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Brand - The Burned Out Vengeance?

Basil van Yhun·8/8/2014, 7:43:46 PM·3 votes·2,015 views

This is quite a long post I know, tl;dr is at the bottom.

Brand is probably the champion with the least amount of mechanics. One CC and everything else is damage. This is very unique and actually interesting to play with but leaves Brand with very little tools to survive in the game outside of outright blowing up his target(s). Despite that I still think that he can be nudged into a spot very he can be quite viable.

First of a small analysis

**Strengths: Burst Damage ** Potentially able to blow up a target almost instantly with very good scaling. One of the highest damaging casters.

Weaknesses: virtually no defense, unreliable damage and cc

Has no mobility tool outside buying items Has almost no tools to fight enemy mobility (pushes, slows) his only cc is a skillshot that needs a set-up (telegraphing it)

Opportunities: teamfight aoe dmg, poke

A good W and ult can deal devastating damage in team fights Abilites are more reliable thanks to reasonable range in teamfights as well In lane his poke can be very potent if the enemy has no mobility

Threats: skill denial, assassinations, high mobility

Spellshields and abilities like Yasuo' W or dodges like Fizz's E can absorb very important parts of Brand's combo, basically negating his Strengths. Seeing as he has nothing else besides dealing damage this greatly impacts his viability

Taking everything into account I think his biggest problem is reliability. Champions like Yasuo or Lee Sin simply have too many tools to annihilate him while dodging his only CC and big, if not all of his dmg. Furthermore the popularity of Morgana and Braum certainly don't make things easier for him.

My thoughts for "nudging" him into viability: Increase in reliability while keeping his core mechanics intact.

Brand's Q slows for a reasonable amount (like 30%?) for a reasonable amount of time (like 1.5 secs) if the target isn't affected by Blaze.

How does this help? It makes his lane more reliable by giving him a tool to cc his target without having to hit another spell before that. It would keep his unique trait of having only one CC available for a rotation though and would keep his stun as unreliable as it should be for a burst caster (right Syndra?).

My second suggestion for reliability would to allow Brand's ult bounce to him like Ryze's E.

This would make him less "well…I'm dead" kind of guy if you meet the enemy jungler during a rotation and there is no monster/creep to bounce your ult off of and it would increase his ability to tear someone up when he somehow manages to catch someone out. This might however be a risky change and require dmg-adjustments because it might create some "bull****" situations for the unfortunate squishy ad-carry who missteps and is dead before he notices it.

Those two changes are relatively minor (imo) and from a player's point of view shouldn't be too hard to implement. They also don't have a big effect on his strengths I think, they only slightly lessen his weaknesses and don't introduce new strengths (imo). Thus those changes should be in the spirit of clear strengths/weaknesses.

If bigger changes are planned for Brand I would really suggest changing the E because it's a pretty bad ability. It's his worst ability (at least imo). I consider it a tool to apply Blaze or in lane a farming tool. Outside of lane it can't function that well as a wave-clearing tool because of it's poor range and in fights is basically just used to initiate a combo on a target that get's close for whatever reason.

In my opinion it should be a complete utility tool. Remove it's base dmg, turning it into a tool that set's a target ablaze on a longer range. A somewhat crazy suggestion would be adding a self-cast portion on it (see below). The proposed change would reduce his lane-pushing/clearing but imo he isn to picked for that anyway and late game, wave clearing with his E is pretty risky under sieges anyway. This is how the suggested functioning of the new E would be. I am fully aware that it would add more CC to his kit but let's face it, all new burst casters have a stun and a slow these days, if not more:

E: Conflagration On Self-Cast: Brand bursts out in flames pushing away every hostile unit near him, dealing damage to them. On Enemy-Cast: Brand lights his target ablaze. If the target is already ablaze it will be engulfed in flames slowing it's movement (like 30% again).

On enemy-cast should also reduce the cool down of the spell later on (in order to avoid horrible landing phases where someone is constantly ablaze) because having to wait on E or W so you can stun again while your Q is off CD feels horrible.

Reasoning behind the self-cast. It would alleviate some of his great weaknesses and threats. The push shouldn't be too strong (thing Maokai Q) but still give him room to follow up with a Q. This would help him greatly against champions who would otherwise just walk all over him with no chance to fight back.

