Riot has finally introduced the new champion in League of Legends. Briar may look harmless, but she is actually a kind of vampire with an insatiable hunger. We present you the new jungler and show you her abilities.
What kind of champion is Briar? Briar was an experiment of an underground organization in Noxus and resembles a vampire-like creature. She has an insatiable hunger for blood and sacrifices, which is also evident in her kit and abilities.
Passive ability
- She has no automatic health regeneration like other champions. Instead, her attacks and abilities bleed opponents. The bleeding effect heals her and scales with missing health.
Q ability
- This is a
Point and Click
gap closer. She jumps to a target, deals damage, and stuns the opponent. At the same time, she reduces the opponent’s armor, and her bloodlust prioritization can allow her to switch it.
W ability
- This is Briar’s central ability. When activated, Briar goes into a blood frenzy and automatically attacks the next opponent she relentlessly pursues. You cannot change this without abilities. During the blood frenzy, you get attack and movement speed, and your normal attacks deal area damage.
- If you activate the W ability again during the blood frenzy, you bite off a piece of your opponent, heal yourself, and deal additional damage.
E ability
- Her E ability ends the blood frenzy. You can charge it, and it deals damage and a slow. If Briar charges the ability, she takes less damage and heals herself. If you fully charge the E, opponents are knocked back, and if they hit a wall, they are stunned – similar to Gnar’s ultimate.
R ability
- Briar kicks a stone. If she hits an opponent, she immediately flies there, frightening all surrounding opponents and automatically going into blood frenzy. Additionally, she gains life steal, resistances, and movement speed. The range of the ability is almost global and is 10,000.
You can see an animated video about the champion here:
Simple mechanics, but tough decisions
How to play Briar? Briar is primarily intended to be an aggressive champion who benefits from tower dives and quick ganks. Her abilities are quite simple and intuitive to use as mechanics. However, this does not make her an easy champion.
The champion Naafiri was also on the mechanically easier side.
The focus with her is on the decisions you make. The blood frenzy mode is a powerful tool, but if you just have the E ability on cooldown, Briar might run into a tower with the opponent and could die. You can do nothing about it, just watch her die.
This is why it’s important when playing Briar to know exactly when to do nothing. With her gap closers and speed, as well as her passive, she is designed for the jungle. But you could probably also see her more often on the top lane, depending on how well her self-heal works on the lane.
Which champions counter Briar? Because she heals herself through bleeding and thus benefits from life steal, tanks with items like Thornmail can be a strong counter against her. But strong crowd control also counters her, especially when she tries to finish you off in blood frenzy.
When will Briar be released? On the PBE, the test server for LoL, she should be released next week on September 6 or 7. Her release on the live server will take place with patch 13.18, so probably on September 13.
She is usually playable on the evening of September 14.
Briar is likely to be a popular champion due to her design, at least more popular than these:
These are the currently 10 least popular champions in League of Legends
