Skarner's Rework - Flawless Masterpiece or Terrible Mistake? | League of Legends
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- čas přidán 14. 05. 2024
- At long last, Skarner's VGU has finally been completed and he's scheduled to be released very soon. But with there being so much buildup and anticipation for a once neglected champion, have they successfully retrofitted his old design into the modern era?
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#LoL #Skarner #LeagueofLegends - Hry
Now we wait 3 more years for Shyvana
In riots deffense, the main reason it took this long was old skarner was a fundamental of lols base code. Poor guy litterally carried the game on his back. So riot had to change the whole game for this rework
@@marshallneff1631REALLY?????
SKARNER WAS THE SOURCE CODE OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT?
i doubt it, she it's a dragon and so expected by the comunnity (specially chine who has the most relevance and attention from the directives of riot) so she will have it sooner
@@thelordofthelostbraincells he was part of the source code because of how old he is. Apparently a lot of champs were built off of Skarner’s code. So hopefully Shyvana will be easier to work on
@@thelordofthelostbraincells technically it is iirc. champions that came later than him with surpress ability literally borrowed code from him.
As a Skarner main, I think you hit the nail on the head when talking about his ultimate. Impale was so awesome because it let you get picks for your team, not because it was a CC ability. I'm going to miss being able to run super fast into the enemy team to kidnap their fed ADC and drag them straight into my team for a 5v1. That's what kept me coming back to skarner.
So what's gonna have happened now is we gonna drag the tank or peel the assassin/diver with the ult if we don't get cc'ed while in e
Atleast the skarner-thresh kidnap combo still works
It's not as big a change as AAtrox, but he's a pretty different champ now.
I LIKE the new version after playing 7 matches. But I didn't main the old one. I prefer the tankier vibe.
his e is trash
Agreed his old E R E was what got me into him now it feels like trying to control a garbage truck, it feels so bad...
9:53 You don't proc it once per rotation. You apply a stack of the passive. On 3 stacks the enemy os affected with DoT. And your every next attack refreshes the stacks → the enemy is still on 3 stacks → DoT remains if you keep attacking the target
Basicly is morde passive but worse
So its Mordekaiser passive minus AoE, damage, and movement speed?
But more damage in return.@@ViktorLoR_Mainu
@@ViktorLoR_Mainu but it's on a kit that has Skarners E, that leads into a guaranteed three hit combo instantly.
@@yargolocus4853 cause morde e doesnt nearly guarantee passive if you hit it
I think they did an overall nice job, although cast time for every ability was a bit too much. Hopefully they removed the w's cast time.
they did remove it on his W
I've already said it 😅
@@raistlinmajere1000not to be a grammar police, but if that’s what you meant, you should use “thankfully” instead of “hopefully”, as hopefully is used when you want something to happen in the future, and thankfully is for when you are happy something happened.
skarner got worsened. its not a cool crystal scorpion anymore, the skills are boring bruiser trash but at least his crashing through walls is cool.
Reminds me of I think of 2014 which I believe was the height of grammar nazis, I thought they were extinct cause of what came after called "context"
It's too early to speak.
But as a former asol main:
To all skarner mains most likely losing their speedy boi forever :
You have my respect and my regrets.
Skarner top main here, thank you
i used to play both champ before they got reworked
i just suck man
why do they think turn a skill require champ to a brain dead pressing Q is a good idea
and for skarner, he is not even the same
nah it's not the same asol still has his cool design, skarner just became boring gameplay and design wise.
@@jackthelarterns675my brother in christ old Asol didn't require any skill
He was one of the least mechanically demanding champs in the game
@@metalllich3493make me wonder what skill take the new asol then. Press e until late game and pray you make it there. They even add the funny execute mechanic on minion just incase csing is too demanding
Skarner gets a drastic rework and suddenly everyone is an old Skarner main.
This happened/is still happening with old Aurelion, too. I swear there's so many more justified reasons to be mad at Riot than this.
@@s0mniosidae this is totally true, back in the day nobody outside the pro-players and one-tricks played old aurelion, but alot of people was angry about his change, even if the champ now a days is more player than ever was, and for the skarner part, i was a skarner player and i find that the rework did everything alright (maybe not the passive) and i dont understand what the people are referring to "the champion loss his identity" what identity? being fast and clicking a stun cant be a identity, and the new one can do exact the same
i only played him a few times because zooming around was fun, but this rework looks so good, I might actually pick him up
@@giovannicampostrini6309 as an actual Asol player who enjoys the rework (was a one-trick, stayed a one-trick), I get enraged every time i see these shitters typing somethinh like "EEEW IT WAS A HARD CHARACTER NOW HE IS BRAINDEAD BAD RIOT GAMEZ RETURN PLEAZ"
Like, my brother in christ, you are the one who asked for him to get the rework in the first place, what the fuck?
@@giovannicampostrini6309 the point of old skarner was yes, just being fast and using a stun ability however new skarner DOESNT feel like Skarner.. they got rid of what made him unique to make him a very slow(compared to old and even other tanks and bruisers) gank oriented tank
I only occasionally play Skarner but i love his old play style, getting a shit stun of speed and just being tanky enough to rush into the enemy team grab someone and bring the over to your team for an easy kill
I also feel quite weird about Skarner's new Impale: the whole point - and what makes it different from Cassiopeia's R, Malphite R and such is that Skarner is able to pull champions back, consistently and quickly. Unlike Lee's kick or even K'sante Q3, he fully controls that ability and can enhance the displacement via movespeed - new Impale feels like a slightly more powerful aoe stun, which is more practical, sure, but not as distinctive that you feel much less safe if you fight near turrets against old Skarner
well you can still paly with phase rush/ deadman´s and ghost.
But Skarner's old R was precisely the problem ! It was so strong that, in order to keep the champion balanced, they had to nerf all of his others abilities. The goal of the VGU was to nerf the ult to allow his others abilities to shine.
Old Skarner has fantastic mobility, but his single target nature made him weak in the current meta.
I think Kit wise, his new kit is more in fashion to these days' league of a million dashes. Also, League's philosophy is out-play in contrast to it's billionaire competitor MLBB & Dota 2's counter-play philosophy. If u think about it, it does seem to follow that train of thought.
One thing I do hate about reworks are the new added cast time if not longer, they added a cast time for Mundo's Q for the same context.