**tl;dr:

  1. Give Brand's Q a slow on non-blazing targets.
  2. Let Brand's R function like Ryze's E and bounce to him as well.
  3. A more radical change: New E, adding in more utility into his kit.**

PS: Skin Suggestions Corporate Brand (overworked office guy having a burn out) Fire Sale Brand (still Corporate Brand but a different twist)

9 Comments

JustMyBassCannon8/8/2014, 9:40:33 PM1 votes

I kinda like the way Brand works right now, personally. Yeah, he has low utility and no innate defense, but he also has one of the highest burst potentials in League. And some of the most irritating harass, seeing as he attaches a free 40-50 damage to all of his spells from level 1.

While it's true that he has minimal utility/defense before items, it's also true that he scales ridiculously well with items, especially spell-procs like Rylai's and Liandry's.

darkdill8/8/2014, 11:44:12 PM1 votes

Funny thing: Whenever I play Brand, the angrier I get with either my teammates or the enemy team, the more stuff just dies around me. I kid you not - Being "toxic" as Brand seems to improve my performance as him.

Certainly taking the phrase "Some men just wanna watch the world burn" to the extreme.

exec38/9/2014, 2:19:58 AM1 votes

Tbh you sound like you're removing some of his weaknesses in an age where we need to be adding more weaknesses to champions. I feel like Brand's PQWE are in a good spot. His strengths are crazy AoE damage and weaknesses are no escapes and only the one CC that needs a setup (but is powerful when you do hit it). His burst and damage over time from passive is crazy (borderline OP imo) and the only things holding him mostly in check are the weaknesses you have described (and the extreme unreliability of his ult) so trying to remove or alleviate those weaknesses is the opposite of what should be attempted. Just because other champions these days lack sufficient weaknesses isn't a reason to change Brand to create the same problem. Arguably Brand is an ideal model of what a champion should be. Having said that I admit I like the idea of Q applying a slow as it's a tradeoff between the stun and the slow (though it'll make hitting W easier).

For me the thing really holding Brand back is his ultimate. It's stupid unreliable and needs some serious work to make it not feel so bad when the ult decides to jump to minions instead of champions. Your suggestion however doesn't help that, it only helps his 1v1 ability and he's suppose to be an AoE mage so he should thrive against groups of enemies so I would not recommend this approach. I honestly don't have a suggestion for his ultimate because it's only as powerful as it is because of how likely you won't get a good one off but I do feel any changes to Brand need to focus on that portion of his kit (you could maybe make the argument of increasing E's Ablaze effects range with level making it a bit more useful later on in tagging people late game for passive damage and setting up an Ablaze ult, maybe an increase in Ablaze ult's bounce range too, who knows).

nge8/9/2014, 3:51:56 AM1 votes

Wot. He is perfectly fine. His weaknesses are in-line with his strengths. One of my favorite things to do when I see a Lee Sin in ranked is I usually try and go with Brand in mid because he counters him so good. Lee Sin hits his Q, lands it, and as he's flying towards me I use my E then immediately use my q to stun and W to burst. Almost an instant free kill every time. I will agree with one thing though is his ult needs a bit more refinement it seems to be more random than anything else, and would love to see it prioritize Champians over minions.

TheKaymon8/9/2014, 5:13:52 AM1 votes

I don't think Brand is in a terrible spot, but I do think he could use a few minor tweaks. I like the idea of the slow on Q. Maybe E could even spread the slow, so instead of only EQW, you could also do QE(R)W for better AoE damage/soft CC, at the loss of the stun.

On a slightly related note, having Yasuo or Braum completely block your ultimate is a terrible feeling. I really don't think windwalls should be able to block ultimates.

Basil van Yhun8/9/2014, 9:23:56 AM1 votes

I think the small change that I suggested for his ultimate don't really change up his core-weaknesses. It just alleviates certain moments of weaknesses that he (in my opinion) shouldn't have. "You have great damage, unless your target is isolated" is kinda weird. I personally would prefer to see the dog on his ult go down for repeated hits onto one target in exchange for always priorizing champions over minions/monsters with the blaze buff increasing the priority on the tagged champion. Priority would look like this: Champion (Blazed) Champion Minion/Monster Brand

And while I like Brand hey s definitely not in a good spot atm. It's not terrible but definitely not good. The BV nerd helped him actually but Yasuo walks all over him and there are more champions just like that. Brand is one of those few champions who has hard-countes that basically shut him down just by being picked. While I am all for defined weaknesses and strengths right now his weaknesses far outweigh his strengths and his strengths even get counterbalanced by being highly unreliable and very counterable.

F1zzics8/9/2014, 4:47:22 PM1 votes

Get Crystal Scepter like every other non-mobile AP carry has to get to be viable. It'll make the Q slow for 35% and the E since they're single shot. He's fine where he is. Any radical changes to grant him additional escapes would have to be additionally granted to the other non-mobile AP carries.