Post That Didn't Age Well: Skarner Edition (2 of 2)
Here's part 1: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/lYKOe7J3-post-that-didnt-age-well-skarner-edition-1-of-2
Back to the main topic! This is was 3 years ago. And after that, we did not got any update of such work. Even by asking in several occasions. It was scrapped? What went wrong? Iceboxed? Or all of that work simply translated into moving the spires and increasing their radius?
What happened? It was clear since the beginning that almost all skarner players disliked the spires, and some 3 years later after this post, we're still stuck here with a gimmicky passive bottlenecking skarner into the jungle, making him more feast/famine than ever, without gaining the best objective control.
What went wrong? Was it hard to decide what to make Skarner into? I can understand that, Skarner historically has been a very flexible pick, being able to build tank, ad, ap: he literally scaless off of everything, and that's a trait most skarner players are attached to. But to me skarner always screames juggernaut: being the "unescapable predator that once it got to the enemy, it sticks to them and never lets go" is definitely a juggernaut trait. He doesn't deal as much damage as the other damage carries, but dealing lots of damage was never a skarner thing: being a dps tanky character with the ability to stick and fare in longer fights was the skarner thing, and i think this should be the main direction for further gameplay work on skarner. And for that he used to have a passive that rewarded him for actually enduring the fight.
Is Skarner ult so strong that the rest of his kit has to be kept in check? This a reponse i get from time to time. Skarner ult is certainly a powerful, and actually helps skarner to fare with the most popular picks, but i think with how powercreep has increased (especially looking at cc and moblity), thanks to certain elements of the champion roster, that it's not that dramatic of a case. This is skill is unique, offers great gameplay, gives great value to skarner, and should definitely stay, at least in its core aspect. But what if something must be done about it anyways? Not sure about it, best thing that comes to mind without changing it's core function, is to put a condition to its use, kinda like yasuo R works only on knockups. But then again, i'd not be interested in changing it.
Is a revert just off the table while he waits for his vgu? I mean, next five releases will be 3 new champions, voli and fiddle vgu. These alone cover some time, and it's not even guaranteed that skarner will come up after those. Meanwhile reverting faulty reworks proved to be a valid option on several champions. Reverting skarner to his crystal venom passive would be especially convenient, since i don't recall it being toxic, or having gameplay issues, and it sure executed the fantasy of playing skarner better than what we got now. Bonus points are:
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having a passive outside of the jungle: for how much of a massive buff provide the spires, they're fixed in contestable zones in the jungle.
So laning requires an unjust effort, and it's far more easier to get punished than other champions. i find it hard to find ways to bring the current passive in lane, without breaking skarner. The vgu should solve this, but i'm talking about a short term solution, and a revert seems the optimal way. -
Q meant something. What i mean is that to justify the spires, Q has been stripped of his ramping as/ms bonus, which rewarded surviving longer fights. Now it's just a kalista AoE, a glorified sheen proc. Reworking Q could be a more work intensive option, maybe making it into a 3 cast skill, kinda like xin zhao's q, where e slashes outward and inward with his claws, and in the end the strikes with his stinger.
In this post i discuss indepht about what could mean for Skarner to get a minor gameplay update: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/oiE1529O-a-malphwukong-update-can-go-a-long-way-to-skarners-current-situation
Thank you for sticking till the end, would love to hear your opinion =)
