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Fixing Skarner

Terchio··4 votes·736 views

With his resurgence into the lowest tiers of the game, I thought it was time to discuss this champion in more detail. While his kit flows somewhat in areas, I thought it was time to bring out his best once more. First off, a description of who Skarner is:

Skarner is a beastly, carnivorous fellow who charges at enemies full-speed without fluffy gimmicks like insta-dashes or hard crowd control. Why not hard crowd control? Well, because he is meant to tank, of course. Tanks don't stun, they slow, as any Malphite player ever realizes. Sure, he has that stun, but after that's gone, you better have more power in the tank, or else enemies will walk completely around you. Sure, his ultimate is a bit of a gimmick, but with its limited scope. He has to use the rest to keep effective aside from power-sapping CC. He HAS to stay in melee range to work his magic, but on the bright side, should he keep working around in the battle, he may never fall.

So, how do we help him?

<Fracture (E)>: Ranged slowing missile.

Brilliant at first look. Except there's a glaring problem. If he has ranged CC, how does he keep an enemy right there? Oh yeah, Impale and Crystalizing Sting. Well, let's take a peek at those.

<Impale (R)>: no auto-attacks, consumes Crystalizing Sting marks

Well, that's a pretty bad idea. Afterall, how do you even deal the damage you have? Counter-synergy, if you ask me.

<Crystalizing Sting (Passive)>: Melee stun after 3 spell-hits and an autoattack.

Okay, better. Still, you just range-slowed a dude, and you have to both catch up to him and proc 3 spells and an AA? They better be trapped on a plate next to some green beans and taters.

He's melee, for crying out loud. He's already situational enough. He needs some actual synergy with his kit.

<Crystal Slash (Q)>: Melee AoE skill with a boost to attack speed, movement speed, low cooldown, the majority of damage on his kit, and a passive that drops his cooldown on it even further.

... What? Seriously, did you just give a skill synergy with itself? Why even have a kit? Pretty sure this IS the kit. Movement speed like his <Crystalline Exoskeleton (W)> has. 2 of the 3 procs on Crystalizing Sting, if not all 3 (Seriously, why is that not his Q passive?). All his damage AND steroids rolled into one. What else is his kit?

Well, let's find out. We showed Fracture earlier. Now...

Crystalline Exoskeleton - Accelerating speed boost (that both Rammus and new Sion now have... woot.) that comes with a handy dandy shield. Speed boost dies when the shield does.

... A piddly shield? I mean, you could say it's movement too, but his Crystal Slash has that. I don't get it.

So, moving on. How do we fix it?

Well, he's meant to be the master of working without gimmicks, so let's start there. No insta-dash, limited hard CC. However, to counter the lack of these two, he will need a highly bolstered teamfight presence, as chasing is his game. How does he cope with it? Tankiness. However, he can't simply be a brick wall. He needs to build his wall, and keep it formed with his work in the teamfight. This is why I propose:

  1. Skarner gets cooldown reduction on his Crystalline Exoskeleton on successful autoattack. Afterall, in the fray, where it's detrimental, he can still be CC'd into submission, but if he isn't, he holds his beefy presence as a staple to give him a teamfighting presence.

But, that's not enough. Yeah, he's mega-beef and all, but what good is the beef if the enemy can't even attack him? I'll tolerate it on the Impale, but seriously,

  1. Crystalizing Sting - Goodbye, buddy, and don't let the door hit ya.

But what about his melee presence? Even super beef-lords have a ranged presence with insta-dashes. So clearly, it makes sense that some damage should happen at a range, and so

  1. Fracture - Get some real damage. and drop that slow, it distracts from the damage it should do to keep him sane.

But then there's a problem. He's a rock in a teamfight. That's good and all, but this rock has problems being a rock. Sure, his shield is nice, but he has AoE skills that mostly lack compatibility with Spell Vamp, and we don't want to make him overly Life Steal reliant when he also needs movement speed, attack speed, damages, manas, defenses, tenacity, etc. Well,

  1. Fracture - Okay, you can heal me, but ONLY if you get into melee range and take it from them. And of course cooldown reduction on autoattack for the further synergy with survival.

Alrighty. Good so far. But still, how do I stay in melee range? Autoattackers need super-hyper-mega-movement-speed to make autoattacking worthwhile without CC. Or, considering his extreme melee needs, a light CC is hardly out of order...

  1. Crystal Slash - Now slows movement on hit, but he loses all those random buffs that overloaded the skill. And keep it low, like 20% slow; don't give him a friggin' free Mallet AoE at level 9.

