Can we talk about how bad the Skarner rework is?
http://www.leagueoflegendsskins.com/images/champions/splash/Skarner_0.jpg
Before his rework, I fancied myself a regular player of Skarner, I loved being a sticky, dangerous bug of fear that caught people out of position and dragged them away to their doom, I also felt very sure of myself playing him and did very well most of the time. Ever since his rework though, I played him a few times and have now completely dropped him from my roster of played champs because he’s no longer good at what I played him for and the kit he has now is incredibly boring.
Riot stated with the Juggernaut rework that they “wanted Skarner to have something truly unique to him” when he’s unable to use his ultimate to kidnap someone. Their solution was to give him the six crystals that are placed on the map when he’s on a team, they said that “with these changes, Skarner becomes a neutral objective control king, and super useful for teams looking to overcome their enemies with buff and map control.
This is not what happened. While Skarner received a huge boost in popularity and was seen as being OP, no one picked him or thought he was OP because of his ability to control objectives, it was because he was a tanky unkillable monster that you couldn’t keep from barreling through your team and killing everyone in sight.
I’ve said before in many threads but the Skarner rework goes against an oft quoted design philosophy of Riot which is that they do not like ball of stats champions and regret the ones that are in the game that came about from earlier years. Skarner is currently nothing but a ball of stats champion who’s passive is to give him more stats when fighting in specific areas. And this was even something that is the exact opposite of what they were trying to achieve. They said that they felt Skarner, as he was before the rework, was just a generic bruiser that never had a real reason to pick him over someone else but that’s what he’s been turned into, ever since his nerfs I barely ever see Skarner picked at all in ranked or normals because, since his stats no longer make him OP there’s no reason to pick him.
Further, the goal of the rework, to make him a neutral objective controller is impossible to do without completely changing his kit, because his kit is not designed for controlling objectives, nothing in his kit rewards him for, or encourages him to fight for objectives aside from getting a stat boost from his crystals. His Q is a short range spammable damage ability, the kind of thing someone who gets up in an enemy’s face would use to give out long term dps, his w is a speed boost for catching people that also has a shield to help him survive being in the middle of an enemy team or taking the damage from someone trying to kite him, his E is meant to allow him or a teammate to close the gap and pounce on someone and his ult is a kidnapping tool. None of these abilities are things that a neutral objective controller would want in their kit.
Know who DOES have a kit for objective control? Nunu. Nunu has two abilities for controlling things in the jungle, he has his consume for dealing large true damage to monsters to secure them for himself or his team and he has his ult which is great in the jungle and river because of the confined aspect of those places and that fact that he can catch people by surprise with his ult by hiding behind a corner or in a bush to channel for a lot of damage before the enemy realizes it or when they have no choice but to fight in it.
But do you know what Skarner’s kit IS good for? What he is SUPPOSED to do? Being a champion that catches someone and then sticks to them and doesn’t let up until they’re destroyed by himself or his team. His previous kit was perfect for this kind of gameplay, with the crystal venom passive, w to move in quick, E to slow someone down, and then Q Q Q to stun them and finish them off or Ult and drag them away into your team.
Further, that kit was satisfying. It was satisfying and felt rewarding to get that third hit in just before the person got to their turret so that they got stunned long enough for you and your ally to finish them off. There was a direct goal for you to focus on someone in a fight so that you could stun them either to peel for a teammate or to single out a priority target.
Does anyone actually feel any kind of satisfaction from taking a crystal and fighting in it? Where is the decision making in fighting over the crystals? No one ever thinks, “Oh no, if we fight here Skarner will be in his crystals, maybe we should try to fight somewhere else.” Because outside of the pro scene, and even in it, fights aren’t something that usually happens because of some kind of war game where you try to take certain objectives over others. Fights happen because of people unexpectedly running into each other, or because you need to either gain or prevent the gaining of a neutral objective. If the enemy team is trying to take Baron, them having Skarner on their team doesn’t factor into whether you fight for it or not, you’ll react to it the same way you would if they didn’t have Skarner on their team.
The crystals also don’t actually change anything about whether you can take the enemy or not. Whether Skarner gets a boost from his passive is determined on which team holds the stronger position in the game when a fight occurs near them. If Skarner is fed then the enemy team will avoid his crystals, if he’s behind then the enemy will take it from him without him being able to fight for it, and if the teams are even then it gives him a slight boost to his stats but it only effects him and so his team and the enemy team will just fight like the crystal wasn’t there regardless of who has control of it because whoever wins the fight is determined by positioning, split second decisions, someone being caught out, or people being grouped up too much for a wombo combo, not because Skarner had his crystal captured.
The entire problem with the crystals is that they offer no strategic use or planning. The mana regen component only matters when Skarner is farming the jungle, the attack speed component only matters if Skarner is a damage threat on the enemy team which is decided by whether or not he’s ahead or not, and the movespeed bonus mostly matters when farming for movement through the jungle and when its used for teamfights it’s usefulness is again decided by how well or poorly Skarner is already doing. And it's not as if you can use it for counterjungling or catching someone by surprised because as soon as you take one everyone on both team knows it because the icon on their minimap changed color.
tl;dr
I feel I’m starting to ramble a bit so I’ll try to sum up and get to the point. Skarner’s rework is terrible. I love Repertoire for what he did on the forums a couple months back but the rework he created and the intention behind it is incredibly half-assed in its attempts to change Skarner’s niche. All it’s done is made Skarner like he was with his first rework where he’s functional, but unsatisfying to use and offers nothing interesting to his team aside from his ult. His ganks are also back to how they were then with whether the gank succeeds or not depending on whether he lands he E or whether his ally laner has enough CC to lock the enemy down for him to smack around. Further, all his current passive did was take away a lot of his base stats to give him more stats when within the area of his crystals and them being a factor for neutral objective control at all is because of where they’re placed, place them in front of turrets or in the middle of a lane and you immediately change what his supposed niche is focused around. It is a terribly artificial way to give someone a niche and it doesn’t even work.
Riot is going to someday come back and rework Skarner yet again, because eventually they’ll realize all these issues with the kit he has now and I can only hope that when they do they turn him back into the sticky inescapable scorpion again but if not then I hope they at least completely change his abilities so he can actually BE a neutral objective controller instead of a generic ball of stats.
, who had a much more vocal angry fanbase that was ALSO ignored)
on skarner.
