Boards›Dev Corner

[FOLLOWUP] Skarner Juggernaut Update

RiotRiotRepertoir·5/11/2016, 6:07:48 PM·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

Skypual5/11/2016, 6:31:57 PM58 votes

Are you considering just removing the spire passive?

MrStingYoGirl5/11/2016, 8:08:27 PM44 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

Raid Boss Morde5/11/2016, 6:36:08 PM18 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.

arghilost5/11/2016, 6:33:13 PM16 votes

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

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

LoquaciousKumqat5/11/2016, 7:45:58 PM15 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.

Sightless665/11/2016, 6:41:19 PM15 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.

hopeful45/11/2016, 6:57:37 PM12 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.

Nameless Voice5/11/2016, 6:50:15 PM6 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."

Sir Hammerlock5/11/2016, 6:36:05 PM6 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?