Do you already play LeBlanc as an AP Mid but want more interesting games than waiting for the enemy team to surrender at 20?

Have you grown tired of the enemy Veigar killing you instantly with Primordial Burst even though he went 0/8 in lane?

Or do you simply want to troll your queue partners by building in an unorthodox manner then carrying them to victory?

This guide is your comprehensive source for learning how to play LeBlanc not as a mid-lane AP monster, but as an absolute terror in bottom lane as your team's AD Carry. While you can technically play every AP Mid as an ADC (except maybe Galio), LeBlanc's skillset has great synergy with the role of an AD Carry by allowing her to chase( ), escape ( ), and CC (sigil of silence ) the enemy easily, skills that are almost essential to a successful ADC's kit. Add a fairly crisp autoattack animation on top of that, and we have a winner.

Furthermore, playing LeBlanc as an AD Carry allows you to mindgame the enemy (Note: only works at higher elo where people actually have defensive runepages and know what counterpicking is). No one expects you to go bottom lane, and their AP will frantically pick magic resist masteries and runes out of the pure fear of being 1-shot in lane. When the game starts and the enemy Kassadin wanders into lane only to find Teemo mid instead of LeBlanc, he will be extremely disappointed because he took magic resist runes and masteries and now has no damage. Abuse the fact that most solo queue opponents are stubborn adherents to the meta, and juke them out; that's why LeBlanc is known as The Deceiver, isn't she?

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: AD Carry LeBlanc is not for the faint of heart. She has a skill cap that makes Lee Sin look like the easiest champion ever, and is not like Ashe who can press two buttons and have pentakills rain down upon her scoreboard. If you suffer from Alzheimer's, ARAM, or Elo Hell Syndrome, do not attempt to play LeBlanc as an AD Carry.

LeBlanc is well known for the following:

• Having an extremely strong early game that makes her dominate in lane, causing the enemy Karthus to weep as he dies over and over again every time he comes back to farm.
• Distortion allows her to pull off excellent escapes and jukes as well as making her ungankable, causing the enemy jungler infinite rage.
• A passive Shaco ultimate in the form of Mirror Image.
• Mimic adds huge depth to her gameplay that allows skilled LeBlanc players to do sick maneuvers.

However, other than these common elements, LeBlanc's strengths and weaknesses vary greatly depending on how you build and play her.

• Pros:
  • Deals ridiculous burst damage once she has some items, sufficient to 100-0 any enemy carry.
  • Great roaming potential if she wins her lane, allowing her to terrorize top/bottom.
  • One of the greatest ganks in the game due to the sheer speed with which it occurs; by the time the enemy realizes that they got ganked, they are already dead.
• Cons:
  • Can't sustain herself.
  • Can't kill blue buff without a leash, even after she builds her core items.
  • Uses mana very quickly if forced to use her skills.
  • Easily countered if picked first, either by stacking magic resist or counterpicking.
  • Very hard to farm with; her only AoE spell is her only escape mechanism. If you use it to farm, the enemy jungler will jump on you for a threesome you cannot get away from. This forces LeBlanc to farm almost exclusively with her autoattacks for the early game.
  • Drops off rapidly late-game; after you kill their carry, you are now on cooldown and cannot contribute much to the rest of the teamfight aside from maybe a single Ethereal Chains, turning it into a 4v4.

Frankly, after playing hundreds games with LeBlanc, I have grown extremely tired of the cons of an AP Mid LeBlanc, specifically, her terrible late-game scaling and inability to farm as effectively as AP mids who have spammable AoE skills like Tormented Shadow (high elo opponents know that LeBlanc turns into a pile of useless if the wave gets pushed to her tower, denying the farm that she so desperately needs). Fortunately, playing her as an AD Carry alleviates both of those problems handily while retaining the fearsome damage output that defines LeBlanc.

• Pros:
  • Deals ridiculous early game damage even with no AP, ensuring first blood if your support plays well.
  • Stays relevant the entire game and snowballs hard enough to carry in teamfights, something an AP Mid LeBlanc cannot do.
  • Farms more easily than an AP LeBlanc because your autoattacks actually deal a lot of damage now.
  • Great sustain like most carries, and can kill jungle creeps easily.
  • Ethereal Chains and Distortion allow you to CC the enemy and chase them down more easily than many other ADCs.
  • Your opponents will try to counterpick LeBlanc if you choose her, not knowing that you went ADC. Confuse and disorientate the enemy by not going mid lane, leaving the enemy AP feel unloved and unwanted, potentially being counterpicked by your team's other AP instead.
• Cons:
  • None of your skills scale with AD, forcing you to autoattack enemies until they die like Master Yi and Vayne.
  • Lower attack range than some enemy carries like Caitlyn.
  • Low base attack speed makes attack speed items like Phantom Dancer give a less noticeable boost.
  • Your skill burst no longer kills enemies instantly, so it's best to save your skills to burst a fleeing enemy down. Using it to chunk half their HP at the start of a fight allows them to run away before they get too low, which is not what you want.
  • Will get you reported by people who adhere to the meta like religious zealots.

If you are new to LeBlanc, of course, you should play her as an AP Mid first; successfully executing an AD Carry build with her requires you to fully understand the best use of her skills for positioning, poking, and disengaging. She's not a tanky mage like Gragas who can get into the fray with Body Slam and still do fine, nor is she a faceroll character like Ryze who just has to land his Rune Prison before mashing all his skills to kill the enemy.

Properly playing LeBlanc requires you to know exactly when and how you can use your skills in engagements, and it is best to learn how to do this in a solo lane against squishy opponents. Remember to choose AP LeBlanc as a counterpick (she is phenomenal against Katarina, for instance), or you will end up laning against Galio whose magic resist makes you weep.

Now, you can't just build every champion AD and make it work in a competitive scene; Soraka would be the worst AD carry ever. But what exactly differentiates AD carries from other champions that makes them good at the job? Let's break it down below:

Gapclosing/escaping and overall mobility:

• Dash/Blink: Caitlyn, Corki, Ezreal, Graves, Tristana, Vayne
• Movespeed buff: Draven, Jayce, Miss Fortune, Quinn, Sivir, Twitch, Vayne
• Stealth: Twitch, Vayne

Innate DPS boost and damage augmentation:

• Attack speed buff: Draven, Ezreal, Jayce, Kog'Maw, Miss Fortune, Sivir, Tristana, Varus
• Attack damage buff: Draven, Jayce, Quinn, Twitch, Vayne
• True damage: Corki, Twitch, Vayne
• %-health damage: Kog'Maw, Varus, Vayne
• High AD scaling: Caitlyn, Graves, Jayce, Miss Fortune, Sivir
• Armor shred: Corki, Jayce, Kog'Maw
• Autoattack reset: Sivir, Vayne

Crowd Control and disruption:

• Slow: Ashe, Caitlyn, Draven, Graves, Miss Fortune, Quinn, Tristana, Twitch, Varus
• Snare/stun: Ashe, Caitlyn, Varus, Vayne
• Knockback: Draven, Jayce, Tristana, Vayne

The two other attributes that benefit AD carries are, of course, AD scaling and long autoattack/ability ranges. Note that all AD carries are great in at least one category and have at least some attribute that fall into other categories.

LeBlanc does not have AD scaling abilities or an innate damage augmenting skill, but she is one of the most mobile champions in the game. Think of her as a more mobile Tristana with a much better early game and a snare.

• greater quintessence of hybrid penetration: Your skills do not scale with AD, so these are actually better quints than Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage on an ADC LeBlanc. Hybrid penetration ensures more early game damage than armor penetration, which ensures more kills, allowing you to snowball harder.
• greater mark of hybrid penetration: Same as above; even though they got nerfed, they are still great on runes.
• Greater Glyph of Ability Power: Some extra damage on your skills throughout the game, these will add 15-40 damage to your typical combo. Nothing to write home about, but damage is damage.
• Greater Seal of Armor: I do not take mana regen seals on LeBlanc because frankly, she doesn't need them if you are smart about your mana usage. The armor will help immensely with survivability.

• Greater Quintessence of Magic Penetration: Gives you slightly more early game damage for the first blood, but sacrifices late-game potential.
• greater quintessence of armor penetration: Gives you slightly more late game damage on your autoattacks.
• Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage: More attack damage for easier last hitting, but you give up a bit of armor and magic penetration for this.
• Greater Quintessence of Health: If you really suck at surviving you can take these, but surrendering damage for survivability is not ideal on LeBlanc because Distortion and Mimic should be more than enough to get you out of sticky situations.
• Greater Quintessence of Gold: These are actually mathematically the best quintessences to take, because they generate enough gold to make up for the other lost stats around ~15 minutes into the game. Take these if you feel like being adventurous.
• greater mark of armor penetration: The same rationale as armor penetration quintessences apply.
• Greater Glyph of Magic Resist: While you should already win every single trade, less damage taken early game is always good, especially against an AP jungler.
• Greater Seal of Mana Regeneration: I never run out of mana, but if you suck at managing your mana consumption, these seals could help you out. Alternatively, enslave Soraka to be your walking mana potion.

