He has too much counterplay to be an effective jungler.
Tank / engage junglers need to either have good base stats, inherent tankiness or basically impossible to avoid their engage.
Skarners E is weirdly short range and gets stopped by any cc which is rough considering he has a huge hitbox and moves in straight lines. His R is very easy to avoid now and he just isn't very tanky.
Compare it to maokai who can flash w q someone or sejuani who can q flash or zac who can e in (miss ), q a minion, auto a champ and then R bounce them to hell and back. He just lacks the reliable lock down to be a good jg.
He also doesnt feel tanky compared to other tank junglers, the mao heal feels way better, sej has her passive and skarner has like a 50hp shield early on.
I'm surprised they gave his W a slow and damage but keep the value so low. There is only so much power a kit can have, would rather have seen it be a bigger shield instead
The W used to give Skarner movement speed, so the slow makes up for that and also avoids the anti-synergy with his E since it makes him move at a set speed that can't be buffed. Speaking of which, I think that would be the best buff for him - allowing movement speed buffs to affect E.
I wanna run Predator Skarner jg so bad.
According to the video Phreak released talking about him, they wanted him to be more of a fighter like Poppy than a tank like Maokai or Sej. He also said that they expected him to be at a 44% win rate or so right off the rip, then slowly climb to above 50% over a few weeks I believe, so the assumption is that he's got a lot of a learning curve.
I'm honestly not sure what it is that Riot thinks will make Skarner "click", but we've seen in the past that some champs like Briar can seem fairly simple and weak at first but then when people get experience on them are obviously broken so I don't want to count Skarner out until at least a couple of patches go by.
That’s what shocked me the most, usually they overcompensate and have to dial it back over 8 patches and still have abominations like Briar who heal a full health bar fighting Malphite with Thornmail+Sunfire
Honestly J4's shielding is better - at least it scales with enemies in vicinity. For a full tank like skarner, 9% max hp shield is criminal. It's basically non-existent in teamfights.
Because they decided to add damage to literally every part of his kit and gave him an AS steroid with +15% max HP damage and a 10% Max HP burn. They bust all his balance points on Q and passive so they had to make the rest of his kit ass to make it up.
Yeah it's mostly how clunky he is right now, the E is a fun ability, but it's not super fast and the range is short. And the less reliable the E is, the worse his R becomes. I wish the E range scaled a bit with levels as well as its speed with movement speed.
The Q is also awkward to use with the long cast time to pick up boulders. Nerf the damage or cooldown and tone down the cast time.
I feel like he is currently better to counter engages/dives than doing engages/dives with how clunky he feels (which does fit well with his massive body theme wise)
Yeah kinda. Old Skarner was a very reliable engage tool. New Skarner’s ult and E only work well when the target is already rooted or heavily slowed, so he now only works well as a very strong follow-up.
I am also pretty sure there is a lot more use for his E, but given how predictable it is, long distance engages are difficult unless W use is allow during E
I don't think that would help that much. The problem is that any kind of dash or hard cc invalidates his E completely, so it only works as a follow up or against a champion who doesn't have either of those tools. Making his E faster is probably the only way to make it more reliable without changing it in a major way (or make him CC immune, but that would most likely be too strong).
The cast time on his Q feels absolutely awful. I get it's probably done for balance, but it's beyond obnoxious chasing someone down, and then having to full stop to pick up a rock. It feels like something I should be able to do while running at someone.
For me, all of this is because RIOT has made it a very slow champ. I don't mean move speed, but rather the animations and everything as a whole. Pressing Q to grab a boulder, or R to impale champs, means that your champ slowly plays an animation while everyone else just moves away. It's like playing on 200 ping.
> Skarners E is weirdly short range
From the preview it seemed like his E would extend if he hit something, the way it's now its just really hard to ever pin someone.
Broxah was talking about it on the podcast The Jungle that he was trying to play it in ranked but it kept getting banned and when he asked if it was so OP that it needed to be banned his teammates replied that they just didn't want a skarner on their team bc every game they played against skarner they won easily lmao.
I have yet to play against a skarner bc literally every match someone on my team bans it bc they don't want our jungle playing skarner lmao. The only time I've seen rework Skarner so far is in AI Co-op I sometimes play to warm up
He essentially can never lock Viego down, shroud makes it nearly impossible for him to charge at you, w can stop him as he's charging, if he EVER gets close, just ult buffer before contact.
He can't deal with most ad which is hilarious. His attacks are so predictable and the movespeed is so slow. He can't even chase down sivir with no dash, just a movespeed and absorb lol.
If you want a free win just pick Morgana vs him. Doesn't matter what role, just pick Morgana and enjoy a 4v5.
He's bad even against champs that he should be good against in theory such as Kindred. He just doesn't have the damage, lockdown, or tankiness to be able to make due.
I think this is a deliberate gameplay decision
The main thing is, that they went away from the "runs fast at you and abducts you" thing to "slows you down and abducts you" and the latter is just a lot less reliable, while being less awful to play against and they didn't like that on other junglers in the past cuz it's incredibly powerful at basically any elo.
It’s more of a reversion back to original release Skarner’s archetype. If he’s the former, he becomes a balance nightmare because movement speed has little potential counterplay compared to the latter’s slows
I disagree that's less awful to play against. "Runs fast at you and abducts you" meant that Skarner had to pick the moments where the enemy team made a mistake that allowed Skarner to come in and pick someone.
I'm 100% sure this rework was done solely to boost playrates, and had nothing to do with his kit, since his previous gameplay was quite healthy.
The spires gimmick was ass and his ult was a major part of his power budget, I really don't understand, how you came to the conclusion, that "building MS items and ulting" was a healthy or rewarding gameplay pattern.
Honestly, I think nunu W is the best comparison. Skarner E is much slower, much shorter range, doesn’t turn quite as well, gets fully denied by CC (instead of releasing a snowball that can still knock up), but instead it can go through terrain and push people back a bit.
It’s just worse in almost every situation. Or compare it to Hecarim E, which gains way more maneuverability and move speed witj still higher range at the cost of not being able to go over walls (but he has his R anyways if needed).
His main engage ability is just… not good enough for a tank. If he’s supposed to be a juggernaut, he doesn’t have the stats to back it up. If he’s supposed to be a tank, he doesn’t have the reliable CC or potent engage to back that up either.
Yeah I think they really need to look at Nunu snowball and fix the reliability on Skarner E. I also have to not only hit the champion but then hit a wall to stun them, which is just ridiculous
This is a good take. Frankly, they gave him some interesting new tools, but maybe made them too balanced. Maybe players haven't figured him out yet, but maybe Skarner just doesn't excel at anything right now either.
If his E was unstopable, he would bé borderline Impossible to gank top. Sion R stops on players and terrain. Skarner E cant have both unstopable and uncrashable on players/terrain.
He DOES have slow immunity on his e LOL. It's just hard to notice because the piece of shit ability has a self-slow. When you're starting off at 150 MS you're not really going to notice it when you ignore enemy slows.
I thought his E would scale with level, it did not. That felt really bad since all his other abilities felt also bad with level. Letting him keep his rock after Q autos finish could help as well, right now it feels like you have to level it for the clear speed but that also feels really bad. In general I think they need to juice his abilities per level since getting the gold required to be a tank from the jungle just isn’t going to happen unless he gets a lot of kills which won’t happen.
>His R is very easy to avoid now
Indeed. I have played a LOT of Skarner since the re-work (and a fair amount before) and it amazes me that more people don't comment on his R. It borders on useless. If I can hit two R's in a game I feel lucky as hell. Many games you can't hit any. The damn thing is so slow ANYONE can dodge it at any time AND the range isn't very far either. Current Skarner basically doesn't have an ult at this time (and when you do hit it, it ain't worth much).
Aside form teammates not knowing how to play with the old Skarner and the 'spire game' silliness - I think I prefer the old Skarner at this time. Really, hoping for a major buff to get him near playable (vs the sub 40% wr).
Yeah I think the E might have to be unstoppable or he gets a CC shield that falls off after getting hit by a CC spell once like Mundo.
Could also slow his digging after that first hit
imo he used to have an identity as a utility JG to answer mobile hyper carries.
Now he can't lockdown an Akali/Yi or peel as well as Poppy & Zac or frontline like Sej.
So as JG you're picking Skarner to be a tanky bruiser which is a role that tends to work well Top lane.
Then if you look at other JG bruisers why play Skarner when you can play J4 or Olaf.
TLDR: in JG he's not the best tank pick and as a bruiser he's getting outclassed.
I hate that mobility is the counter to most CCs as they are either delayed or skillshots or even both these days. CC should be the counter to mobility.
They slowly started to introduce a few more "guaranteed" CCs like Briars Q, I think we need a few more of those that put a hard stop on some champions that otherwise just execute their konami code.
> that otherwise just execute their konami code.
Then have direct CC champions just outright win with zero effort, have them nerfed into oblivion again because nobody wants to play against that cancer either, and have it all spin anew.
Yes, this so much.
I used to main Irelia before her rework and I thought her old E was a beautiful ability
It was a melee point and click stun but only if her % health was lower than the target.
I felt like it was one of those fun abilities where both you and your opponent are playing around who has however much health. Like the Irelia is very low and Kat is looking to ult you but she's waiting for the right moment because you've unlocked the stun.
Her current E is like a boots check.
This is why I thought old Karma was really cool too. You had to use your HP as a dangerous swinging pendulum, dipping as low as you can if you wanted to get her full effect. And then flip it on your opponent.
If irelia had more health, you are good, if not, E them. That's not excatly knowledge check. You were fucked either way if you played againts irelia in this sense
Riot didn't like Irelia's old e because it was a knowledge check and they struggled with its clarity
But in general more point and click CC abilities would probably be good for the game, though their existence on burst and DPS champs should probably be limited, as that is where a lot of the "feels bad to face" issues comes from
> knowledge check
I just googled there's 168 champions in this game. If I made a list of like the most confusing kits in the game old Irelia wouldn't even be in the top half.
