[FOLLOWUP] Skarner Juggernaut Update

RiotRiotRepertoir·May 11, 2016·1 votes·55,390 views

Hi all,

I know this is long overdue, but we wanted to get this design followup out there and available to the public so everyone knows how we currently feel about Skarner following his changes in the Juggernaut update last year. What follows is our opinion on the state of the champion in the game currently, including not only the things we think went well, but also the stuff that hasn't quite worked out.

Our original goals for Skarner were to align him with a Juggernaut playstyle/fantasy and to establish an identity as a powerful objective controller amongst Juggernauts. To that end, there is some stuff that we think is working, and some stuff that isn't.

Here's what we think is working as of now:

We do think that Skarner succeeds in presenting himself as a much bigger threat around the main neutral objective points of contestation. Interestingly, when the 6.9 patch launched last week, early data showed that Skarner actually benefits more from his team obtaining Mountain Drake's buff than any other champion. That was pretty cool to see.
As a Juggernaut, Skarner's access to the enemy backline is meaningfully reduced. In this way, he does more closely resemble a Juggernaut's strengths/weaknesses.

That said, there's some stuff that isn't working, most of which stem from two primary issues with the update:

We probably just shouldn't have tried to make Skarner a full on Juggernaut. Without monumental changes to the champion, he probably will not ever be an effective one. The champion had a history of being a sticky, low damage threat, and trying to make him a Juggernaut meant we had to reduce that stickiness significantly, alienating his current player base's playstyle. Additionally, given the powerful crowd control tools in his kit, Skarner will almost certainly be better off building really tanky and optimizing to maximize his CC.
Skarner's Crystal Spires passive occupies too much mindshare within the game for the play it's actually generating. This is especially true for all the non-Skarner's in the game, who didn't necessarily opt in to the experience. The sheer level of involvement required for everyone in the game is a large part of what makes the passive feel "mini-gamey" or arbitrary. Additionally, the magnitude of the effects in the zones does lead to Skarner feeling relatively weak outside of them.

So what does all that mean moving forward? While Skarner does seem to perform well in his role as an objective controller, he does have the aforementioned issues. Given the opportunity to do some cleanup work on the champion, we would probably look to:

Explore options to reduce total mindshare (especially for other players) required by his passive.
Adjust his stat profile to be a bit less Juggernaut-y and a bit more Diver/Vanguard-like.
Look to reduce some of his dependency on snowball to succeed.

Given this assessment, there may be some follow-up work we can do to clean up some of those issues, and we may try some small scope experimental stuff on the PBE to see how they feel.

Again, sorry for the delay on getting this out.

Cheers, Repertoir

219 Comments

SkypualMay 11, 201658 votes

Are you considering just removing the spire passive?

RiotRiotRepertoirMay 11, 201627 votes

No. We are considering reducing the total amount that people in the game have to play around it.

Sightless66May 11, 201634 votes

That's very disappointing. Do you guys at least have a plan for making them feel like less of a limiting factor for Skarner?

RiotRiotRepertoirMay 11, 201614 votes

Yes, that would likely be part of any changes we may try out.

SolideusMay 12, 20166 votes

One version you could try:

scrap the buff-zone around spires
Only Skarner can interact with them
When he captures a spire Skarner gets the power-boost for X seconds

Depending on what tests well, I recon the spires can either give a longer buff and go on cooldown, or a shorter buff with spires being re-usable right away.

This would would still give Skarner the localized power and area control, where he want to tap a spire, fight with the buff up, while keeping control over the spire-area so he can get to the spire again to refresh the buff.

He'd be less constricted to a specific area and more constricted by the buff-duration instead. Enemies wouln't have to keep capturing spires, but could still deny Skarner the opportunity to capture it by controlling the area. Now they could also wait out the buff he gets, an option that didn't exist before.

I'm curious if you already have tried something like this before, though? It's a bit simpler, but if you did I figure testing could have shown it didn't promote good gameplay or such?

WendígoMay 11, 201662 votes

Is it really that hard for you guys to admit the spires are dumb? Or that Skarner never needed to be an objective control Juggernaut?

RiotRiotRepertoirMay 11, 201633 votes

"Spires are dumb" is not really a conversation. The point of this is to be transparent with our thoughts about the changes. Like I said, we think there is stuff that isn't working correctly, and we think there is stuff that is.

Sightless66May 11, 2016109 votes

If that's all the scope of this conversation is, then fine, but we do want you to know that Skarner players don't like the spires, and that we think the spires are strongly in the "isn't working correctly" category. Most of us don't even consider them fixable. It's important to us that you guys understand that.

