On Aug. 30, Riot Games finally introduced the next League of Legends jungler—Briar. As wild and untamed as she is, Briar is expected to land on Summoner’s Rift with a bang, especially because she holds incredible potential to break the game.
It’s no secret that Riot has been creating champions with overloaded kits for the past couple of years. Take, for example, Akshan: He has stealth, a shield, a swing, on-hit effects, and the ability to resurrect his entire team. Viego is no different: He has stealth, a reset mechanic, innate healing, a dash, invulnerability, and two hard forms of CCs.
Briar, however, takes gaming and jungling in League to a whole different level. She has:
- at least four sources of healing in her kit
- armor break
- three dashes
- point-and-click stun
- attack speed and movement speed steroid
- bonus damage dealt based on missing health of enemies
- slow
- knock-back that stuns enemies if they hit a wall
- fear
- additional armor, magic resist, and movement speed from Certain Death (R)
This, even when listed like this, is a lot to process, not to mention the headache you’ll get when you have to read through her novel-long tooltips. The only mechanics that are missing from her kit are stealth, resets, and invulnerability. When you pair all of Briar’s abilities with items like Sterak’s Gage, Spirit Visage, and Death Dance, she could truly become an unstoppable and blood-hungry killing machine that’s impossible to stop.
Related: New LoL champ Briar originally had broken ‘suicide-self-revive-wombo-combo’ ultimate
So, when you finally face off against her on Summoner’s Rift, you’ll surely need to buy Grievous Wounds in any shape or form. You’ll also want to have plenty of hard CC so you can lock her down and try to burst her. Although it doesn’t seem like Briar has many flaws on paper, the player navigating her loses control over her when she enters her frenzied state. But, aside from this, Briar has basically everything she might need to find success immediately after launch.
Another area of concern, though, is how are more simplistic champions like Anivia who only spawn a wall and have one more life every couple of minutes ever supposed to begin to compare to Briar. For example, Briar’s E, Chilling Scream, is basically Qiyana’s Supreme Display of Talent (R) but without the initial burst. This ability, on top of that, slows enemies, reduces damage taken, and heals Briar.
If you ask me, Briar’s future seems clear: She will roll out with Patch 13.18 in September, dominate the game if she manages to slide through the pick-and-ban phase, and most likely meet hotfix nerfs on her first day. She will also be a nightmare to balance for pro play and will most likely meet the same destiny as Akali with Riot slowly stripping her of her abilities. Hopefully, I will be proved wrong.
