Skarner rework: Why it doesn't work

Hi, I'm CaptainFlowers, and I love Skarner. I climbed as high as diamond 2 last season, largely thanks to my favorite purple scorpion. I loved his original version with the permaslow on Q, and I enjoy playing his current iteration just as much. It's because of how much I enjoy this champion that the newly announced "rework" has me so worried.

IDENTITY

Riot claims that "each champion in League should feel distinct from one another," but Skarner has always been a distinct champion. That alone is part of why he's not frequently part of the meta. Skarner is a champion that is very good at some things, and very bad at others. The meta is defined by the champions that are the most efficient and effective at their given roles. These champions often have a variety of tools available in their kits, especially in regards to those that are mostly played in the jungle. Skarner doesn't have nearly the number of tools that the meta junglers have at any given time. One of his most glaring weaknesses is his lack of a gap closer in a game that is increasingly dominated by mobility. What he does have however, is a unique identity as a heavy melee threat with one of the strongest lockup abilities in the game. He has a hard time getting on top of champions, but once he's there he can inflict high amounts of sustained damage while enduring plenty of punishment himself. His ultimate offers an opportunity that no other champion in the game can offer, and can turn a game around if used at an opportune moment or an out of position enemy. Skarner struggles incredibly hard vs champions that can kite and evade him, while excelling vs those that can't. But that's part of his identity. He's not a jack of all trades.

EARLY GAME

Specifically in the jungle role, where he's primarily played, Skarner's ganks before having his ultimate available to him are lackluster. He doesn't have hard cc, and he's a champion that has almost 0 burst in his kit. His early strength comes from his ability to duel other champions. He can defend himself in his own jungle if he's invaded, or he can position aggressively and try to invade or countergank the enemy. Once he gets his ultimate, he becomes a force to be reckoned with, forcing a kill or a flash almost every time its off cooldown.

LATE GAME

In teamfights, Skarner is unique because of how persistent he is. He opens the fight with his ultimate, hopefully grabbing an important target and dragging them to their doom (or close enough to it they have to flash away after it ends). After that initiation however, he can function equally well diving onto the enemy or falling back to help his allies. His main damage tool, Crystal Slash, provides attack speed and movement speed bonuses for continually proccing it on enemies, and is on an incredibly low cooldown. With Skarner's tendency to build cdr through tank items, it gets even lower. His powerful shield can enjoy nearly 100% uptimes with 40% cdr, allowing him more mobility on the battlefield provided it isn't broken, and even more mobility than that when combined with the bonuses from a stacked Crystal Slash. Because he's not dependent on movement abilities, dashes, or blinks to move around, and because his damage comes from his constantly activated crystal slash (usually augmented by a trinity force), he can switch targets in the blink of an eye with no loss of efficiency or momentum. When other champions have expended their cooldowns and are busy repositioning, Skarner is wreaking havoc.

CHANGES AND PROBLEMS

This proposed rework for him however, makes it difficult to achieve any of this. Various aspects of Skarner are being changed around to accommodate a new passive that seems to be mostly just a gimmick. It's a "unique mechanic" that exists just so they can say Skarner has one, without actually answering any problems he has.

CRYSTAL SPIRES/ZONES OF CONTROL

I'll start with the most glaring change: the crystal spires and the zones of control. Skarner receives massive movement speed, great attack speed, and % based mana regeneration within these zones. What's not to love right? Well, as it turns out, there's a lot. The zones can be captured by enemies, giving them both gold and a (brief) vision radius around the spire. As has been brought up by many others who read the changes, this can be disastrous for both Skarner and his team. Enemies can now invade your jungle, capture your spire, and see if anyone's nearby, claiming gold for themselves as a bonus, all because you picked Skarner. The zones themselves are also moderately sized, but considering there are only 6 on the map, this passive feels incredibly niche at best. You'll never have it active during a gank simply because there are no zones near the lanes. They actually encourage the enemy team to counterjungle you due to the advantages they can get from capturing the spires. CRYSTAL SLASH AND MOVEMENT Crystal Slash is seeing its base damages removed and set to a ratio of total attack. Based on normal Skarner builds, this actually isn't too big of a change. The skill currently does 20 damage at level 1 and 60 at level 5. With the proposed rework, Skarner with 70 AD at level 1 (base + runes/masteries) will hit for 22.4 per Q. A level 18 Skarner with 170 AD (base + runes/masteries + trinity) will hit for 68 per Q. These look like improvements, but the damage issue here is the fact that the original bonus AD ratio on Q's uncharged damage, which was .40, is going to be completely removed. This results in Level 1 damage being slightly lower, while level 18 damage is also less, but by a higher amount. Of course, the more AD you build, the more effective your Q's will now be, but Skarner isn't a champion that wants to build lots of AD. That doesn't work on him. He needs to be fat to do his job. He wants to build tank and cooldowns, with a trinity for damage so hes still a very real threat to an isolated carry. The nature of big beefy champions without gap closers, or juggernauts as they're called now, is that they're brick walls that still threaten damage, not damage dealers with a defense item, maybe two. Speaking of gap closers, remember how Skarner doesn't have one? That means that his ability to get onto enemies and threaten them is dependent on his ability to run at them fast. This rework is completely butchering him in that regard. Not only is he losing the attack and movement speed bonuses in crystal slash completely (likely due to them being "made up for" by the spire zones that most fighting won't be taking place in to begin with), but he's also losing 15 base movement speed. This is an absolutely massive nerf. Currently, 18 champions are faster than Skarner. If he loses 15 base movespeed, there will be 74 more added to that list. Fiddlesticks, Lucian, and Swain will all be faster than Skarner, as well as 30 of those 74 having some kind of dash/blink mechanism. Skarner will have no way at all of sticking to any target that is smart enough to force a fight outside of his spires. Also, Crystal Slash's cd is being reduced, but the cd reduction on autoattack is reduced as well vs all non champion targets. This means he can get off more Q's vs champions, but his pushing and clearing speeds will be almost the same. A final, nice buff to the skill is that the mana cost will be going down. Although not super important in the jungle, as Skarner picks up blue buff for his initial clear and can solve his mana problems almost entirely with a trailblazer pickup, this is actually a really nice change for toplane Skarner, a niche pick that can work in some matchups. I mean, it would be, except for the fact that there are no spires in top lane, so I guess Skarner can't go there anymore since he has no steroids outside of spire range.

