Riot Games has revealed the patch notes for League of Legends update 13.18, which finally sees new champion Briar released onto the main game. There are also some big changes to other champions as Riot prepares to launch the patch that Worlds will be played on.
Briar was revealed a few weeks ago and has proven to be a bit of a divisive champion within the community in terms of her design. Some fans absolutely love the ‘hangry jungler’ but others have shown their dislike of the concept. While she has been available for testing on the PBE, she will now launch properly into League of Legends tomorrow, September 13, for everyone to play and make up their own mind.
Briar is a jungler with no base health regen, and to make things worse her abilities cost health to cast. However, some of her other abilities will give her health, or deal damage based on the health missing. So she appears to be a champion with massive risk, but a lot of potential rewards, which seems like a pretty fun concept, so she will no doubt be a popular pick for junglers going forward.
Elsewhere in the patch most of the champion changes are in response to the previous patch and how that unexpectedly impacted a few champs. Jarvan was a big winner from the Shojin and Goredrinker changes, so he gets a significant passive damage nerf, while Kayn’s Darkin form gets another nerf after the last one didn’t really do anything significant.
In the buff department one of my favorite champs, Thresh, gets a nice buff with an increase to shield strength for his W, but one of my least favorite champs, Kennen, also gets a buff that basically allows him to do things for longer or more frequently.
Patch 13.18 is the penultimate patch before Worlds, which will be played on 13.19, so a lot of the changes are clearly gearing up for that. The Thresh buff is no doubt a response to this, as everyone wants to see Thresh played at Worlds, but there have also been some very pro-focused nerfs. Xayah gets some big early-game nerfs, including a significant base health decrease, while Rell gets some movement speed nerfs to slow them down both literally and in terms of how strong they can be at high levels.
Some items have also been tweaked, with Spear of Shojin getting some more changes to its damage and Statikk Shiv getting even more balance changes. It seems Riot just can’t find the sweet spot for the Shiv, which is annoying because it’s the most fun item in the game when it works.
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