On Saturday, May 30, new Balance Changes were announced, a week before Monthly Qualifiers for June. With A TON of buffs and changes, the meta is bound to be shaken quite a lot. Today at Prodigy, we're taking a look at the biggest winners, sorest losers, and greatest question marks of these changes!
Biggest Winners
Starting off with the winners, we've got to talk about:
Piper
With over 17 interactions changed due to her damage buffs alone, the old, beloved sniper is going back into the big leagues, and we expect to see her at the top of tier lists again, just like it used to be.
Getting to 2-shot Colette, Lou, Max, and Mina, as well as 3-shot Ollie and 8-Bit, she is now a force to be reckoned with in Heist as well as Bounty, becoming WAY more effective against some of her biggest counters.
Her health buffs are nothing to scoff at either, even though that buff evens out with Mandy's damage change. Requiring 3 shots from Fang - who has been dominating the Bounty meta recently - as well as 4 from Ollie, we are almost guaranteed to see Piper back in the spotlight once again.
Tara
10% faster reload brings her up to a similar level as Sandy or Nani reload-wise, leading to a substantial DPS buff over time, but - arguably more importantly - lets her cycle supers WAY faster.
While Tara at the moment isn't unplayable, this buff should let her jump up to the likes of low A tier, simply due to the sheer strength of her super even in 2026.
Lou
Lou is, fundamentally, very strong already - he is kept in check by how difficult hitting shots is. With an attack range of 9.33 tiles and a reload of barely 1.1 seconds, Piper's projectile speed, decent damage, and a stun on top, his projectile width is the only thing he's lacking.
Well, the new balance changes give Lou precisely that: his projectiles are going from 0.67 tiles - like Piper, for context - to around 0.8, a value that, to our knowledge, isn't utilized in the game at the moment. Having no direct comparison, we can only assume the impact of this buff... however, if the last time Lou got buffs is anything to go by, we're expecting an easy S tier.
Charlie And Carl
While it might feel like grouping these 2 brawlers together doesn't make much sense, they both share the same mechanic of having 1 ammo that needs to get back to them.
This means that both of their damage buffs are A LOT more effective, simply due to how much they get to spam attacks. Charlie now 4-shotting brawlers like Amber, Colette, Lou, or Gus and 3-shotting Byron, Carl being able to 2-shot Colt, Pierce, or Angelo if he hits his Pickaxe both ways... these 2 are certainly expected to be back in top ranks, Charlie possibly getting close to low S tier.
Starr Nova
Starr Nova, in her current iteration, is by no means a bad or weak brawler - just not strictly an assassin. Despite this, however, she is receiving 4 separate buffs - all of which are substantial.
Starting off with her health buff, she now requires 2 full-projectile hits from Leon, 3 Meeple shots, and over 4 Pierce, certainly helping her survive in more open maps where these brawlers reign.
Starr Nova also received a damage buff over 20%, which lets her 2-shot Byron or Nani, 3-shot Chester, Colette, Cordelius, Edgar, Finx, Gus, Jae-Yong, Clancy, Lou, Lumi, Pierce, Shade... yeah, this should go without saying - she already has S tier potential with this change alone.
As if it wasn't enough, though, her better Star Power - as you might recall from our post on Starr Nova - is also scaling with this change, so she will be even more effective in that healing role.
On top of all these, her base Super damage is also increasing. With how good her base attack already is, this change might not be the most useful, but will certainly make her even more viable in Heist.
Sorest Losers
Heading over to our sorest losers section now, it's only right that we open it with:
Crow
Crow, after being S tier for nearly a year now, is receiving possibly one of the single biggest nerfs in the history of Brawl Stars, almost doubling his attack spread.
Going from 22.5 degrees to 40 is going to make it really difficult - if not impossible, past point blank - to hit multiple daggers on one target, leading to a significant DPS decrease at his currently most effective range. We're expecting a HARSH drop off for him, possibly even to B tier.
And yes, this change alone is so impactful that there's no need to even mention his Hypercharge nerf, but it will, of course, also play a role in his fall off.
Mina
Mina is receiving 2 different nerfs: damage on her last hit in the combo as well as Gadget duration.
We believe the more major one is her damage - not only is she losing 400 damage in her total combo, but also healing on her Star Power from it, which will hurt her sustain a lot.
Dropping down to 7200 total damage on a full combo, she is now practically defenseless against Alli, which she now can't even 3-shot, but she's also going to require over 3 ammo now for brawlers like Charlie, Clancy, Edgar, Finx, Jae-Yong, Shade, or Starr Nova, which is bound to impact her performance a lot.
On top of that, her Gadget is also going down to just 1 second of shielding, which should finally kill off the cheese potential she has. Perhaps for once we will see Mina actually drop down to B tier?
Chester
4 different nerfs, all of them impacting the strong parts of Chester - that's how we would summarize this change in 1 line.
While the Candy Popper changes don't hurt him too much, as the primary function of that super is the wall-breaking ability, his Gadget nerf is substantial. While the damage boost nerf is very much possible to survive, being barely 600 damage over a whole 4-attack sequence (which deals over 16,000 damage anyway...), the reload boost nerf is MASSIVE. -25% on a TRIPLING of his reload speed is huge, taking it from 0.633 seconds for one ammo down to around 0.8 seconds per, which should help tone Chester down. He might still remain S tier, as his damage is still absurdly good, but it's a good start.
Question Marks
Lastly, we've got the question mark changes - the part where we can't really discern what will happen post-update. To start this section off, we've got to talk about:
Ash
Ash is receiving the Damage trait (commonly known as Tank), letting him charge super passively by taking damage. In return, he's getting a 30% nerf to his HC charge rate.
On one hand, the trait should help him a ton - combined with his other Gadget giving Ash rage for a small HP cost, this might finally let him get played vs. not-completely-free matchups.
On the other hand, the Hypercharge nerf is big - Ash's hyper is one of the stronger ones, letting him put on great pressure very easily... it might end up completely evening out the trait, leading to him being stuck in his current tier. We can't tell that from just the announcement though - be sure to check out our competitive tier list after the changes go live!
Damian
The second and last change in this category, Damian's situation is very peculiar - his speakers are now significantly less durable, breaking in just 1 hit, but in return, they deal way more damage.
While on paper this might sound like a nerf, we've got to remember that Damian's Star Power lets him immediately knock the enemy back into a speaker after supering - and because 8 of them spawn, all it takes to neutralize the durability nerf is aiming the knockback properly, so as to break the least valuable speaker with it. Who knows, perhaps this will turn out to be a buff?
Conclusion
Overall, we've received a lot of very necessary and great changes. While we did not cover all of them, buffs like Gray's and Mandy's damage, Dynamike's reload, or Pearl's Heat Retaining have all been much needed for a long while, and nerfs such as Lumi's Gadget, Shade's Hypercharge, or Meeple's gadgets fantastically pinpoint the most burning issues in the latest meta. We're very excited to see these changes go live and to help our users draft in the new meta!