Even more animalistic!
LoL Briar: Her Kit Was Actually Planned For Different New Champion
We're just a few weeks removed from the official release of LoL's newest Champion, Briar, who will be introduced to the game in the upcoming Patch 13.18. The Noxian Vampire lady will surely be an interesting and quite unique character to play, and many fans are awaiting her release eagerly.
But did you know, that the original plans for Briar's champion design and concept looked totally different for a very long time? Well, in this article we will dive a little bit deeper in the birth process of Brair the Restrained Hunger.
LoL Briar: The "Stolen" Ability
Now, we finally know which new Champion will cross our paths after the next League of Legends Patch. Briar, a vampire champion with an unstable mindset and a penchant for blood. Beside the official announcement, Riot provided lore fans with a quick backstory and a longer article about the process of creating this champ.
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And according to the devs, some ideas, especially in the ability department, were originally designed for other champions. In the "Champion Insights: Briar" article, Riot Games stated that,
A willful loss of control was part of Briar’s kit from the very beginning. The design team actually had this mechanic in their arsenal after work on another recent champ with a nose for blood—Naafiri.
Naafiri, a champion in the form of a hunting dog with a pack in her ability kit, was the last champion, the company released before Briar. And it seems to be the case, that some of Briars abilities were originally invented by Naafiri designer Glenn "Riot Twin Enso" Anderson, for LoL's resident doggo.
You’d lose control and go rip somebody apart. That felt good for a dog champ, but it didn’t feel like an assassin, which is what Naafiri was always meant to be. Assassins want to kill their targets as fast as possible. A frenzied state needs some time to feel correct
And so the team decided to use the abilities on a more violent champion, which fits the description of Briar perfectly. With Briar's gameplay the team wanted to capture the essence of a monstrous, terrifying blood-hunter, who ravages entire villages when, when he's in need of sustenance, the article says.
Also, there were different plans for ultimate ability "Certain Death". According to Riot employee "August" her ultimate was originally planned to be similar to Aatrox' ulti,
At one point she had a revive, similar to old Aatrox [...] It was on her ultimate. When it was off cooldown, if you died, you would suck blood from everybody around you and you’d revive with a lot of health. But it also had an active use. The active was that she killed herself. She would do 1 million true damage to herself, but then obviously trigger the passive to resurrect and drain everybody near you
Well, after reading all of these original ideas, many players were surely happy about the current design of Briar. It will be interesting to see, how this version of Briar will fit into the game and how long it might take the first players to call her overpowered or simply broken.
Maybe some players will even wish, that the dev team would have used their original ideas, but only the future will show it.
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