Ignite adds that last bit of damage necessary to kill someone in your burst and can secure a kill when otherwise the enemy would have gotten away with 50 HP. A few kills on an AD LeBlanc can snowball her hard. The 5 additional AD/AP from Summoner's Wrath is also great to have.


This is perhaps the most overpowered summoner spell out there, allowing you to engage, disengage, gank, escape from a gank, reposition yourself to land critical Ethereal Chains, and much more. It has been nerfed many, many times since its release, but it is still good and will continue to be good unless Riot removes the ability to jump over walls with it or adds a channeling time. Combined with Distortion and Mimic, you can put a huge distance between you and your enemy team in less than a second, and if they Flash after you to try and chase you down, just activate Distortion again to get back to where you started!

Note that Distortion, while having a longer range than Flash, is not a substitute! It is slower, and you can be hit by spells like Rocket Grab or Rupture during Distortion, potentially killing you in a situation where Flash would have gotten you out safely.


This is like a Quicksilver Sash, except it doesn't cost 1660 gold. Note that this only removes disables and summoner spell debuffs like Ignite, and will have no effect on the damage-over-time (DoT) effects of poison/burns like Noxious Trap and Blaze. Extremely useful against a CC-heavy enemy team, but giving up ignite for it is a heavy cost.


Increases your burst when combined with Summoner's Wrath , and allows you to chase an enemy down or shut down the enemy ADC in teamfights. A very good spell overall, but your support should be the one taking this, not you.


Debatable usefulness on ADC LeBlanc if you plan on using it offensively, especially since you have to give up Flash or Ignite for it. If playing her as an AP Mid, a surprise teleport to a warded bush can let you instantly kill an enemy with your QR combo, but ADC LeBlanc does not have enough burst to make this viable. More likely than not, you end up using a 300-second cooldown Teleport to make them burn a 300-second cooldown Flash, resulting in a waste of time.

This spell is still useful for teleporting you out of sticky situations where you are surrounded by enemies and Flash/ Distortion won't get you away safely, however.


A possible alternative for people who think Flash and Distortion are redundant. It also helps you roam between lanes faster and has a variety of other niche uses.


You have Elixir of Fortitude, so you do not need this. If anything, your support should be taking Heal, not you, the ADC.


You have Elixir of Fortitude, so you do not need this. This is also not ARAM, so it's of debatable utility.


You are not Ryze, you should not be facerolling your skills. Playing LeBlanc well requires intelligent, calculated use of her abilities at the right moment to deal maximum damage with minimal cost, and her base mana is way more than sufficient for this purpose.


Shut up and buy wards, Billy!


Revive's cooldown is so long that you will most likely only get to use it once in a game, ostensibly to change the outcome of a pivotal teamfight that your team was going to lose. However, you are giving up Ignite or Flash to take this spell, which is most likely what allowed the enemy team to snowball this hard to begin with.

You also aren't Karthus, so reviving won't really let you do a whole lot more in teamfights.


While I would love to get some sick frags with Smite, this spell is really better left for the jungler.


You really shouldn't be playing ADC LeBlanc in Dominion, and even there, you shouldn't be taking Garrison since you are not the initiator.

Standard AD Masteries, with a point in Summoner's Wrath instead of maxing Butcher because you get 5AD and 5AP with that point instead of a measly 2 bonus damage against minions. However, you have to take Ignite to benefit from it, so remove the 1 point in Summoner's Wrath and put it into Butcher if you don't use Ignite.

Similarly, if using Cleanse, you should get the point in Summoner's Resolve to get that extended debuff reduction, which will save your life much more often than 2 magic resist will.

The reason I take points in Defense instead of Utility is because you really don't need any of the bonuses in there. Need mana? Conserve it better instead of blindly spamming your skills every time they go off cooldown. As ADC LeBlanc, your autoattacks will hurt, and an AA- Sigil of Silence-AA combo can easily melt 1/4 of a squishy champion's health without much mana cost.

The extra armor and health in the defense tree, on the other hand, are enormously useful for giving you early-game survivability as well as making you take less damage with every trade.

An excellent passive with a huge amount of potential should you know how to use it properly. Soviet already explains in great detail how to use Mirror Image in his guide, so I won't cover it here.

Sigil of Silence
Your single-target nuke, which should be maxed first for high early game damage. Even though you are not building AP, you deal so much damage without items that it is essential to max Sigil of Silence first for maximum early-game burst.

Remember that this skill has a second part: the silence. The sigil proc deals a considerable amount of damage while silencing the enemy and preventing them from fighting back, thus you should try not to use this skill for poking without triggering its second stage.


Your only AoE spell and your only escape mechanism. This should be maxed second for the reduced cooldown. This skill is, however, picked at level 1 in the skilling order because it's extremely useful should a level 1 teamfight break out due to its AoE damage and higher base damage, not to mention that Sigil of Silence is worthless without a second skill to trigger the silence.

The range on Distortion far surpasses most ADC gapclosers ( Tumble, Quickdraw, you name it), making chasing easier than even when combined with Ethereal Chains.

Arguably, you can take Ethereal Chains instead of Distortion in niche scenarios where the snare is useful, but very rarely will you actually get to use it. Get to your lane or camp at blue, wait to see if the enemy is invading, and decide what skill to take from there.


A mini Morgana ultimate in skillshot form. Successfully landing this skill will make an enemy be unable to escape from you, and the silence from Sigil of Silence will prevent them from flashing out of range for its snare. The best part is that while the enemy is slowed and snared, you can keep autoattacking them for massive damage, while your run-of-the-mill AP LeBlanc has no damage after she blows her cooldowns.

You can also throw this into bushes as an alternative to facechecking it. If it hits something, you know somebody is there.

Note: Opponents who know that this skill hits minions will sometimes hide behind a minion wave with low health thinking you cannot hit them with the snare. WRONG! You can easily Distortion past the minion wave and land the snare.


An excellent ultimate on a ridiculously low cooldown, this skill is what defines LeBlanc and allows so much depth in her gameplay. Mimicked spells do absolutely ridiculous damage even when you have 0 AP, allowing you to melt ~1000 health off enemies just with the magic damage from a Q-R-W-E combo. Some basic tips about this ultimate:

• Mimicking Sigil of Silence allows you to silence opponents for up to 6 seconds while melting their life bar away with your autoattacks.
• Mimicking Distortion allows you to either deal heavy AoE damage to clear a minion wave/finish off running opponents, or just to substantially widen/close a gap between you and your enemies.
• Mimicking Ethereal Chains allows you to either snare a single champion in place for a really, really long time, or snare two people separately and get your team two kills.

The cooldown is so short that it is almost guaranteed to be up every time you need it. Using this skill to its fullest is what makes or breaks LeBlanc, so learn everything you can do with your skills. Again, I highly recommend checking this guide for how to properly combo with LeBlanc. Even though you are building ADC, your early-game and much of your later gameplay still revolve around proper usage of your skills. Learn them well and you will become so fed that you can AA their tanks to death while their Vayne scratches away at your health with her puny bolts that do no damage.

Note: LeBlanc's skills cost tons of mana, which makes mana regeneration items useless on her because all it does is let you cast Sigil of Silence one extra time after five minutes. She is not a sustained caster, and ADC LeBlanc should be getting her damage from autoattacks and only using skills for CC or the killing burst, so conserving your mana in the first place is far, far more important than trying to compensate for overusing your skills by stacking mana regen.

LeBlanc's gameplay when you pick her as an AD Carry is very unique; play her as if you were using her as an AP Mid early game. The absolutely ridiculous base damage on her skills far outshines her autoattacks early game, and you can very easily assassinate the enemy ADC or support if they don't constantly keep their health topped off.

Because of her ability to silence the enemy, there are precisely zero bottom-lane champions who can win against LeBlanc in a trade for pure damage; abuse that and harass your enemy every time it is safe to do so; their only way to retaliate is with their autoattacks, which are weak because they have no items.

As the game goes on and you get your core items, things start to change drastically as the majority of your damage shifts from skills to autoattacks. Do not neglect your skills, however; they still do a considerable amount of damage and can finish off an opponent who is running away with 1/3 health.

I cannot tell you the specifics of how to play your game; every match is different, and even different people playing the same champion can behave very differently. Analyze your opponent, figure out what they can do and how they react to what you do, and exploit any deficiencies you find.

Their Soraka likes to come and autoattack you to get gold from Pickpocket ? Make her regret it by dishing ridiculous amounts of damage to her. Their Corki keeps spamming Phosphorus Bomb to farm and has no mana to use Valkyrie? Burst him with your combo and get first blood.

PvP success in the League of Legends requires you to know your opponents and be able to think ahead, not follow some bland template outlined in a guide on Mobafire and expect victories to automatically show up in your match history.

Remember, as LeBlanc, your ultimate early-game goal is to destroy the enemy AD Carry as hard as possible. You are capable of denying their CS so hard that they can barely afford a B. F. Sword at 20 minutes, so take advantage of this. There's also the infamous "pre-6 hell" that lots of champions go through where their ultimate is half their utility, making your early-game dominance even better. Prevent the enemy from farming, and farm them instead.

