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@Scruffy, i'd like to talk with You about the Q ratios on PBE Skarner

Predatorator·6/11/2014, 9:58:16 AM·3 votes·1,079 views

Hello there and thank You for paying Your attention to this post. I'd like to know what will Skarner be after this rework. Because the previous rework was aimed at making him a fighter. And it succeeded pretty well, but at the cost of his stickiness. Now, in this new rework You gave him some stickiness (i'm happy with it, and so are the many people who tested him, as from their comments), but in exchange You gut his damage, in the way we all know. Now people speculates about the rework will make Skarner a tank, but You or Morello said You're not going to make him tanky. Now, i'm no PBE tester, but i don't want this to invalidate my opinion, since i've been continously playing Skarner since last December, if i remember well. I'm a big fan of Fighter Skarner, him and another champion are the only two i enjoy playing in this game, so i'm going to ask You: does a stun that becomes relevant only in late game, worth the gutting of at least his Q scalings? his "bread-and-butter"? I know, he deals bonus magic damage along with the stun, but it's not even that meaningful. I'd rather have Skarner's Q scalings back, or at least increased, more than dealing 100 bonus magic damage every 6 seconds in lategame. Or would You like to make the nerf meaningful? Here:

make his stun to last 1 sec at every rank, or make it to last 0.75/1/1.25;
instead of bonus magic damage, make the passive to heal Skarner;
units marked with Crystal Venom will deal xx%(1 stack)/xx%(2 stacks)/xx%(3 stacks) less damage to Skarner (values per stack depend also from passive level); Skarner will deal xx%(1 stack)/xx%(2 stacks)/xx%(3 stacks) more damage to units marked with Crystal Venom.

Thank You for eventually paying Your attention to this. I'll wait for any Your response. Best Regards, EnolaGay45

Friendly note: release Battlecast Skarner please =)!

Edit 1: Added solution 3

20 Comments

CaptainWednesday6/11/2014, 2:56:05 PM3 votes

I agree that nerfing the Q and E damage will hurt Skarner early and mid game as his relying on his ultimate to deal a majority of his damage will become problematic. I think the stun duration is fine as he already has decent CC and much better stickiness now. His W shield also provides enough defense to build at least one Life Steal item for sustain. That being said, I still think the Q scaling should become 40% TOTAL AD, so that Bruiser Skarner can still work. I raise this quetion yet again:

What's the point of sticking to a target if you deal such little damage?

Tahalden6/11/2014, 11:17:09 PM2 votes

Just to throw in my two cents: The ratio's don't matter much for bruiser/tank skarner, which is the primary way of building him from the jungle. Typically, you only get one damage item anyway, ie either SotEL, ICeborn gauntlet, or tri force when fed.

Comparing Live Skarner with PBE Skarner, we have the following: Assume that you get 3 (charged) Q's off before the passive is procced. PBE Skarner has base dmg on max-level Q of 68 physical, and 60 magical, a total reduction of 29 dmg; for 3 Q's this is then 87 dmg. This is compensated by the passive proc, which does 20-105 dmg. Hence, late-game Skarner now does slightly more damage, early-game Skarner somewhat less (depending on how the passive damage scales. Fair enough.

For example, getting SotEL as a single damage item gives you a whopping 30 AD, in addition to the likely 8 AD from masteries (runes would typically be AS and, e.g., movement speed). For Live Skarner, the bonus AD dmg on Q currently then does 25 dmg. For PBE Skarner, this is lowered to 12.5 dmg for PBE Skarner. Getting 3 Q's off before the passive proc thus means a total reduction in damage of 37.5.

As second example, getting IG gives Skarner 30 AP. Live Skarner then does 12 bonus damage; PBE Skarner does 6 bonus damage. 3 charged Q's (which is an ideal situation, really) then do an additional 36 damage on Live Skarner, 18 additional damage on PBE Skarner, i.e. a reduction of 18 damage comparing Live to PBE.

Overall this is a slight nerf to the dmg output of bruiser/tank Skarner. Of course, this nerf increases with every additional damage item you build. If you're a fan of fighter Skarner, then indeed the nerf is very visible. This is counterweighted by the additional stickiness, a short stun, and a huge damage boost on the ult (which itself is counterweighted by the dmg nerf on E). Given that Skarner has limited inherent tankiness, the champion was never meant to be a fighter, although, when fed that would still be an option, I guess.

In any case, what this means is that it is in principle not a big issue if the ratios would remain as they are on live for the common bruiser/tank builds of Skarner. The differences in dmg really are not that significant. If the ratios are kept , this also means the players who like building Skarner as a fighter can still do so, with the increased risk of simply being too squishy to survive fights for long.

So an idea is to keep the original PBE Skarner base dmg on Q (20-60) and buff up the bonus AD ratios back to 0.8. This arrives at a similar result in terms Q dmg for clear speeds and the like, while also enabling dmg-oriented builds. Keeping the AP ratio low, implies that SKarner still benefits from AP (for his shield, and in therms of dmg output on ult) but avoids an AP heavy build that makes Skarner potentially too tanky and with too much dmg output through the Q ratio.

In any case, the ratios on Q don't affect tank/bruiser skarner too much. And if he's built as a fighter/glass canon, he'd die too quickly to be relevant anyhow. What is sure though, is that the damage nerfs on Skarner, really are not significant nerfs. He still puts out similar amounts of dmg as a bruiser/tank, with the added benefit of sticking to targets much better and an ult that literally blows people up.

Terchio6/12/2014, 6:33:58 PM1 votes

Q ratio? Q has been the only thing that was ever slightly OP, unless you live in a cave and still think that his ultimate is actually OP. The only thing that ever made his Q not overkill was that it was his kit, essentially, and they have only made that worse recently. I'd hardly call a drop on Q his downfall... Why no E love? Ratio halved, and base damage halved, and it was already crap... Ridunculous.

Predatorator6/15/2014, 6:40:38 PM1 votes

bump

Predatorator6/18/2014, 5:58:43 PM1 votes

@Scruffy @Morello

L7xLoTek6/12/2014, 4:16:41 PM1 votes

I might just be out of the loop on this one, but has anything been done to Skarner's mana costs? Because with this change, I feel like you'll need to spam skills (especially in the jungle) even more, and Skarner's manapool and -regen in relation to the cost of his must-spam skills gets really bad, really fast.

Predatorator6/11/2014, 9:03:41 PM1 votes

Bump