Out of all reworks, Only Yi's Alpha strike and Katarina's E are the only ones that does not have a cast-time that's not a self buff
@@FrenchLegitimist meanwhile blitzcrank
This is skarner the champion with 4700 hp 329 armor and 201 MR. But most importantly has unstoppable a shield and goes over walls
Vayne has true max health damage. Camille does true damage and if fed is basically unkillable. Yone is a hyper carry that does magic, true and physical damage with loads of cc. You'll be ok with two suppressions.
He's at least a giant cool scorpion guy so I approve. Remember tank fizz? Can't be worse than that.
yone doesnt do true damage@@chancebrown3945
@@chancebrown3945 Vayne true.
Camile Single target dmg and can be killed in team fight pretty easily. Same as every other bruiser. Bigget threat in teamfight is her being able to kill adc or mage.
Yone again nothing to say.
But Skarner none of them cc you and drag you inside tower so Skarner might become most frustrating champ.
Atleast he not in Sg server yet.
@@chancebrown3945 ?
Skarner has been my main since 2015, so this rework has had me worried for a long time. I can't say for sure until I actually get hands on his new form but it sure seems like he went the way of Aatrox and this isn't Skarner anymore. They did keep threads from the old Skarner (AOE damage, the consistent shield, his R) but they seem like they were fully willing to throw the poor guy out and start over on account of his unpopularity.
Skarner's strengths in his old form was his mobility, lockdown and map control. His E was highly underrated as it could theoretically produce a full team stun when used right. Throwing an E out of a bush into a group of unsuspecting enemies, stunning them all, and then speeding back into fog of war was what made him so fun. He was simple, but could still play mind games. He forced you to understand the game macro and outthink/outflank your opponents.
It does seem like some of this aspect was held onto tho. His new E provides some of that same ability to make plays from fog of war, and the ability to combo E into R for a girthy single-target lockdown is reminiscent of the E - R - E combo he could pull off before.
I'm quite disappointed by the reduction in his mobility. Being able to zoom around the map was so much fun and allowed a lot of moments of catching the enemy off guard because they saw you mid and were certain they had more time before you could rotate, but an E - Ghost - Spire combo got you rotated to them in seconds.
All that said, I am actually excited to try him out. I've always erred more on the side of Tank with Skarner, and Nunu is my second most played champion so the E being similar is fun for me because it plays into a style I already know. Quite honestly my biggest gripe is the model and his skins. Earthrune Skarner was my favorite skin because it made him look like he was a part of Summoner's Rift. Like vines and a crystal had given the rocks of the Rift life. I was hoping they'd lean into that look with Earthrune and keep the stone and vines theme but instead Earthrune for new Skarner just looks kinda like Galio aesthetically. Missed opportunity.
I wonder is original creator of the character work with the rework or not. Many rework make me feel like it isn't.
@@poom323 Skarven rework made guy who worked on K`Sante and Smolder. He's fired now actually
The e was the best ability of old skarner and the movement speed + shield of old w. The e was really well design and as a top skarner enjoyer skarner was really good for trading people just didn’t know how to do it. Skarner e gives you your passive buff (attack speed, movement speed, mana regen) and the cooldown was reduced by the time your e stun enemy’s, so you could e into a minion wave + champion and auto fast the minion with your passive + regen your mana and then you hit the enemy and you already have again your e so another stun and then get away fast because w + passive that the e proc. With that you could actually push lane, regen mana, trade the enemy without the ennemy reacting because your passive makes you auto faster the enemy which stun him and then passive go away. Could do the process a lot of time because again passive proc with e which regen mana. And if you were in difficulty the old cheesy e r e into tower was there. With my e trading pattern I could go out of lane with 50 grasp proc whic gives a lot of hp.
League's philosophy is all about out-play in contrast to it's billionaire competitor MLBB & Dota 2's counter-play philosophy.
Since outplay is all about getting used to a champ's gimmick it's a huge pain/loss if they reworked it too differently or differently enough.
This feels closer and closer to a game that shutdown -- Bloodline Champions where everything is a skillshot that's not a dash/self-buff.
Out-play + rework every
@@googloocraft1217 E was stupidly underrated. It can zone, it can clear wave, and it’s the only reason I’d play Skarner support once in a while.
Was skarner support good? Nah. But with the right lane partner (veigar and ziggs paired well) you could pull off some really fun cheese. You just sit in the bush and threaten E constantly and use your bot spire to rotate up to mid. No one could ever call skarner flashy, but put an experienced skarner player on the champ and he was a stupidly reliable and versatile guy.
The best thing I can say in his favor was that for the entire 9 years I’ve played him I don’t think there’s been a single moment where every skarner player agreed on what the best build was. Every new meta we’d all try different stuff and it would all kinda work cause he was just a fundamentally good champion. Unfortunately League has drifted more and more into a game where the average player could not see the value and utility skarner provided
Almost no one cared about Skarner and now that riot made him a "regular" champion people are suddently in love with old Skarner. I think they did a prettt good job with him but there is always a posibility with him becoming the next Smolder/K'sante, that guy have some good concepts but goes to far
I think it would boil down to how tanky the new Skarner is. With all the CC in his kit if he was another unkillable juggernaut that would cause some problems
For me the old skarner just had a problem with his q dealing no damage and you can't lane with his cause his crystal spire passive.
really liked the boy and i have about 150 games on him but this doesn't feel that interesting to me.
do think people who like darius and sett might enjoy him though
The amount of people I've seen saying they miss "the crystal vanguard" or "he feels like a different character" is insane. Where were you when be was the least played character???
@@thejedisonic67 i dont think hes gonna end up all that tanky his only defense is the W shield he doesnt get any other passive sort of sustain or tankiness that most other tanks d
o (zac passive, ornn passive etc.) and neither does he have any form of active sustain beside the shield.
Like why he would be more tanky than old skarner. Like if both build full tank they are about the same in tankiness 😂
I think I agree about it feeling like an Aatrox rework. New Skarner is a good champion made great by being able to bring Skarner back into the game, at the expense of leaving the novelty that came with Old Skarner behind. New Skarner is a more tamed and self-contained, while Old Skarner was wild and unpredictable. It was fun scuttling into a fight with crystal armor going Mach 3 as a goofy ass crystal scorpion to then nab someone and drag them who knows where... but sadly that was it. The spires were neat but impractical and his Q underwhelming. We all kinda knew he would be a hard champion to rework. Overall, I think what I miss about Old Skarner was his silly little scuttling and unique gameplay, but I appreciate New Skarner for being a more playable and relevant champ.