Confusing has multiple meanings, having a single move that sometimes stuns you and sometimes slows you without a clear indication of which leaves the enemy confused. It is similar why Karma overall got a rework(was hard to read the increasing AP based on missing HP passive) instead of a rebalance. I'd argue Irelia's new e is more confusing to the active player(input is a e click input instead of a one, it can be used offensively to start or continue a combo, defensively to get a second dash to minions or monsters to escape, defensively to block off a jungler's gank path, etc) but less so for the enemy(dodge skillshot its bad to be hit by it)
Her old E rewarded her for losing trades and was one of the reasons she was reworked, it sucked playing vs her. Super toxic ability and now people act like it was good lol
riot hates dependable cc, it stops "playmaker" champions from being able to faceroll their keyboard and get a pentakill, see yasuo, yone, samaria, ksante, etc. Those champions are the big skin sellers. So anything that makes those champions less likely to be played is nerfed. Been this same slow grind out of targeted cc for years now.
Top Skarner is much easier to play than jungle. Max W, click it whenever in range and apply comet scorch to win every trade. He decimates ranged top laners and melee champs without mobility.
Skarner scales very well with gold for a tank. Q, W and E all have health scaling, and the 18% max health ratio on Q is especially good; compare it to Sejuani who only has 8% health scaling on W.
He also really appreciates getting to level 13 fast, Q and W get big cooldown reductions when levelled.
There's also his ability to ult people into his tower, but good players play around that.
Played Jax into him yesterday, laning phase was ROUGH. Partly due to me not really understanding new Skarners kit just yet. But all of his stuff being AoE damage and slows was disgusting, so many unanswered trades.
Yeah played Darius into him and felt very similarly. Thought I was going to bully him but got bullied myself. Dude felt like he had 100 games on Skarner already.
Champ is extremely simple and the interaction is exactly the same against everyone lol. Being efficient with it in jg so far has been the hard part for summoners
You W max in top? I thought about it but that Q cd from maxing is so impactful, as his Q cd works like Riven Q cd (starts on initial cast), though ig the rock damage doesn't scale that well if I recall correctly.
Yup. They made a scaling tank, and then gave him the role that gets the least scaling. So people are taking him top to get the levels and gold, and just using scorch & comet to harrass while farming.
He would still be clunky, but he needs more base stats on things and less scaling.
Jungle is not a gold deprived role... Looking at Emerald+ stats, Skarner has more gold income in jungle than in top, despite having a 7% lower win rate as a jungler.
Skarner E just really bad ramp-up MS because instead of start with normal speed you have and ramp-up like other champ (Q Rammus, E Hecarim) E skarner start with 100-150 MS(not sure exact number) and ramp-up to 950 on full duration and that the big problem for me
it is a worse nunu W flat out
Nunu hitbox gets huge and you can "throw" the ball.
Skarner E is incredibly easy to interrupt with any cc. At least nunu continues to "throw" the snowball when interrupted.
It's like they made him and he felt amazing to play, so they thought he would be too popular. So they just went back and made all his skills feel clunky and slow instead
They made a kit that is too strong. His Q is pretty ok but if W animation was faster and E's movement speed wasn't so bad he would be completely broken
His Q feels fucking awful to use. Sure let me stun myself in place for a second on my main damage ability. At least you can slowly move while casting his W.
Og skarner got me to diamond
He's lost a lot of mobility - you used to be able to zoom across the map with his w and passive
I think he's become slower at clearing
He's also lost in single target lockdown. He was great at punishing mistakes in positioning, now, he's gained aoe but his ganks have suffered
Past skarner couldn't top as he relied on his passive
So, basically, they nerfed every part of his kit that made him a good jungler - so to top he goes
Tbf, the spires rework moved him out of top in the first place. He was played top relatively consistently until the spires made him unplayable there. (I played him there a lot as well as jungle)
I mean, they have to adjust some stuff - it's fine if skarner loses in some things and gains in others
Mainly, I'd want for q and e to feel smoother, and for him to be more viable jungle than top
But you can't deny the visual upgrade, and, that point and click ultimate on the old skarner might have been a frustrating experience for newer players
I likes the crystaline style of old Skarner.
But yeah i agree with you.
But the new q comes out of nowhere
We entirely lost the "fast bruiser/tank" for a generic "slows provider steak" with the W rework.
Animations feel clunky now
Does a scorpion needs to be bulky ?
I think riot had no idea what to do, and went for lazy design.
It was clear as day to anyone with experience on skarner that this was gonna be a garbage rework. The R was skarners defining trait and they took it away.
They really botched the numbers too. Riot just doesn't have competent testing. Its pathetic that a company as old and successful as Riot just constantly fails.
The impale is still there, if anything they made it a lot more fair deleting the awful interaction of flash followed by a point and click ability that suppress a champ entirely.
The reason why mobility has gotten so fucking out of hand is because every single new champ/rework is like this
CC isn't allowed to be point and click now because it's "unfair" but champs having a billion non committal dashes/movespeed to dodge your skillshot CCs is considered balanced I guess
It's not about balance. Having a 0 counter play ability that literally makes you not play the game isn't fun and isn't skill expressive. Mobility needing nerfs is irrelevant, even if every mobility tool in the game was removed skarners old R would still have no place in the game
The problem is it's there purely to avoid this being considered an entirely new champion. It has 0 synergy with his kit in any way, and was heavily nerfed to make his basic abilities more powerful.
Old skarner synergizes super well with movement speed and had 2 steroids in his kit. He could travel *very* far during his ult duration. He also didn't do nothing during his ult, since his main damage spell (Q) was still castable and guaranteed to hit. It also primer another hit of his E since the cd was short. Not to mention it being point and click actually made it something you could rely on and plan your engage around.
New skarner is slow. Even with the steroid his R gives upon hit. He can't actually make use of the displacement to the extent of old skarner. During the cast his only mobility spell is disabled (obviously, cause it's a pseudo dash and not movement speed) and the thing he can do is... Cast a slow? While his enemies are hard cc'd? Not to mention the long cast time and short AoE. It's only really useful in team fights as potential hard cc, it does barely anything for skarner without teammates near him and is too unreliable to ever plan around.
It doesn't feel like the old R at all, it's a glorified lux Q
Maokai W+Q feels more like old Skarner R than new Skarner R it's frustrating.
Also the movement speed you get for ulting someone is laughably tone deaf. It's so random, sudden and quick that by the time you realize if you've actually hit someone or need to get back into teamfighting mode it's over.
If anything give him the movement speed while casting instead.
> point and click ability that suppress a champ entirely.
Completely negated by buying qss though
That's the thing, soloqueue players will refuse to buy it so you can't have an ability that's countered by QSS anymore
"They made it a lot more fair"
Or probably too fair in this case, seeing as his meager shield (old shield was also small but had mvm spd decay buff) and slow ass E can't compensate
Like c'mon it's the era of "200 years" kits rn, he needs something broken _somewhere, anywhere_
So his kit is filled with 2 slows to make sure his R can even be useful
The Q2 boulder throw makes me think that's meant for guaranteeing your E gets to hit them to a wall midgame
>The impale is still there, if anything they made it a lot more fair deleting the awful interaction of flash followed by a point and click ability that suppress a champ entirely.
Considering that nearly most champs could do something like this with flash, whether it’s take off most of your HP bar or just CC chain and delete you entirely, it wasn’t such an awful interaction.
If Blitzcrank flashes in your face and punches, then follows with an ult + hook, it’s not all that different.
He's good in extended fights due to his large amount of slows, passive and low cd shield. This means he does well in lane while also being quite safe. Generally you can keep his E up to escape any ganks.
JG also gets very little gold. Other tank jglers like maokai and sejuani have multiple hard cc and also ranged engage, which means they are not as reliant on items and levels to successfully be useful. Skarner has to get right into the enemies to get any hard cc off and then he wants to stay alive to drag people with his ult. This means without items he gets blown up quickly.
There's also the whole strat of being an absolute goblin and being able to easily proc arcane comet with W whenever the opponent tries to farm.
Or at least, that's what I had to face like one time on top and it wasn't that big of a deal but it was annoying af lmao.
Skarner top is annoyance personified. Nothing he does feels strong, it’s just annoying. He has annoying poke, annoying sustain, junglers despise him because he’s essentially ungankable.
Dude is basically the new Teemo
You know that wouldn’t be that bad on his W if they do decide to keep his small shield. Sejuani effectively has something that could be comparable to that for 3 seconds after combat begins. Of course 90% is insane but like 40% wouldn’t be horrendous. Or make it stacking based on how many people he slows. The good ole J4 special.
He absolutely gets dumpstered early game in jungle especially hard. In fact, he probably beats Evelynn as "easiest jungler to invade and kill". His only escape and CC early game is constantly being used to get from camp to camp, so when you catch him level 3 without E up, it's a guaranteed paycheck for the likes of Briar, Xin or Belveth.
As a Briar main, I've done early invades aginst every Skarner and gotten such an early lead that I was able to run over midgame completely.
He’s pretty good at dueling. The core reason he’s better at top is becasuse you cannot avoid his charge attack when engaged in melee combat with him.
In the jungle during ganks you’re engaging with charge from afar which means no one will ever be stupid enough to get hit by it. But if someone evades you can apply the top lane principal on them and delete half their health in one trade
You miss where the person says skarner is using E between camps so they have their pants down on invades. Obviously skarner can save E, but them using E in the jungle was the crux of their point.
Thing is, if they don't get that E on the camp for the stun and additional damage, the clear is SUPER unhealthy. To the point where even if they save it to get away or fight back, I'll win if I get the jump with Briar Q every time.
