Hey, so disclaimer. I’m not a Briar user, not even remotely but I have played against her enough to know what she does.
This is the 4th time in row that Riot is nerfing Briar and the last 3 nerfs did particularly nothing. Isn’t this an indicator that they don’t understand what’s making Briar OP? They keep nerfing the wrong things over and over again and then have surprised Pikachu face when winrate stays the same.
Now on their 4th attempt they are nerfing Briar’s lethality build by turning R into magic damage, forgetting that Briar’s E has the strongest AP scaling in the entire game, even stronger than Nunu’s R. So what stop these players from dropping the lethality builds and go for AP builds?
In my opinion, what makes Briar OP is her E. The charge and knock back part of it to be specific. It frustrate me that this ability can not be interrupted. And that make Briar OP in teamfights. She engage teamfights with her R and knock everyone with her E, paving the way for the rest to finish them. It is even more frustrating when you against Briar in 1V1 and despite you CC her, her E still knocks you back, and give her window to escape with low HP, and if you chase, you gonna run into more of her teammates.
I believe Briar should retain her identity as assassin and her Lethality builds remain her top choice. But her reliability must be reduced. She should be punished for making bad plays just like everyone else. And that can simply be achieved by making her E knock back cancelled with hard crowd control abilities.
I see what you did there with the IV bag statement