My only hope is that new Skarner will retain the pokemon easter egg lol
There is absolutely no reason why they hat to take the crystal theme away. Everything from his theme to his lore to his abilities still works if he's made of crystal without tossing out what made him more than just a scorpion.
As a huge Skar Skar Skar fan since his reveal alongside Leona. I am greatly disappointed in the rework. I remember over a year ago it getting leaked, his ult would be Aoe, and i stated it would be a nerf. It's exactly that they forgot what the champion was about for this boring slow tank. I loved his map presence thanks to his mobility even before the spires and i feel this is nothing like the champion i love.
Aatrox 2: The Skarner VGU is a good way to describe his rework.
I love it on paper so far, it IS not the same character and you are right about the tower lock down cheese being less likely to go off smoothly. But I fully intend to yank 3 people under the pair of turrets as a clutch save at my nexus some time just to laugh, as they get buried in my spawning minion wave. Is it more niche? Yes. Is it going to make me laugh maniacally when I finally pull it off? Oh yes. I have yet to get to play him, but may come back with more input when I do.
Also, RIP crystal scar references. It wasn't perfect, but I had fun on that map usually.
Maaaaaan, finally said what I was thinking. Sure, the kit is fine and all, but I don’t feel like I’m playing SKARNER anymore. I loved my janky crystal scorpion. Going full tank, full AD, Full Magic Damage for cheeky Q Spam, etc. now it just looks like he’s jammed into the Tank Role with little hope of variety
It's just a modern Malphite rework. Nothing more, it's disgusting.
He just got Q AD ratio buffs we can cook
About skarner being able to ult over walls, he was always able to do that with his old ult, but the wall needed to be very thin, and you hardly encountered a situation where it was useful.
and you needed to have vision of your target...
As a Skarner main and lore enthusiast, this rework is a disgrace.
Gameplay might be well constructed for the character they wanted to create, but it is not Skarner.
The only thing that mattered to me was lore and characterization.
Skarner used to be a tragic hero forced to fight against greed of mankind and struggling with his pacifist nature, with a noble cause of saving his kind.
What rito gave us instead is just a Malphite2, but this time it's a random kaiju with paranoia. And they claimed this thing is more reletable than being a survivor of a genocide... This rework is not just a disgrace. It's an affront and indignity.
Look how they massacred my boy :c
Now skarner is out and we realise he is actually overpowered than before
@@LRsonic Yeah the last patch fixed some issues and that Q QoL made him not feel awkward anymore. Compared to PBE pre launch, Skarner actually feels good now.
uploaded 42 seconds ago???
LESGOOOOOOOO
Edit: after watching the video I somewhat agree on skarner feeling much more like he's lost a bit of his identity but I also think that it's probably for the best. Versatility in builds and how a champion is played is rarely seen as a positive by the community and leads to generally problematic designs.
Voli and Udyr are 2 great examples as some of the most hated champs by the wider playerbase due to being versatile and good as both high profile tanks AND great damage sources. Both are generally seen as "Love or hate" champs and that versatility to be good at both is something I believe is more than a small part of the reason. I definitely understand how it can be a bit disheartening for a champ to lose the ability to have multiple playstyles but I also feel like in a general sense that it's probably healthier for juggernauts or tanks to be unable to play well outside of that specific class.
As an old Skarner top main this VGU is really underwhelming. This new champion doesn't feel like skarner at all, they scrapped everything of his old kit and made a completely new one that visually resembles the old skarner. The way he plays, the combos, his role, it's completely different. Old Skarner could have worked just fine in this meta with a simple rework of q passive, nothing else was needed, especially not a VGU.
Its not a hot take to say that old Skarner is gone. My favorite aspect of Old Skarner was his movespeed centric playstyle of displacing a carry to your team across the map and having people question mark ping you on how you even managed to do that. Now that's gone and you just get kited by 200 years dash champions while you have the clunkiest charge ability in the whole game. Not to mention how they ruined his lore! Putting him in Ixtal basically just means that we won't ever hear about Skarner ever again since he went from being the main link between two important regions to being placed in a timeout corner of the least popular region...
Agreed on that aspect. The speedy boi is gone. Watch how easily Smolder kited him in the clips shown. And while Smolder is safe, he is far from 200 years of mobility. So now Skarner will have no way of actually locking down champs like Qiyana or even Riven who have really good mobility.
All things must change 😂. I play Zilean so it's so fun to pair with Skarner but also a super strong counter with Skarner. 99% slow from Zil E
@@DemonVermin riven doesn't even need to kite you, she just stuns you, then you die from everyone focusing you since it's the most stoppable ability rn
Nobody really knew how skarner worked since no one was interested in him. Thats why youll get question mark while a kayn doesnt
kind of has the same dividing problem with Morde's rework, and what I fear about Shyvana's in the future: sacrificing the original janky identity for a champion with arguably better, more cohesive gameplay and plan of attack... while sacrificing the gameplay identity of the character underneath to do so
100%. They are planning for future players instead of keeping old players happy. Cant really blame them but its so hard to see
Main skarner here, and i agree with you, this rework, although the kit looks fun to play with, strays too far away from the original skarner, feels like another champ (Yes i got mad because of the lore change too, it was really random for them to change like this). i'll miss building random items like na'shor's tooth, hexplate and trinity for him, but i won't mind letting those crystal pillars go tho, rest in piss territorial passive 💀💀
No it was not random they changed his lore beacuse of the fact that arcane is canon
@@pokemonlover4894 i know, but the thing is: they still could've fit him in arcane? like, they didn't even show the true origin or nature of the crystals. also, if they're finding a way to fit camille in arcane, then this doesn't make sense
@@wuzido2200 yeah but the problem is that frist of all hextech and the gates should have been made way before Jayce and Viktor where born plus the fact that Jayce and Viktor made hextech in arcane so this does not only mess up Skarner's lore this also mess up Camille's lore
@@pokemonlover4894I also feel because of Arcane, they purposely try to put him on the good boy side. Hextech coming at the cost of a civilisation would make him (if he knows about it) moraly ambiguous, and we can't have that for our protagonist.