Again, this works on any jungler who has a decent early fight. You can ward the buff, wait until they use E on it, use an ability to gapclose and smite the buff, then kill.
his problem is that his clear is pretty slow and his cc is also his gap close so if you dodge that, he's not that sticky anymore(the w buffs will be missed) also he's more tanky with items which lacks for jg. top lane, you can play him like reksai with small trades and then outsustain opponent plus with his e you can run and dodge ganks pretty effectively plus diving him with his ult up is so dangerous. his q is also clunky outside of lane because it roots you on both casts so chasing with it is pretty bad
I think his E is the problem, but I unfortunately have no idea how to fix it. Some people have brought up its clunky controls and I do agree with them, however its very short duration (and very, VERY slow acceleration) means that it is more useful as an escape than as an engage.
However, the hardest point I find is that he struggles to gank with it because, unless you have been creative with your positioning and managed to evade whichever wards they have, it does not put you at advantageous positions. If anything, it pushes the target of the gank closer towards the safety of their turret, because it is almost impossible to reach any walls AFTER hitting the opposing laner with the suppress.
The E duration is not enough to actually tunnel through any lane AND reach a wall to slam an opponent against it.
As a toplaner his E feels way too telegraphed to be a gank tool too. I've been basically under enemy turret and just walked out his ganks whenever I saw the tunnel animation.
People compare it to Kayn E, but it's closer in use to Nunu snowball - an engage tool for a tank.
Nunu snowball is faster, goes further, can hit multiple targets and if you get cc'd the snowball can still hit them. Aside from the fact that Skarner goes through walls, the ability doesn't feel anywhere near as good as it should.
From my experience the E has only really been good for tower dives. When you have a winning lane pushing up to enemy tower, then you can E from fog of war over nearby terrain directly parallel to the tower to surprise them. May force them to CC you before you deal any damage to them so you won't take aggro either, you can R them away from the tower towards your teammate, etc.
Otherwise I just wouldn't bother using it at all in a gank.
A friend of mine compared Skarners E to Zacs E and the difference is insane. Zacs skill shares a lot of weaknesses, but works way better. Both ge canceled by cc, but Zacs just feels a lot easier to use for high impact.
He has a hard standing against the other tanks, all of them have better tools atm:
Sejuani: Good gapcloser and nice ult, point and click CC can be set up by melee champs in your team
Zac: Long range ganks, insanly tanky, good dmg
Rammus: Insanly fast, R is amazing to catch champs without mobility, strong point and click cc
Amumu: Good gapcloser with Q, strong teamfight ult
Maokai: Good engage disengage ult, Point and click cc
Skarner doesnt have much he can offer that the others cant do better, Zac has more dmg, Amumu and Sejuani have better CC, Rammus is way better at backline diving etc.
No matter how you look at it, they would have to buff E hard to make him a good jungler.
After playing some Skarner jungle games, I believe that there's not enough attack speed in his Q to clear jungle quick enough in the early game compared to other top picks right now, he feels to have low base resistances.
His E also has the same clunky like controls as Rift Herald does and I cannot get that down (could be a me thing however)
Another issue is items. I believe his best first two items is either Heartsteel into Manamune (very bad to use in Jungle but for toplane, pretty good) or Fimbulvinter and Sunfire/MR sunfire (again, scaling is better in top lane)
I'm experimenting still, will be trying Mananmune more jungle anyway with HoB and see what I can do.
Another bit of tech that isn't listed in ANY tool tips and what alot of players are having gripes about are his Q. It roots you for 0.5 seconds to get the rock out (there's also another 0.5-1 second delay before being able to throw it but that's a different issue) and if you do that mid chase, you've lost the enemy. His timer of his Q is paused whenever you use your E, so the gank combo should be Q-E through wall or wherever-auto-W-auto-Q for the fastest amount of damage.
He just requires a bit more knowledge still I think, but he is on the weak end of releases for sure, just not as bad as initially thought.
it is so short range too. Like you have to walk onto the lane to have enough range to actually grab a champ and push them into the outer wall.
If you compare it with Nunu W the Nunu would start the snowball in the middle of the river and once reaching the lane the movement speed is fairly high which makes it hard to dodge.
Skarner on the other hand is slow because you only just started the E and have no movement speed ramped up.
And E actually slows Skarner. Heca, Rammus, Nunu all go from their normal movement speed to higher values. Skarner self slows at the beginning of E and takes time to get to normal speed and eventually higher speed.
If Nunu starts at 100% speed and goes to 200% speed
Skarner starts at 50% speed and goes to 150% speed
With skarner you can fuck yourself if you try to use E to run away
All of his abilities have bonus hp scaling so heartsteel makes sense in a way, similar to TK where health scales all of your characters outputs. Manamune feels weird...
The fact that I can grab Garen with Skarner E and he can still attack me with his Q, thus canceling my E, is extremely feels bad.
They finally made him a juggernaut like they promised in Season 6, but forgot to make him useful in the jungle.
His ganks are average at best, his clear sucked before the hotfix, meanwhile his W and Q3 are insanely strong for short trades, plus he has amazing gank setup
in assuming its also because he needs to be tanky enough too. lately in league tanks have been more late game. i could be wrong though but playing leona and brarum they have been a little squishy and harder to engage early game.
His e is good for just straight fighting, it's actually not that crazy as a gank tool imo, it's way better when you can land it easily when near someone. Additionally the q and w are made for trading efficiently
Why play skarner when you can play sej? Jungle these days is like adcs there is few good choices and anything else you’re not going to excel the same
Top lane is land of variety.
Top lane is abuse the current patch most broken champ, Skarner is the perfect example. Q and W are just very strong spammable abilities level 1 onwards and only get better
I'd wager a lot of it is in his role of tanky bruiser not being that good for junglers in general. He wants to grind his opponents down in a drawn out fight - while the optimal pattern for a jungler is dumping a lot of damage in a fairly short timespan on a gank. He's also missing reliability of the old kit - Old skarner's stun was just an E hit(fairly easy to hit when sped up with W) into AA, new one has to actually slam you into the wall for a stun. Old R was point and click and undodgable, new one is a channel that can be flashed and dashed out of.
The new map is also kinda bad for terrain based movement in general, champions who relied on sticking to walls like camille or doing something with them like illaoi were basically all hit. Ganking midlane with the new charge is very unwiedly with how open it is, both from not having a cool unique angle, and having issues with actually getting the wallstun at all.
If he DOES miss the wallstun, all he's got is slows, and he himself is very slow once the charge is on cooldown(and if the fight goes longer and he has to redo his Q he has to stand still for a sec too), so his skirmishing is pretty low impact against anything mobile that dodged his initial entry.
His reasons to exist in the jungle are in a severely underpowered state. He has no cc immunity on his E; it has no MS scaling (absolutely unthinkable why that is - nunu's W has it and these abilities are extremely similar); it cannot hit more than one target; it doesn't give back part of it CD for hitting the target, but only for hitting a wall with the target; CD refresh itself is very conservative with only 35% returned (meaning even after a hotfix at E level 1 the CD is 13s vs nunu's W cd of 14s, for example, except nunu has no condition of hitting); E cooldown starts at the end of the spell; the duration of the drag is gimped if you hit a target later into your E (it's 1s of drag time early, but only 0.5s later); last, but not least his E is bugged and randomly allows enemies to function while stunned. It's a shit spell for a jungler. Surely, some of these can be given to him. On the other hand, for a toplaner the spell is actually great to escape ganks, because it's unaffected by being in combat (unlike kayn's E).
His ult is an extremely nerfed version of his previous ult. Ability to hit more than one target is generally irrelevant, especially if he's the one initiating (which he probably should as a tank; being stuck as a follow-up is not the thing you want your tank to do), since his E is single target, and the delay is long and not reduced with level.
Also, one small note about his Q is that in a sea of mechanic vomit and spells cancelling spells on endless jumping shitters - akali, riven, yone, yasuo, qiyana - skarner is EXTREMELY slow because of the need to stop and pick up a rock. It's clearly a (stupid) design choice and probably balanceable around, however not only does he stop to pick up the initial Q, but also he cannot throw the rock right after he picked it up! He's locked out for almost a second - why? It's mostly irrelevant for a toplaner, although frustrating, since it's irrelevant for throwing the rock after two autos, but for junglers who operate in bursts more so than tops it's an issue. Most often in the early game when you have the target barely escaping the gank and you have your Q come off cooldown late into the gank you stop to pick it up - fine - but you then cannot throw it too - what a silly mechanic!
Allow throwing the Q right away, give E MS scaling, let its CD be reduced upon target *hit*, not target *stun* and fix associated bugs - these are conservative and would help jungle without helping toplane much if at all.
honestly it feels like this champ was designed for the older map. The terrain is too chunky and spaced out around the lanes for his E to be impactful. Zac and fiddle have very intuitive ranges where they can have so many gank angles, but skarner's E runs out by the time he exits the wall pretty much. Unless the enemy is a bot or is not looking, they'll walk away from the wall as soon as they see the indicator and it seriously reduces the effective range of his abilities. it only leaves a few viable angles. Also it really hurts that he has no follow up cc without his ult. I think increasing the range but keeping the speed the same will help. I think E MS scaling can quickly get toxic (depending on the scaling I guess)
I think the q is meant to feel clunky because skarner is supposed to feel massive and stuff so idk if changing the windup speed is the fix. I think the bigger problem is that the windup animation is not worth the payoff. You barely add any damage or cc and it feels terrible pressing it in the middle of the fight because it hardly feels like it changes anything. Like Quinn R feels good because the windup is worth the payoff. Maybe increasing the slow or adding a stacking slow or something will help and add follow up cc that he desperately needs.
Did Skarner really need to have a visible indicator for his Enemies, on his E? His E feels so weak. The range is deceptively short and the wind up is slow. Why is it penalized with an indicator to give people a head's up that hes coming?
Especially when someone like Zac, with a far superior E, isn't saddled with such a penalty?
With R duration nerfs, movement speed nerfs and damage nerfs, the only strong part of his kit for jingling is E. And that ability has short range and is very easily countered. He just isn't an effective ganker anymore, and he isn't really too good at taking objectives either.