Okay, working steadily now. Where do we put that steroid, though? Does it need to come back? Well... why not? The movement speed buff was kinda nice as it was on Crystalline Exoskeleton, but that wasn't enough to make his shield feel like a shield anyways. It needs more to be attractive as an object to keep alive, and have more negative effect if you can't bring it back up. That way Skarner can become a monster, but only if he doesn't get in over his head.

  1. Crystalline Exoskeleton - Attack speed buff placed on shield, as long as you keep it up, to make it feel like it means something in battle. Reduce its cooldown on autoattack in order to make CC really crush down on him. And finally, lose the ramp-up business. Skarner wants his speed now, not later. That's what he sacrificed his insta-dash and extreme mobility for in the first place.

So, you should try out a few of these ideas, Riot. Or maybe all. All's I know is that you're trying to make a beef-master tank dude that goes mega CC, but not so much CC so that teamfights are still annoyingly stupid to play, so you can only reasonably stun one guy. Even Malphite is laughing at him, insta-dash and all. A melee with limited team-worth in fights will never live in a healthy way.

TL;DR: Put Skarner back to permaslow. It's not OP when controlled (see Gangplank/Ashe), and it's far less feast-or-famine than a character who is somewhat forced to ride team CC to be of any use at all.

Also, at very least give him the possibility to use his Q steroid on towers... That's the only steroid that can't be used on them to the best of my knowledge, at least as long as enemy minions aren't there, and it's too distracting to grab them. Not fun.

13 Comments

Shahamut3 votes

So... basically, you just want them to revert all the changes back to normal?

I wasn't extremely fond of them taking his perma slow, but to be honest, it was for the better. My thoughts on how to fix Skarner as he is now?

Passive:

Put the stun to 1 second ALWAYS! The .5 second stun for the early game doesn't even stop a jungle creeps attack pattern. I would gladly trade some of the "bonus damage that doesn't scale with anything" to just leave the stun at 1 second.

Q:

Revert the changes from patch 4.11- Skarner's damage isn't high, never was high, and if you were able, I would ask you to check my game log to see how often, even when I carried hard, that I was the champ with the most damage dealt to champions. Almost never, and I wasn't even second most of the time. You can keep the movement speed down if you want, if you thought it was too fast, but pls give back some of that dmg.

W: Ramp down, not up. Easy fix, that and a slightly lower mana cost. That is all.

E: Give base damage back, if I cant even use it to farm a minion from range (40dmg? really?) what good is it? oh? a slow? THEN WHY DOES IT COST SO MUCH MANA?! 50-70? That damage is so low that if you leave it as is, it should never cost more than 50. (30,35,40,45,50). And honestly, I personally would put it at 35 always.

R: This is the only thing that really doesn't need anything. It would be awesome to be able to auto attack your prey, but you can still use Q 1x which starts to restack crystal venom. So Im not really upset, since it can be a whopping 700+(100%AP) if you are good at getting your stacks on them first.

It still makes me mad that they nerfed skarner after a week and a half of people playing him again...

If you look at his stats now, he is right back to where he started: less than 2% pick rate (1.15% last I looked), and currently less than a 50% win rate. He will never see another LCS game again (only saw 1 before nerf, and I dont think he even won?).

MAKE HIM AT LEAST COMPETITIVE!

I think that is all any champion main wants, is to know that their champion is good enough to be picked by pros. Even if only situationally.

Skarner isn't "too easy to play to be that good". He is INCREDIBLY weak to kiting. There are so many champions with CC in this game, many of them very popular.

Nothing about skarner is or ever was OP.

I like the new kit, now can we stop kicking him?

Also, battle cast Skarner... Im waiting...

EDIT Also, Skarner is still very much feast or famine. If he gets ahead, he can wreck people. Put him behind, and he almost can't catch up.

Terchio1 votes

So... basically, you just want them to revert all the changes back to normal?

... Yes.

I wasn't extremely fond of them taking his perma slow, but to be honest, it was for the better. My thoughts on how to fix Skarner as he is now?

Disagree. It was a character identity that fit in several ways, mostly in that it gave him a zone of threat, not instakill of course, but incredibly strong nonetheless, and still allowed him to do something with absolutely no ranged power whatsoever. Now he's a flake at all ranges.

Passive:

Put the stun to 1 second ALWAYS! The .5 second stun for the early game doesn't even stop a jungle creeps attack pattern. I would gladly trade some of the "bonus damage that doesn't scale with anything" to just leave the stun at 1 second.

Q:

Revert the changes from patch 4.11- Skarner's damage isn't high, never was high, and if you were able, I would ask you to check my game log to see how often, even when I carried hard, that I was the champ with the most damage dealt to champions. Almost never, and I wasn't even second most of the time. You can keep the movement speed down if you want, if you thought it was too fast, but pls give back some of that dmg.