@@LG555 yeah beacuse they cant have Vi,Caitlyn,Ekko,Jinx and Viktor have weapons that is powered by the souls/body parts of a almost dead species beacuse that would make them evil also now when Skarner is gonna what happens to Camille beacuse that is the reason she got rich
You're very right, this ISN'T Skarner anymore. Ive been saying this since they revealed the visuals/lore changes that this is a completely new character...sad to see his kit has followed suit.
Old Skarn was a beautifully flawed relic from the time when Taric's entire personality could be captured in one word "GEMS". He was literally an archetypal character with nothing making him unique aside of the setting of Runeterra letting him be both a living crystal and a magical mind meld of his entire race at the same time.
His aesthetics, however, were so clearly defined that if you saw a crystalline bug there wasnt a question of if you were staring at a weird Kha'zix skin you knew it was dat boi. And you knew what he was gonna do, hit a fracture stun into impale combo and pull you out of position with his superior movespeed from shield. Not to mention its just fun being fast as a tank, even if your effectiveness is locked behind going deep with only melee tools to back it up.
We could have kept ALL of that flavor and fun twist on juggernaut gameplay but for some reason now we have a flat, grey slate colored golem that vaguely resembles a 3 tailed scorpion. Thats all he is to me now, a dead knock off that replaced one of my favorite champions....imagine if Kog'maw or Cho'gath got this treatment with a VGU. People would flip their lids.
If we don't include the movement speed granted by his old passive, you do realize that his new version is faster than old skarner at pulling an enemy with his ult, right?
His old W granted 16% movespeed that doubled after a few seconds, while his new ult grants you 40% movespeed. All of this while now also being able to grab 3 people. The only thing he lost was 0.25 seconds on the duration of his ult.
@@darkbribe777wow his ult can hit three people!
It’s almost like the whole point of skarner was that he didn’t hit multiple people and allowed you hit one person and pull them out of position.
If I wanted to CC nuke a whole team there are dozens of people who do that better.
@@draketurtle4169 Ok then hit the ONE person you want to pull, if that's what you want. It's a skillshot.
@@darkbribe777Try pulling a SINGLE person out of 3 with a cast time of 0.5 and self stun
They should make him faster during impale, but based on how many people he grabs. So you can single out a target far away, or lock 3 champions in a team fight.
As one of the few people who liked to play Skarner before this, this definitely feels like an entirely new champion instead of a rework.
When champs like Aatrox got reworked, they at least had a similar look and vibe to them, even though a lot of the time their gameplay changed completely.
New Skarner on the other hand looks nothing like his previous incarnation and plays nothing like him either. I get old Skarner wasn't exactly the most exciting champ but there were plenty of ways to update him without completely changing him. Hell, a change of passive and a visual update would have done plenty to revitalize him.
At the very least they should have done a Traditional skin for him, because there is absolutely nothing left of the original Skarner in there.
This is how I felt with Karma back in the day.
Sion trundle and karma got a similar treatment, im not all for it though
Why is this a bad thing exactly? Especially to a design that, let’s be honest, had little to no following of any kind.
@@bulletcola7890 He did have one, it's just that Riot literally asked players who don't play Skarner if they want him reworked.
Literally dictatorship of the majority.
@@wallachia4797 not to mention that his old gameplan was legitimately one noted and boring. He just rammed people over and that’s all he does outside of stun chains.
His new kit actually has more skill expression, and has more to work with on top of just ramming his face into opponents unlike his old kit.
Also, the voting poll was basically asking everyone, including the mains of old Skarner to.
A change they could make to allow for more build flexibility could be to scale his ult's move speed with damage or lethality. That way, the intended tank build remains unchanged while introducing the original "beeline for one enemy and yank them away" build.
As a Skarner top player, at the same time I am happy he is getting a bit more independent as his spires aren't a thing anymore, one of the more enjoyable aspects was just being such a fast champion. Yes, there's dashes but only a few champions have a consistent high movement speed that plays into their kit, even if it isn't Hecarim levels of synergy, being able to combo people with phase rush and YOINK them out of their team or just get them to your tower was amazing!
I remember being able to remember the almost exact area where someone fucked up, that being when they reach those little banners you get from clash, if you're that far into the lane and there's no minions you're able to do the tower combo with phase rush with quite the ease! Now that he doesn't have as much mobility, I feel like he'll still be good and a whole lot better in top lane but it's going to have that feeling that you can't do shit after your E gets canceled. Like in the video itself, there's a clip of old Skarner getting stunned after ulting and he's able to run away after that goes wrong, and now, if there's no follow up to your ult you're very screwed if your team just keeps doing nothing.
His audience more likely changed, I'm still waiting to play him on live servers to be sure, but I'm scared that a champion I love so much isn't going to be something I enjoy anymore.
Also a Skarner top main here, hi :D
I agree with you, my biggest concern is that he lost his build variety and dmg capability, I played full dmg Skarner with Trinity,Muramana and then stuff like hydra, cleaver ,shojin etc. and its so much fun, but the new ad scalings seem to be really bad and you cant spam abilitys for Muramana anymore.
A while ago I came up with a rough idea for what I'd want new Skarner to be, I am not claiming to be a game designer and I already know I'm bad at league but I did want to keep how I play Skarner intact:
Passive: Crystal Shell
Every Few Seconds (reduced by taking damage) Skarner creates a chip point facing a random direction*, dealing damage to an enemy in that
direction chips it off, granting a small stacking shield and burst of movement speed and ghosts
Q: Crystal Slash
Slashes around him in a circle, dealing physical damage and max healthy magic damage. While under a shield, max health magic damage
is increased
W: Crystal Spire
Skarner channels in place, burrowing a crystal spire at its location and briefly revealing around itself. while inside, passive cooldown is
further decreased, and gains further movement speed bonuses. Spire has 2 health (based on level), enemies who hit the spire are revealed
briefly. The area of the spire cannot go over walls. Skarner can channel again ontop the spire to grant vision in an area for a moderate
duration, and granting all allies who pass through it in this time a shield and movement speed. Spire has 2-5 charges (based on level),
has a lifespan scaling with AP.