With that said, let's have a look at the starting item choices:

Possible starting items:

A long sword gives you much-needed damage on your autoattacks and leaves enough money to buy two Health Potions. While some people would argue that starting Doran's Blade gives you health, the same amount of damage, and sustained heal, it doesn't build into anything and doesn't let you take potions to heal back quickly from a bad exchange that brought your health low.

No boots? Are you insane?
Not quite. While the Boots and Health Potionx3 start was ubiquitous in Season 2, with the Season 3 changes, champion base movement speed was increased while the bonus movement speed provided by boots have decreased. This means that you can afford to start with other items while still having sufficient mobility. Best of all, your primary harass will be your autoattacks and sigil of silence, which cannot be dodged like skillshots, so if your laning opponent took boots, he now does less damage than you and didn't gain anything by taking boots first.


An alternative that gives you more sustain at the cost of 10 AD. This is not recommended due to the flask nerf, so if the enemy carry has great pokes that are guaranteed to hurt you, ask your team to pick a sustain support in champion select.


If you insist on taking these, I can't stop you; ever since the flask nerf, this start has become more lucrative. These are beneficial for avoiding skillshots like Light Binding if you can't do it without them, as well as making chasing somewhat easier. The loss of 10 AD is still substantial, though.

What to do when laning:

• Farm, farm, and farm. League of Legends is a very farm-centric game; you cannot afford to lose CS even if you are intent on pewpewing an enemy Ezreal in the face with your staff. 10-15 CS is equivalent to a kill, and last-hitting well will make you significantly stronger than your opponents by virtue of getting your core items before them.
• Harass, but keep moderation. LeBlanc excels at making her enemies lose half their health in an exchange, but the ultimate goal here is to kill them, instead of harassing them so low that they will just recall to base and heal to full.
• A good way to harass is by doing damage to the enemies when you have a safe opening to do so. If the enemy ADC used their skills to farm or failed at harassing you, they are on cooldown and you can immediately retaliate safely. This will cause them to run back and lose CS, as well as take heavy damage without a chance to dish it back in return.
• Save your high damage burst for finishing people off; most people want to stay in lane as long as possible, and if you continuously deal only minor damage with your harass, they will stay in lane with low health, thinking you can't kill them because you are dumb and built AD on LeBlanc. As soon as you see a chance to 1-shot them, go in for the kill and erase their remaining life in one burst right underneath their tower, making them forever regret underestimating your damage potential.
• While you are perfectly capable of killing the enemy by yourself, LeBlanc's synergy with jungler ganks is astounding. Not only does her ridiculously long silence prevent enemies from flashing away, but her Ethereal Chains is a slow and long snare that gives your jungler enough time to get in on the action and deal serious damage. Letting your jungler come in not only demoralizes the enemy with a fierce threesome, but also allows your jungler to get the XP and Assist money, bringing your entire team more ahead.
• Keep track of when the enemy support wards river! Many people do not re-ward right before a ward expires, and instead opt to only ward again after the initial ward dies. Exploit this foolish behavior, as it gives your jungler a brief window to sneak in and either catch their support warding by herself, or perform a surprise gank during that brief moment of safety. Wards last 3 minutes; communicate this to your jungler so he doesn't waste time coming in when it's warded and knows exactly when the enemy will no longer have vision.
• As long as you do not die and are keeping up with CS, you are winning the lane. Don't tower-dive and instead get killed by the enemy team unless you know for a fact you can get out safely after immediately bursting them down. I have seen far too many greedy players die to try and last-hit the enemy champion, only to give him a double kill. When played well, LeBlanc will never die, and you should make not dying your main goal. Remember, every death feeds the enemy, and a fed enemy is annoying as hell. Take your kills in relative safety and watch their team rage in all chat because their lane went 0/6 to an AD LeBlanc.

As always, keeping on top of your early-game purchases is important:


Always carry one around if you have the leftover gold, because it's like a free Heal that can save your life or bait the enemy into tower diving, not to mention the attack damage buff you get for 3 minutes afterwards.

(The extra health gain is unaffected by Ignite, allowing you to survive otherwise certain death and piss the enemy off because they didn't get the kill.)

Sight Ward
Buy these if you want to win, because they are the most important items in the game. Your support is not the only one responsible for warding, and he or she may not always be there if you need an area near you warded. You will always have spare inventory slots before your full build is complete, so carry some around if you can spare the gold.


"But I have a Crystalline Flask!" you say, "Why do I need these?"

The answer is actually quite simple: 360 HP and 180 Mana is not enough sustain to prevent you from having to recall. Every time you go back to base, the Crystalline Flask will give you the equivalent of ~2 Health Potions and ~2 Mana Potions, totaling ~140 gold. However, the CS that you miss while at base will greatly exceed this amount. Therefore, it is more economical to buy some consumable potions and avoid going back until you can finish a core item, not only to let you get a finished build faster than the enemy, but also stay ahead of them in terms of levels.


This item deserves its own section, because it is an extremely situational purchase. If you can buy a B. F. Sword, don't blow money on these items, get the B. F. Sword instead. These swords are, however, excellent at giving you survivability, damage, as well as sustain. The general rule of thumb is to buy these if you are being bullied out of lane; it shouldn't typically happen because you should be the one doing the bullying, but against a particularly annoying duo like a skilled Caitlyn/ Taric, this can be a lifesaver.

After laning phase is over, you should have your core items and be ahead of your enemy in both kills and CS, especially kills. This turns their ADC into a pile of useless in teamfights because they are underleveled and underfed, while you will be so built that you crit for 700 damage with your magic stick. Even if you didn't do that well, do not worry; laning does not win games, teamfights do. Do well in a teamfight and you can make a comeback even from a bad early game.

General teamfight tips:

• Don't get ulted by Mordekaiser.
• Don't engage in a teamfight just because you can; make the judgment call of whether or not your team will actually benefit from getting into a fight there and then.
• Pretending to be your clone while Mirror Image procs can let you get off uncontested autoattacks.
• If you are guaranteed to die soon, instead of trying to run, use the last few seconds of your life to DPS the enemy.
• Pay close attention! Many players suffer from "I have no idea where the **** my champion is" syndrome during teamfights and end up being useless because of it.
• Focusing is secondary to actually dealing damage; if their carry is out of range and safely protected at the back, attack the closest enemy! Don't let a low-health champion turn into a ****** magnet.
• When ahead, get more ahead. Don't overcommit and squander your advantage by wasting time.

As the ADC, your role in teamfights is straightforward: To deal as much damage as possible to the enemy. It is up to you to decide who to snare with Ethereal Chains and who to silence with your sigil of silence, and there is no simple formula for that; you have to make the judgment call yourself during teamfights.

There will be some obvious targets like Katarina during Death Lotus or Fiddlesticks when channeling Crowstorm, but because of the relatively long cooldown on your skills that can be used to proc the sigil, pick your targets wisely.

Therefore, the primary focus of this section will be on the various items available to you for purchase. If you already play an ADC champion, most of this will be familiar to you. If not, read on:


Core items, no way around it if you want to do damage.



I changed my mind on this item after being persuaded to try it by a friend of mine; you can actually substitute this for Phantom Dancer or build one in addition to it and receive a huge, appreciable bonus in damage in teamfights, as long as you know how to build charges by moving or using Distortion.

• Crits for 250 damage with Infinity Edge, which is absolutely huge for being completely free damage that comes on top of your normal autoattacks.
• This is guaranteed to constantly proc almost every other attack when you are chasing a low-health enemy.
• Gives you tons of assists even if you only attacked down two of their champions.
• Charges super fast if you kite around, which you should be doing anyway in order to avoid incoming damage.
• Both the initial dash and the return on Distortion will charge Statikk Shiv by at least 30 (more if you walk further away before returning), which means you will proc this AoE lightning at least 3 times in a teamfight for a maximum of 3000 free magic damage.

Now, from a pure mathematical standpoint, your single-target damage will be higher if you build Phantom Dancer. However, Statikk Shiv also gives you strong pushing/waveclearing on top of its stats, which can give you greater map control midgame than would otherwise be possible.


Black Cleaver is actually more of an AD caster item since it procs on all physical damage, not just autoattacks. The stats aren't optimal for an ADC, but this is an option if you need that extra bit of survivability in an offensive, armor-shredding item.


This is an assassin-type item, which synergizes well with your skillset's high single-target focus. Burst a high-priority target with your skills before unleashing this item's active on them while they are silenced, blowing through their entire health pool instantly. This item unfortunately does not grant you any stats other than attack speed, so it is arguably only useful if one enemy champion is the source of the majority of their damage and eliminating him/her can win teamfights.


Actually a decent pick on LeBlanc, because it not only gives her a huge mana pool but procs the 6% mana damage on Sigil of Silence as well as its Mimic version. Increases your damage and mana pool with a significant caveat that you have to rush Tear of the Goddess because it takes forever to charge on LeBlanc. Only build into this if you expect a very long game.

Note: Both the initial Sigil and the silence proc will trigger Muramana, dealing the 6% damage twice for each cast, provided that the sigil is then triggered with a different skill. Ethereal Chains is not classified as a single-target ability despite being one, and thus will not interact with Muramana's toggle active.


Surprisingly viable, because the AP on these items actually help her burst, unlike many other AD champions that take this item despite having no AP ratios on any of their skills.