W: Ramp down, not up. Easy fix, that and a slightly lower mana cost. That is all.

E: Give base damage back, if I cant even use it to farm a minion from range (40dmg? really?) what good is it? oh? a slow? THEN WHY DOES IT COST SO MUCH MANA?! 50-70? That damage is so low that if you leave it as is, it should never cost more than 50. (30,35,40,45,50). And honestly, I personally would put it at 35 always.

R: This is the only thing that really doesn't need anything. It would be awesome to be able to auto attack your prey, but you can still use Q 1x which starts to restack crystal venom. So Im not really upset, since it can be a whopping 700+(100%AP) if you are good at getting your stacks on them first.

It still makes me mad that they nerfed skarner after a week and a half of people playing him again...

If you look at his stats now, he is right back to where he started: less than 2% pick rate (1.15% last I looked), and currently less than a 50% win rate. He will never see another LCS game again (only saw 1 before nerf, and I dont think he even won?).

MAKE HIM AT LEAST COMPETITIVE!

All definitely a start. However, he still doesn't need hard CC beyond his ultimate, and the passive on his Q, but not W and E, basically strips the rest of his identity after his permaslow disappeared. He had the capability to sustain in the fray before. Now he's better off trying to sustain at a distance.

Nothing about skarner is or ever was OP.

I disagree. His permaslow maxing at a Mallet with no cost to himself was kinda stupid, especially on his only real damaging skill. He doesn't even need 20% probably.

I like the new kit, now can we stop kicking him?

What kit? grab-and-done once again? That's not a champion.

EDIT Also, Skarner is still very much feast or famine. If he gets ahead, he can wreck people. Put him behind, and he almost can't catch up.

Exactly as I said... He's more feast or famine than ever. If he doesn't have the tools to do his own combos against anything more than bots, he's unbelievably feast or famine. You can't grip someone unless an ally grips them first... so why pick him? And actually, his power was quite high when played right before, you just needed to find a stride and not go Triforce (Yeah, that's the tank item meant to put a thick ceiling on your damage... Only effect that doesn't stack with anything else, except for Armor Pen, which is a bit non-advisable since he has little range, need for tankiness, and loads of magic damage). Triforce was always questionable at best without insta-dashes. Now, since he can't even damage without it, might as well.

Shahamut2 votes

So... basically, you just want them to revert all the changes back to normal?

... Yes.

This will never happen, so I try really hard to simply not entertain the thought.

Disagree. It was a character identity that fit in several ways, mostly in that it gave him a zone of threat, not instakill of course, but incredibly strong nonetheless, and still allowed him to do something with absolutely no ranged power whatsoever. Now he's a flake at all ranges.

I somewhat agree with RIOT on this one. Skarner sticking too you for ever is fine, Skarner making his entire team stick to you forever is not as fine. Hence the MS buff to replace the perma slow on Q. I have a 60% win rate as Skarner in ranked and reached silver 4 from bronze 5. I don't have extensive amounts of time to play, but I think that much should say something. He can still get in on people, its just a little tricky, specifically, in lane. Jungling with him is about the same, accept that his clear speed has dropped quite a bit. (a couple of seconds makes a big deal imho) Random suggestion for you guys who miss the slow on his Q, buy a Rylia's, A little health, some AP for shield and ult dmg, and you get your slow back on Q. :)

All definitely a start. However, he still doesn't need hard CC beyond his ultimate, and the passive on his Q, but not W and E, basically strips the rest of his identity after his permaslow disappeared. He had the capability to sustain in the fray before. Now he's better off trying to sustain at a distance.

The way Skarner is right now, with the lower cooldown on his shield, sustain is... LESS necessary for his kit. I rarely ever buy sustain items till late late game. Allowing his E to have its damage and ratios again though would let those crazy skarner players that like it, play him full AP mid lane :P I wouldn't do it, I want to be able to reliably kill a minion from range. Either this needs to happen or its mana cost should go WAAAAY down.

Nothing about skarner is or ever was OP.

I disagree. His permaslow maxing at a Mallet with no cost to himself was kinda stupid, especially on his only real damaging skill. He doesn't even need 20% probably.

Touche', but even with that slow, did he consistently turn games for his team? He still sported a less than likeable win rate, and people weren't picking him.

What kit? grab-and-done once again? That's not a champion.

I feel as if that really is an unfair way to describe his kit. He is still a very good duelist once he has items. His Shield, MS and AS buffs, and ranged slow are all still useful after his ult is down.