RiotRiotRepertoirMay 11, 201627 votes

Cool. I get that. Sorry if that didn't come off clearly in the body.

RowGoMay 12, 20169 votes

What do you think about Skarner being able to move his spires around with his ult and it not bearing any effect on the cooldown?

WickedJoker9May 12, 20162 votes

what about his spires will spawn over time at base and he can place them wherever he deems best, making that location his lair, (with a max of course) so his objective control isn't purely focused in the jungle.

SammyTehJammyMay 12, 20164 votes

A huge problem with spires are as was mentioned, that you feel incredibly weak when out of them. However, how do you incorporate spires without making you seem weak outside of them? If they provide something only to Skarner, then he is always going to be weaker outside of them. If they provide something to everyone, such as vision/gold, you make it a bit too much for the enemy to have at their disposal as well.

Not to mention that spires are in set locations on the map. Once grouping starts and you are pushing down towers and having fights in the lane, Skarner completely loses out on his spire passive.

They're not a great mechanic but there might be a way to make them work. Having them in set places doesn't feel right because as I said, you either have them or you dont, and when you don't, its not always because of lack of control, simply a different location on the map.

DeathBurstMay 11, 201617 votes

Not a Skarner player, but upvoted for actually providing constructive feedback instead of opinion presented as fact. We need more people like you :)

If I can probe you a little more: what do you think about Skarner being an objective controller, independently of how this is achieved? If spire weren't involved, would you like this aspect of "Don't you dare contest my dragon/baron or I'll wreck you"?

Because Repertoir said that this was their objective with the Jugg Roster Update, and this is in essence the only thing in their "correctly working category" (the other point being just a technicality).

Sightless66May 11, 201648 votes

The spires are the main thing making him an objective controller. Outside of that, he lacks either strong DPS for taking objectives quickly or good AoE CC that would allow him to punish enemies attempting to fight in the narrow entrances to dragon or baron pit. Mechanically, nothing about him works well for those areas.

The shrines do allow him to be a threat in those areas, but it's mainly through stat superiority. You don't fight Skarner in Dragon pit because he's just a stronger fighter than you there. You don't fight Skarner if he's even a bit ahead and going for your red because you just can't win. It's not very engaging for the Skarner player because it lacks high moments (just hitting harder isn't very fun), and because it means that if you can't control the shrines, you always feel weak.

I'm still not certain that objective control is really his greatest strength. I personally play him for much the same reasons someone would play Volibear: strong fighting for punishing immobile or burst-based champions with the potential for a strong flash-engage. Objective control is a nice side-benefit, but it doesn't factor in very much. Without the spires, it wouldn't factor in at all.

That said, I don't mind that Riot wants him to be good at objective control. I just don't want him to only do it through stat-stick gameplay that leaves him feeling undertuned outside of them. Given that he still lacks significantly unique mechanics outside of the spires, I can see why Riot is reluctant to remove them, but that doesn't really do anything to help the players out.

DeathBurstMay 11, 20162 votes

{quoted}

I'm still not certain that objective control is really his greatest strength.

And would you like it to be? Or would you feel it's too drastic a change of his playstyle?

Sightless66May 11, 20166 votes

I would not mind one way or the other, so long as it can be done properly. If it can be done through an interesting mechanic, that would be fine. I strongly doubt it could be done with his current kit without relying on stat-increases, and I'm very uncertain that it's worth trying again, but with a hypothetical kit change that encouraged objective control it could be fine.

WoonStruckMay 11, 201633 votes

{quoted}

"Spires are dumb" is not really a conversation. The point of this is to be transparent with our thoughts about the changes. Like I said, we think there is stuff that isn't working correctly, and we think there is stuff that is.

True, that saying something is dumb isn't real conversation...but the point still stands that nobody really likes the spire gimmick.

Even players in Korea, where Skarner's considered an extremely strong pick atm, are building Warrior->IBG->DMP to completely marginalize the impact of spires. NOBODY likes playing around them. Its just another dimension to deny success to Skarner, which is WHY people are building in ways that he doesn't need the spires.

You guys really should look at removing them in the future, otherwise just give the benefits in river/jungle totally (similar to the mana regen in river/jungle), albeit reduced effectiveness, and slightly buffing base stats.

If you don't want to touch the passive, then what are your thoughts on players trying to bypass the passive completely? Would you make him even MORE dependent on spires, or eventually decide that there is no point in them remaining in the game?