E: Crystal Dust
Scarner scatters crystal dust in front of him, dealing magic damage to enemies hit, slowing, and marking them with crystal dust. If skarner
auto attacks a unit marked by crystal dust, that enemy takes bonus magic damage and is stunned. If skarner hits a chip point on a marked
champion, crystal shell cooldown is fully refunded. Hard crowd control from any source of skarner refunds 1 second of this abilities cooldown
R: Crystal Prison
Scarner lunges his tail in front of him, grabbing and suppressing all enemies in a cone in front of him for a short duration. Skarner can
move during this and cast q ability, but cannot auto or use w or e abilities*.
skarner's rework E can also be stop by soraka's E even when he is already dashing
"Flawless Masterpiece or Terrible Mistake?". Impossible to have something in the middle.
Because it is anything but the middle. You either never liked him and are happy they massacred a champion that was never made for you anyway or you are sad they killed your champion just to please the normies who don’t care and will drop him and not play him anyway.
Skarner feels so werid to play now cause he feels so much slower. the E doesn't even feel like a increased movement speed.
I don't understand why no one talks about the passive. I understand that it kept him in the jungle, but for me it changed the game entirely. It made the map "new" as not only there were these new objectives but changed the way lanes could play. There aren't any characters in the game that change the terrain or the map in a way such as scarner would. It was such a unique concept that was cool.
Skarner could’ve been great with small changes like updating his passive and making Q activate his E. His passive could be that CCing gives an AS and MS bonus or spawns a mini crystal Trundle W where Skarner gains stats, but the enemy can walk out. Or if they wanted to be lazy, make a Hecarim copy but MS gives tank stats and not AD.
He was fast and nimble in a way that made him very satisfying, and his E was one of my favorite abilities in the game his new R is nowhere near as fun as the old one. I am sad to see him go.
Thank you! I’ve been saying the exact same thing as your final thoughts! I know they made some changes that reduced his slow and clunky feel in the rework (like removing the movement stop of W) but he just isn’t the same type of champion. The playstyle is so different that this is a sort of Aatrox-lite rework imo.
As an old Skarner OTP I’m glad you mentioned how they heavily nerfed or even removed the viability of him to be a bruiser. His build diversity was one of the reasons I loved him. He could go AD, tank, hybrid, and even had some good AP builds. I always wanted to play him as a bruiser unless I would’ve been useless depending on team compositions in which case I just went tank. Really nice and thought out video, I agreed with everything you said. ❤️❤️❤️
With New Skarner already getting AD ratios on his Q and E, I believe he has the options to go full tank or a more bruiser oriented playstyle. His kit leaves a lot of room for him to be a really powerful bruiser. Building Stride/Iceborne Gauntlet, with Sunfire Aegis, and building Bruiser/Tank from there seems really fun. And on top of this, I don't think you really emphasized that Skarner now has the full ability to play somewhere other than Jungle. He was almost always a niche pick Top, but was never meant for it. Now, he's incentivized to go jungle because of his ability to walk through walls, but that's about it. Beyond that, he's really got the chops to be a strong top laner/ support. I feel like a good skarner with a good build will make it almost impossible to run away from him.
The e was the best ability of old skarner and the movement speed + shield of old w. The e was really well design and as a top skarner enjoyer skarner was really good for trading people just didn’t know how to do it. Skarner e gives you your passive buff (attack speed, movement speed, mana regen) and the cooldown was reduced by the time your e stun enemy’s, so you could e into a minion wave + champion and auto fast the minion with your passive + regen your mana and then you hit the enemy and you already have again your e so another stun and then get away fast because w + passive that the e proc. With that you could actually push lane, regen mana, trade the enemy without the ennemy reacting because your passive makes you auto faster the enemy which stun him and then passive go away. Could do the process a lot of time because again passive proc with e which regen mana. And if you were in difficulty the old cheesy e r e into tower was there. With my e trading pattern I could go out of lane with 50 grasp proc which gives a lot of hp.
The movement speed and the shield spam made him smooth and fun and SHIELD IS THE ONLY THING IN THIS GAME THAT MAKES YOU TANKY, because there’s to much % health damage and true damage in the game so shield (healing too) is the way to go. The rework really feels slow and that’s sad because your just getting kyted which is FRUSTRATING, and with the old skarner you could dodge a lot of ability with ms boost which kinda makes you a LOT MORE TANKY and you could space perfectly + all in go away which reduced the time he was in fight and again his survivability. That’s why he was the only champ I felt tanky and fun to play
Hell yeah baby that castle crashers ost is smacking hard im too busy bussin it down to pay attention, is it the catfish fight? I can remember
Not a skarner main but I probably played him a lot more than most people. imo the rework totally changed what i liked about him. I also play singed so i like running fast and disrupting the enemy team, and Skarner used to do that but now he's just a generic tank. I also dont know when you'd realistically pick skarner over other tanks. He doesn't do damage and his cc is way too unreliable
I was a Crystal enjoyer. I’m sad to see them gone, and was hoping that some move spd was in place to compensate. Hearing that the spd build is dead though kinda soured my opinion on him. I’m sure he’s going to be more fun than old Skarner but he was like the happy medium between Warwick and Hecarim of Movement Spd Jnglers. Tanky enough with some sustain, but also Bruiser-Y enough to be able to build all Dmg and be a Hypermobile, Fast Assassin.
Imo I think his Wall Dash should scale with Move Spd to increase how fast (and by extension) how long it goes. Its slow enough to be interrupted yo deny it as a get out of jail free card like Kayn’s Wall Step, but lacking the build Diversity might make him feel restrictive
I personally want to see his old kidnapping back, and I think it could be done fairly with the way the new ult is designed (if nerfs are needed there are a ton of things they can change like cast speed, range, width, cd, cc duration, etc.)
I'd change it to where he can cast abilities mid-ult. E also gains max ms immediately if he hooks a target, or at least much faster ms acceleration. Meaning, if he doesn't use it to engage and guarantee the R, then he can use it to get a kidnap similar to old skarner, even over walls now (but riskier with outplay potential).
For balance, I'd say flash is disabled during R channel and cast, R cast time is a bit longer, and is only single-target again so it can be body-blocked and/or is less rewarding. Or, if losing the multi-hit is a deal-breaker, the E spd acceleration + bonus ms he gets on implale scales based on number hit. A single target gives the fastest speed, maybe a multi-hit SLOWS skarner, so you have to choose between a kidnap vs. area control.
Because his E is his only mobility now, it doesn't seem like the R>E kidnap would be oppressive. The only thing maybe concerning is constant slows from Q/W, but even that seems fixable (Q can already be dodged, if W alone is too reliable you can increase R cast time, reduce R range, or decrease W slow%/range). And if the E speedup is too much in lane, it can scale based on level.