These items are of questionable usefulness; they give you magic resist and a magic shield, but you can easily reposition yourself with Distortion and avoid taking the damage in the first place during teamfights. What's more, you aren't Olaf or Tryndamere, so the damage passive of Maw of Malmortius will not really benefit you that much. Only get this if you for some reason cannot just silence the enemy AP during teamfights and make him irrelevant.


A good item overall, but you should not be dying in the first place as LeBlanc. If you are dying because of hard crowd control effects like stuns or suppression, consider getting a Quicksilver Sash and upgrading it into a Mercurial Scimitar. Consider Warmog's Armor instead of Guardian Angel if the extra 1000 HP allows you to survive.


These items don't give you a lot of attack damage and only provide a pittance of magic resist for their cost, but the items' active is well worth the money: all debuffs are removed from your champion, including the ones that Cleanse cannot remove. This is extremely useful if your enemy team is full of hard CC that's killing you and your support isn't building a Mikael's Blessing. The magic resist will also greatly improve your survivability against their fed Xerath or Veigar that's causing you to have to buy this item in the first place.

Note: Most people will wait until you are CC'd to unload their damage. This is not a good idea! Take advantage of this, because it gives you a critical window of time in which you can use Quicksilver Sash's active and Flash away.

(Yes, Flash, not Distortion. Distortion is not instant! Being cheap and unwilling to use Flash makes the difference between surviving with 1200 HP and staying in the fight to deal damage, or being greyscreened and feeding the enemy.)


I generally do not buy this item because smart enemies will pop it with a token spell and massacre you afterwards, but there will be games where the spell shield saves your life from Requiem or Noxious Trap. Purchase at your own discretion, because it is a purely defensive item whose effectiveness depends highly on the enemy team composition.



You don't particularly need the slow because you already have Ethereal Chains, Enchantment: Furor, as well as Distortion to help with chasing, but the huge health bonus and attack damage can be welcome.


Normally an AP item, both of its stats benefit an ADC LeBlanc. 100 AP adds roughly ~250 damage to your burst, and the armor given by the item significantly increases your tankiness. What's more, the active lets you do this.





It's an inexpensive snowball item, but losing 35 attack damage and 15% movement speed when you die with no easy way to get it back can be devastating. Bloodthirster gives almost as much attack damage as a fully stacked Sword of the Occult and can stack from minion and monster kills, allowing you to restore its stacks easily on death and not be stuck.


Building LeBlanc as an AD Carry does not turn you into a hybrid champion; this item is not cost-effective on LeBlanc and its active does not help her.


While I am a Touhou fan, I still would not buy this item. The CDR and active don't help LeBlanc and the stats are pathetic compared to other items of similar cost.


You don't need the CDR, and a Quicksilver Sash is much more useful than Tenacity on someone as squishy as LeBlanc.


I am ambivalent about this item. You don't have an innate attack speed steroid like Draven or Graves, and your attacks also don't have on-hit effects like Bio-Arcane Barrage or Blighted Quiver, so this item does not really benefit LeBlanc too much. It technically doubles your damage against multiple targets and gives you tons of attack speed, but spreads it out over multiple targets as opposed to concentrating it on one enemy (not to mention the lack of crit), which is not great for an ADC. It does apply lifesteal, although you should have more than enough sustain already without it.

In the general case, Runaan's Hurricane is something you purchase to gain pushing power in exchange for lower DPS against players.

It has great synergy with some items, and an experienced player who knows when they are appropriate purchases can opt to purchase this item if they have already built one of the other items for a specific reason.

• Black Cleaver - Shreds the armor of three enemy champions.
• Blade of the Ruined King - Chunks three enemies for 4% of their health per attack.
• Phage/ Trinity Force/ Frozen Mallet - Slows half of the enemy team.
• Statikk Shiv - Gains 30 charges per AA rather than 10.

It has a good active, but it just doesn't augment your damage enough against enemy carries, which should be the ones you are focusing down in teamfights. I can see an argument for this item if you are for some reason playing in a 700 elo game where everyone stacks several Warmog's Armor and thinks they are unkillable, but realistically you will do way more damage by building other items in most situations. This is an extremely situational top-lane item and should not be purchased by AD Carries in most cases.


As popular as this combination may be, Atmog's is garbage! Anyone who wants out of Elo Hell should immediately stop building this item combination, on any champion, because building this is what got you into Elo Hell in the first place. If I see someone building Atmog's, I immediately know that they can be ignored because they do no damage due to spending all their money on this item combination. Warmog's Armor by itself is an acceptable situational purchase, but definitely not Atma's Impaler.

---

As always, remember that objectives are extremely important in League of Legends; don't forget to do the following:

• Maintain vision and control over monsters and buffs like Dragon or Baron Nashor by warding the **** out of the map. 125 gold for a Vision Ward pays for itself many times over if it ensures your team a Dragon or Baron kill.
• Stealing buffs from the enemy jungle can cripple the potential of their ADC and AP. The enemy will also be aware of their own jungle timers, however, and trying to do this can possibly lead to being engaged on by the whole enemy team.
• Do not wait for the enemy team to be aced before doing Baron Nashor! Many low-elo players make the mistake of thinking that they cannot take baron when the enemy team is not dead. There are several reasons why this is not a good thought process:
  • Trying to ace the enemy team often gets your own team aced instead, giving them either Baron or several turrets in the process.
  • Trying to kill Baron Nashor after a teamfight when your team is weakened can often result in a failure to actually kill him, allowing the now-respawned enemy team to jump in and steal it while killing your low-health stragglers.
  Therefore, it is usually a much better idea to go for Baron when you know for sure that the enemy team has no vision of the Baron pit and its surrounding areas (easily accomplished with a Vision Ward in the right spot), and when at least 1 or 2 of the enemy team members are somewhere far away, like bottom lane.
• If the enemy team has the Baron buff, do not fret! The game is not over yet. Even with the buff, they do not want to engage you under your tower, and every second in stalemate is a second of the buff wasted. Wait it out patiently and harass from the safety of your tower, and if they get cocky and start a 5-person tower dive, make them regret the decision by unloading all your CC while the turret is pounding away at them. While the Baron buff is game-changing, it is not a guaranteed win for the team that has it. Engage well, buy elixirs to offset the difference in stats, and you can still win a full-on teamfight.
• As always, Oracle's Elixir is a good buy even after the nerf. Controlling vision in the late game is critical, and denying the enemy team of wards in highly dangerous jungle areas can allow your team to get a great initiate off.
• Remember to sell your Crystalline Flask at some point to reclaim the gold and inventory slot. If you can afford a component of your next item (such as a The Brutalizer) but the rest of your inventory slots are full, sell the flask; the extra stats outweighs the sustain from the Crystalline Flask, and at this point you should have way more than enough sustain from your Bloodthirster that you won't need the consumable.

If you tl;dr'd this whole section, there's only one thing left to say:

Note: I've had some people ask me to include some pretty outlandish supports like Gangplank, Ezreal, Veigar, and my favorite, another LeBlanc. While I don't really think they're viable picks, I did include Orianna and Nidalee, who aren't traditionally considered supports. (Plus, you're reading an ADC LeBlanc guide, so it seems a bit contradictory for me to rule these supports out.) If you want me to expand the list even more and add the esoteric supports, leave a comment and I will consider it.

Taric is an exceptional support for most AD carries, including AD LeBlanc. A Dazzle Shatter combo can get you a kill out of nowhere, and Taric deals a ridiculous amount of damage by himself, allowing you to add your burst on top of that for an instant 100-0. His CC and armor aura also give you incredible survivability as well as making you even more ungankable than you already are, and he tops it all off with Imbue to sustain your lane.

Taric runs out of mana if he has to Imbue constantly, and at low ranks of the skill, he has to do it that way to get any appreciable heal out of it. However, this is still way more sustain than you get out of typical supports, and places Taric high up on the list.

Taric is a melee champion, and enemy champions do not take kindly to being smacked in the face by a spiky hammer. This limits his safe harass to dealing damage after Dazzle, which is mana hungry. Fortunately, it is still cost-efficient provided that you follow it up with your own burst, causing the enemies to hug their tower in fear and lose CS. Eventually, just the sight of Taric walking towards them can cause a pre-emptive retreat, allowing you to farm in peace while denying them of CS.

does high damage and crushes their armor. Throw in a and they will either flash away in fear, or die because it's on cooldown. His Shatter really shines late game when you have your Bloodthirster and Phantom Dancer, but early-game the armor-breaking passive only augments your damage slightly since your burst damage is still magic. It doesn't really matter when the burst damage from both of you combined is already overkill for a single enemy, however.

One Dazzle and your team is ahead one kill, not much else to say here except that your jungler's presence only speeds up the enemy's eventual demise. The only drawback of this targeted stun is its short cast range, but proper use of the side bushes and Vision Wards can allow him to land it.

Taric can throw in a Dazzle and the Nocturne that just ulted him will get killed instead. As long as you do not overextend and fail to ward, LeBlanc and Taric can walk away from nearly every gank without a single death, and sometimes even score a kill on the desperate tower-diving Shyvana, causing the enemy team to rage at each other and decreasing their chances of winning.