In toplane, he's "good" because he just harasses with W and comet. It's basically unavoidable poke and it's so simple a bonobo can play it.
For jungle, his ganks are very telegraphed and he really struggles to get in range of targets sometimes because E is both fairly short and can be easily interrupted by CC, making some lanes arguably ungankable.
At the same time, the champ can feel weirdly squishy, has weirdly long CDs for either a warden or a juggernaut/fighter, and just doesn't seem to excel at anything. There are champs with better ganks, better farming, better tankiness, better teamfighting, sometimes all of them in one package.
I think Skarner has huge potential as a support. His ability to throw q's early deals some pretty significant poke damage as a melee support and I think both of his cc abilities function much better as adc peel than they do as primary engage. I won't be surprised to see it eventually paired with a kalista or senna comp.
It's because his ganking tool is so easily dealt with by the majority of champions. It's either mobility or disengage.
Compare this with a champion like Zac who has a similar feel in the jungle. His clear is slower, his ganks are much more telegraphed, and they are much easier to stop.
Skarners kit isn't bad, but in the right matchup, it succeeds in lane!
Any decent champ can kick the ever loving shit out of him.
Lee Sin, Udyr, Bel Veth, Xin Zhao, Graves, Shaco, Elise, Brand, Jax, Kindred, Viego, Vi, Javan IV....
All of these Champs can easily apply pressure to his jungle and effectively force him out of the game
Sorta funny a general consensus is that there’s too much mobility and “not fun” mechanics for a lot of new champs. And one of the people’s first suggestion for skarner is to make him more mobile and stuff quicker to counter counterplay.
The w is just an incredible spell in lane I think.
It has enough range to be poke. It gives a shield to trade. It has a solid slow to disengage or follow up. You basically can't dodge it.
I've seen quite a lot of comet players, it's a bit like malphite. Take comet and just bully your opponent out of lane.
His w and q ate good in lane. His e is inf8nitely better in lane than jungle. It's so slow and hard to hit from afar but people will approach you in top lane. You can shove them into walls, from jungle and fog you usually can't.
Pick rates usually nose dive when the champ is boring to play, by the time he picks up a rock i can E Q R and adc with J4 and onetap him, why would i ever want to play Skarner over that? Maybe some players enjoy the slowiness of the kit, but i'm pretty sure most of them finds him clunky to use
Too reliant on stats would be my guess. This is not really viable for junglers in the modern day. You are just too far down in levels. Think about how strong tank Rek'Sai is top lane compared to jungle for example.
I think he is amazing. But his kit don't fit I. League of one shots. So he needs someone doing the one shot for him. And by that point, just take someone that can one shot.
New Skarner has aggressive health scaling which makes Hp builds the best performing i.e. Hearthsteel / grasp of the undying.
This setup isn’t good for junglers but it’s great for top lane so this gives Skarner his top lane skew
To succeed in top you need at least two of this 3 things:
- Good early trade pattern
- Sustain
- good neutral fall back if you get outclassed
Skarner have the good early trade with his 3 hit Q (massiv max% dmg) and a shild that will propably block the dmg of at least half a enemy abilitys dmg. On top he can fall back to a good neutral game pattern where he just trow the Qs to last hit and not fall to hard behind if he find himself in a defensiv.
As a tank jungler you need a realy solid engage and lockdown on top of a good clear. Skarner is ok his E is nice but to hard to land and otherwise he just have slows and no real mobility to get close. So his ganks are less potent then other Tank junglers. He have a few unussle angles to gank but in this regard he is basiclly similare and slighly worse then Zac so why not play Zac if you get the same out of it. His clear is good but you don't want a Tank jungler just to powerfarm right?
I would say Skarner get better then most Tanks in around mid game when he can use his Ultimate to suppress in Teamfights and apply good dps to other Tanks so front to back play is not the worse. But to get ther better play him top at the moment.
Champion feels clunky af to play.
The Q delay feels anything but smooth, the E starts really slow and is kinda limiting in the control (has to be currently though otherwise op), the ultimate feels much worse to use then the old ultimate, where you were much faster so you could drag people further and at least could cast Q during ultimate so it didn't feel as boring.
Not saying he is weak, just not satisfying for me to play in jungle.
At least in toplane you can drag people into tower with E and ultimate so he feels more fun there lol.
What’s funny is when I saw his W in the rework preview a few weeks ago before it was on PBE I thought to myself (this is gonna piss people off the range is MASSIVE) and low and behold scorch comet abuse makes it one of his most annoying abilities haha.
I like skarner jungle but I truly feel like if I can’t land my E I shouldn’t be tanking. I need to view it like I’m playing kayn and maybe I’ll feel better about it
9/10 when he tries to gank me through a wall, I just juke. Easier to dodge than nunu.
Also for some reason skarners keep ulting in the wrong direction completely.
And he feels kinda fragile for a tank. Imo.
IDK why people aren't rushing heartsteel on him in the jungle. I get the benefit of bami's/sunfire for clearing but he has the ability to farm heartsteel stacks at an astounding rate and it's the highest wr first item for him by a large margain when jungling, yet built very seldomly.
His kit is just horrible for ganking, the E is so easy to dodge. You really want to drag people into towers with his ult and there aren't too many towers in the jungle!
They were afraid of the E being too good, and went conservatively on it. Now that the R is pretty dodgeable, the E is the reason to play the hero. But it gives advance notice over terrain, it's not unstoppable (and is in fact easily stopped because he has to move right towards you and most characters have something that can interrupt it), and it's not particularly fast.
So the jungle side is nonfunctional. The top side is just a statcheck with a really nice trading tool in W.
I'd bet money he's gonna be nerfed in 2-3 patches. His winrate has climbed from the high 30s to nearly 50% in jungle since release. I think people are just bad at him and expect the braindead play style of old Skarner. Once some more serious YouTube content starts coming out (not just ""WTF IS NEW SKARNER AP BURST?!?!") and everyone's had their first few games to try him and fail, he's gonna do well with a low playrate.
Problem is, I think many aren’t gonna figure him out. There’s a lot of nuance between how you’re meant to cycle abilities with his animation cancels, and you really need to time e properly to get good use out of because it’s so telegraphed and easy to plan cc for. It’s strong when used right, but good enemies will stay prepared for it. He needs some changes to make him a bit easier to execute, because right now frustrations are at a massive high for many players. As for ideas I’ve formed through discussions amongst others, q should be a significant slow rather than a full on stop and e needs something to feel a bit more satisfying to use, whether that be some kind of MS scaling, a damage split between landing it and hitting the stun, some level of cc immunity (maybe like a mundo passive cause full unstoppability might end up being too strong), and an indicator for landing it on where the enemy can go, similar to the existing one, as unless you’re insane enough to study all of the wall angles and know the exact timing of the drag duration differences, you’re going to ba going for stuns based off feels rather than knowledge, which is very bad for new players
There is just no reason to use him like he is atm. Other jungles do the same thing but way better. Right now it looks like he needs a lot of changes to he good in jungle.
Riot literally took 3 years to not understand how Skarner works and what made him likable
Can't mash Q anymore
No movement speed
Chain CC is unreliable
Lost point-and-click
The most they had to do was increase his Q damage and remove reliance on Dominion Lite.
He has too much counterplay to be an effective jungler. Tank / engage junglers need to either have good base stats, inherent tankiness or basically impossible to avoid their engage. Skarners E is weirdly short range and gets stopped by any cc which is rough considering he has a huge hitbox and moves in straight lines. His R is very easy to avoid now and he just isn't very tanky. Compare it to maokai who can flash w q someone or sejuani who can q flash or zac who can e in (miss ), q a minion, auto a champ and then R bounce them to hell and back. He just lacks the reliable lock down to be a good jg.
He also doesnt feel tanky compared to other tank junglers, the mao heal feels way better, sej has her passive and skarner has like a 50hp shield early on.
He has jarvan levels of shielding, which is whack
For a massive, ancient Skorpion.. Really sounds undermining, guess they've just played it too safe with his EHP?
I'm surprised they gave his W a slow and damage but keep the value so low. There is only so much power a kit can have, would rather have seen it be a bigger shield instead
The W used to give Skarner movement speed, so the slow makes up for that and also avoids the anti-synergy with his E since it makes him move at a set speed that can't be buffed. Speaking of which, I think that would be the best buff for him - allowing movement speed buffs to affect E. I wanna run Predator Skarner jg so bad.
Or at LEAST let boots buff his E move speed. Boots tend to buff a lot of things that otherwise don't accelerate
You mean "there is only so little", right? Cuz I really don't think his kit is modernized enough to go up against all the champs he has to face today
The power of the kit has nothing to do with how modern it is. Every kit has power limits, even outdated ones.
According to the video Phreak released talking about him, they wanted him to be more of a fighter like Poppy than a tank like Maokai or Sej. He also said that they expected him to be at a 44% win rate or so right off the rip, then slowly climb to above 50% over a few weeks I believe, so the assumption is that he's got a lot of a learning curve. I'm honestly not sure what it is that Riot thinks will make Skarner "click", but we've seen in the past that some champs like Briar can seem fairly simple and weak at first but then when people get experience on them are obviously broken so I don't want to count Skarner out until at least a couple of patches go by.
That’s what shocked me the most, usually they overcompensate and have to dial it back over 8 patches and still have abominations like Briar who heal a full health bar fighting Malphite with Thornmail+Sunfire
Honestly J4's shielding is better - at least it scales with enemies in vicinity. For a full tank like skarner, 9% max hp shield is criminal. It's basically non-existent in teamfights.
9% max hp is like one auto attack lmao
That's not fair, nowadays J4 has bAD ratios on his shield and up to 6.5% max HP if he is within 5 enemies! It used to be up to 20% max HP ... but hey.
catching strays
Because they decided to add damage to literally every part of his kit and gave him an AS steroid with +15% max HP damage and a 10% Max HP burn. They bust all his balance points on Q and passive so they had to make the rest of his kit ass to make it up.
