I've played quite a few games as Briar by now, and tested out a lot of different builds. Briar is awesome because she has so many build options that are viable.
Yet this build is objectivly not the one and perfect build to go for, so what's the point with it? - You shall see shortly ;D

The usual briar build I see people go for is Stridebreaker into Black cleaver. And while the build is fine, I don't think it plays to briars strengths at all.

Briars gimmick/playstyle

Briar saw a pretty fast buff since her winrate on release was around 29%. But the thing is.. Briar was always strong, now she's just plain op.

Her playstyle is rather unusual tho, she has some of the pre-rework Warwick energy. Where you can kind of just "let go of your keyboard" and watch her do her thing. But it comes at the consequence of only having 1 ability (with a looooooong cooldown) that can stop her again. Meaning her entire gameplay loop is all about knowing when to hand over the controls to Briar, and when to take them back. 1 miss step, and she is 10ft deep into tower diving a full health champ while taking 4 tower shots.

So what makes someone unstoppable with Briar, is someone who can utilize her abilities correctly (hint hint, nodge nodge... it's not that hard)

But! Even the best briar player will int from time to time. That's just briar things ;)

The Build

The strategy of this build, is to play to Briars strengths. While stridebreaker is great for sticking to opponents, Briars W already gives her so much movement speed, in most cases, I've found it doesn't make much of a difference.

The Goredrinker rush however gives Briar the early damage and sustain she needs to win most trades with the enemy jungler, and sustain that she needs when she needs to survive that 1 tower shot, or when E isn't up, so she can't use W.
Briar is a champ where diving will just happen sometimes, and she's has to attack to heal, so Goredrinker plays into that.

Prob the most baffling item choise/build order here is the Death's dance.

So let's talk about it. Why would you build death's dance before Black cleaver, when BC is her main damage item? It's quite simple.
Briar already has a ton of early damage, but building death's dance allows her to survive trades for much longer. Since she has so much healing in her kit, building death's dance means less damage now, but more survivability in fights. When I have built Goredrinker, tabbies, and Death's dance I tend play lot more aggresivly, since I know I can survive almost any fight long enough for my team to rotate around it. I can peel when ganking bot, fight most jungle matchups, solo objectives while staying full health, dives are now much less risky.

Why no bork?

Blade of the ruined king seems like it would be a good item on briar, especially since it's usually a early brawler item. From my personal experience.. the item is a total bait. The on-hit and movespeed is kind of forgettable on Briar. And the health and healing from Goredrinker is just better. Again she has a ton of damage built into her kit, and Black cleaver is a much better choise than Bork.

Sterak's Gage

Briar is prob the only champ I always build Sterak's on. The shield is such a huge deal, when you want to hit those tripples or quadras under the enemy tower xD

When/how to use her abilities

I totally recommend you actually go read her abilities, and test them out in the practice tool, before playing her in a real match. The reason for her previous low winrate, was likely because people played her, having no idea what her abilities do.


Briar's W is her main ability, and is what her entire kit is built upon.
When you press W, you dash forward and loose control of Briar. Briar will self taunt, and start running at/attacking the nearest monster camp, minion, or champ, prioritizing champions. This is what makes Briar so wierd to play, you don't really get to choose what she is doing. You can however, optimize it. Her W's dash can be used to dash over some walls.

Her Q is a CC leap/gap closer, kind of similair to pantheons W. Using her Q, you can kind of control who she locks onto (she can Q onto allies/wards/allied minions aswell, you can use this to body block Ashe arrows, cait ult, etc.). Adittionally her Q applies an increasing percentage of armor penatration, that scales when you level it up. This is super usefull used in combination with her W, for even more insane amounts of damage.

Briars W has a recast with a missing health execute and heal. Meaning timing her W recast is important. Holding onto her W recast for as long as possible ensures the maximum damage and health regenerated. This goes for her jungle clear too.
U can usually execute monsters like scuttle crab when they are around 200-300 health (in the early game) using her W recast.

Her W self taunt doesn't last forever, it will automaticly stop if nothing hostile is within range, or after 5 seconds.

Her E

Hold on to this ability until you don't want to fight anymore. Her E has such a slow charge up, so hitting a fully charged E will likely almost never happen. You can just tap it, if you want to avoid taking tower shots. Or charge it up, if you wanna zone off enemies from engaging.
Please... This is my greatest advice.. Wait for her E cooldown to be around 2 seconds or ready, before ever pressing W in a fight...
Adittionally her E serves as a "get off me" tool. As it applies a 40% damage reduction while charging up, and heals her scaling with max health. This means while you would rarely get to use it while fighting, it is situationally usefull when you're being chased down. The downside being that you stand still, so if the E doesn't land, the enemy is guaranteed to catch up.

The E is her second most important jungle clear tool. Her E makes it super easy to farm krugs and golems. Just Start W, lock on with Q, wait for the W recast, then charge up E to slam them into the wall, for extra damage. Super easy clears!


Briars ultimate functions very much the same way her W does, if you land it. However this time all her autos are empowered, and instead of targeting the nearest champion, she will run it down, until the one she hit with her ultimate dies or she does. This means you cannot change target no matter what u do, until they are dead.
The ultimate fears anyone nearby, which makes it a super great engage tool.

You can still use W and W recast while her ult is active. This wont replace the empowered autos from the ultimate, with the less powerfull ones from the W, neither will it allow you to latch on to a different target. It will however let you use the recast to heal.
Q and E both still function the same way as with W. You can use Q to jump to someone else, but she will run back to the target of her ult. E will let you cancel the ult early just like with W. It won't stop her from leaping in tho, so beware. When you hit someone with Briars ultimate.. You will be attacking that target, no matter what, so make the best of it.

While Briars ult is a global one, landing it is a different matter.
The travel time is quite slow, and it is a skill shot. Meaning you either have to get really close, or predict the enemy's movement. This is where ally CC is your friend. I don't recommend ulting from fountain, you most likely wont hit anyone, or you will hit someone in an unfavourable situation.
The enemy will hear a very obvious audio cue, so any player with more than 3 braincells, knows to prob not stand in the same spot, your best bet of not wasting her ultimate, is to play around it. Ult followup on ashe arrow is a great combo, or hiding close by and going in on a Nautilus knockup.