EDIT Also, Skarner is still very much feast or famine. If he gets ahead, he can wreck people. Put him behind, and he almost can't catch up.

Exactly as I said... He's more feast or famine than ever. If he doesn't have the tools to do his own combos against anything more than bots, he's unbelievably feast or famine. You can't grip someone unless an ally grips them first... so why pick him? And actually, his power was quite high when played right before, you just needed to find a stride and not go Triforce (Yeah, that's the tank item meant to put a thick ceiling on your damage... Only effect that doesn't stack with anything else, except for Armor Pen, which is a bit non-advisable since he has little range, need for tankiness, and loads of magic damage). Triforce was always questionable at best without insta-dashes. Now, since he can't even damage without it, might as well.

I pull off his combos in ranked, and I win solo lanes with him. Triforce is a slighty higher dmg output item than Iceborn Gauntlet, but your build has to change to fit it.

TLDR: Im still convinced: Mana cost reductions and W's movement ramping down rather than up, are all that need fixed. NEED. It would be NICE to also give back some of his damage... Since there is NO way you can convince me that he was doing too much.

Terchio1 votes

Triforce is simply not that good on him, and that's why he's faltering in the first place. There are a ton of melee characters that can dash in for Triforce hits, most of which have pretty quick speed at it, so the consistent proccing isn't that great, and some even have armor shred (Wukong, Vi, Jarvan and Xin, for instance, have some extent of all 3). Skarner has one of those, if he manages to bite in the first place, and then game's (now technically second) highest Base AD. Who else has that? Cho. Heck, Cho goes better with it, because at least he has supreme natural tankiness and a lack of other movement speed to go with it. What's 8% movement speed on something that already gets up to 50%? Not much.

If you are rocking with Triforce Skarner, that's nice, but you're still playing with a character who is subpar with the item in so many ways.

And as far as giving up on old Skarner, I'll never be doing that. At least that Skarner had something of an identity. His only skill that retained the cooldown reduction passive is the one that was least fun to proc it with anyways. Damage mostly, no CC or sustain enhancements. That's not an identity, and it won't be, not with any number of mere tweaks. You know who could have used a tweak or two, though? Old Skarner. He wasn't in a good place because no one would put him there. However, now that Skarner has to fight himself to play his own game, he'll not be valid any time soon. A character as obscenely melee as he is needs a rewarding experience for catching enemies, and a simple Triforce in damage isn't going to do much toward that. Feast or famine forever.

Sparchilé2 votes

I started playing skarner when he had the fracture heal. It was wonderful in mid lane. I was 1v5 pentakilling in ranked with full ap build. The 80% AP ratio on shield made him ridiculous. I used that shield along with seraphs embrace to have about 1500 hp worth of shields. I had lichbane, sorc shoes, spirit visage, rabadons, and either zyhonas or void staff depending on enemy team comp. I could easily sustain constantly and skarner had strong base values and ratios back then so i was destroying other mid laners, along with the passive cdr with aa, i was constantly spamming abilities.

Then came the changes to fracture. YAY no more heals. The damage was the same but you couldn't really mid lane anymore because most mids out ranged you. So then i started to jungle skarner. Took a while to get used to. Once feral flare came out i thought about using it on skarner because the attack speed increases from q. I finally used it on him after riot nerfed the hp on hit scaling. Feral flare was devastating on skarner. I had feral flare, blade of the ruined king, ice born gauntlet, randuins omen, merc treads, maybe a mr item or a guardian angel. That build was letting me out duel anyone. The gauntlet allowed me to stick to anyone and deal more damage. I was extremely sticky and my damage was absurd. I've had an entire enemy team think i was hacking because they tried to kill me in the jungle and i was sitting there dueling everyone 1v5, the cdr on passive allowed for ability spamming, so my shield was constantly up and aoe q stacking with gauntlet was dealing massive damage to everyone around me. This was getting me pretty far in ranked.