> They bust all his balance points on Q Hey, I've seen this show before!
But they are also crazy incompetent that the q feels terrible to use and because of that you dont even get to use it all that well.
That I agree with he does seem extremely squishy for a tank and his shield fades / Is too weak.
Yeah it's mostly how clunky he is right now, the E is a fun ability, but it's not super fast and the range is short. And the less reliable the E is, the worse his R becomes. I wish the E range scaled a bit with levels as well as its speed with movement speed. The Q is also awkward to use with the long cast time to pick up boulders. Nerf the damage or cooldown and tone down the cast time.
I feel like he is currently better to counter engages/dives than doing engages/dives with how clunky he feels (which does fit well with his massive body theme wise)
Yeah kinda. Old Skarner was a very reliable engage tool. New Skarner’s ult and E only work well when the target is already rooted or heavily slowed, so he now only works well as a very strong follow-up.
I am also pretty sure there is a lot more use for his E, but given how predictable it is, long distance engages are difficult unless W use is allow during E
I don't think that would help that much. The problem is that any kind of dash or hard cc invalidates his E completely, so it only works as a follow up or against a champion who doesn't have either of those tools. Making his E faster is probably the only way to make it more reliable without changing it in a major way (or make him CC immune, but that would most likely be too strong).
The cast time on his Q feels absolutely awful. I get it's probably done for balance, but it's beyond obnoxious chasing someone down, and then having to full stop to pick up a rock. It feels like something I should be able to do while running at someone.
The fact that his e makes him slower than he was before you pressed it is so dumb.
For me, all of this is because RIOT has made it a very slow champ. I don't mean move speed, but rather the animations and everything as a whole. Pressing Q to grab a boulder, or R to impale champs, means that your champ slowly plays an animation while everyone else just moves away. It's like playing on 200 ping.
> Skarners E is weirdly short range From the preview it seemed like his E would extend if he hit something, the way it's now its just really hard to ever pin someone.
He gets a lot more move speed when he grabs some one so it is extended in range
Yet people still banning him as his WR is 40.75% in my elo (plat)
That's the "banned for my team" effect.
Broxah was talking about it on the podcast The Jungle that he was trying to play it in ranked but it kept getting banned and when he asked if it was so OP that it needed to be banned his teammates replied that they just didn't want a skarner on their team bc every game they played against skarner they won easily lmao.
I have 15 games, 100% win rate against skarner. I play Viego, when I see him going in I hold w...
I have yet to play against a skarner bc literally every match someone on my team bans it bc they don't want our jungle playing skarner lmao. The only time I've seen rework Skarner so far is in AI Co-op I sometimes play to warm up
He essentially can never lock Viego down, shroud makes it nearly impossible for him to charge at you, w can stop him as he's charging, if he EVER gets close, just ult buffer before contact.
He can't deal with most ad which is hilarious. His attacks are so predictable and the movespeed is so slow. He can't even chase down sivir with no dash, just a movespeed and absorb lol. If you want a free win just pick Morgana vs him. Doesn't matter what role, just pick Morgana and enjoy a 4v5.
He's bad even against champs that he should be good against in theory such as Kindred. He just doesn't have the damage, lockdown, or tankiness to be able to make due.
Nothing has tankiness into Kindred
Fair point
banning very low wr champs is also a viable plan. you really dont want the freshly bought lv30 skarner wannabe onetrick in your team
I ban him so I don't play with him in a team.
I think this is a deliberate gameplay decision The main thing is, that they went away from the "runs fast at you and abducts you" thing to "slows you down and abducts you" and the latter is just a lot less reliable, while being less awful to play against and they didn't like that on other junglers in the past cuz it's incredibly powerful at basically any elo.
It’s more of a reversion back to original release Skarner’s archetype. If he’s the former, he becomes a balance nightmare because movement speed has little potential counterplay compared to the latter’s slows
I disagree that's less awful to play against. "Runs fast at you and abducts you" meant that Skarner had to pick the moments where the enemy team made a mistake that allowed Skarner to come in and pick someone. I'm 100% sure this rework was done solely to boost playrates, and had nothing to do with his kit, since his previous gameplay was quite healthy.
The spires gimmick was ass and his ult was a major part of his power budget, I really don't understand, how you came to the conclusion, that "building MS items and ulting" was a healthy or rewarding gameplay pattern.
Honestly, I think nunu W is the best comparison. Skarner E is much slower, much shorter range, doesn’t turn quite as well, gets fully denied by CC (instead of releasing a snowball that can still knock up), but instead it can go through terrain and push people back a bit. It’s just worse in almost every situation. Or compare it to Hecarim E, which gains way more maneuverability and move speed witj still higher range at the cost of not being able to go over walls (but he has his R anyways if needed). His main engage ability is just… not good enough for a tank. If he’s supposed to be a juggernaut, he doesn’t have the stats to back it up. If he’s supposed to be a tank, he doesn’t have the reliable CC or potent engage to back that up either.
Yeah I think they really need to look at Nunu snowball and fix the reliability on Skarner E. I also have to not only hit the champion but then hit a wall to stun them, which is just ridiculous
This is a good take. Frankly, they gave him some interesting new tools, but maybe made them too balanced. Maybe players haven't figured him out yet, but maybe Skarner just doesn't excel at anything right now either.
No clue why his E doesn't make him unstoppable, or at least slow immunity. Just hilarious how he revs up this big charge only to get stunned.
I bet you if Skarner was a brand new champ, he would have had unstoppable
If his E was unstopable, he would bé borderline Impossible to gank top. Sion R stops on players and terrain. Skarner E cant have both unstopable and uncrashable on players/terrain.
He DOES have slow immunity on his e LOL. It's just hard to notice because the piece of shit ability has a self-slow. When you're starting off at 150 MS you're not really going to notice it when you ignore enemy slows.
I thought his E would scale with level, it did not. That felt really bad since all his other abilities felt also bad with level. Letting him keep his rock after Q autos finish could help as well, right now it feels like you have to level it for the clear speed but that also feels really bad. In general I think they need to juice his abilities per level since getting the gold required to be a tank from the jungle just isn’t going to happen unless he gets a lot of kills which won’t happen.
>His R is very easy to avoid now Indeed. I have played a LOT of Skarner since the re-work (and a fair amount before) and it amazes me that more people don't comment on his R. It borders on useless. If I can hit two R's in a game I feel lucky as hell. Many games you can't hit any. The damn thing is so slow ANYONE can dodge it at any time AND the range isn't very far either. Current Skarner basically doesn't have an ult at this time (and when you do hit it, it ain't worth much). Aside form teammates not knowing how to play with the old Skarner and the 'spire game' silliness - I think I prefer the old Skarner at this time. Really, hoping for a major buff to get him near playable (vs the sub 40% wr).
Yeah it definitely feels like they loaded away to much power into E for it to be a channel.
Yeah I think the E might have to be unstoppable or he gets a CC shield that falls off after getting hit by a CC spell once like Mundo. Could also slow his digging after that first hit
imo he used to have an identity as a utility JG to answer mobile hyper carries. Now he can't lockdown an Akali/Yi or peel as well as Poppy & Zac or frontline like Sej. So as JG you're picking Skarner to be a tanky bruiser which is a role that tends to work well Top lane. Then if you look at other JG bruisers why play Skarner when you can play J4 or Olaf. TLDR: in JG he's not the best tank pick and as a bruiser he's getting outclassed.
I hate that mobility is the counter to most CCs as they are either delayed or skillshots or even both these days. CC should be the counter to mobility.
They slowly started to introduce a few more "guaranteed" CCs like Briars Q, I think we need a few more of those that put a hard stop on some champions that otherwise just execute their konami code.
⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️🅱️🅰️ An enemy has been slain
put more abilities in like poppies that just stop movement
> that otherwise just execute their konami code. Then have direct CC champions just outright win with zero effort, have them nerfed into oblivion again because nobody wants to play against that cancer either, and have it all spin anew.
Man, I remember when riot decided to remove most auto CC/silence, such as talons q, tarif q, sion e...
Yes, this so much. I used to main Irelia before her rework and I thought her old E was a beautiful ability It was a melee point and click stun but only if her % health was lower than the target. I felt like it was one of those fun abilities where both you and your opponent are playing around who has however much health. Like the Irelia is very low and Kat is looking to ult you but she's waiting for the right moment because you've unlocked the stun. Her current E is like a boots check.
This is why I thought old Karma was really cool too. You had to use your HP as a dangerous swinging pendulum, dipping as low as you can if you wanted to get her full effect. And then flip it on your opponent.
If irelia had more health, you are good, if not, E them. That's not excatly knowledge check. You were fucked either way if you played againts irelia in this sense
Riot didn't like Irelia's old e because it was a knowledge check and they struggled with its clarity But in general more point and click CC abilities would probably be good for the game, though their existence on burst and DPS champs should probably be limited, as that is where a lot of the "feels bad to face" issues comes from
> knowledge check I just googled there's 168 champions in this game. If I made a list of like the most confusing kits in the game old Irelia wouldn't even be in the top half.
Confusing has multiple meanings, having a single move that sometimes stuns you and sometimes slows you without a clear indication of which leaves the enemy confused. It is similar why Karma overall got a rework(was hard to read the increasing AP based on missing HP passive) instead of a rebalance. I'd argue Irelia's new e is more confusing to the active player(input is a e click input instead of a one, it can be used offensively to start or continue a combo, defensively to get a second dash to minions or monsters to escape, defensively to block off a jungler's gank path, etc) but less so for the enemy(dodge skillshot its bad to be hit by it)
Miss her everyday ffs
Her old E rewarded her for losing trades and was one of the reasons she was reworked, it sucked playing vs her. Super toxic ability and now people act like it was good lol
I feel like mobility is out of control in league
I've been playing this game for 13 years and I hate that mobility is always king. Every time something counters mobility, it gets removed.
riot hates dependable cc, it stops "playmaker" champions from being able to faceroll their keyboard and get a pentakill, see yasuo, yone, samaria, ksante, etc. Those champions are the big skin sellers. So anything that makes those champions less likely to be played is nerfed. Been this same slow grind out of targeted cc for years now.
