She’s super popular, super fun to play, and is seeing play at all skill brackets.
I definitely think she needs some fine tuning – she somehow STILL has a 52/53% winrate in low/mid elo despite REPEATED nerfs patch after patch – but unlike champs like Zeri or K’Sante I don’t think she’s inherently unbalanceable.
She’s had a positive effect on the jungle meta, and obtained a bunch of new OTPs. To me at least, she’s a highlight of 2023, which otherwise had the very forgettable Milio and Naafiri, the latter of which is actively OP at low elo and yet hardly anyone plays her (3% pickrate in silver/gold even with a 54% winrate last patch).
Is she the most positive champion release since Renata?
Reddit challenge: try not to tell everyone Renata is the best recent champ [difficulty: impossible]
spoiler alert: Renata literally was bottom 5 pickrate champions in the game for 9 straight months until she saw some play in worlds, she also had 50% WR. People on subreddit like to gaslight themselves and say she is so cool but when it comes to it, no one fucking plays her
An actual successful new Jungler champ is Viego, has sub 50% WR and is played more than Briar whose playerbase will most likely abandon her if she is ever sub 50% WR.
We are also assuming she will be bad at pro play.
People praise Renata because she’s easy to outplay and she has nearly no dueling power.
People praise Renata because you see her once per 100 games. She is in same tier as Zil. People would ban her a lot, if she was popular.
She has a 6% playrate, which puts her support pool with other standard supports. Looking at the 5%-7% champions:
Lulu
Pyke
Janna
Renata
Karma
Xerath
Bard
Nami
Ashe
Milio
Zyra
Soraka
Alistar
Morgana
She’s not exactly common enough to user your ban on, which is more or less the same with everyone else in that range (maybe morg, she pulls a lot of bans).
Agreed on Viego, his mains are like Kayn mains, super fucking loyal no matter how bad their champ will ever be