MrStingYoGirlMay 11, 201644 votes

Hey, diamond skarner main here, reached #1 Skarner NA earlier this season.

Skarner is actually quite strong right now, he's just fairly uninteractive. His ult and Q are already not very interactive spells (I think the last iteration where his Q stacked up to a stun and his Ult consumed stacks to do more damage made him a bit more interesting).

His passive is also hugely binary. Not only did it singlehandedly destroy his ability to go top lane (which I loved to do), it also put him in the weird place of being stronger based on where on the map he was. This was ok for invading and baron/dragon, but otherwise too easy to play around. Other champions with similarly binary strengths, such as late game scales or early game menaces, have ways to take advantage of their relative strengths to cover their relative weaknesses, but skarner can't other than to get free dragons because his strengths are so cut-and-dry (you may mess up and duel a voli bear at level 2 not knowing how much his bite does early game, but skarner has literal 'do not enter' circles).

This isn't to say he's bad, in fact I've had great success with him, and know others who have as well. It's just that he's so binary in every aspect other than his E (which by the way is great, love the cd reduction mechanic) that nobody wants to play him.

Now, what would I like to see? First and foremost, make his Q more rewarding to hit consistently. It feels completely useless at the moment. Earlier it had a buff the more you hit it, a permaslow, or a stacking stun. My favorite was the stacking buff because it made skarner scale up as the fight dragged on, which felt amazing.

His W and E are in good places in my opinion, I like the Cd reduction mechanic on E and the speed ramp-up on W.

His ult also could use minor tweaking, I'd love to see its duration extended on targets debufed by your E/Q/Whatever you want to attach it to. That way it's still good for the sudden ults out of nowhere (but maybe tone down the initial power so thats its not a case of buy QSS or lose the game) but also becomes more devastating the longer skarner is in the fight.

His passive, obviously needs a complete rework. The stacking srun was my favorite, but I really like his new E as well. What I would really love to see is skarner storing up crystal energy as he hits his Q, then entering a supercharged state, darius-style when he stacks up, which makes him move and attack faster and maybe empowers his ult.

I'm really glad you're revisiting Skarner, I've played 2000+ games of the little guy and gotten two different accounts to diamond on his back, so I'm always happy to see where he goes.

Also I'd love to see more skarner players

I miss my kind

Deadeye RolfMay 11, 20164 votes

I'm a Plat Skarner/Shyvana main since the two came out somewhat near each other. My sentiments on Skarner are expressed really well here.

I think I'm in the minority and actually enjoy the spire mechanics. It gives Skarner a meaningful way to contest objectives even when behind because of the incredible amount of "free gold" Skarner generates from fighting inside a spire. That being said, I would not mind losing some power under spire to be able to "ramp up" to a charged state by landing q's or e's. Maybe spires could double the stacking rate?

PredatoratorMay 12, 20162 votes

i agree with everything you said. i also love the Q change you proposed, but that shifts him more into a juggernaut role (which is fine according the purpose of his last rework)...wouldn't it feel wierd in a vanguard skarner?

MrStingYoGirlMay 12, 20162 votes

Yes, but have any of Skarner's past iterations been a 'vanguard' style of play? Not really. We had the permaslow, massive damage Skarner first, which was more about sticking onto people and killing them. Next we had the stacking stun/Q buff Skarner, that was more about staying in the fight to lay down lots of CC and some respectable damage. His current iteration with the one-proc E-stun, HP-scaling shield, and MS buff on ult feel the most 'vanguard'-y of all his forms, because it makes him focus more on CC and catching that actually doing damage.

The reason I suggested that specific Q change is because it would encourage him to be more of the into-the-fray, stronger as the fight drags on, juggernaut we've seen before, instead of the supportive, cc-focused hard-tank we see now.

Raid Boss MordeMay 11, 201618 votes

Please tell me you guys have a follow-up to a follow-up post for Mordekaiser as well. He still feels more like a burst or sustained mage than an actual Juggernaut.

Malicious MetalMay 11, 201620 votes

He does do a lot of Juggernaut-y(?) things though. The only thing that's holding him back are abysmally low base stats, especially MS and Armor/Health.

He's got the Juggernaut DPS with his low CD spells and is a high melee threat due to his mace of spades and his Iron Man passive makes him able to soak tons of damage. His W is still weird though and his E cost's too high for what it does.

Raid Boss MordeMay 11, 20164 votes

That's exactly what I mean though! If you look at his stats compared to every other Juggernaut, he has the lowest, and his stats are more closely related to squishy artillery mages or ADCs, not even close to Juggernaut stats.