I'm happy with new skarner, never played the old one outside of aram, and this one looks fun
Skarner had alot of identity issues, like, why was a full tank moving faster than akali, but new skarner actually feels like a tanky giant scorpion, he even has poison stingers as the max health damage from his passive is a dot effect
Old skarner didn't feel like skarner, new skarner feels like skarner
I mostly agree - but I think he'll be able to get away with building some damage. Sort of like Poppy - where she mostly builds tank but might build 1-2 damage items.
Skarner was one of the first champs i played when i entered the game (back in 2016, i even thinked he was a voidborn like reksai lol), i really liked the simple but unic mechanics of the champ, the cc chains, the variability in builds
but i dont feel that the rework did anything wrong, outside of taking the crystals off the champion and moving it to ixtal, but the reason for this would be possible explained on the second season of Arcane were they probably would want to give the hextech crystals a new origin not related with the literally genocide of a race of sleeping creatures
but talking about the abilities, outside the passive i find that all the abilities work almost the same, q being a physical damage circle around the champ but now adding a new mechanic turning it into a skillshoot, the w is still a shield that is related to the movility against enemy champs, the e is the cc/gank ability, and the r despite being easily avoidable is a pretty balanced "tank cc ult" for tf, people argue that is slow, so you want it to be instant like malphite ult?
i just feel that the champion needs more mobility, more mixed scaling in the abilities to conserve his build variability and most important a traditional skin that shows him in his crystal scorpion form
I agree with you on the point that new Skarner doesn't really feel like old Skarner and as someone who kept an eye on the rework and Riot for the past years, there is a long and somewhat easy explanation as to why he turned out this way. In his old lore it was explained that Skarner is basically the last of his kind and all the others are semi-dead in the form of Hexcrystals, which found their way to Piltover and is the cities powersource, almost all Champions from Piltover and even some from Zaun use them to power their weapons or themselves. This is obviously a highly interesting situation but since it's not known by almost all of them, it got never adressed, as a matter of fact Seraphine who knew got her lore changed so that she doesn't and stay the innocent little popstar.
Fast forward to 2021, Arcane gets released, it's a massive hit and a lot of non League players fall in love with the story and characters, but one thing got never adressed in the show, the origin of the hexcrystals.
Shortly after the release of Arcane up until now alot of things happened simultaneously Arcane season 2 was being pushed, the Skarner rework was confirmed and the Riot lore team decided to unify all of League lore. They decided to make Arcane canon and during this time most likely decided to completly remove Skarner from the hexcrystals in order for the Arcane cast to look better. If they hadn't changed it all of them would basically use enslaved Brackerns and Jinx would have already killed like 4 in the first season as a child.
After this Skarner was basically just a Crystal Scorpion from Shurima with an outdated kit. Fast forward to February/March 2023 and Riot reveals that they also scrapped the crystal part of Skarner, they pushed him out of Shurima into Ixtal and gave him Earth Magic.
So now he is a giant earth bending Scorpion in Ixtal. They then rewrite his lore and want to turn him into some kind off "horror" figure and turn the previous Brackern who was the last of his kind who only wants to save his kind from imprisonment/enslavement into a giant paranoid maybe even schizophrenic Kaiju-Scorpion who ... basically imprisoned and somewhat enslaved Ixtal for thousands of years to "protect" them from the non existent threat of the void.
On top of that from what I understand he is supposed to be similar to the earthbending badgermoles from Avatar: TLA who were the original earth benders, but atleast gameplay wise that doesn't fit him, since he only rips a piece of rock out the earth which he throws and digs through walls. Atleast to me that doesn't say original earth bending master, thats just a giant scorpion with powerfull pincers.
tldr: they completly changed his lore, home, race and gameplay. The only thing remaining is his scorpion appearance and name
If it makes you feel any better
Ixtal's impact breaks yone out of his E, being the only displacement type suppression
I never played him too much, but I like the old one more. Not enough of it left.
Any Rush type ability (Sion R, Nunu W) rarely has fair hitbox. And since most come with hard cc attached to them they become very frustrating to navigate, unless you're playing hyper mobile season 10+ champion. I don't hate the idea behind the kit, but I sure as hell am not excited to play against it.
As a poppy main who enjoyed playing old skarner top, I personally feel like it's a loss for the game. If I want to play poppy, I want to play poppy, and if I want to play skarner, I don't want to play poppy. I will really miss his old e and r, but I am hopeful that he will still be enjoyable to use with his split ad/ap ratios. Unfortunately, I doubt it since they stripped the ratios from both his q and e, but we'll see.
This new iteration looks really good, but I probably won't play him anymore. I like to run fast and he's lost that part of his kit in exchange for slows. I also like to mix up building for consistent dps or tank depending on the game which as you mention he seems to have lost in favor of being a better tank.
I'll have to give him a try with a Phantom Dancer and see if that helps. If not I am down to just Shyv as my main jungler, who's rework I am very afraid for. I hope they don't double down on the burst mage build. AP AOE Bruiser is my preferred build and what I feel is most likely to be lost.
Yone being released 8/6/2020 with 2 legendary skins and Zilean floating around with a disgustingly unacceptable model still makes me rage internally at every moment I remember that fact
As a skarner enjoyer i love the rework, feels like him to me but with mpre use cases. Excited to take him as a top brusier with titanic hullbreaker
It feels like the asol rework, made it look super flashy but took out the soul and put something else there
Fun fact: when riot plans reworks they usually ask otps for advice about what decisions to make for the rework. They didn't do that for skarner. And also, yeah, as a 200k mastery points skarner otp people tell me so cheerfully that skarner seems so cool now and all of that, but it's just that I like him mainly because his playstyle focuses on being fast, being annoying, while still tanky and doing nice dps and run fearlessly to the backline to kidnap enemy adc in teamfights. It's not only you who thinks that old skarner is gone, maybe for good when it comes to pro play and development of meta, but not for us 4 skarner players
Now the question how the Hextech work since Skaarner has no longer connection to Piltover
Arcane is officially canon, so...
they made arcane canon so they could get away with doing this VGU this way. i really am not happy with that decision but arcane is their new money maker, so they're gonna cater to that
As a Skarner main, I think the new Skarner has many more opportunities and not a dependable nature like before, but I would like him to have something as a memento from his old self. Like a mechanic that automatically summon the Pillar but not change his Q, for example.
