FOTM Report: The AD Leblanc Hype

Disclaimer: Nerfplz in no way supports or promotes the playing of AD Leblanc in ranked matches

Introduction

Now I know what you're thinking...AD Leblanc?! You're joking right...unfortunately I wish I was. Turns out Asian teams in China and Korea have started utilizing Leblanc as an AD top lane by building Statikk Shiv/Trinity Force as her core items.

How to Play AD Leblanc

Logic

The logic behind AD Leblanc is that as an extremely high mobility ranged caster with relatively short cooldowns on her escape. Thus, she can be used as an extremely safe split pusher top lane. 

Core Items

Although she suffers from poor waveclear early on, the idea is that by building Statikk Shiv, she can shove her lane and remain relatively safe from any would-be gankers.

Meanwhile, Trinity Force Leblancs serve as more of a traditional somewhat tanky ranged duelist role, and tend to get more involved in team fighting.

Other core items for top Leblanc have historically included bruiser items such as brutalizer, generally built into a ghostblade.

Thoughts

For a person that plays Leblanc on the regular and happens to be good at playing her as an AP caster, I could see how AD Leblanc top could be viable. She has plenty of juking power coupled with high amounts of CC via her snare. In comparison, she is indeed on paper potentially the best ranged escape artist in the game.

However, similar to regular Leblanc, a large amount of her power is the ability to know when to go in and when to stay out along with landing her all-important snare at clutch times. I think that she's a viable pick, but other, much easier champions perform her split pushing role better, such as Tryndamere.

Example Game

Here's an example of a high level AD Leblanc top game posted by ChallengerTV. It's a full game, but I just selected a short segment of her doing natural AD Leblanc things. As you can see, it still involves her landing all her skills as a regular Leblanc would, but with a few more supplemental auto attacks to go along with it.

All in all, I'd say she's somewhere in Tier 3 at the moment.

What about you guys? What do you think about top lane Leblanc?