Also, he somehow has the lowest Movement Speed while being the only Juggernaut without CC or a movement speed boost/gapcloser. Darius, Illaoi, Garen, and Skarner all have superior base movement speed AS WELL as having CC, and other movement speed boosts (Skarner W, Garen Q, Illaoi W is a mini targeted gapcloser).

That's what I don't understand here... at least a short root/stun on his Q would be so beneficial. It just doesn't make sense that a giant mace crushing you doesn't even make you flinch.

DecritMay 11, 20162 votes

Honestly i don' t feel like that - the rework was a boon for him in that regard, since he was not anymore about spamming E in laning phase, having a Q that was more trolly than tactical or powerful ( and bursty) and a w that was mostly useless, even more than the W morde had at the beginning of the rework.

It' s perfect? No, but he has a much more feel like a heavy warrior now, while still being probably too much spellcastey.

stuartk11May 11, 20163 votes

Finding the unique strengths and weaknesses of Mordekaiser are a little bit tricky though. How would you differentiate him from the other picks that are available?

SpecterVonBarenMay 11, 201610 votes

Can you please... PLEASE not derail this into being about Morde? Malicious has been championing him forever and getting huge exposure to his issues while me, lowly semi-known person that I am, am the only one that's ever spoke out about Skarner since the Juggernaut hype died down.

arghilostMay 11, 201616 votes

Hey there, one of the few high elo skarner players on NA here. Some things on your post

Reducing/getting rid of the minigame of the spires should be a top priority. If your team is well adapted/team players, you have a very large advantage over the other teams jungler. If your team is lazy/clueless, then you are at a very big disadvantage from the very beginning when the other team opts to capture your river spires. Very frustrating and gives the skarner player little autonomy on if he wants to be aggressive or passive.
Please do not change his role from a juggernaut, that would be a huge mistake. There is already a glaring void of juggernauts in the jungle role, this would pretty much send them into extinction/top lane only. You also alienate his playerbase who like him being super unkillable but not really able to get to the backline. I do not want to be playing another vi/wukong/etc. Don't make him generic. He is rewarded greatly for good positioning/playmaking and punished when you dont properly assess a teamfight.
On the other hand, a good leaf to take from other champs would be something like a wukong passive. If he's supposed to be an objective controller/teamfighting juggernaut, you could have his attack speed/movespeed scale based on the number of allied champs within a certain radius of him for example.
I'm not sure why you guys feel he is snowball dependent? he is one of the best jungle farmers in the game, up there with shyvana level speeds. He definitely is not even close to lee sin/shaco/etc in needing to get kills. He is perfectly content just farming away.

RAMAR713May 11, 20164 votes

{quoted}

Please do not change his role from a juggernaut, that would be a huge mistake. There is already a glaring void of juggernauts in the jungle role, this would pretty much send them into extinction/top lane only. You also alienate his playerbase who like him being super unkillable but not really able to get to the backline. I do not want to be playing another vi/wukong/etc.

I actually disagree with this. The thing here is that Juggernaut is really just a name for something that is not well defined. It would be bad to say there are no fighters in the jungle but to say there are no juggernauts is trivial since there are only 4 in the game... well, 2 actually if we are to be honest; Mordekaiser is a subject for a some other day but ill speak my mind about Skarner who most people will agree is not an actual Juggernaut despite Riots best efforts. He is and has always been a Vanguard (thats what they call them now isn't it?) no matter how you look at him.

Lets compere some quick stats. Out of the 4 so called Juggernauts Skarner has: -Roughly the same defense as the others -Way less damage than any of the other -Way more agility than the others -Way more CC than the other 3 combined

The main objective of the Juggernauts is roughly to wear out the enemy frontline with several slow yet moderately to highly offensive abilities, they can do this also because of their toughness, however their lack of mobility impedes them from reaching the back lines. This is the exact opposite of what Skarner does; with tankyness and movespeed he runs past the frontline (which he cant harm with his low damage) to deliver the moderate to heavy CC to the priprity targets in the back line so his team can follow up. Now i'm not a Skarner main but I'm confident this is what he does best and not fight tanks one on one like Darius or Garen. This makes him a vanguard in my opinion.

That being said, he really didnt change much with the juggernaut update IMO, he is still tanky, he is still fast, he has more CC actually, he just lost damage. So in relation to your concerns, having Riot make him a proper vanguard like the main post states probably wont change any of these things. At least i dont think we will see Skarner change much in the near future, I doubt Riot would turn him into a diver like Vi or Wukong which you stated.