Dazzle, Shatter, and Radiance remain relevant for the entire game, and if Taric built AP, his Imbue will heal for an absurd amount as well. A good initiate and Dazzle can lead to instant death for a high priority enemy target before the stun even wears off, turning the fight into a 5v4 instantly.

Taric does not have game-breaking skills like Crescendo or Black Shield, however, and it's the only reason why he isn't ranked "Extremely High" on the endgame potential scale.

---

Blitzcrank is played as a support mostly to turn the bottom lane into a kill-fest; a good Rocket Grab is almost guaranteed to get a kill or make the enemy burn Flash. With Power Fist he can force first blood as early as level 2 thanks to his high burst synergizing with LeBlanc's ability to sigil of silence for 2/3 of their health when combined with autoattacks. Good opponents will, however, know how to avoid Rocket Grab, and without a successful pull, your lane will be bullied constantly and the lack of sustain will hurt you hard.



Blitzcrank is not a sustain support; he is meant to get you as many kills as possible.

Blitzcrank's main form of harass is threatening Rocket Grab into Power Fist and possibly Static Field for a long and painful death while being constantly CC'd. Without landing Rocket Grab, however, he is a melee champion who will get kited hard by ranged characters, and can't really poke the enemy team. Either he lands a Rocket Grab and commits to a full combo, or he sits in the brush not doing a whole lot.

does ridiculous damage, pulls them closer to your tower and further from their own, and knocks them up for an absurd duration of total CC time. After level 6, adds considerable damage to the burst and also silences them to delay their Flash and giving LeBlanc extra time to lay down the hurt. Even if LeBlanc went back to buy items, Blitzcrank is fully capable of killing an enemy champion by himself if they let him land the Rocket Grab, causing enemies to hesitate about pushing the lane.

A good Rocket Grab will net a kill with or without the jungler, but guarantees one when he is present. Unfortunately, it is a slow-moving skillshot and not a point-and-click wonder like Dazzle, so missing it consistently will likely cause your jungler to leave your lane.

Blitzcrank cannot shield his ally and his movement speed steroid only helps himself get away. Worse yet, his Rocket Grab pulls the enemy jungler towards him, which is an unwise decision to say the least. He does have the ability to knock up with Power Fist before making a run for it with Overdrive, as well as the short silence that Static Field provides him, so his kit does make ganks more manageable.

Rocket Grab is broken, and Overdrive is a free, spammable Ghost. One good Rocket Grab can turn a crushing defeat into victory, and Static Field is an excellent interrupt against any enemies trying to channel their high-damage spells in the midst of a teamfight. Blitzcrank's kit is game-breaking in the right hands, and is the reason why he is frequently banned in ranked games.

---

Soraka is often seen as a stereotypical healer that does nothing except act as a walking Health Potion, but a good player will use her aggressively as her kit does allow for a lot of offensive play. As LeBlanc, you want to shut down the enemy carry, not turn bottom into a farm lane; a Soraka who knows what she's doing can net you a considerable number of kills, while making sure that you will never need to recall to heal.



Soraka is the definition of a sustain support, with her skills providing you with loads of health and mana, making you practically impossible to bully out of lane.

• Consecration gives you more MR than 9x Greater Glyph of Magic Resist.
• Astral Blessing has a ridiculous base heal of 350 when maxed, and gives you a temporary armor boost.
• Infuse restores mana and doesn't cost anything.
• Wish can heal teammates on the other side of the map.

While her AP ratios got nerfed several times since release, Astral Blessing and Wish are still the best heals in the game (barring the Imbue from a fed Taric who has a Rabadon's Deathcap and Mejai's Soulstealer).

If you are extremely good at avoiding incoming damage, you can ask the Soraka to max Infuse before Astral Blessing. Getting enough mana to halve your enemy's health every 9 seconds is no small deal, not to mention that Infuse does considerable damage when used offensively as well.

This is highly dependent on how the support player plays her; while your average Soraka player will babysit with her and camp in the brush not doing a whole lot, a good Soraka player will constantly harass the opponent with her autoattacks and Infuse. Infuse silences the enemy, preventing them from fighting back, and the damage from her autoattacks add up if she gets them in every so often.

Some Soraka players will delay Starcall until level 8 or even 13, but a good Soraka will grab a point in it before level 6. 20 Mana is nothing and allows it to be spammed on a pushed wave or a greedy carry, and it's a low-cooldown AoE spell that reduces enemy magic resist. Normally this isn't much help to an ADC, but as LeBlanc, it is a godsend; a few stacks of Starcall can drop magic resist close to or below zero, making the enemies take 100% or more damage from your spells.

She has no hard CC, but the silence from Infuse prevents enemies from using skills like Arcane Shift or Flash, which is more than enough for you. LeBlanc's early-game burst is ridiculously high, and the 1 second silence from a rank-1 Infuse gives you enough time to get in and blow up the enemy's health bar, especially if a few Starcall stacks are applied.

Soraka can aid your jungler's ganks by using Infuse on the enemy carry and by making the jungler unkillable with Astral Blessing. If your team has an AP jungler like Fiddlesticks or Maokai, the MR reduction from Starcall helps secure the kill as well, provided you can get in range to hit them.

Soraka has no escape mechanisms and can only silence one enemy; if a particularly bad gank happens, she has little choice other than using Astral Blessing and Infuse quickly before running back to her tower.

It is worth mentioning that a Soraka who is paying attention to her Starcall icon will be able to notice an approaching stealthed Rengar or Shaco, but the chances of this happening are so low in solo queue that you might as well not expect them to do it in the first place.

Note: Most junglers will not be stupid enough to come in at half HP, but if they do, LeBlanc can burst them for 300 gold and this will often be more than enough to scare the enemy bot lane into retreating.

The AP ratios on Soraka's heals are mediocre at best, causing her to drop off late-game as she has no burst and needs to stay in the middle of a fight to spam Starcall. Doing so, however, gives the enemy team an easy, squishy target, and a dead Soraka causes her team to lose the aura bonuses they get from her Aegis of the Legion as well as her heals.

---

Nunu & Willump is not classified as a support, but his Blood Boil and Ice Blast combined with his tankiness make him a fearsome partner at bottom lane starting at level 1. His ability to buff you with Blood Boil and his signature ultimate will cement your bottom-lane dominance, and his versatile kit aids you throughout the game by massively augmenting your damage output and mobility while slowing the enemy down and hastening their death.



Nunu & Willump can't directly sustain the ADC since Consume only heals himself, but the indirect sustain from Blood Boil allows you attack faster and move faster, increasing the HP recovery via life steal as well as making it easier to avoid enemy skillshots like Mystic Shot.

Since Nunu & Willump is very tanky, he can walk into the enemies and bait them to use their burst on him, while LeBlanc follows up with her own burst, now free from being counterattacked. While Consume does steal CS, losing a couple of minions to Consume is not a huge deal since the gold still goes to your team, just on the support instead of the ADC. Furthermore, if Nunu & Willump tanking hits for you allows you to harass the enemy back to base (or better yet, kill them), give Willump a reward by letting him nom a minion - he earned it.

(Alternatively, only eat the siege minions; 500 damage will not kill them, allowing you to last-hit the cannon.)

Nunu & Willump is a melee champion, but he can be played very aggressively due to how awesome Ice Blast is. Not only does it slow movement speed considerably at higher ranks, but the target's attack speed is also reduced. Enemies will also take considerable damage from having ice cubes thrown at them all the time, so if their lane has no sustain because their support is Zyra, they will often be forced to go back to base (one way or another) if you do your job properly as LeBlanc.

Blood Boil is also OP, making your attack speed and movement speed absurdly high while their Vayne sluggishly shoots one crossbow bolt every 2 seconds. This lets you, the ADC, harass much more freely with your own autoattacks and skills and get out easily.

( Blood Boil actually gives enough of a movespeed boost to let barefooted champions catch up with someone who has Boots, sometimes causing the enemy to rage about it.)

One good Ice Blast should usually lead to a kill unless they used Flash, and Absolute Zero can chunk full-health enemies for most of their HP if it lasts the whole channel. Unfortunately, support Nunu & Willump cannot typically afford to exclusively build AP unless he's really, really fed, and without the massive AP that a lane Nunu & Willump with CS has, in late game his Ice Blast and Absolute Zero won't be dealing the huge damage they would on an AP Nunu & Willump.

Junglers love Nunu & Willump because of his skillset; Ice Blast is great for ganks due to the huge slow it gives, and if needed, Absolute Zero can be used as an AoE slow if it will net your team kills on champions that otherwise would have escaped. If Blood Boil isn't on cooldown, it can also be used to give the jungler a huge buff.

Blood Boil lets you literally walk away from ganks and Ice Blast makes one member of the enemy team worthless during the gank. Popping Absolute Zero after walking into a bush can sometimes net LeBlanc a double or triple kill instead if the enemy team is particularly chase-happy and doesn't pay attention to their reduced movement speed.

Unlike AP Nunu, a support Nunu's damage doesn't scale super-well into the lategame. Fortunately, however, his utility remains high because his skills still do an excellent job at crowd control. Landing Ice Blast on a stray enemy is a guaranteed kill, and Blood Boil gives you a considerable DPS boost even if you are fully built.

