Skarner's Crystals (analysis and recommendations)

Skarner is a champion I love. He's one of my favourite junglers, and I am one of those people who enjoyed him both before and after the last rework. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if I will enjoy him after the new rework (much like Garen, my go-to top laner). There are several reasons for this, but I'm going to focus on the new passive for now.

Keep in mind I am not a PBE tester, and these thoughts are based purely on speculation and what I've seen of PBE footage.

1. The new passive looks like a gimmick to add a crystal scar mini-game to SR, and eats up far too much power budget, and harms his identity.

The bad:

The crystals give Skarner a HUGE buff for being near them. "Skarner gains 150 Movement Speed and 35%+5%/lvl Attack Speed, and he restores 3% of his maximum Mana per second." Cool. Unfortunately, this means reducing his movement speed from 345 to 330, as well as removing the stacking attack speed and movement speed buffs on his Q.

The fact that his movement, attack speed and hard CC were all tied to these Q stacks meant that Skarner had to be able to stick to his target to be able to gank/fight effectively; this formed a big part of his identity. Don't let the scorpion get close, or he'll snag you and fuck you up. Don't commit to a fight against him unless you know you can win. Now, this identity is diminished in favour of a weird thematic crystal idea which eats into his power budget hugely, yet still has a huge amount of counterplay; gold and temporary vision for taking control of a zone will actively make counterjungling the poor scorpion even more valuable than before.

Additionally, this will lead to more snowbally games. Usually a team with a strong advantage has control of the enemy's jungle as well as their own. With Skarner being incredibly powerful only when around the crystals, an enemy that has lost their jungle will lose harder as a Skarner can rip anyone to shreds thanks to his crystals. Conversely, a Skarner on the losing team will have his power diminished even further than most champions on the back foot because he will not be able to safely reclaim his jungle, and smart teams are likely to ward the crystal areas and attack him while he tries to reclaim the crystal.

The good:

The crystals being placed exclusively in the jungle and river seems highlight Skarner as a champion who excels in jungle combat, making him a fast clearer and potentially a dangerous counterjungler. It's a shift in identity, but not necessarily a bad one, if it's executed correctly (currently it is not). However, it is unlikely this gameplay fantasy will be reached considering the large amount of counterplay available.

The crystals existing near Baron and Dragon will make setting up to contest these objectives more interesting. Team Skarner gets a big buff to his ability to clear the buff and fight around it if the crystal is held, but the enemy team is able to prevent this by acting sooner.

Having other objectives on the map unique to your champion can influence the game in fun and interesting ways. Bard's chimes are clearly the inspiration behind this, although the chimes are better executed. Bard is amazing.

Possible Solutions:

Right now, the crystals idea has potential, but is horribly muddled right now. They are too far away from lanes to be used for ganking, but are too easily countered by the enemy team to be useful in a counterjungling situation.

Solution 1: Crystal Ganks Move the crystals closer to the lanes, giving the crystals more of a ganking focus.

This plays well into the counterplay aspect, and will give the enemy laners AND junglers incentive to control these buffs, while incentivising Skarner's allied laners to control the buff in order to maximise his gank potential. The issue he is that it puts additional pressure on the laners and is likely to cause them to miss CS; it is likely that only the junglers would want to contest the crystals, but this is fine - if the enemy jungler neglects a lane, it is more likely that Skarner will be able to gank it effectively, since the buff will probably stay in Skarner's possession longer.

Solution 2: Crystal Counterjungler Make the crystals' buffs _significantly _weaker, but make them always under Skarner's control, and return some of his power budget (I'm looking at you, -15 movespeed and Q nerfs).

By making the crystals less impactful but granting Skarner a reasonable advantage in either jungle, they will allow him to maintain good jungle clear speeds, and apply more pressure to the enemy jungler. Instead of a Skarner pick being considered a gimmicky mini-game which gives the enemy team bonus gold for defending their jungle, it becomes a 'watch your back, because a fast, angry scorpion could be around the next corner to fuck you up' situation. Note that the crystals' power would be HEAVILY reduced for this to be balanced.

Solution 3: Crystal Zone: Add a few more crystals to the map and increase their radii of effect significantly, but only allow Skarner to activate one crystal at a time. Activating a new crystal de-activates the previous one. Return some of Skarner's power budget to other skills (stacking Q attack speed, but NOT movement on Q or passive). Increase time taken to activate a new crystal.

This would allow Skarner to be able to 'camp' certain portions of the map with increased effectiveness. Maybe he'll want to set up a crystal near top to apply long term pressure there, set up in one half of the enemy jungle in order to focus on countering the enemy jungler, or set up in his own jungle to get some fast early clear, or to farm a bit if he falls behind.

Skarner's currently active crystal would have an icon on the minimap indicating this. If an enemy team spots an activated crystal, an icon will appear on the minimap (even through fog of war) to let the enemy team aware of Skarner's area of greatest influence (no actual vision though). Whenever Skarner activates a new crystal, a soundbyte would play to both teams indicating that Skarner is prioritizing somewhere else on the map, and the enemy team's minimap would no longer show the icon on the minimap. A new icon will only appear to them on the minimap once the newly activated crystal has been spotted for the first time.

What I like about this idea is that Skarner gets great power in an area, but his intent is well-telegraphed, particularly if the enemy team has reasonable map vision. While setting up near top puts a lot of pressure on the enemy top laner, it also relieves pressure from the other two lanes. Skarner's movement speed would be kept low in this instance in order to highlight his weakness at ganking lanes he has not set up for, and the increased 'capture' time of crystals would make the set ups more of a commitment, as this whole idea would fall apart if changing crystals could be done rapidly.

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tl;dr Skarner's new passive is a unique idea with a lot of potential, but currently its implementation needs a lot of work as it currently has a muddled identity. By reworking the skill to focus on either ganking, jungle control, or zone control (see ideas above), it would streamline the passive and define Skarner's role more clearly, while still giving him unique flavour.

And with that, I am going to go to bed as it's very late here in England. Let me know what you guys think.