Molten Shield is a good spell to cast to work up to Annie's stun, so sometimes it's beneficial to grab at least 1 rank in it early.
Striking killing blows on minions with Disintegrate enables Annie to farm extremely well early in the game.
Storing a stun for use with her ultimate can turn the tide of a team fight.
The stats provided here highlight some valuable Annie against Briar counter statistics that may help us understand the distinctions between the pair. As an example, Annie’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is more than Briar’s KDA ratio of NaN, highlighting that Annie may be more central to her team's team fighting effectiveness than Briar..
Annie often has a slightly smaller longest kill spree than her matchup does. Commonly, she takes less damage than Briar. This is usually reflective of different amounts of tankyness; however, it can also show that the one champion has less mobility and thus is unable to kite away from additional harm when engaged or poked.
Both League champions are great. Both champs have their pros and cons. In League's current meta, Annie usually loses when trying to fight Briar, with a 48.1% win rate. Therefore, Annie makes a bad counter for Briar.
While Annie does have a lower win rate compared to Briar, when on opposite teams, Annie also has a much greater learning curve that makes her a more difficult champ to learn. You should be careful when picking Annie into Briar.
Moreover, Annie also has a good amount of utility and CC, a similar amount to Briar. This makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when facing champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there is not a single best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Annie vs Briar matchups, Briar is the better champion with a lower win rate, more champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your allied champions during teamfights.
Annie is a somewhat poor counter for Briar. Make sure you focus your gameplay on increasing your CS and clearing objectives. If you can do that, you should hold your own as Annie against Briar.
If you would like to learn all of the intricacies of Annie to counter Briar during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to learn a few extra tricks and insights into this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and stats shown above, you will increase your win rate significantly and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Annie most often picks up much more CS as Briar. Champions who typically don't acquire much CS typically don't require much CS to be valuable teammates, such as sup champs. These kinds of champions are able to scale properly off of their abilities and first items alone. Yet, champions with large amounts of CS, such as hyper-carries, often need several high cost items to be effective. In either case, try to exceed the numbers shown here to do well.
The best items to focus on in your Annie versus Briar build consist of Rabadon's Deathcap, Zhonya's Hourglass, and Shadowflame. When Annie used at least these three items in her build, she did much better vs. Briar than with most other typical counter builds. In fact, Annie boasted an average winrate of 48.1% when playing against Briar with this build.
To have the highest likelihood of beating Briar as Annie, Annie players should use the Electrocute, Cheap Shot, Eyeball Collection, Relentless Hunter, Absolute Focus, and Manaflow Band runes from the Domination and Sorcery rune sets. Out of all the rune sets that we analyzed for Annie vs Briar clashes, this mixture of runes yielded the best win rate. Moreover, these runes provided a 48.1% win rate overall.
By default, tips, statistics, and builds on how to beat Briar as Annie are shown for all ranked divisions combined. To scope the statistics and builds to an individual division, you may use the selection menu above.