---

Alistar is often banned because he is one of the most fearsome supports in bottom lane, but as lolking demonstrates, his win ratio is abysmal. Part of the reason why this happens is because the constant bans prevent players from practicing with him, and when they end up being able to pick Alistar in a game, they end up sucking. To play the minotaur at a bare minimum level, a summoner must be able to execute the combos below:

• Headbutt -> Pulverize, knocking up the enemy before they are headbutted away.
• Pulverize -> walk behind enemy -> Headbutt, knocking the enemy towards your own tower.

Of course, there are many more tricks to playing Alistar well, but without being able to do these two combos properly, an Alistar player will be entirely unproductive to the team, often helping the enemy instead by sending low-health targets to safety with Headbutt.



Triumphant Roar is spammable, but doesn't heal the ADC a whole lot (90 health + 0.1 per AP at max rank) and makes Alistar run out of mana quickly if he has to spam it. The minion healing also ends up pushing the lane, which can be undesirable in some circumstances.

Alistar is a melee champion and doesn't get to autoattack the enemy much, and his only ranged skill throws himself into the enemy. Rather than poking constantly, Alistar often ends up babysitting and waiting for a chance to Headbutt -> Pulverize for a kill.

One good combo from Alistar and first blood will go to your team; this is why Alistar is so scary in lane. The CC duration from Pulverize is just as long as Dazzle, not to mention that Headbutt puts Alistar right next to the enemy and allows him to Trample and autoattack them immediately, dealing huge damage to the target and making them easy to pick off by LeBlanc's enormous burst.

Alistar's Pulverize is AoE and can hit both the enemy carry and their support if they positioned themselves poorly and clumped together. The CC duration is often more than sufficient for the jungler to close in and deal damage, causing the enemy to feed you.

Alistar can Pulverize the approaching Master Yi and walk away like nothing happened, or Headbutt the Udyr away and make him have to run all the way back to hit you. Trying to gank Alistar is nearly impossible and can get the jungler killed instead (Oh you ran into a Pulverize? Have a free Sigil of Silence Mimic Ethereal Chains combo meal).

Even if LeBlanc went back to base to buy her Bloodthirster, Alistar does perfectly fine by himself even in a 1v3 situation. Tower-diving him is suicidal since his Unbreakable Will makes the cow tankier than a fed Dr. Mundo, and his Pulverize -> Headbutt combo can keep any divers within tower range for what seems like an eternity.

Alistar remains excellent the whole game; he is a great initiator with the staple Headbutt -> Pulverize combo that can sometimes CC the whole enemy team for 1.5 seconds, and his ultimate renders enemy CC worthless. The only part of Alistar that isn't ridiculously broken in teamfights is the fact that Unbreakable Will doesn't negate crowd control after activation (something Ragnarok does), so timing the activation properly is important.

---

"High skillcap?!" you protest, "But Sona is listed as having the lowest difficulty of 10 in the game!"

I call bollocks; when was the last time that Riot knew what they were talking about regarding champions? While it is true that you can be braindead and faceroll and still somehow do okay with her, the difference between a good Sona player and a bad one is huge.

Against a bad player using her, you can easily bully her out of lane and maybe even snatch first blood, but a good Sona player will poke you so hard that you run out of potions while she and her ADC are full health and still have tons of mana, just because one of them knows how to Power Chord correctly.

I won't say this is an overlooked passive - even low-level Sona players know about it and sometimes try to proc the skill - but it's heavily underappreciated and misused. Learning how to charge it up and what the three different effects are is easy, but being able to immediately tell which one you will need is not. Sitting on a Power Chord is also unwise, because every second that Power Chord goes unused, you are surrendering harass potential, not to mention that you won't be taking advantage of the fact that it's an autoattack reset (AA- -Power Chord AA is nearly instant and does huge damage). Sona is not a passive support by any means; her poke potential is outstanding and wasting it can lead to a worse lane than it otherwise would have been.



Aria of Perseverance is not a ridiculous heal like Astral Blessing, but it's more healing than most other supports have and also provides bonus armor/MR. The heal is also quite spammable, if mana-hungry.

Hymn of Valor is a big damage poke that homes in on champions, and Sona's autoattack range of 550 combined with strong Power Chord effects is also nothing to laugh at. With an AD/AP aura as well as an Armor/MR aura, Sona gives your lane rather large advantage in trades. Many Sona players max Hymn of Valor first and end up giving you an extra 12 AD and AP at champion level 5. This translates to an extra ~50 damage to LeBlanc's burst, which is substantial.

Sona's only form of CC before level 6 relies on a Song of Celerity-powered Power Chord. However, the slow on it starts at an impressive flat 40% that lasts 2 seconds (think free Frozen Mallet). Combine this with her Hymn of Valor and autoattack harass, and your enemies will often be brought down to burstable HP before they even hit level 6.

Once Crescendo is unlocked, the enemy bottom lane might as well surrender, because one good ultimate from Sona will net LeBlanc a double kill with ease.

If the jungler is getting ready to gank and communicates this to her, Sona can charge up her Power Chord with the slow and make the kill much easier. The movespeed and AD/AP auras off Song of Celerity and Hymn of Valor will also help with the kill.

Sona has no escape and a good gank can sometimes force her to waste Crescendo just to make it out alive. Before level 6, she can't do much besides mashing and running away, especially if Power Chord isn't charged.

Crescendo is just as game-changing as Curse of the Sad Mummy if the Sona can aim, and while her AP ratios may be abysmal, the auras on her skills are incredible (just the 20 AP and AD from Hymn of Valor is worth almost 1200 gold per champion). This falls off late-game as people complete their core items, but it is still a bonus that the enemy team does not have, not to mention that Sona's skills have very low cooldowns and can be used multiple times during teamfights.

Note that Crescendo should not be blindly used as an initiate, especially if your teammates are not in position to immediately follow up on it or if your top laner/jungler has a good initiate of their own ( Rammus and Malphite, for instance). Waiting for their initiate before popping your Crescendo leads to a painfully long chain-CC for the entire enemy team and will almost guarantee a win.

---

Nidalee is a monster when in a solo lane, either top (AD) or mid (AP). However, she's versatile enough to be played as a support as well, and does a rather good job at it. An unfortunate part is that lack of farm makes her weak late-game, something you wanted to avoid by building LeBlanc as an ADC in the first place. Her synergy with LeBlanc is also not the best, but she's still an acceptable support.



Primal Surge is a decent heal that also gives you an attack speed buff for a short duration afterwards, but Nidalee's dependency on mana means a choice between healing you or landing a Javelin Toss. Do not depend on her heal, because having to heal you means less harassment, and a lower chance of killing your enemy.

Nidalee's pokes are excellent; Javelin Toss is one of the longest ranged pokes in League of Legends, save for Jayce's Shock Blast fired through an Acceleration Gate. The spear is what most people recognize Nidalee by and is her signature skill, securing kills from outside tower range and annoying her opponents to no end.

Additionally, Bushwhack can discourage opponents from trying to take advantage of the bottom-lane brush, due to its damage and the vision it grants.

Nidalee has no CC, so her main job is getting the enemies low enough to let LeBlanc 1-shot them, although a good Javelin Toss can kill recalling enemies in the fog of war from very far away. While she becomes a great chaser post-6 with even better potential for securing kills, the support should be feeding kills to the AD Carry rather than taking them for herself.

The lack of CC means Nidalee can't really assist hugely in ganks pre-6 other than using Primal Surge to give somebody an attack speed boost and maybe throwing a Javelin Toss for damage. Post-6 Nidalee can dish out some serious damage, but her melee range makes this less than likely to actually happen against opponents who don't overextend.

Nidalee's lack of CC makes her a tempting gank target, although she gains the ability to put up a serious fight once she unlocks Aspect Of The Cougar. Other than that, though, she can't do much during a gank other than retreat to a tower if winning the fight is difficult.

(Note: Bushwhack, contrary to popular low-elo belief, doesn't substitute for wards and barely discourages a gank.)

A top lane Nidalee would definitely rate as "Extremely High", but since she's being run as a support, she has no farm and her item build probably looks like if she was 900 elo and went the full support route.

Fortunately, decent Nidalee players know how to build her and will actually have some damage, but support farm simply isn't enough to make her an intimidating beast, even if they fed like hell. She does have great post-teamfight clean-up capabilities, though, due to great chasing and the ever-so-ridiculous Javelin Toss.

---

If Blitzcrank is the king of CC, Janna is the queen. Three of her skills are excellent crowd control tools, with her ultimate being able to ruin the entire enemy team's positioning in a teamfight. While her skills don't seem as ridiculous as Rocket Grab at first sight, they scale very well into the late game and can be extremely disruptive no matter how long the game lasts.



Before level 6, Janna has no heal, and Monsoon is more often than not used for the knockback component rather than the heal. However, Eye of the Storm is an excellent, low-cooldown shield and allows you to trade safely, not to mention the attack damage boost it gives.

