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Skarner's Crystal Spires

Cephaloclod·8/6/2015, 6:46:34 AM·6 votes·5,029 views

Let me start this by saying that I love Skarner. He is my favorite jungler and honestly, probably my favorite champion. I have loved the guy since I first started playing League and saw my friends using him. I've adapted his "I cannot be impeded." and "Organic weaponry is inconsequential." ("Why not just head over to this 'consequential' place and get it?") lines from Battlecast Alpha Skarner as a catchphrase of my own, often using them for comic relief with my friends. Skarner was the first champion I was ever excited to try and genuinely interested in playing. This scuttle-bug of gems was and continues to be one magnificent hype train for my friends and me. I have fun when I play Skarner and I just generally feel better when playing him.

Having said this, I must comment on the proposed changes to Skarner's kit. More specifically, his new passive "Crystal Spires." In short, it seems like a horrendous, terrible idea. I understand the desire to add new mechanics to the game, however, this is a poor attempt at creating diversity in the league.

Initially, it seems alright, Skarner gains power while in the area, meaning you'll prefer to fight there, not unlike Trundle with his Frozen Domain ability. However, after giving the idea moments of thought, glaring flaws appear. Unlike Trundle, Skarner cannot move his domains and as such is reliant on fighting within certain areas. This means Skarner will depend on fights taking places in awkward, clustered spaces that no competent player would want to be caught out in. While it does increase his ability to clear some of his jungle camps, the static position of the domains limits his power to incredibly specific portions of the map. His power is no longer dependent on how well he is doing in the game, how well he farmed, how well he aided the lanes, or how well the player can play Skarner but rather where the enemies choose to fight him! Imagine if Nami could only use abilities while in the river, imagine if Brand couldn't use abilities in the river; fights that included them would be dependent on both team's positioning rather than anything else that the single player can help determine. This having been established it can be determined that this part of the passive will be useless/unusable for the majority of the game, meaning Skarner will effectively, like a Karthus or Zyra who never die, have no passive ability.

Unfortunately, it gets worse for the Crystalline Chelicerata. His passive that he receives little to no benefits from can easily be turned against him to produce a lead for the enemy team. The obvious being the dedication of gold to his enemies. While some people claim this is "not going to decide anything significant" it may prove to be the kiss of death for Skarner. While 15 gold may not seem like much, it also gives the enemy motivation to not only capture the points but to contest them and to invade Skarner's jungle in order take them. While the spires placed near the enemy buffs are obviously there to encourage counterjungling, Skarner still proves to be a relatively weak counterjungler. That being said, it will be easy for the enemy team to recapture the points, granting them more gold. Everytime Skarner enters the enemy's jungle to take back the spire, he is putting himself in danger for very little reward. Even if he takes the buff or another camp, he is granting the enemy more gold in the long run and stands very little chance of being able to defend his position, becoming reliant on assistance of laners to prevent death. The Crystal Spires may also increase the counterjungling Skarner suffers from. While the enemy will run the usual risks that come with counterjungling, they can use the spires to their advantage, baiting out Skarner or his teammates out of position and into the jungle where they can be easily ganked by wandering laners or by the more powerful of the counterjungling champions. Those champions that are more apt at counterjungling will be able to abuse the spires to generate even more bonus gold atop the gold they are leeching from Skarner's jungle. It is because of this that in most situations Skarner players may find it best to simply ignore other the spires and simply use the ones in their jungle, removing a considerable chunk of usability from his already weak passive.

Also, how does this fit his character at all? Crystal spires? He's fights for Shurima now and guards an ancient power while underground as featured in the most lazily slapped together three sentence lore to ever be added to League of Legends. Capturing points? Playing king of the hill? His passive should about being unlocking ancient secrets lost to the desert, embracing forbidden powers buried deep beneath the sand, not a watered down version of a bad 5CP map from TF2!

TL;DR - Riot hates Skarner and all Skarner players but can't admit it so they give him a terrible passive to get him killed more and to assist the enemy team.

TL;DR - Riot thought people liked to play Dominion.

TL;DR - There is little to no motivation or benefit from capturing the Crystal Spires as Skarner. At this point, they serve mainly to assist the enemy team and to open Skarner up to more counterjungling. It also makes no sense in relation to his lore and the changes as a whole force him to play out of the jungle (not complaining just pointing it out).

Please don't ruin Skarner, he is my favorite.

5 Comments

Arcane Azmadi8/6/2015, 8:59:43 AM2 votes

The problem with all of these reworks, made most obvious with Skarner, is that Riot have decided to try and "diversify" the newly-named "juggernaut" class by forcing them into specific roles and play patterns. In Skarner's case they're literally chaining him to jungle objectives by making him completely ineffective EVERYWHERE on the map except around the buff camps, Dragon and Baron, because apparently their vision for Skarner is "buff-controlling jungler" and they don't want him played any other way, in order to make him "unique". You can see similar things in how they gut Garen's offensive power while increasing his late-game AD scaling (but also removing his ability to scale with crit) to try and force him into buying the new damage items (since he doesn't benefit from anything except raw AD and armour pen) as well as nerfing his tanking ability to discourage you from trying to build him as a tank.

If I'm right (and I'm pretty sure I am) Riot have completely the wrong end of the design stick here. Their idea of "force people to play the champs the way we want them played" is ham-fisted, clueless and abrasive- we don't WANT to run Mordekaiser in a duo lane, but Riot wants us to so they make him useless as a solo laner (but paradoxically don't even make him a good duo laner either). They want Skarner to focus entirely on objectives so they eviscerate his ganking power and making him effectively IMPOSSIBLE to play outside the jungle. Riot are supposed to give us the tools and then let us, the players discover how to best use them. It's called Emergent Gameplay, it's the source of metagaming, and it's what gave us things like mid lane Diana (she was originally intended as a jungler), support Morgana and Zyra (they're both mid lane mages), top lane Nautilus (again, a jungler) and even things like AD Kennen (mainly just a gimmick, but it WAS viable). Apparently Riot are tired of letting the players have things their way and are putting their foot down- "NO, you will play these champions the way WE tell you to!"

LoL Ergo Urgot8/6/2015, 9:22:13 AM2 votes

http://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/champions-gameplay-feedback/d2bmpMif-skarner-pbe-changelist-and-feedback-thread?comment=00090000

This is the link to the PBE thread for Skarner.

These changes will make Skarner even more reliant on his team to help control the points and for someone like me (a gold player which is low elo) I can't depend on my team to coordinate stuff like that. If Skarner's team is getting beaten badly and looses control of his jungle, well he will have no passive.

These changes are horrendous and if Riot remains adamant on these changes then we should start speculating what Skarner's 4th rework should look like.

Also another quote of his I love "The resistance is a lie" just the way he says it.

Chespin20138/6/2015, 3:05:38 PM2 votes

Completely agree I don't like the direction Riot is going with these changes

Voidgolem8/6/2015, 3:12:55 PM2 votes

I feel like with the new items incoming skarner isn't -as bad- as people are making him out to be.

I still dislike the concept of capture zones taking up his power budget since they're static and not really in areas you'll spend a lot of time fighting in (well, the baron/dragon ones, maybe, notsomuch the buffs) - what's the point of making him really strong in six specific regions if most of the game avoids those zones?

...

and that's before getting into how bad AS actually is in teamfights, for those times he's in one of his capture zones.

InternalBleating8/20/2015, 3:21:53 PM1 votes

Yep, I only had every skarner skin and played him religiously. Now I doubt I'll play him again.