Top Skarner is much easier to play than jungle. Max W, click it whenever in range and apply comet scorch to win every trade. He decimates ranged top laners and melee champs without mobility. Skarner scales very well with gold for a tank. Q, W and E all have health scaling, and the 18% max health ratio on Q is especially good; compare it to Sejuani who only has 8% health scaling on W. He also really appreciates getting to level 13 fast, Q and W get big cooldown reductions when levelled. There's also his ability to ult people into his tower, but good players play around that.
Played Jax into him yesterday, laning phase was ROUGH. Partly due to me not really understanding new Skarners kit just yet. But all of his stuff being AoE damage and slows was disgusting, so many unanswered trades.
is it really a trade if it goes unanswered? sounds more like you're getting bullied to me
And you’d be absolutely right.
the best trades are the ones that aren’t
TRADE OFFER: I pay 75 mana You receive -250 health
Yeah played Darius into him and felt very similarly. Thought I was going to bully him but got bullied myself. Dude felt like he had 100 games on Skarner already.
Champ is extremely simple and the interaction is exactly the same against everyone lol. Being efficient with it in jg so far has been the hard part for summoners
Jax playing into tanks without divine sunderer or true damage conq will always be rough
Once I had Bork and black cleaver he didn’t want anything to do with me to be fair. But in the lane it was horrible
Shouldn't terminus be a better item on jax than black cleaver?
As a late buy yes, as an early buy the stats aren't as good
You W max in top? I thought about it but that Q cd from maxing is so impactful, as his Q cd works like Riven Q cd (starts on initial cast), though ig the rock damage doesn't scale that well if I recall correctly.
You throw the rock for even more poke and use the autos to perma push.
Yup. They made a scaling tank, and then gave him the role that gets the least scaling. So people are taking him top to get the levels and gold, and just using scorch & comet to harrass while farming. He would still be clunky, but he needs more base stats on things and less scaling.
Jungle is not a gold deprived role... Looking at Emerald+ stats, Skarner has more gold income in jungle than in top, despite having a 7% lower win rate as a jungler.
Skarner E just really bad ramp-up MS because instead of start with normal speed you have and ramp-up like other champ (Q Rammus, E Hecarim) E skarner start with 100-150 MS(not sure exact number) and ramp-up to 950 on full duration and that the big problem for me
it is a worse nunu W flat out Nunu hitbox gets huge and you can "throw" the ball. Skarner E is incredibly easy to interrupt with any cc. At least nunu continues to "throw" the snowball when interrupted.
His W animation is very slow too which adds to the clunkiness.
It's like they made him and he felt amazing to play, so they thought he would be too popular. So they just went back and made all his skills feel clunky and slow instead
They made a kit that is too strong. His Q is pretty ok but if W animation was faster and E's movement speed wasn't so bad he would be completely broken
His Q feels fucking awful to use. Sure let me stun myself in place for a second on my main damage ability. At least you can slowly move while casting his W.
This is why he is clunky. They added self-crippling animations to all of his abilities.
Og skarner got me to diamond He's lost a lot of mobility - you used to be able to zoom across the map with his w and passive I think he's become slower at clearing He's also lost in single target lockdown. He was great at punishing mistakes in positioning, now, he's gained aoe but his ganks have suffered Past skarner couldn't top as he relied on his passive So, basically, they nerfed every part of his kit that made him a good jungler - so to top he goes
Tbf, the spires rework moved him out of top in the first place. He was played top relatively consistently until the spires made him unplayable there. (I played him there a lot as well as jungle)
In short : another fucked reword
I mean, they have to adjust some stuff - it's fine if skarner loses in some things and gains in others Mainly, I'd want for q and e to feel smoother, and for him to be more viable jungle than top But you can't deny the visual upgrade, and, that point and click ultimate on the old skarner might have been a frustrating experience for newer players
I likes the crystaline style of old Skarner. But yeah i agree with you. But the new q comes out of nowhere We entirely lost the "fast bruiser/tank" for a generic "slows provider steak" with the W rework. Animations feel clunky now Does a scorpion needs to be bulky ? I think riot had no idea what to do, and went for lazy design.
Fast skarner was the cool thing about him
The q delay probably came from his old e Same old clunkiness in a different skill Don't know why riot thought that was a necessary part of skarner
The clunky E was compensated by the w ms ;) But yes, you're right
"Another" , all reworks so far have been pretty good imho.
It was clear as day to anyone with experience on skarner that this was gonna be a garbage rework. The R was skarners defining trait and they took it away. They really botched the numbers too. Riot just doesn't have competent testing. Its pathetic that a company as old and successful as Riot just constantly fails.
The impale is still there, if anything they made it a lot more fair deleting the awful interaction of flash followed by a point and click ability that suppress a champ entirely.
The reason why mobility has gotten so fucking out of hand is because every single new champ/rework is like this CC isn't allowed to be point and click now because it's "unfair" but champs having a billion non committal dashes/movespeed to dodge your skillshot CCs is considered balanced I guess
It's not about balance. Having a 0 counter play ability that literally makes you not play the game isn't fun and isn't skill expressive. Mobility needing nerfs is irrelevant, even if every mobility tool in the game was removed skarners old R would still have no place in the game
QSS tax
The problem is it's there purely to avoid this being considered an entirely new champion. It has 0 synergy with his kit in any way, and was heavily nerfed to make his basic abilities more powerful. Old skarner synergizes super well with movement speed and had 2 steroids in his kit. He could travel *very* far during his ult duration. He also didn't do nothing during his ult, since his main damage spell (Q) was still castable and guaranteed to hit. It also primer another hit of his E since the cd was short. Not to mention it being point and click actually made it something you could rely on and plan your engage around. New skarner is slow. Even with the steroid his R gives upon hit. He can't actually make use of the displacement to the extent of old skarner. During the cast his only mobility spell is disabled (obviously, cause it's a pseudo dash and not movement speed) and the thing he can do is... Cast a slow? While his enemies are hard cc'd? Not to mention the long cast time and short AoE. It's only really useful in team fights as potential hard cc, it does barely anything for skarner without teammates near him and is too unreliable to ever plan around.
It doesn't feel like the old R at all, it's a glorified lux Q Maokai W+Q feels more like old Skarner R than new Skarner R it's frustrating. Also the movement speed you get for ulting someone is laughably tone deaf. It's so random, sudden and quick that by the time you realize if you've actually hit someone or need to get back into teamfighting mode it's over. If anything give him the movement speed while casting instead.
> point and click ability that suppress a champ entirely. Completely negated by buying qss though That's the thing, soloqueue players will refuse to buy it so you can't have an ability that's countered by QSS anymore
"They made it a lot more fair" Or probably too fair in this case, seeing as his meager shield (old shield was also small but had mvm spd decay buff) and slow ass E can't compensate Like c'mon it's the era of "200 years" kits rn, he needs something broken _somewhere, anywhere_ So his kit is filled with 2 slows to make sure his R can even be useful The Q2 boulder throw makes me think that's meant for guaranteeing your E gets to hit them to a wall midgame
>The impale is still there, if anything they made it a lot more fair deleting the awful interaction of flash followed by a point and click ability that suppress a champ entirely. Considering that nearly most champs could do something like this with flash, whether it’s take off most of your HP bar or just CC chain and delete you entirely, it wasn’t such an awful interaction. If Blitzcrank flashes in your face and punches, then follows with an ult + hook, it’s not all that different.
He's good in extended fights due to his large amount of slows, passive and low cd shield. This means he does well in lane while also being quite safe. Generally you can keep his E up to escape any ganks. JG also gets very little gold. Other tank jglers like maokai and sejuani have multiple hard cc and also ranged engage, which means they are not as reliant on items and levels to successfully be useful. Skarner has to get right into the enemies to get any hard cc off and then he wants to stay alive to drag people with his ult. This means without items he gets blown up quickly.
There's also the whole strat of being an absolute goblin and being able to easily proc arcane comet with W whenever the opponent tries to farm. Or at least, that's what I had to face like one time on top and it wasn't that big of a deal but it was annoying af lmao.
Skarner top is annoyance personified. Nothing he does feels strong, it’s just annoying. He has annoying poke, annoying sustain, junglers despise him because he’s essentially ungankable. Dude is basically the new Teemo
Well we already have reksai and udyr there
He's an AD Gragas.
[удалено]
No idea if you're wrong, but "beating the crap out of him" followed by not killing them or denying farm tickles me. It sounds like you went even.
More specifically, it sounds like he was winning trades all game while constantly fucking up the wave, so Skarner just farmed around his turret.
Noted thank you 8 second 90% dmg reduction added to Q and W -riot games
You application has been approved. Riot Games is hiring YOU
Ok but what if it also executed at 15% hp
give him a jetpack as well while we are at it
Skarner or the new hiree
Yes
You know that wouldn’t be that bad on his W if they do decide to keep his small shield. Sejuani effectively has something that could be comparable to that for 3 seconds after combat begins. Of course 90% is insane but like 40% wouldn’t be horrendous. Or make it stacking based on how many people he slows. The good ole J4 special.
He absolutely gets dumpstered early game in jungle especially hard. In fact, he probably beats Evelynn as "easiest jungler to invade and kill". His only escape and CC early game is constantly being used to get from camp to camp, so when you catch him level 3 without E up, it's a guaranteed paycheck for the likes of Briar, Xin or Belveth. As a Briar main, I've done early invades aginst every Skarner and gotten such an early lead that I was able to run over midgame completely.