While Howling Gale technically has a longer range than Javelin Toss, it has to be charged for 3 seconds to reach that range. Hitting an opponent with a Howling Gale that was charged in broad daylight is difficult for Janna players who don't know how to juke opponents or predict them, so the tornado is sometimes hidden in the bush for the surprise factor. Sometimes, an opponent will move into the target range of Howling Gale before it has fully charged up, and Janna can activate the skill again to release it early and get a guaranteed hit.

While her autoattack range of 475 is not impressive, Janna's high mobility makes hit-and-run harass with her autoattacks and skills easier than with most other supports.

Zephyr is a decent slow and can be chained after the knockup from Howling Gale to keep opponents in range for a long time, and the decent damage on Janna's skills means that an opponent will more often than not be at burstable health for much of their time in lane. This allows LeBlanc to easily move in after a knockup and go for the kill with relative security.

Good communication from the jungler allows Janna to prepare her combo and ensure a good gank, and her arsenal of CC makes securing the kill much easier. While she doesn't have a stun or root, the knockup from Howling Gale is more than enough.

Ganking Janna is quite difficult unless she blew all her cooldowns while overextended, since she can pop a tornado and walk away easily free from most situations. Monsoon makes tower-diving suicidal, and her shield is life-saving if one of you gets low.

Janna is one of the few supports who don't need any items to be extraordinarily effective for the entire game. She has a spammable multi-target crowd control with Howling Gale, can defend objectives easily, and if she is allowed to position herself for her ultimate in a teamfight, acing the enemy team becomes easier than ever.

(Note: Monsoon is not often used for its healing component, but this skill actually restores a higher base amount of health than Wish if teammates stay inside it for the whole duration.)

---

Riot designed Thresh with the support role in mind, but many of his abilities are so underwhelming that it's depressingly hard to get results out of him compared to traditional supports. The follow reasons highlight why Thresh is an underwhelming champion at the moment:

• Forced to collect souls to match the normal passive scaling other champions have.
• Souls expire quickly, forcing Thresh to walk into the middle of a minion wave and take burst/harass from the enemy team.
• Roaming means missed souls and puts him behind.
• Some of the worst AP ratios in the game.
• Soul drop rate is at the mercy of an RNG.
• Bad crowd control compared to champions like Nautilus and he has nothing to make up for it.

This wouldn't be too bad if Thresh was suited for other tasks. However, Riot designed him with the current meta in mind and seems dead-set on making him a support. As he is right now, Thresh can't jungle, gets bullied by most AP mids and top laners, and can't collect souls without being whacked, especially in a solo lane. This makes him effectively unviable anywhere other than as a support, something no other support champion suffers from.

The only thing Thresh does well that separates him from the other supports is Dark Passage, his one and only redeeming skill. This skill gives a 1500 range gapcloser to allies, giving Thresh the unique abilities to reposition other players on the team. This can lead to very interesting setups in certain situations, but aside from this skill, the Chain Warden has very little to offer that other supports cannot.



Thresh cannot heal, but he has a throwable AoE shield due to Dark Passage. This isn't true sustain by any means, though.

The passive from Death Sentence causes Thresh's autoattacks to hurt if he has not attacked for a while, and it seems that Riot intended for Thresh to be a poke champion. Unfortunately, his AA range of 475 and lack of mobility as well as lack of escape mechanisms means it's usually ill-advised for him to go in and whack the enemy, since he's essentially guaranteed to lose the damage trade.

Thresh has decent CC potential; if he can land the initial Death Sentence and follow it up with Flay, the target is essentially guaranteed to die. If the AD Carry is out of position, he can even throw his lantern via Dark Passage and pull the carry towards him. The Box may not be as strong as Cataclysm, but it's still an impressive slow that does a decent amount of damage, so a post-6 Thresh can throw it out after getting near the target with Death Sentence.

For the same reasons as outlined in the Kill Potential section, Thresh can assist ganks with his assortment of crowd control tools and likely secure the kill.

Flay can be used in an emergency against a chasing Udyr, and Dark Passage can save an overextended lane partner. Death Sentence's pull towards Thresh is marginal at best and should not be used the same way as Rocket Grab, so don't expect to pull the enemy jungler under your tower any time soon.

Thresh, frankly, loses usefulness somewhere past the 15-minute mark. He still has CC, but he scales so poorly compared to other champions that he's basically worthless in teamfights except to occasionally slow somebody or fling them in a random direction a little bit. He remains squishy, so he dies instantly when he approaches the enemy team, feeding them for a free kill. Unfortunately, since he can't approach the enemy team safely, his ultimate as well as Dark Passage become relatively worthless. There will be moments where a good lantern toss saves the day, but more often than not, he is out of the picture. In the hands of a very well-organized 5-man team, Thresh can remain viable throughout the game via good communication, but in solo queue, this is not happening.

---

Lux is traditionally taken mid lane and built as a fearsome AP monster with ridiculous damage, but the meta has seen her being played as a support at bottom lane on occasion. Fortunately, since she does have a shield and great CC, she can fulfill the role quite well if played right.



Prismatic Barrier is still a shield, but it's not something you can afford to throw out constantly. Not true sustain, but will absorb some damage, especially if Lux knows how to direct the return path by moving.

Illumination is seriously underestimated and can chunk an enemy's HP bar pretty fast if Lux is allowed to proc it. The only real downside is that all of her abilities are ridiculously slow, evadable skillshots. (0.5 seconds is a looooooooooooooong time to get out of range in competitive play).

Fortunately, just like Nidalee, Lux can afford to miss her skillshots and still considerably damage the enemy as long as she gets a good one off.

Light Binding is OP, not because of the snare duration ( Dark Binding snares longer), but because it can apply to two targets in a line. This allows it to hit an enemy champion hiding behind a minion wave. While the damage and snare duration is reduced, a 1 second snare is more than enough time to create an opportunity for LeBlanc to hop in and deal heavy damage on top of Lux's normal combo.

Once she hits level 6, Final Spark can secure kills from people who flashed away, or snipe people recalling in obvious locations. While you won't get the kill, it's better to get an assist than have prey run away on a sliver of health from right under your nose.

Lux has some intimidating CC, and one good Light Binding or even just the slow from a Lucent Singularity can be enough to allow the jungler to come in and secure kills.

As a squishy support with no direct escape mechanism, Lux doesn't contend extraordinarily well with ganks, but a ganking opponent moving in a straight line towards her can be snared with Light Binding and slowed with Lucent Singularity while she retreats to the tower. Prismatic Barrier is not a huge shield, but it can still save lives during ganks.

This is where Lux truly shines (no pun intended): her late game is just as awesome as her early game. She won't be a ridiculous damage dealer with 0 cs, but she is still an incredible teamfight asset; even discounting her crowd control capabilities and the IMMA CHARGIN' MAH LAZER (all of which, by the way, are gamebreaking), a well-placed Prismatic Barrier can negate up to 360 damage for every person that it hits, which is a very significant cushion rivaling Locket of the Iron Solari. When played properly, a support Lux can be just as disruptive as Zyra during teamfights.

---

Zilean, much like Lux, is often dictated by the meta as an AP Mid champion. While he works fine in that role, he excels at supporting as well. While he doesn't have hard CC, Time Warp is a considerable targeted 55% slow, not to mention that it is also the longest-duration CC in the entire game, clocking in at 5.5 seconds at max rank.



Zilean has no way of healing or shielding his ally, unless you count the health gained from Chronoshift as a heal.

Time Bomb is one of the most annoying pokes in the entire game. It does huge AoE damage and has the potential to ruin your enemy's positioning when they try to spread out and avoid being blasted by the bomb together. Spamming it drains Zilean's mana pool and pushes the creep wave to their tower, however, so it should be used with moderation.

Zilean can't secure a level 1/2 first blood like Blitzcrank, but after he hits level 4 along with LeBlanc, the lane becomes a considerable threat due to their combined burst being able to 100-0 an enemy when coupled with the CC from both champions.

Zilean's passive, while seemingly worthless, gives your team a crucial window in which your laners are level 6 when the enemy is level 5 (assuming nobody gets first blooded early). This can very easily lead to several early kills or forced Flash burns, giving your team an extremely important early game edge.

Time Warp can be used to either speed up the jungler by a ridiculous amount or to slow the enemy by an equally ridiculous amount. Placing a Time Bomb on the jungler if the enemy is out of cast range can supplement his damage as well. Chronoshift can save divers, although it should be used as insurance rather than as a "PERMISSION TO SUICIDE DIVE" grant. No one wants to revive with 600 HP under a turret with Ezreal and Taric standing right next to him.

Time Bomb + Time Warp on the jungler can ruin the gank and make the enemy back off, a self-cast Time Warp will let Zilean run back to tower almost instantly ( LeBlanc can Distortion back), and after he unlocks Chronoshift a jungler without a suppress/silence essentially has no hope of killing either Zilean or his lane partner.

Zilean's lategame as a support is astoundingly good. Even disregarding the ability of Chronoshift to bring you back to full health after dying (which by itself already puts Zilean at the top of the scale), a max-level Time Warp lasts a really freaking long time. It is an absolutely devastating skill when your teammates have skills that can take great advantage of it ( Impale, for instance).

