My thoughts Skarner's Rework

Hi all. I wanna get out of the way that I am not in any way a credible source to Champion knowledge. I am currently Silver IV and have only been playing this game since Vel'Koz's release. That said, I have mained Skarner for several months and I would like to state what I think of his upcoming rework in Patch 5.16. I have posted RiotRepertoir's PBE thread above. The reception from Summoners has been... horrible, to say the least. People accused Riot of ruining the champion and making him too gimmicky. While I certainly agree with the latter, I'd like to keep an open mind. Here are my thoughts:

The good: The amount of attack speed that Skarner receives from his Spires is massive. At level 18, he will boost his attack speed by 150% near the Spires. At level 1, he gets 48% attack speed - the same amount that his old level five Q gave him. His Q no longer grants attack speed, and attacks against minions and monsters only reduce the cooldown by .25 seconds, but the ability's cooldown is reduced to 2.5 seconds at max rank, and because of the huge attack speed from the Spires, he might be able to use the Q faster than he did before. He also has no need for a blue buff, because he gets 3% of his mana back while under Spire. These traits actually make it a possibility that Skarner could solo the dragon as soon as it spawns. His W is significantly improved, actually scaling with his health - a lot of his health. It's Sion's shield on steroids. Now I'm not stuck with an 80-300 shield as a tank (although Skarner's tankiness was always ridiculous). His E has his old passive moved to it, and all we have to do to stun someone is land the E and then autoattack. Applying the stun also reduces the cooldown of his E by one second, and ulting someone reduces it by 1.75 seconds. His ult now does more physical damage than magic damage. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but apparently Skarner will also be granted movement speed during his ult. The PBE forum says "Makes his R a bit more dangerous once landed, as he will always have his passive's Movement Speed bonus while dragging his victim". Due to the way it's worded, I'm not sure about this, but it would be a huge buff if this ends up being the case. I'm also a bit happy that despite his Q nerfs, the ability at least does more damage. Skarner does, after all, have the highest base AD in the game, and now it actually ramps up even more as he levels.

The bad: I'm beating a dead horse here, but it is a huge weakness that Skarner has be near the Spires AND have them captured already to get the bonus and be at his full potential. I get that in order for the enemy team to capture the Spires, Skarner's team has to already have captured them beforehand, meaning that the enemy team can never capture the ones in their jungle unless Skarner ventures over to do a bit of counterjungling. However, being solely dependent on the Spires for power spikes and not his Q is a downfall. The Spires won't help him at all during ganks because they're nowhere near the lanes. His Crystal Venom passive will be missed. I know that his E instantly applies the Venom to a target, but we have to land it first, and if we don't, the gank is over. He can't apply it with his Q any longer, which will probably feel clumsy. His ult also won't deal more damage to a target if they have the Venom on them, but at least it won't consume the Venom, so I can E someone, ult, then autoattack for 2.75 seconds of continuous immobility. Also, and by far the biggest, is that Skarner is useless when trying to defend his base. He can't do much while keeping super minions off his Nexus turrets, wchich could lose him the game.

I guess that's it for my thoughts. Comment what you guys think about the rework. While I definitely don't think it's perfect, Keep an open mind. Maybe this will actually be a good thing for Skarner. Gl and hf all.

Edit: I guess I should input my thoughts on Runes and Masteries then. Right now (before the rework), I run Marks of Attack Speed and Quints of Movement Speed. After this rework I'll change them to Marks of Attack Damage and Quints of Scaling Health. My Masteries won't change. 0/27/3 jungle tank.

Edit: Hey guys. PBE gameplay videos have come out recently, and after watching them, I've concluded that Skarner's rework will make him incredibly strong. It turns out that stunning with his E actually not only reduces the cooldown, but also will grant him the Spire bonus for the duration of the stun, and stunning multiple people will keep it going longer. So he CAN get buffs away from his Spires. Also in conjunction with the new items (Dead Man's Plate, Sterak's Gage and Titanic Hydra), Skarner will gain so much health and attack damage that he will be one of the strongest tanks in the game. Under the Spires, a fed Tryndamere won't be able to 1v1 him, and even without the Spires he will still be a powerhouse. I am very satisfied with this rework, and hope that everyone else can grow to like it as well. Gl and hf all.