Briar has been running rampant on Summoner’s Rift for a couple of patches now. Thankfully, the Riot Games devs have had enough of her and are slapping her strongest builds with nerfs in League of Legends Patch 13.24.
On Nov. 28, Riot’s lead gameplay designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison shared the Patch 13.24 preview on X (formerly known as Twitter). While there’s a sea of champions getting buffs like Gragas and Braum, only two champions are getting nerfs—Briar and Ivern. Ivern nerfs are still a mystery, but Briar is getting hard nerfs to her Lethality and Bruiser builds.
“Nerfs targeted at adjusting the balance of her lethality and bruiser builds. We’re keeping the nerfs on pace with players continuing to learn her and climb the mastery curve. As mentioned before, she is one of the steepest learning curve champions in the game,” Phroxzon said.
I believe Briar’s nerfs are completely justified, especially given the fact she’s the most banned champion right now, according to stats site U.GG. Currently, her ban rate is a whopping 36 percent, and if Riot continued to ignore her, she could easily reach Kassadin level of bans from season three. On top of that, Briar has an almost 53 percent win rate. So, yes, Briar surely deserved these nerfs. Looking at the announced changes, I assume Riot will trim down her AD scaling and try to incentivize Briar players to go for different builds. Just for good measure, I’d also cut down her healing a notch.
League Patch 13.24 will roll out on Dec. 6. As well as these long-awaited Briar buffs, the devs are buffing long-lost champions like Braum and Vel’Koz who don’t get much action in solo queue.