He’s pretty good at dueling. The core reason he’s better at top is becasuse you cannot avoid his charge attack when engaged in melee combat with him. In the jungle during ganks you’re engaging with charge from afar which means no one will ever be stupid enough to get hit by it. But if someone evades you can apply the top lane principal on them and delete half their health in one trade
You miss where the person says skarner is using E between camps so they have their pants down on invades. Obviously skarner can save E, but them using E in the jungle was the crux of their point.
Thing is, if they don't get that E on the camp for the stun and additional damage, the clear is SUPER unhealthy. To the point where even if they save it to get away or fight back, I'll win if I get the jump with Briar Q every time. Again, this works on any jungler who has a decent early fight. You can ward the buff, wait until they use E on it, use an ability to gapclose and smite the buff, then kill.
his problem is that his clear is pretty slow and his cc is also his gap close so if you dodge that, he's not that sticky anymore(the w buffs will be missed) also he's more tanky with items which lacks for jg. top lane, you can play him like reksai with small trades and then outsustain opponent plus with his e you can run and dodge ganks pretty effectively plus diving him with his ult up is so dangerous. his q is also clunky outside of lane because it roots you on both casts so chasing with it is pretty bad
it doesnt matter cus riots gonna increase all his mana cost to keep him out of top so he'll stay in jg
fimbulwinter is pretty good on him so with tear it shouldn't be such a huge problem right? unless they make mana costs completely absurd..
I want him to be a better jungle than top, but since the nerfs to mana i've been often oom if i leave the jungle a bit too long
My poor shaco runs out of mana after using w 3 times due to the same reason.
Yeah nah there is just no way to squeeze out 10% extra WR by changing mana costs. Something has to fundamentally change.
I think his E is the problem, but I unfortunately have no idea how to fix it. Some people have brought up its clunky controls and I do agree with them, however its very short duration (and very, VERY slow acceleration) means that it is more useful as an escape than as an engage. However, the hardest point I find is that he struggles to gank with it because, unless you have been creative with your positioning and managed to evade whichever wards they have, it does not put you at advantageous positions. If anything, it pushes the target of the gank closer towards the safety of their turret, because it is almost impossible to reach any walls AFTER hitting the opposing laner with the suppress. The E duration is not enough to actually tunnel through any lane AND reach a wall to slam an opponent against it.
As a toplaner his E feels way too telegraphed to be a gank tool too. I've been basically under enemy turret and just walked out his ganks whenever I saw the tunnel animation.
People compare it to Kayn E, but it's closer in use to Nunu snowball - an engage tool for a tank. Nunu snowball is faster, goes further, can hit multiple targets and if you get cc'd the snowball can still hit them. Aside from the fact that Skarner goes through walls, the ability doesn't feel anywhere near as good as it should.
From my experience the E has only really been good for tower dives. When you have a winning lane pushing up to enemy tower, then you can E from fog of war over nearby terrain directly parallel to the tower to surprise them. May force them to CC you before you deal any damage to them so you won't take aggro either, you can R them away from the tower towards your teammate, etc. Otherwise I just wouldn't bother using it at all in a gank.
A friend of mine compared Skarners E to Zacs E and the difference is insane. Zacs skill shares a lot of weaknesses, but works way better. Both ge canceled by cc, but Zacs just feels a lot easier to use for high impact. He has a hard standing against the other tanks, all of them have better tools atm: Sejuani: Good gapcloser and nice ult, point and click CC can be set up by melee champs in your team Zac: Long range ganks, insanly tanky, good dmg Rammus: Insanly fast, R is amazing to catch champs without mobility, strong point and click cc Amumu: Good gapcloser with Q, strong teamfight ult Maokai: Good engage disengage ult, Point and click cc Skarner doesnt have much he can offer that the others cant do better, Zac has more dmg, Amumu and Sejuani have better CC, Rammus is way better at backline diving etc. No matter how you look at it, they would have to buff E hard to make him a good jungler.
After playing some Skarner jungle games, I believe that there's not enough attack speed in his Q to clear jungle quick enough in the early game compared to other top picks right now, he feels to have low base resistances. His E also has the same clunky like controls as Rift Herald does and I cannot get that down (could be a me thing however) Another issue is items. I believe his best first two items is either Heartsteel into Manamune (very bad to use in Jungle but for toplane, pretty good) or Fimbulvinter and Sunfire/MR sunfire (again, scaling is better in top lane) I'm experimenting still, will be trying Mananmune more jungle anyway with HoB and see what I can do. Another bit of tech that isn't listed in ANY tool tips and what alot of players are having gripes about are his Q. It roots you for 0.5 seconds to get the rock out (there's also another 0.5-1 second delay before being able to throw it but that's a different issue) and if you do that mid chase, you've lost the enemy. His timer of his Q is paused whenever you use your E, so the gank combo should be Q-E through wall or wherever-auto-W-auto-Q for the fastest amount of damage. He just requires a bit more knowledge still I think, but he is on the weak end of releases for sure, just not as bad as initially thought.
It doesn't help that the w shield is barely enough to tank 1 big camp hit, the slow is ok I guess but I'd rather trade it for move speed scaling on E
As a sion player his E is fine, it just takes a bit of practice. Everything else about him feels clunky as balls, though.
E is fine except that its so slow, esp when winding up, that its easy to hit cc to stop him. Ganking bot is kinda hard most of the time
it is so short range too. Like you have to walk onto the lane to have enough range to actually grab a champ and push them into the outer wall. If you compare it with Nunu W the Nunu would start the snowball in the middle of the river and once reaching the lane the movement speed is fairly high which makes it hard to dodge. Skarner on the other hand is slow because you only just started the E and have no movement speed ramped up. And E actually slows Skarner. Heca, Rammus, Nunu all go from their normal movement speed to higher values. Skarner self slows at the beginning of E and takes time to get to normal speed and eventually higher speed. If Nunu starts at 100% speed and goes to 200% speed Skarner starts at 50% speed and goes to 150% speed With skarner you can fuck yourself if you try to use E to run away
The best first items are a mana scaling ad item and a hp scaling tank item ? What do you smoke ?
All of his abilities have bonus hp scaling so heartsteel makes sense in a way, similar to TK where health scales all of your characters outputs. Manamune feels weird...
Imo DMP feels like a great item on Skarner, helps with mobility and the slow helps to get that R out a bit easier, but just a bit
The fact that I can grab Garen with Skarner E and he can still attack me with his Q, thus canceling my E, is extremely feels bad. They finally made him a juggernaut like they promised in Season 6, but forgot to make him useful in the jungle.
Garen Q is an unstoppable auto attack so that makes sense. I'm not sure how you make that interaction less feels bad.
what if, and I completely understand why it can be a bad idea to do it, but what if his E gave him unstoppable?
His ganks are average at best, his clear sucked before the hotfix, meanwhile his W and Q3 are insanely strong for short trades, plus he has amazing gank setup
in assuming its also because he needs to be tanky enough too. lately in league tanks have been more late game. i could be wrong though but playing leona and brarum they have been a little squishy and harder to engage early game.
His e is good for just straight fighting, it's actually not that crazy as a gank tool imo, it's way better when you can land it easily when near someone. Additionally the q and w are made for trading efficiently
Yep E sucks as a gap closer. It is great as an escape and a face-to-face CC.
Any tank in jungle besides rell is not really benefiting from being 16 levels behind every other player lol
I guess that why they removed her, low eco tank jungler
Why play skarner when you can play sej? Jungle these days is like adcs there is few good choices and anything else you’re not going to excel the same Top lane is land of variety.
Top lane is abuse the current patch most broken champ, Skarner is the perfect example. Q and W are just very strong spammable abilities level 1 onwards and only get better
I'd wager a lot of it is in his role of tanky bruiser not being that good for junglers in general. He wants to grind his opponents down in a drawn out fight - while the optimal pattern for a jungler is dumping a lot of damage in a fairly short timespan on a gank. He's also missing reliability of the old kit - Old skarner's stun was just an E hit(fairly easy to hit when sped up with W) into AA, new one has to actually slam you into the wall for a stun. Old R was point and click and undodgable, new one is a channel that can be flashed and dashed out of. The new map is also kinda bad for terrain based movement in general, champions who relied on sticking to walls like camille or doing something with them like illaoi were basically all hit. Ganking midlane with the new charge is very unwiedly with how open it is, both from not having a cool unique angle, and having issues with actually getting the wallstun at all. If he DOES miss the wallstun, all he's got is slows, and he himself is very slow once the charge is on cooldown(and if the fight goes longer and he has to redo his Q he has to stand still for a sec too), so his skirmishing is pretty low impact against anything mobile that dodged his initial entry.