Well, I would be happy just with the change in Passive and E.
My boy skarner finally got the love he deserves
Not love, they just replaced him with an objectively less interesting character. RIP Skarner may you live on in our memories
No@@Jedran275
At leats he got his revenge
@@Jedran275 for real.
@@Jedran275 The current design is way better than that purple freak they passed as a champion previously.
I really love the BASE default skarner rework, he's like a polished mineral shell but I wish they made the skins more distinct, like keep Sandscourge looking like a pincushion poisoonous red eyed scorpion instead of a machine for example, keep Earthrune actually being made out of nature instead of sculpted
Old Skarner player here. He is actually so slow, literally unplayable unless you stack movement speed or run ghost, as you can't properly chase or reposition, which is basically a death sentence for a dashless tank (a 16-second cooldown engage doesn't count). Not to mention that his cooldowns are so long, even when stacking ability haste. The only saving grace is that his ult becomes a 60-second cooldown. The bonus AD scaling doesn't even do anything because none of the AD items are that good on him because of the slow cooldowns.
as a skarner main i'm really gonna miss old skarner, what was fun about him was depending on team comps you could have really weird builds like crit or ap mid
I've mained Skarner since release, and the new Skarner doesn't completely disregard what Skarner was but I think it doesn't understand his fantasy well in regards to where the power lies in his kit. I've always thought throughout the different iterations that the main thing Skarner had was his persistence in sticking to an enemy, via speed boosts, slows and mini stuns which the ult also complimented by being able to drag people back to lengthen the fight. It's also why the crystal spires felt out of place, and the rework to become this high damage character who beats you down in his zone being a step in the wrong direction.
New Skarner E is a great upgrade and it finally gives him an in beyond just running directly at someone down lane, but the big rewards you used to feel once in are no longer there and I think that's what could be improved upon. Q should reward keeping for third hit by reducing Q CD, W should have a slightly longer slow so to allow for repositioning and make it feel impactful beyond applying a shield, and R should grant higher movement speed during it since that's actually what is fun about the ult.
Lower the damage and ratios to make him fair, but they should focus on the fun and reward of the kit rather than just making him powerful.
I was on call with my friend when we saw the rework. I heard his audible sadness that his speedy crab was gone..........and then instantly heard his mic piercing hype that he looked so cool.
As a skarner main I am quite disappointed. I am not a fan of the new ultimate at all. I loved being so fast grabbing the enemy carry and bringing them to my team. Also the build diversity is so fun with current skarner that losing this just makes me sad.
I mained skarner. Had 11 wins straight with him. Losses still got S. People didn't know how to use him or deal with him. I wish we could choose an option between new and old before que.
Something you pointed out in this video is what I fear will happen to shyvana with her vgu. I really like being able to go multiple different builds on shyvana: tank, mage and auto attacker. I fear they will flatten her down to one like with skarner here with tank
I've played skarner a whole bunch on PPE and I can safely say that I do not think he will be overpowered at all. He is extremely easy to kite, his engage tool with e is extremely easy to dodge or just CC him out of it, and his damage overall is very hemmed in by needing to just Auto attack. For those wondering, yes his best build is to just build pure tank and let the third q carry you to victory. He is a straight up tank and there is no doubt about that. Good luck!!
Edit: I forgot to mention The ultimate. Yes, it is by far the worst ability on skarner. I found much more success by just putting one point in it. Max q then w then e then r. It sounds weird but it's true. His ultimate truly is that bad.
I personally was always of the belief that they just needed to rework his passive. The rest of his kit worked very well, and fit very well into the niche of a straightforward and simple champion, a bit like Garen in that aspect. But his passive, and the massive power budget allocated specifically to the spire zones, was way too complex and restrictive for players that wanted something simple, while the rest of his kit was too straight forward for those wanting more skill expression. As his previous passives had been assimilated into his Q and E already, the first being a cooldown refund on attack and the second being applying a mark with abilities to stun, a reversal to his old passives seems impossible. Still, I would have liked to see if he could have thrived again with just a simpler passive that required less of his power budget.
And as it turns out, Skarner is terrible because he has almost exclusively tank scaling, no base mobility outside of E (which is slow as fuck), and a Q which relies on autos to deal actual damage but doesn't have a low CD, auto reset, or attack speed buff. Not to mention, similar imobile tank champions like Sion and Cho Gath are very weak at the moment, because damage options for tanks don't scale hard enough. At the bare minimum he needs is lower cooldowns so that building mobility and damage tank items won't feel like you are gimping his overall dps, and his Q needs to either have a reduced cast time or more damage.
Playing Skarner when he first had Energize (Reduce Ability Cooldown every auto attack) all the way into his Spires, I feel as though the rework Skarner attempted to implement every version of him into this one big collage of abilities.
tl;dr "Aatrox level" Rework Skarner combined the threat of pre-juggernaut rework Skarner with the gameplay of post-juggernaut rework Skarner. For those who played old-old Skarner like me, it's like saying hello to a friend whose been gone for a long time, to those who played Spire Skarner it's a goodbye for a long time.
Crystalizing sting was a three hit passive that would let Skarner stun an enemy and deal bonus damage, seen in his reworked passive where he now has a three hit passive that deals DoT instead of a burst of damage, arguably also found in his new three hit Q with a slow at the end.
His old Q would give him stacking attack speed on-hit, which is arguably slower than his new Q that just gives him attack speed outright. While I'd loved for Riot to keep this ability, eventually it became a way to trigger items and it wasn't really useful past that. The new Q feels more impactful that way while maintaining the old Q's shorter cooldowns, at the cost no longer as useful in procing sheen items at the very least.
His W being split into his new W and E is a choice, not one I'd agree with but I can see why. His W was really only useful to boost your engage and mildly useful mid combat where you're taking damage, with the amount of damage in league nowadays a purely defensive ability can consistently be out damaged unless it's absurd (Yone W shield, old Poppy passive + R.) Turning the shield component into a damaging ability that rewards you with more shields modernizes the defense aspect of his W, meanwhile the movement speed part of his old W being put into a purely damaging engage tool that encourages engagement modernizes the offense aspect of the W.
