Once again explaining the issue with the Skarner rework but in another way.

I have argued many times and made my feelings on this issue heard many times before this on how terrible the Skarner rework was. Having learned that they were going to, yet again, rework him because they realized it was a failure was offset by the fact that Repertoir has said that they like how well he's doing now that Dragon's are valuable and that they only intend for small changes.

This means that they still do not understand what the issue is with this rework and I am going to explain it again but with an example.

Let us say that Riot decides they want to make a point blank burst mage that's good against divers. Sounds like a silly choice yes?

But here's how they intend to do it, they make it so that all of his abilities do less damage the further they are from him, to such an extent that hitting with the very tip of your Q does less damage than his auto attacks. So suddenly Xerath's winrate against divers and melee champs is better than his winrate against ranged champs, people build him tanky ap with things like RoA and the new Hextech items, Riot deems it a success because now Xerath is doing what they wanted, he is good at super close range and bad at long range.

Now you tell me the obvious, this is completely ridiculous, Xerath is supposed to be a siege champ that has massive range, you haven't even changed his kit at all Specter, it's just made to be worse at range because of numbers. And this is exactly what's wrong with Skarner. His kit is not designed for neutral objective control, making it so his stats are terrible everywhere but around neutral objectives does not make him a good neutral objective controller, it makes him only useful around those objectives.

None of his skills are designed with the idea of controlling objectives and the rework was one of the shoddiest I've ever seen, it tried to make huge changes to how people play him with the least amount of effort possible by making his numbers better when near crystals and bad when not.

This is not something that can be remedied with small changes, either he needs to be redone to something like what he was before the rework or they need to completely destroy him and redo all of his abilities from the ground up. The last rework was a half-hearted attempt at making him different and another half-hearted attempt at fixing it will just result in further failure.

Please make my favorite bug great again.

http://i.imgur.com/wuvyekw.jpg

Edit: Someone has chided me for not giving my own solutions for Skarner. I admit, I too hate threads that just complain but don't suggest any solutions but ever since my application to Riot was rejected, I haven't felt much like posting ideas on the boards. Add to that that I have already given suggestions for this issue many times in the past and am tired of repeating myself about it and to no benefit and I think I'm justified in not posting any ideas in the OP. But I will do so now anyway since I had a discussion with someone else about how they could change Skarner.

One way to change Skarner is to make his ult capable of dragging his crystals but have it have a separate cooldown for using it on a crystal. This would allow you to SET UP where you want to put them so you could plan ahead on where you intend to fight. This would actually demonstrate some skill and require proper planing, both to set them up and to make sure you don't place one in a spot you could be zoned from. You'd have to reduce the range of the effects but at least this way you wouldn't be shackled to just fighting in the jungle.

Another thing would be to get rid of all the stat shit and instead make it so they give him utility or special effects on his abilities, the kinds of effects that would make him better at dealing with baron and dragon or maybe they'd give him his old passive on his Q again. Part of what makes the current crystals so bad is that they're just stat balls which is a lot of "invisible power" that Riot says they don't like.

Another would be to ditch the activation gimmick entirely and make it so Skarner's abilities, when used on the crystals, do more things. Maybe hitting his Q on a crystal causes it to ring out with a harmonic frequency that deals damage, or silences enemies for half a second, or maybe it slows enemies. Hitting his E on a crystal could cause a large beam of energy to shoot out towards the nearest enemy. Using his W while next to a crystal could apply his shield to all of his allies in range for half the value.

If we're talking about changes that involve the removal of the rock crutches, reverting him back to the version of him before the Juggernaut patch would be a fantastic solution that Riot would unfortunately never go for. So if it were something entirely different then perhaps make Skarner more like an actual scorpion, maybe remove his current ult and make his Q have him grab someone for a short time (Like .5 seconds) and make his E be a spammable short duration slow and his main damage source. Maybe make his W a crystal creator that has to be placed in the jungle or a bush and have it give him increased damage and so the idea is to drag someone to their doom into the crystal zone.

For now I'll need to stop since break ended but I'll continue this later.