{quoted}

On the other hand, a good leaf to take from other champs would be something like a wukong passive. If he's supposed to be an objective controller/teamfighting juggernaut, you could have his attack speed/movespeed scale based on the number of allied champs within a certain radius of him for example.

While Skarner would benefit from this I always found these ghost stat boosts to make for boring passives. Its just like the issue with Tarics old armor aura, it is not perceived by the player and is therefore not impactful or satisfying. I like the minigames, they just have to be well designed IMO.

MessaigaMay 11, 20164 votes

Skarner is snowball dependent not because of an innate need for kills to function. Rather, Skarner needs a lead so he can take full advantage of his spires on a regular basis. If nobody on your team has enough threat for enemy champions to respect, then there is little preventing them from capturing spires whenever possible and denying Skarner his ability to do anything other than pick somebody out with Impale.

Sightless66May 11, 201615 votes

We do think that Skarner succeeds in presenting himself as a much bigger threat around the main neutral objective points of contestation.

I'm not sure I agree. Playing around objective control never feels rewarding when I play Skarner, and I don't find myself making decisions based around objective control with Skarner anymore than I do with other champions. My success case is much more based around aspects other than objective control than it is based around objective control. Even in the class of tanky bruiser-ish champions, he isn't my go-to for objective control because AoE tank junglers like Amumu threaten to win fights around the baron and dragon with more ease than Skarner does.

I would strongly advise removing the spire passive or weakening it with the eventual goal of removal, and moving him more towards a diving tank playstyle. This would fit his fantasy much better.

As a Juggernaut, Skarner's access to the enemy backline is meaningfully reduced. In this way, he does more closely resemble a Juggernaut's strengths/weaknesses.

Is this really a positive thing? Ulting the backline is arguably the only big unique moment in his kit right now. He doesn't really have anything else unique going on for him. Smacking the frontline around for mediocre damage and unreliable CC all the time doesn't feel good.

Additionally, the magnitude of the effects in the zones does lead to Skarner feeling relatively weak outside of them.

Understatement of the year right here.

LoquaciousKumqatMay 11, 201615 votes

Can you give some reasons as to why oyu think the spires are a success? I think they're a failure from multiple perspectives, and Skarner would be in an amazing spot if you took the spires away and allocated the power back into his kit.

I don't think I've met a player who likes the spires - please listen to your playerbase. Sometimes you need to throw away what you love to make it right.

RiotRiotRepertoirMay 11, 201612 votes

Can you give some reasons as to why you think the spires are a success?

I don't. I said they accomplish the goal of giving him the strategic strength we set out for him to have. I also mentioned that there's plenty wrong with them.

HellioningMay 11, 201628 votes

Can you explain why you wanted to give him that particular strategic strength? I understand that a large portion of the juggernaut update was to differentiate between them and give them unique, strategic strengths, but I'm just wondering why Skarner was decided upon for the 'neutral objective taker' juggernaut.

It just seems arbitrary, liked you picked names and strengths out of a hat or something.

DecritMay 11, 20162 votes

I guess because the basics of Skarner is spamming Q. It always was somehow. And he was mostly a jungler too.

That sets too much well for neutral objecxtive taking.

HellioningMay 11, 20162 votes

I can understand that he was one of the few 'juggernauts' to jungle. But I'd question how close of a 'juggernaut' he was, anyway.

DecritMay 11, 20161 votes

agree. I guess it was more a thought that traveled from spamming q -> camp control -> heavy presence -> juggernaut

In my honest opinion, as i am a not a skarner player, his Q spam should get ridden of. I think there is no place in LoL for skills of the likes of this, Eve' s Q, Trundle' s Q and so on unless there is a proper resource system or mechanic behind, like Shen' s blade or Taric' s heal.

HellioningMay 11, 20162 votes

...What?

Trundle's Q CD is four seconds. That's not nearly short enough to be compared to Skarner Q or Eve Q.

And I don't even see how you're relating Shen's Q or Taric's Q to those skills.

DecritMay 11, 20161 votes

my bad, probably i did explain myself too much hastly :P

You are right about Trundle' s cooldown, but still it' s a skill that you just spam in lategame to use it as as soon as it is avaiable compared to Leona' s Q, for example, that even if you have a lot of cdr you want to use it strictly to the right targets and do not waste it. You might optimize trundle' s Q so you can use it to reset autoattacks or to target the proper enemy, but since in teamfights there is lots of chaos and a low cooldown aniway then this is just oversighted, leaving little room to improvement. It' s more an aptitude problem that can surface even with skills that have longer cds than the ones you listed.