Did I mention that he can instantly plant two Time Bombs that deal a combined 640 AoE magic damage with 0 AP? Not to mention that with Rewind on such a short cooldown, Zilean can actually get off at least three of these bad boys off in a lategame teamfight assuming he doesn't instantly die.

With enough CDR, Zilean can constantly spam Rewind and be limited not by cooldowns, but by mana. Chronoshift's real cooldown can be brought to <60 seconds if Rewind is cast frequently, rendering it available for every teamfight.

---

Morgana is labeled by Riot as a support champion, but she was such a ridiculous mid laner that the meta shifted her towards the AP carry mid. much like Lux, is often dictated by the meta as an AP Mid champion. However, many players forget that Morgana is perhaps one of the strongest support champions in the game, only kept in check by her lack of sustain. Her late-game scaling is ridiculous, due to Black Shield essentially giving a champion complete CC immunity for a few seconds and can be instrumental to winning teamfight.



Soul Siphon sustains Morgana in mid lane, but as a support she does not get to throw down her pool every minion wave, and won't raelly heal much. Black Shield can shield you, but it only absorbs magic damage from pokes like Javelin Toss, and is completely helpless against physical damage dealt by the enemy carry.

Morgana won't be doing much autoattack harass because of her pitiful AA range, although the same cannot be said for her skills. Tormented Shadow is great for zoning because of how much damage it does and how long it lasts, and the sheer threat of Dark Binding will have most enemies cowering behind their minion waves in pure, unadulterated fear. Unfortunately, Tormented Shadow also pushes the lane an insane amount, so it has to be used wisely.

Land Dark Binding for first blood, or if they flash away, do it again in 10 seconds. A 2-second snare at level 1 is absolutely huge, and despite its low projectile speed and minion collision, one of the best CC options available at bottom lane.

Dark Binding into Tormented Shadow is guaranteed to tick at least three times to lower the enemy's magic resist (five if they do not walk off the pool as soon as possible). This doesn't help typical AD carries, but is tremendously helpful to LeBlanc. After the two-skill combo by Morgana, the target will likely have lost at least one-fourth of their maximum health, with their magic resist shredded into nothing by Tormented Shadow and becoming easy pickings for your burst.

A skilled Morgana player is every jungler's wet dream. Black Shield can prevent the enemy from CCing your jungler and walking away, Dark Binding can root them in place for a long time while three champions unload their skills, and Tormented Shadow is an excellent zoning tool to bait enemies into an angle that makes them open to ganks. Nearly every gank will be a success if set up properly.

Black Shield pretty much makes your lane ungankable, and Soul Shackles can win 2v3 situations when combined with the rest of her skillset. Most junglers are just wasting their time trying to gank a LeBlanc/ Morgana combo; the CC between the two of them guarantees a slow and painful death for even the sturdiest of junglers.

Note that Black Shield doesn't cleanse CC, it only prevents further application. Use it early rather than being greedy and using it too late.

There was this phase in ranked history where Morgana was an instaban like Blitzcrank and Shen. This is no longer the case after a series of nerfs, but her kit is so perfect for PvP that she remains a force to be reckoned with. She can walk into a teamfight, ult, and either stun the entire team or wreck their positioning, not to mention that Black Shield is one of the most broken skills in the entire game due to its ability to render a teammate completely invulnerable to CC effectively for its duration. A good Janna wins engagements; a good Morgana wins games.


Rest Coming soon™!

Isn't Malzahar better to build AD on if you just wanted to build AD on an AP Mid?

I am aware that Malzahar is a popular and surprisingly viable pick to be built AD, since his voidlings have 1-1 AD scaling and multiple voidlings can be out at the same time, essentially increasing his damage to many times what a normal ADC can do. However, I feel that AD Malzahar belongs top lane and should take on the role of a bruiser and not ADC, unlike LeBlanc who works better as a carry.

Plus, I like LeBlanc's gameplay a lot more because her skillset gives her as much depth as Lee Sin, which is why I made a guide focusing on her.

---

I like messing with the meta, but I'm no good as an ADC! Can I still lane swap as an AP and be effective?

Sure! Lane swapping is a perfectly viable and legitimate tactic. In the specific case of LeBlanc, she cannot roam as freely from bottom lane as when she goes mid, which is why I prefer building her as an ADC when I send her bottom lane.

Many AD carries actually shut down popular AP mids hard with their early-game dominance and high non-spell damage, especially Sivir with her Spell Shield negating CC, burst, and harass from the opponent. If you can lane swap and hard counter at least one of the enemy champions, by all means go ahead and do it; half of the game is exploiting your opponent's weaknesses, after all.

---

How is it possible to build an AP Mid as an AD Carry and have it work in ranked games? This should be impossible!

Remember when Ezreal came out? He was released as an AP champion. None of his abilities scaled with AD except his Q, yet he worked extremely well as an AD Carry. So well, in fact, that he is now primarily played AD and has one of the highest win rates out of all the bottom-lane carries.

---

Why isn't <insert champion here> listed as a support?

• Yorick: I haven't seen a Yorick in forever, and when you win your lane this hard there is little reason to play him as a support character.
• Singed: He wants to be an unkillable tank, and support gold does not allow for that, even if you get lots of kills. Plus, Poison Trail steals CS from you.
• Ashe: Are you serious?
• Amumu: He is a godly jungler but only a mediocre support. Plus, no one likes him.
• Maokai: When your ganks are this good, not jungling feels like a waste.
• Sejuani: Glacial Prison is OP, but she has to whack the enemy to CC them otherwise. Also has no damage or bulk when built as a support, so it's best to run her as a jungler.
• Heimerdinger: Steals CS.
• Cho'Gath: Top lane monster whose potential is wasted as a support.
• Skarner: Better off in the jungle.
• Rammus: You play him to Powerball into the enemy lanes and get kills, not as an unsustained support who can't even poke well.
• Nasus: Only good for Wither when played as a support and I dislike massively wasted potential on champions.
• Rengar: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no.
• Sion: Worthless other than the stun, needs farm, or falls off hard without items.

Congratulations, you have learned the basics of playing LeBlanc as an AD Carry. It is only through experience, however, that you will truly master every aspect of LeBlanc, the Deceiver. There are many things like map awareness, proper warding, positioning, and predicting your enemies' next move that will make far more of an impact on your overall gameplay than regurgitating a build order from a guide on the internet.

If you enjoyed the guide, please remember to drop an upvote as it helps this guide gain more visibility. If you didn't, feel free to leave a downvote, but please take some time to explain in the discussion section what aspect of the guide needs improvement so I can correct it ASAP.

Above all, learn the game, exploit the meta, and you will be able to demolish your negligent opponents every game. (Unless, of course, they have also read this guide. In which case you are screwed.)

• Hahano, for his Who is your jungler and what does he do? guide that gave me the formatting for the support synergy section.
• jhoijhoi, for her guide to making a guide that helped immensely in the creation of this guide.
• Panglot, for his awesome warding helper guide.
• Rickk, for inspiring me to play League of Legends competitively.
• Shahiid, for his comprehensive ADC item math.
• Totallynotn00b, for his awesome AP LeBlanc guide that I shamelessly ripped o- err, used as a reference in the construction of this guide.
• Folks at lag.tv who told me about Siv HD's video on ADC LeBlanc, giving me a good chuckle. (It was a little sad to find out that I wasn't the first one to come up with this idea, though.)
• Mobafire, for hosting this guide and providing a great interface with which one can be designed.
• Riot, for creating the game we all have wasted countless hours playing, League of Legends.
• The gentlemen in solo queue whose trolling inspired me to pick up LeBlanc in the first place, for the express purpose of murdering them over and over again in order to exact vengeance. :D

Jan 27, 2013 - Corrected an error with Muramana's description that stated it worked with Ethereal Chains, even though it doesn't.
Jan 21, 2013 - Various formatting changes and minor updates in response to patch notes.
Jan 12, 2013 - Support section updated. Added a Traditional AP Build because somebody wanted it, not sure why. Added Thresh commentary.
Jan 9, 2013 - Corrected Black Cleaver caption.
Jan 7, 2013 - Support section updated.
Jan 6, 2013 - Manually fixed the [​[Rune Prison]​] glitch because it was bugging me (for some reason, it shows up as Rune Prison instead of -|Rune Prison). Fix this, Mobafire!
Jan 5, 2013 - Support section updated.
Jan 3, 2013 - Formatting changes, added minor tips throughout the guide. Elaborated on Runaan's Hurricane. Q&A section added.
Jan 2, 2013 - Removed Statikk Shiv from the "Do Not Buy" list.
Jan 1, 2013 - Guide published

To-do:

• Gameplay videos
• Support synergy analysis (I plan to cover most supports in here, so it will take a while; for now, I finished the Taric and Blitzcrank sections as a preview to what it looks like. Of course, I primarily play AD Carries and AP Mids, so if you think I am mistaken about a particular support, please don't hesitate to leave a comment!)
• Lane opponent analysis
• Evaluating viability of hybrid LeBlanc (spoiler: it's just going to be math showing why she should be built pure AD or pure AP, not half-way in between. Don't try it.)

If you have any suggestions for things to be added to this guide, don't hesitate to drop a message in the comments section. I read every message and will eventually respond to questions, even if not on the same day.