Of course his old E was just a slow with the stun part of it being added after Crystallizing sting was removed, which is now spread all throughout his kit with mass slows, stuns and pull. Personally the fact the tore apart Fracture this way is a bit lost on me, but I can see why they'd do so, the ability was by no means broken but it was far more impactful, second to his Impale. The rework E being reduced when you do go through a wall is also much less restrictive than actually procing crystallizing sting.
Post rework Impale isn't modernizing Skarner but the nail in the coffin in changing how he's meant to be played, rather than this tanky "assassin," you instead get this bruiser that would dive you, break you out of your turret range and then kill you with DoT securing the kill.
His spires, while fun, made him hard to play overall after the Juggernaut rework. It was a feast or famine passive that hinged on the spires being captured, without them he had his stats, his E and his ult. Though this is still present in how rework Skarner is portrayed. He takes up space in a fight, his CC cannot be ignored and his ult is incredibly disruptive, his domain is the earth and so he became the objective that his spires were meant to be.
Overall, I love new Skarner because it feels like Old Skarner who'd buy Sunfire and Atmas Impaler, I also loved Spire Skarner who could build a lot of different items. Every version I've loved Skarner and this one is no exemption.
I agree with what you’re saying about impale getting nerfed
When it comes to build variety, tank items are not as bad as brusers. I think they made the right choice.
I will miss his point and click ult, I heavily enjoyed holding onto my ult to screw over dive in assassins like zed, fizz, le'blanc...or champs that like to get stuck in and just spam CC in one way or another to win. Having a Yi dive bomb into my team to try and alpha all over faces, only to get stung and made to stay put as everyone beats him up was a fun 'screw you' to the stupidly high mobility theme that seems to be everywhere. His new ult is gonna be such a pain to land against some champs.
What if made his Q rock element based a bit like qiyana , if he take the rock from river or gras he'll get different effects
No, just remove the cast time and give it decent AD ratios
They didn't exactly do it but it feels a bit like Aatrox rework. Not really though, but similar vibes, when it comes to losing identity.
He looks very cool though.
More like a Swain level then
@@FranciscoJG yes, thanks for correcting me. That's actually closer to what I was thinking.
Since his release I have always mained skarner...
I Miss my Kind...
maybe u can't rush down a champion from the front and then drag them away, but maybe u can sneak from behind, use E to push them towards ur team and then use R to keep carying them towards ur team. It is different and there are trade offs well have 2 see if its worth it
Opticly? New Skarner is pure prawn. Gameplaywise? I already have a few builds in mind I'm gonna try before judging, since I haven't played him yet. But I'm deeply happy to see that rito finally got something done for once.
I already miss old Skarner, he really doesn't feel like Skarner anymore to me
Personally i think changing HP based damage to some hints of AD/AP ratios may be enough to change his build flexibility like old skarner
Can confirm E is more useful when already standing next to them. I've played Skarner support a few times now, and the disengage/turn around potential is insane. The amount of times I pulled an E-360 wall stun in one game was stupid.
Skarner M7 pre rework here: very good analysis of the rework’s impact on skarner’s playstyle. The lack of movespeed which separated him from other tanks and which allowed him to build with such versatility is lost to the generic “good engage” tool. While he is 100% more viable and interesting, just like you said, it’s not skarner anymore, just a “skarner-like” 2024 tank
its completely fine, if you think about it we also lost full ap siom with the rework, but that playstle was cheesy and unhealthy, just like skarner 4 sec cc near a tower but very useless without a tower
As a Skarner main with 1 mil mastery, it’s sad to see him being more pidgeon holed into a tanky role. His jungle also feels lame because his fast pace is gone. His E cd is too long to really make up for that. I also think his E feels bad because it only does damage if you collide, making it useless against grubs, herald, baron and dragons. I like the visual update, but for this to take 26 months is kind of pathetic.
The should’ve kept the one target impale but made it a ranged skill shot similar to xin zhao W. Way lower cool-down and slightly wider hitbox, would be interesting
One thing i thought right when they revealed his kit is that having AoE slows on both his Q and W is kinda redundant. I wonder if they could have given his W something like bonus MS scaling with how many enemy champs it hits.
I just really really really want some game mode or sub-game where we can simply olay the champs as they were before if we so wish.
Unfortunately, now you know how I felt when they changed Evelynn. There was so many ways to build older Eve but then nuked her to only being able to build one way and that's it. So now that's two of my og mains that have been changed for the better (and worse)
The kit has a lot to like, but itts really really cluncky right now, it needs some animation speed ups or give him some increased base AS, his Q throw doesn't go very far and I would like it to operate more like gnar q where it explodes at the end of the path regardless of landing a hit. The biggest issue is just how easy it is to kite him. There's a solid framework and I am sure he's strong in the right hands but he's really pointlessly cluncky especially for a new champ
One "solution", make him less clunky depending on the build for faster CC and movement, so building attack speed and maybe a deadman's plate he can do some old skarner shenanigans with the trade being he his less tanky, his kit still exposes him a lot but it could be woth it. That would involve a massive change on his scalling but come on Riot, Yone exists, let people have fun.
I hope we start seeing him being played as a support.
I completely agree with you at the end. It really seems way too different from original skarner and especially his ult feels much worse. In my opinion if they made all these changes but left his ult the same as before it’d be fine. That channel time ruins it with how mobile the usual targets are (assassins or caught out carries)
Give him ap scaling in w and ult, so he can build lichbane and cosmic drive, the run phase rush. There we go we got speedy skarner back
Skarner is my most played champion and has been my favourite for the 4 years I've played this game. The rework looks so fun I want to cry with joy.
12:06 ty don't see enough people bring this up
Damage and numbers arent a design flaw per se. They can be adjusted quickly unlike core mechanics of kits, like K'sante R.
Oh and, sure. Maybe he lost his identity. But his Identity was "go in, R, go out". He was literally the tax collector, single handedly driving up QSS purchases. I myself think it is a good rework, giving purpose to a champion, which didnt really have one before.
I have the same feeling like Morde rework, Abilities is fine but worng replacement make fun aspect of old version completely gone and become boring champion.
I feel like Riot should replace new E to W instead and keep a kit of old E, which is one of the most fun aspect of old Skarner. You can use it to cc enemy, deal damage, gain movement speed, catch up enemy, clearing wave or camp, hit and run poking, by changing the way to use it via differ positioning and targetting.
The one change I would do is to make his W give you move speed for every enemy you hit instead of slowing them, so it doesn't feel so clunky in teamfights