Probably taric' s Q was not the best example, but i am talking about skills that have low cooldown, not necessarily lower than 2 seconds, that can be really underperforming if used like the trundle case before. For example, i said shen' s Q because with max rank and hitting an enemy you consume the 3 attacks quite quickly and you find yourself very often to use it again in a short time, but if you spam it and don' t manage to proc the improved version then you lose a lot of damage. Another example of a spammy spell that however requires skill and decisionmaking is Olaf' s Q, which can be spammed if you manage to pick it up but then you have to plan how, where and when to throw it.

Hope this makes more sense now ^_^

HellioningMay 11, 20163 votes

If Trundle is just spamming Q off of cooldown, then he's not resetting his autoattack with it, which is probably the strongest part of that ability. No, it's not as complicated as some other skills, but not every skill in the game needs to be complicated.

I kind of understand what you're getting at, but the game doesn't need every skill to have 5+ seconds of cooldowns.

hopeful4May 11, 201612 votes

As ive said many times before: The idea of crystals was good, but the implementation was poor. You could do really innovative stuff with them but you just gave them a boring and generic steroid. The two main ideas that were presented by the community:

Give Skarner the ability to Teleport to them
Make them having an AoE effect if you hit them with E

Among many others. Honestly they were such a cool idea which went poorly because it was honestly half assed.

WendígoMay 11, 20166 votes

{quoted}

Among many others. Honestly they were such a cool idea which went poorly because it was honestly half assed.

This is how I feel about much of the Juggernaut update, not just Skarner

DJ S0NAMay 11, 20168 votes

Darius and Garen rework were a success actually, just Skarner and Morde were hard nerfed and forgotten.

Sir HammerlockMay 11, 20166 votes

If you guys really do rework him AGAIN, please let it work this time. Skarner has been reworked more than any other champion League, I mean, this will be... what... 7 times now?

RiotRiotRepertoirMay 11, 201614 votes

We're not planning on reworking him again. If we do end up doing any work on him in the future, it would be small tweaks and numbers adjustments.

DwarvenGiantMay 11, 20164 votes

Just to make this clear, you are referring to the near future, right?

Because other Rioters say from time to time that he would probably very much benefit from a full VGU someday, to finally get it right with him (although he's not much of a priority). I mean, "nothing is off the table" generally, right (As it usually is in design/development)?

RiotRiotRepertoirMay 11, 201615 votes

Ideally, the actual near future, yes.

Sahn UzalMay 11, 201638 votes

You're planning to change his class to be more Diver/vanguard-y, but you're not planning on another rework? I'm not trying to be sceptical, or put negativity in this discussion. But I'm having a bit of trouble seeing how small changes and number adjustments could accomplish that :o

With that said, the fact that you are revisiting him is something a lot of players didn't even hope for, so props to you guys C:

A bit off topic; I'm really enjoying Malzahar recently. His Voidlings have always been my favorite part of his kit, so seeing them become a more important part of his kit was really cool to me! I have to ask though: Are you guys planning on balancing Malzahar with just number changes, or is there any chance we get to see some changes to the way his W works? (Thinks back to Quinn Q), Pants are Dragon said in one of his videos his W would propably need some changes to the way it works in a video, so that's where the question comes from.

AmperMay 11, 201610 votes

Instead of giving him arbitrary points to contest, why not work in something like Azirs passive with a meaningful cooldown. If I could pick to place a spire on my enemies red buff at 2 minutes, then at 8 minutesplace one on dragon, again every 6 minutes or so I could then have some power spikes in areas that I plan to or want to contest or occupy. I imagine same aoe but more tactical approach to the placement based on how the game is flowing. This would make the placement more meaningful to the situation. Maybe extend a small portion of the bonus to allies as well. Then it gives Skarner the ability to coordinate potential future objectives.

Just something that I've been sitting on since the Juggernaut update.

Nameless VoiceMay 11, 20166 votes

I really like posts like this which give a brief summary of how Riot feel about a champion.

Have you (or other Rioters) considered making more posts of this kind, not necessary only about reworked champions, but about oft-discussed champions in general?

There are often "hot topic" champions on the boards, where people complain about their current state and talk about what they would like to see changed, but we rarely get to see Riot's perspective on champions until someone starts working on them. It would be nice to see more posts like "We believe champion X is problematic because of Y, but we don't currently have plans to work on them right now."