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I would be glad if a rioter answers me this. Why do you refuse to give Skarner actual damage?

FrancisMuni·7/9/2019, 5:30:00 PM·3 votes·1,862 views

Its quite the long story. Riot decided to give Skarner shitty base damages but really good AP scaling. It turned out that the scaling along with the AS on the passive and the reset on his Q by auto-attacking made a stupid synergy. He was hotfixed 3 days later but his players found that he could still be really good if build as an AD bruiser.

But the story couldn't have a happy ending and Riot kept changing the jungle and making more and more ebola champs both in jungle and outside of it, which led Skarner to fall behind and behind on both the powercreep and the mobility creep.

By this time Skarner started being considered a shitty character in early and midgame, but a really powerful duelist late thanks to the Trinity-Sterak combo. But Rito couldn't have their hands still and did 2 things in a relatively short timeframe (the first 4 months of season 8) that indirectly lead to Skarner's final nail in the coffin. They were:

  • The new rune system.
  • The Irelia rework.

For anyone that is wondering: "What the fuck does the Irelia rework have to do with Skarner" keep reading.

But first of all, the new runes. Well, in my opinion, the new rune system is a pile of dogshit. Because the runes are so situational, they only work in 2 possible scenarios:

  • Your champ already has really good numbers so you can pick them for their utility (they give you sustain, poke, ult CDR, gold advantage, mana...) or just to buff your overall damage.
  • Your champ has a really good synergy with one or more runes (Heca and Predator, Nasus and Ezreal and Klepto...)

So, the moment a champ without good numbers doesn't have good runes, he is completely screwed. "Does Skarner have good runes for him?" You may ask. Weeeeeeeeellllllllll... Sorta... yes and no. For instance, the runes that fit him tend to be in different places (Predator and Ult hunter in a branch, Celerity in another, Shield bash in another, Approach velocity in another one...) you get the idea. The introduction of Summoner Spellbook and Predator was a HUGE boost to Skarner's performance in high ELO after Riot buffed him a bit, but mainly because pros started using him as an ult bot, using the MS from Predator or the Flash CDR from SS.

The sad thing is, this strategy doesn't work nearly as well in low and average ELOs, and even if it did, it's incredibly boring. The main thing is that you depend on really long cooldowns to do something, even a normal gank. You need either Flash or Predator to gank pre-6, and your ult becomes also necessary after. This ties Skarner into a really limited number of gank atempts. By the time you build RG you are already in mid game and people is grouped. While most other junglers can gank 10 times at least in the first 15 minutes, Skarner only will be able to do 4 or 5 full power ganks. This isn't a problem in pro play because players have are really good at tracking the enemy jungler and the amount of deaths in a game is very low; in solo Q, you can expect a Kayn, a Warwick or a Twitch to gank 12 times and have success at 9 or 10.

So, this cheesing won't do the work in Silver or Gold, but we still have the option to build as a late game splitpusher, right? Wrong. Here is where the Irelia rework joins in. I think that most (if not all) of you will agree with me on the fact that Irelia was broken beyond belief in the entire season. Well, instead of doing what they did to Skarner a few years before, they started with their "nerfs". You know, they started doing reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally small nerfs every 2 months or so, so in their minds it would serve to calm down players that said that Irelia was busted (Spoiler: it didn't work, we are not THAT stupid). They remove the shield breaking thing, they did a little tweak there, another right here... Irelia was so broken, yet this changes so small, that were the equivalent of trying so stop a fire by pissing, and the ultimate climax were the -5 MS nerf.

But one of these nerfs was indirect. Riot decided to kill the only thing that made AD Bruiser Skarner almost viable; the Trinity-Sterak combo, because Bruisers like Irelia and Jax were really powerful with these 2 items. But they didn't gave Skarner anything in return.

Now that we know how we got here, let me ask you the question. Riot, why don't you give Skarner damage?

Yes, he may be strong in the LCS, but he is a diver, picking a person and locking him down is what they are supposed to do. Skarner already has a harder time than Vi, Warwick, Xin Zhao, Camille, Jarvan IV or Hecarim catching his enemies, to the point that he requires Predator/Flash and his ult JUST TO DO HIS JOB, but he also happens to be the bruiser with less damage in the entire game. I don't get it. If the champs that are listed before have more reliable ways of point-and-clicking the enemy carry to death, why can't Skarner have the same damage as them, if not more. Yes, his ult may be strong and unavoidable, but he isn't the only one to have such a powerful tool:

  • Warwick : his ult has a kilometric range and he can secure it with the AoE fear of his E.
  • Vi : another ult with really good range that also happens to make her IMMUNE TO CC. And after that she is guaranteed to land his Q, a knock-up.
  • XinZhao : point-and-click dash into a point-and-click knock-up that gives him enough time to walk behind his opponent and Insec him with his ult.
  • JarvanIV : point-and-click knock-up and ult. Yes, some champions can jump out of it, but it is still a really powerful tool.
  • Camille : her E lets her hover half the map and her ult is Jarvan's ult ON STEROIDS. COME ON, YOU CAN'T EVEN FLASH OUT.
  • Hecarim : his ult is near instant and can be easily chained to an Insec with his E. You can easily Insec people without your ult, its just an additional tool. Did I mention that his ult makes him invulnerable? CAUSE IT FREAKIN DOES.

All of this champions have combos that have a lot more range and are way easier to perform than Skarner's one (because he actually has to land a thin slow skillshot that happens to have a 12 sec cooldown on max rank). And all of them have WAY more damage than him. His damage early is easily 1/3 or 1/4 of what he should have, even though in late he has almost a decent DPS, it doesnt matter because games end before 30 mins most of the time. Then, what is your excuse? And please, don't mention the 9.5 QoL changes because they were the buff version of the -5 MS Irelia nerf.

8 Comments

Crystalysk7/9/2019, 7:31:34 PM4 votes

{quoted}

  • XinZhao : point-and-click dash into a point-and-click knock-up that gives him enough time to walk behind his opponent and Insec him with his ult.

I guess you don't know Xin Zhao cannot "insec" the target he already challenged in a fight.

This sort of things make your post lose credibility.

Predatorator7/9/2019, 7:20:06 PM2 votes

Agreed. You know, ad skarner kinda worked even after the sterak-trinity combo nerf, especially with the introduction of conqueror, which gave him some survivability before building trinity and sterak. what really put the nail on ad skarner's coffin is the nerf to conq. now going ad makes you so squishy even after those two items. so now the most effective way to play him is going tank

But conq can't be buffed back ofc, So best thing woud be to compensate skarner's damage for the losses from steraks's scalingwith bonus ad. I'd probably go too for adding base dmg, which compliments with his tank builds.

The Ecdysiast7/9/2019, 5:54:14 PM1 votes

His problems could be fixed by giving him an actual passive instead of the spires that aren't really in his favor any more. They made him okay for a bit back in 2015, and he's seen a small amount of success very infrequently since then.

He's one of the many champions who got unfit changes during a class "update" and as a result is still in need of an actual change. Problem is he's really ugly and not all that fun to play, so he doesn't get attention from riot.

FSRER7/9/2019, 6:16:15 PM1 votes

Excact same reasons apply to Singed too. Skarner and Singed should have something fixed about them

JackMcCarry7/10/2019, 10:30:29 AM1 votes

His R especially in organized play takes a huge chunk of his budget. Remember when he was reworked and had actual damage? He pushed the 60% WR making him the fastest hot fixed champ in league, or one of them at least.