All of the sudden I learned about the skarner reworks on pbe. after reading through the changes it seemed like it would be ok, but you couldn't really kill anyone. I decided to try it on pbe and i was very disappointed. Having a 0.5 second stun that doesn't have noticeable damage and was only usefull in late game once it became one second, why did it need a 6 second cool down time to stun again, it takes about 7 seconds to get 2 q + 1 e + aa to stun in the first place so along with that after the first stun it take about 13 seconds to stun again. Meanwhile udyr can just auto with bear stance every 6 seconds for his stun no problem and his stun already is one second and he out damages skarner. He even has a faster clear time utterly destroying skarner as a champion, udyr can also gank better since his move speed bonus is instant and can be spammed more. Why would skarners w move speed steroid need to be a slow ramp up he already has a hard time chasing. His e is not even worth using, its garbage, the only reason its ever used it for the slow, because at max rank it has a 120 base value with a terrible mana cost, cool down, and ratio, so its always the last ability to be upgraded. He no longer has anymore cdr on any abilities except on q, which for some reason had 4 passives to it. Without your q skarners useless. The movement speed was nice on q it helped being sticky, but with the reduced damage on it, it wasn't a reliable ability for damage. The only ability that wasn't changed was his ult. Skarner's ult and cdr passive is what made him skarner, but with the passive stun they turned skarner into a crappy braum with a really good ult. With all these changes they didn't do anything to mana costs. They weren't changed at all. Cooldowns were slightly reduced. but i still prefer cdr passive. This rework turned skarner into a brickwall with a minor cc and a hard cc who could also run fast. Malphite fits that description better and he does a better job at it, his slow is heavier and it deals actual damage, and his ult has a huge impact in team fights. Skarners ult is the only thing skarner has for teamfights. Sure he has a stun but good luck stunning more then one person in the duration of that team fight. Skarner can't go any path other than tank.

Sparchilé

I remember reading some about trying to make skarner auto less. I thought that was ludicrous with less damage on his abilities, it you actually tried to deal damage you would actually be auto attacking more. Later when the rework was released he was played in one lcs game, and riot was thought he was broken and nerfed his damage more. Destroying skarner as a champion further.

Venowolf1 votes

His W need some change's to make feel more like a unostoppable tank:

60/70/80/90/100 (+ 8/9/10/11/12 % TOTAL of Skarner health) and also make's some kind of tenacity buff. some like this: While the shield persists, Skarner gains 15% of tenacity.

I'l agree with the increase of the duration of his passive stun ,turn into 0.75/1/1.25 feels better, now that everyone have acces to the tenacity elixir the stun duration need some review IMO.

Terchio1 votes

Nah. Shields based on health should not be a consistent trend, in my opinion. It takes the focus off of building the shield, as it builds itself as you level. By level 13, the latest you're probably going to have a level 1 shield, that shield has already accrued up to 192 shield, and that's assuming zero health bonuses at all. It takes all the benefit out of leveling the skill, aside the wonky movement speed bonuses that come with it.

Also, as for the Tenacity, CC is his kit now. It should be up to him to grab the Tenacity he needs to land his kit, if he even needs it. Ideally, at least for the enemy team, they will not be focusing their harder CC on the non-damaging bruiser, but instead on his juicy carry. Afterall, everyone can nab an elixir...

insaiyanbacca1 votes

build triforce into tank and suddenly he is very damaging and tanky

Terchio1 votes

Triforce is not tank. It's 667g worth of tank on a 3703g item. The item has a ton of random stats, not any particular theme, but also has a defining passive and active. The passive improves movement speed, which Skarner mostly sees as diminished with his max around 50%, and his active adds a trickle more damage than any other melee that wields it. On the flip side, most who wield it well do need the movement speed buff, and additionally have an autoattack modifier on top of it, or an instant dash, or even an armor penetration ability, even all 3 (Vi, Xin). If you're getting Triforce for his high base AD value, stick with MegaGnar. The item is way too costly, and rarely pans out when your enemies have any sight whatsoever.

insaiyanbacca1 votes

see that your problem you want to build full tank, but full tank does not work anymore you need at least one damage item on everyone that you want to go full tank on thats why i said triforce INTO tank you buiild triforce for the damage then you build your tank items and it does very well also skarner uses nearly every stat triforce give the only stat it gives that he doesnt use is crit chance. if your building full tank the enemy team has next to no incentive to attack you instead of your carries if you have damage it makes you more of a threat to your carries which means they have to both worry about your carries damage and worry about you killing their carries.

Terchio1 votes

Don't pretend to be your assassin. It may win you games when both teams lack a viable one, but it will make you obsolete on games that are driven by assassins. You are there to stun and cause a ruckus, and without instant dashes nor a credible burst combo, you are forced to be a strong initiator solely. He doesn't have many viable combinations, mind you, but if you're going Triforce on him instead of Xin, Vi, Jarvan, Wukong, Poppy, Nasus, or one of the other initiators that could use some movement speed for their instant dashes or stronger on-hit effects with armor penetration, you're doing it on a sub-par character. Triforce was never good on him, and that's why he's constantly falling into obscurity.

insaiyanbacca1 votes

well considering ive carried many games using this build and become an unstoppable tank of doom im going to stick to it. you can stay with sub-par build your choice

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