CRYSTALLINE EXOSKELETON

Skarner's W is being changed from a flat base value to a % of his total HP. While this results in his early shields being roughly the same, his lategame shields will be much stronger. This is a buff, but at the same time it directly contradicts the changes to crystal slash, which seem to encourage players to build more AD in order to continue being a damage threat.

FRACTURE

Skarner's slowing line missile will now last .5 seconds less and slow down for each enemy it passes through. On its own, this is a nerf, but combined with his nerfed base movespeed and lack of movespeed buff on crystal slash, it makes the dream of sticking to an opponent all but dead outside of a spire. His old crystal venom passive has also now been moved to Fracture to make way for the new bullsh unique crystal spire mechanic. As a sort of compensation for reduced slow duration and multi-target missile speed, the spell now applies a more potent venom to enemies it hits, and following up with a single auto attack on marked targets within the next 5 seconds will stun them immediately for 1 second while dealing some bonus damage. I believe these changes are the biggest violators of Skarner's identity, the one that Riot seems to think doesn't exist. If this change goes through, he will have more pre 6 gank potential due to only needing to hit the first auto for the stun to proc, but Skarner has never been about having strong early ganks. Not all champions need to be good at the same things, or be strong at the same points in the game. At the same time, he loses that ability to seamlessly transition between targets as the game progresses without losing his momentum. Miss your E? Use it on someone else? Well, you can't apply poison to a new target now; you need to wait for E to come back up and try again. He loses that relentless feeling you get from playing him and applying poison to everyone around you with Q, then stunning whoever you catch, or whoever is brave enough to step up and try to hold you off. Instead he turns into another Elise trying to stun you with his E, except he has to autoattack you afterwards.

IMPALE

Skarner's signature ability is seeing a minor change. The base damage is going way down while the ability gains bonus damage on both start and finish equal to Skarner's total AD. This results in the ability doing overall more damage, but at the same time, it encourages building more ad on him, which was never what Skarner wanted to do. When Skarner builds greedy and chooses AD items over tank items, even if those items are bruiser-y like hexdrinker or black cleaver, he'll find himself dying too quickly in fights against opponents who know to target him down and take advantage of his lack of mobility.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Riot is using this rework as a chance to try out something really quirky and new on a champion that isn't very popular in its current state. The cost of this is that this champion already has a unique role in the game and this "rework" will dismantle his ability to duel early and create space or threaten carries in teamfights later on, unless those duels/teamfights take place on top of one of 6 designated areas. In League of Legends, you're supposed to feel like you're playing on equal footing with other players. You play different champions, build different items, but at the end of the day, you're supposed to feel like you outplayed the enemy and deserved that win. This new spire mechanic on Skarner turns him from a playable character in a moba to a trash mob from an MMO. The spires have the potential to be used to outplay my enemy. At the same time, my enemy knows that I'm weak without them, they know they can exploit them to gain an advantage over me, and they know that if they play around the spires correctly, I'm incredibly weak compared to current Skarner outside them. Please Riot, consider what you're doing with Skarner. Scrap the crystal spires idea. I'm sure plenty of dank custom games like Hide n Seek or Protect the Soraka will be spawned from playing around with the spires, but I'd hate to see my favorite champ become nothing but a harbinger of minigames.