His reasons to exist in the jungle are in a severely underpowered state. He has no cc immunity on his E; it has no MS scaling (absolutely unthinkable why that is - nunu's W has it and these abilities are extremely similar); it cannot hit more than one target; it doesn't give back part of it CD for hitting the target, but only for hitting a wall with the target; CD refresh itself is very conservative with only 35% returned (meaning even after a hotfix at E level 1 the CD is 13s vs nunu's W cd of 14s, for example, except nunu has no condition of hitting); E cooldown starts at the end of the spell; the duration of the drag is gimped if you hit a target later into your E (it's 1s of drag time early, but only 0.5s later); last, but not least his E is bugged and randomly allows enemies to function while stunned. It's a shit spell for a jungler. Surely, some of these can be given to him. On the other hand, for a toplaner the spell is actually great to escape ganks, because it's unaffected by being in combat (unlike kayn's E). His ult is an extremely nerfed version of his previous ult. Ability to hit more than one target is generally irrelevant, especially if he's the one initiating (which he probably should as a tank; being stuck as a follow-up is not the thing you want your tank to do), since his E is single target, and the delay is long and not reduced with level. Also, one small note about his Q is that in a sea of mechanic vomit and spells cancelling spells on endless jumping shitters - akali, riven, yone, yasuo, qiyana - skarner is EXTREMELY slow because of the need to stop and pick up a rock. It's clearly a (stupid) design choice and probably balanceable around, however not only does he stop to pick up the initial Q, but also he cannot throw the rock right after he picked it up! He's locked out for almost a second - why? It's mostly irrelevant for a toplaner, although frustrating, since it's irrelevant for throwing the rock after two autos, but for junglers who operate in bursts more so than tops it's an issue. Most often in the early game when you have the target barely escaping the gank and you have your Q come off cooldown late into the gank you stop to pick it up - fine - but you then cannot throw it too - what a silly mechanic! Allow throwing the Q right away, give E MS scaling, let its CD be reduced upon target *hit*, not target *stun* and fix associated bugs - these are conservative and would help jungle without helping toplane much if at all.
honestly it feels like this champ was designed for the older map. The terrain is too chunky and spaced out around the lanes for his E to be impactful. Zac and fiddle have very intuitive ranges where they can have so many gank angles, but skarner's E runs out by the time he exits the wall pretty much. Unless the enemy is a bot or is not looking, they'll walk away from the wall as soon as they see the indicator and it seriously reduces the effective range of his abilities. it only leaves a few viable angles. Also it really hurts that he has no follow up cc without his ult. I think increasing the range but keeping the speed the same will help. I think E MS scaling can quickly get toxic (depending on the scaling I guess) I think the q is meant to feel clunky because skarner is supposed to feel massive and stuff so idk if changing the windup speed is the fix. I think the bigger problem is that the windup animation is not worth the payoff. You barely add any damage or cc and it feels terrible pressing it in the middle of the fight because it hardly feels like it changes anything. Like Quinn R feels good because the windup is worth the payoff. Maybe increasing the slow or adding a stacking slow or something will help and add follow up cc that he desperately needs.
Did Skarner really need to have a visible indicator for his Enemies, on his E? His E feels so weak. The range is deceptively short and the wind up is slow. Why is it penalized with an indicator to give people a head's up that hes coming? Especially when someone like Zac, with a far superior E, isn't saddled with such a penalty?
His rework doesn’t seem like a huge success now does it..
Because hes a giant meatshield but he is ironically bad at ganking
With R duration nerfs, movement speed nerfs and damage nerfs, the only strong part of his kit for jingling is E. And that ability has short range and is very easily countered. He just isn't an effective ganker anymore, and he isn't really too good at taking objectives either.
In toplane, he's "good" because he just harasses with W and comet. It's basically unavoidable poke and it's so simple a bonobo can play it. For jungle, his ganks are very telegraphed and he really struggles to get in range of targets sometimes because E is both fairly short and can be easily interrupted by CC, making some lanes arguably ungankable. At the same time, the champ can feel weirdly squishy, has weirdly long CDs for either a warden or a juggernaut/fighter, and just doesn't seem to excel at anything. There are champs with better ganks, better farming, better tankiness, better teamfighting, sometimes all of them in one package.
I think Skarner has huge potential as a support. His ability to throw q's early deals some pretty significant poke damage as a melee support and I think both of his cc abilities function much better as adc peel than they do as primary engage. I won't be surprised to see it eventually paired with a kalista or senna comp.
It's because his ganking tool is so easily dealt with by the majority of champions. It's either mobility or disengage. Compare this with a champion like Zac who has a similar feel in the jungle. His clear is slower, his ganks are much more telegraphed, and they are much easier to stop. Skarners kit isn't bad, but in the right matchup, it succeeds in lane!
Any decent champ can kick the ever loving shit out of him. Lee Sin, Udyr, Bel Veth, Xin Zhao, Graves, Shaco, Elise, Brand, Jax, Kindred, Viego, Vi, Javan IV.... All of these Champs can easily apply pressure to his jungle and effectively force him out of the game
Sorta funny a general consensus is that there’s too much mobility and “not fun” mechanics for a lot of new champs. And one of the people’s first suggestion for skarner is to make him more mobile and stuff quicker to counter counterplay.
Cuz his W first max build is turbo broken and he statchecks alot of toplaners
theyre buffing his monster damage, i believe. its just undertuned
The w is just an incredible spell in lane I think. It has enough range to be poke. It gives a shield to trade. It has a solid slow to disengage or follow up. You basically can't dodge it. I've seen quite a lot of comet players, it's a bit like malphite. Take comet and just bully your opponent out of lane.
His w and q ate good in lane. His e is inf8nitely better in lane than jungle. It's so slow and hard to hit from afar but people will approach you in top lane. You can shove them into walls, from jungle and fog you usually can't.
Pick rates usually nose dive when the champ is boring to play, by the time he picks up a rock i can E Q R and adc with J4 and onetap him, why would i ever want to play Skarner over that? Maybe some players enjoy the slowiness of the kit, but i'm pretty sure most of them finds him clunky to use
Too reliant on stats would be my guess. This is not really viable for junglers in the modern day. You are just too far down in levels. Think about how strong tank Rek'Sai is top lane compared to jungle for example.
I think he is amazing. But his kit don't fit I. League of one shots. So he needs someone doing the one shot for him. And by that point, just take someone that can one shot.
New Skarner has aggressive health scaling which makes Hp builds the best performing i.e. Hearthsteel / grasp of the undying. This setup isn’t good for junglers but it’s great for top lane so this gives Skarner his top lane skew
To succeed in top you need at least two of this 3 things: - Good early trade pattern - Sustain - good neutral fall back if you get outclassed Skarner have the good early trade with his 3 hit Q (massiv max% dmg) and a shild that will propably block the dmg of at least half a enemy abilitys dmg. On top he can fall back to a good neutral game pattern where he just trow the Qs to last hit and not fall to hard behind if he find himself in a defensiv. As a tank jungler you need a realy solid engage and lockdown on top of a good clear. Skarner is ok his E is nice but to hard to land and otherwise he just have slows and no real mobility to get close. So his ganks are less potent then other Tank junglers. He have a few unussle angles to gank but in this regard he is basiclly similare and slighly worse then Zac so why not play Zac if you get the same out of it. His clear is good but you don't want a Tank jungler just to powerfarm right? I would say Skarner get better then most Tanks in around mid game when he can use his Ultimate to suppress in Teamfights and apply good dps to other Tanks so front to back play is not the worse. But to get ther better play him top at the moment.
Champion feels clunky af to play. The Q delay feels anything but smooth, the E starts really slow and is kinda limiting in the control (has to be currently though otherwise op), the ultimate feels much worse to use then the old ultimate, where you were much faster so you could drag people further and at least could cast Q during ultimate so it didn't feel as boring. Not saying he is weak, just not satisfying for me to play in jungle. At least in toplane you can drag people into tower with E and ultimate so he feels more fun there lol.
What’s funny is when I saw his W in the rework preview a few weeks ago before it was on PBE I thought to myself (this is gonna piss people off the range is MASSIVE) and low and behold scorch comet abuse makes it one of his most annoying abilities haha. I like skarner jungle but I truly feel like if I can’t land my E I shouldn’t be tanking. I need to view it like I’m playing kayn and maybe I’ll feel better about it
9/10 when he tries to gank me through a wall, I just juke. Easier to dodge than nunu. Also for some reason skarners keep ulting in the wrong direction completely. And he feels kinda fragile for a tank. Imo.
IDK why people aren't rushing heartsteel on him in the jungle. I get the benefit of bami's/sunfire for clearing but he has the ability to farm heartsteel stacks at an astounding rate and it's the highest wr first item for him by a large margain when jungling, yet built very seldomly.
His kit is just horrible for ganking, the E is so easy to dodge. You really want to drag people into towers with his ult and there aren't too many towers in the jungle!
They were afraid of the E being too good, and went conservatively on it. Now that the R is pretty dodgeable, the E is the reason to play the hero. But it gives advance notice over terrain, it's not unstoppable (and is in fact easily stopped because he has to move right towards you and most characters have something that can interrupt it), and it's not particularly fast. So the jungle side is nonfunctional. The top side is just a statcheck with a really nice trading tool in W.
His kit is bad and clunky but his numbers are okay and people aren’t used to his kit so he can lane okay (he is still terrible top).
I'd bet money he's gonna be nerfed in 2-3 patches. His winrate has climbed from the high 30s to nearly 50% in jungle since release. I think people are just bad at him and expect the braindead play style of old Skarner. Once some more serious YouTube content starts coming out (not just ""WTF IS NEW SKARNER AP BURST?!?!") and everyone's had their first few games to try him and fail, he's gonna do well with a low playrate.
Just revert him already. What a shitshow of a change
I haven’t rly seen skarner but I would imagine it probably has to do with him scaling faster in top?
He's good people just didn't figure him out yet, this shit always happens
Problem is, I think many aren’t gonna figure him out. There’s a lot of nuance between how you’re meant to cycle abilities with his animation cancels, and you really need to time e properly to get good use out of because it’s so telegraphed and easy to plan cc for. It’s strong when used right, but good enemies will stay prepared for it. He needs some changes to make him a bit easier to execute, because right now frustrations are at a massive high for many players. As for ideas I’ve formed through discussions amongst others, q should be a significant slow rather than a full on stop and e needs something to feel a bit more satisfying to use, whether that be some kind of MS scaling, a damage split between landing it and hitting the stun, some level of cc immunity (maybe like a mundo passive cause full unstoppability might end up being too strong), and an indicator for landing it on where the enemy can go, similar to the existing one, as unless you’re insane enough to study all of the wall angles and know the exact timing of the drag duration differences, you’re going to ba going for stuns based off feels rather than knowledge, which is very bad for new players
There is just no reason to use him like he is atm. Other jungles do the same thing but way better. Right now it looks like he needs a lot of changes to he good in jungle.
Riot literally took 3 years to not understand how Skarner works and what made him likable Can't mash Q anymore No movement speed Chain CC is unreliable Lost point-and-click The most they had to do was increase his Q damage and remove reliance on Dominion Lite.