Briar is to receive yet another nerf in the upcoming patch 13.24.
Balancing a new champion has always been a point of struggle in League of Legends. Before deploying the champion in actual games, it’s so hard to balance it. But some champions make a lot of attempts to finally be called ‘balanced.’ These champions often have kits with inherent complexity. Aphelios, Zeri, etc, have been talked about a lot in that regard. Now, Briar is in the same spot as them.
Ever since Briar was released in patch 13.18, she has undergone changes after changes. Most of the earlier adjustments were bug fixes and some fine-tuning here and there. However, from Patch 13.22 onwards, she has been getting successive nerfs. After her nerfs in 13.23, she still sits at almost 53% win rate across all ranks. This is way above the expected mark of 50%, that too on a new champion that is not mained by a lot of people yet.
That’s why, in patch 13.24, she is to undergo yet another debuff. More details below.
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Briar Nerfs in Patch 13.24
- Attack Speed Ratio: .664>>>.669 (unchanged in level 1)
- Armor: 32>>>30
- Q – Head Rush Damage: 60-200>>>60-180
- W – Blood Frenzy AS: 60-120>>>55-115%
- E- Chilling Scream Damage Reduction: 40%>>>30%
- R- Certain Death: 150-450 (+75% BAD)(+110% AP) Physical >>> 150-450 (+50% BAD) (+120%AP) Magic
One of the major causes for Briar seeming unstoppable is the fact that she has almost everything in her kit. Bleed, Stun, Armor Reduction, Damage Reduction, Healing, Magic Resist, Armor, Slow, Cleanse – she has it all. Not to mention a ton of damage due to her immensely good AD scaling.
No wonder such a complex champion would require some trial and error before she could truly fit into the game. Ironically, when she was first released, her win rate dropped below 40. It is mostly because people did not know how to play her. But as people learned the champion better, it has become one of the most picked junglers as well as the most banned champion.
It is true that the overwhelming CC and in-built utilities, along with damage, are not free, as you need to land skill shots to be truly scary with briar. But still, people will get better sooner or later. And with just the basics, she turns out to be a true horror in the rift. It’s like Nocturne, but with all the utilities in the game.
Naturally, Riot had to tone her overwhelming presence down. That’s why every ability in her kit will take a hit in the next patch. Her base Attack Speed Ratio will be down by a minuscule amount, though. This probably shouldn’t impact hugely. But the base armor reduction by 2 may make it difficult for her to win the early jungle fights.
Q and W abilities have received a similar amount of downgrade. The early damage from Q is kept the same, reducing it by 5 for later stages of the game. Attack Speed is reduced by 5% across all the phases of the game. This, along with her damage reduction from Chilling Scream should result in a noticeable decrease in her ability to instantly kill squishies even without being very ahead.
The nerf on Ultimate is quite visible, and rightly so. This is the ability that makes her terrifying in picking up champions with low survivability. Riot is trying to bridge the gap between her Assassin builds and Bruiser builds. That’s why these changes are made. You can see how they lowered her AD scaling from R and increased it on AP. This is to encourage more diversity in the building. Especially since the new season will have many new items with high versatility, a change like this opens the door for more variety-oriented playstyles.
When Will Briar Nerfs be Live?
Briar nerf, along with other changes of Patch 13.24, will be live on all servers on December 6, 2023.
