Beginners Guide To Skirmishers

Very few of those things you mentioned are actually conditional defenses. Conditional defenses are defenses that are entirely dependent on the skill of the user. In the right hands they can be amazing and in the wrong hands they can be useless. Things like shields and healing are very rarely conditional, they are either on or off. I think the issue is that we define "conditional" differently because you literally explain what conditional defenses are later on in your post:

If we want to be technical, I'd say the main difference between Divers and Skirmishers is that Divers get defense that isn't game changing but is very reliable while Skirmishers get the more potent but more mechanically intensive versions.

And I would argue that Kled's passive is very skill dependent. It isn't simply hit them until Skaarl comes back. How you use your dismount and remount mechanic is extremely complex because Kled because untargetable during dismount and remount. Check out when Zig played Kled in the LCS if you don't understand what I mean.

The important thing to remember is that Skirmishers are not the only class that has conditional defenses but they are the only class that is DEFINED by their conditional defenses. If you remove the conditional defenses from a Skirmisher then they are no longer a Skirmisher. That's how I figure out what truly makes a subclass unique and what subclass a champion belongs too. If I remove Vlad's pool and replace it with something else he's still a battle mage and he's still Vlad. If I remove Cassiopeia's ult and replace it with something else she's still a battle mage and she's still Cassiopeia. If I remove the conditional defenses from someone like Fiora or Riven or Yasuo then they cease to be the same champion.

{quoted}

I disagree with that.

Almost all Divers do have conditional/windowed defenses, but less base durability than Juggernauts, just like Skirmishers do, so you can't say the "conditional defense" is what defines Skirmishers.

• Vi has a shield that procs when she hits someone with an ability.
• Irelia has her on-hit healing doubled for a short period of time and a conditional stun
• Xin has also a on-hit healing and a burst of AS for a short period of time, and his ult knock away the persons he's not focusing, serving as a mostly defensive move.
• Diana (most often played as an Assassin nowadays but initially designed as a Diver, and considered problematic because of this dichotomy) has a shield that refreshes if she's in the middle of the melee.
• Renekton has spell on-hit healing and his R
• Camille and Pantheon have their passive shields
• Aatrox has his revive
• etc. etc.

Hell, even Battle Mages regularly have conditional defense. Vlad pool, Swain R+AoE root, Karthus passive, Cassio conditional stun,...

If we want to be technical, I'd say the main difference between Divers and Skirmishers is that Divers get defense that isn't game changing but is very reliable while Skirmishers get the more potent but more mechanically intensive versions. And based on that, Kled is more on the Diver side: nothing technical about remounting, you just hit'em and Skaarl will come back.

I do agree that Kled is more of a Skirmisher, though, simply not for that reason. He is definitely not a Diver, because he has absolutely no reliable access to a priority target, and no way to lock them in place in the middle of a team-fight. And he has %HP damage that is good against Tanks, as Skirmishers are supposed to be. At the same time, he is clearly an hybrid with some sub-class of Fighters, because his mobility is rather low for a Skirmisher, and his base durability is quite high. So to me overall, Kled is a Skirmisher/Juggernaut hybrid, absolutely not a Diver.

Honestly I think kled is in the same class as Jax, he's a fighter.

Generally a skirmisher is someone who has some game changing strong defenses that can't be stopped (only prevented, usually), and some weak defenses (can be stopped, reduced or prevented). The only skirmisher I know of that has an ability that can't be stopped or prevented is Tryndamere.

Static defense doesn't force the enemy team to play a specific way to counter you, because the counterplay is also pretty much static-- buy penetration and more damage in the case of health and armor, or in the case of damage reduction try true damage if you have it available.

Dynamic defenses like skirmisher abilities force the enemy team to play a specific way to counter it-- it doesn't matter if there are 5 or 50 enemy champions, a skirmisher style strong defensive ability cannot be "mitigated" with "bigger numbers, and more of it", assuming the skirmisher gets to cast it.

Alpha strike, fiora riposte, yasuo windwall and mocking shout fit this pattern. Mocking shout has an additional way to prevent the effect-- by being turned away from Tryndamere when he casts it-- but that only prevents the slow, not the attack damage reduction.

Undying rage as I mentioned above is in a class of its own because it can't be stopped and there is no way to prevent it either. There aren't any other skirmisher abilities like this, and very few abilities like this in the game. Alistar can also use his ult through any cc, but it doesn't make him literally immune to death, just very very tanky. Alistar could be played as a skirmisher if he itemized in such a way as to rely on the durability of his ultimate to protect him while he does crazy damage. You can test that theory in order to validate what i'm saying about skirmishers.

Weak defenses are like Trynd heal, Meditate, Fiora ult heal and Yasuo passive shield.

Jax, Kled and Ekko sit on the edge of the skirmisher space (in different directions).

In Jax's case, he sits between skirmisher and fighter. His dodge constitutes a strong skirmisher defense, and his ultimate a weak defense. What pulls jax towards being a fighter is the fact that so much of his power budget is consumed by the fact that his weak defense also happens to synergize strongly with any static defenses he has purchased, which means building static defenses on him as if he were a juggernaut or a fighter is often more practical than building glass cannon. Effectively this closes the gap between Jax without using his defensive abilities and Jax using his defensive abilities-- comparing a no ult jax to a no ult tryndamere is stark for instance.

Kled is also like that-- one of his defensive abilities synergizes so strongly with static defenses he doesn't have enough power budget left over to give him the continuous threat or DPS that skirmishers generally have. On top of that, the window for which he can use this defense is so wide it makes more sense to talk about the window in which he can't use it. He's still a skirmisher, but barely-- he's probably more of a fighter.

Shyvanna, Jax, Kled, Renekton somewhat fit in the same "place". You can't really call them juggernauts because they do have some fairly significant mobility, and you can't really think of them in the same sense as Vi because that mobility doesn't really let them definitely always reach a specific target or stick to that target. They are just fighters and they focus on fighting, not assassinating.

Renekton and Shyvanna utilize some juggernaut qualities to make them effective fighters, while Jax utlizes some skirmisher qualities and can utilize juggernaut qualities if he needs to. Kled tries to blend the two qualities into something without a name and uses that.