I will forever miss building max ms, running up to a guy at mach 20, giving him the middle stinger, and dragging him back so my 4 teammates and I can jump him.
Even being on the receiving end of a speed skarner was fun cause every time you knew his ult was up, your team had to figure out who was getting yoinked at the speed of light
For me the main problem is that riot THOUGHT that his new ultimate is really powerful so they took power from him from everywhere essentially, when actually his new ult sucks ass. When will you ACTUALLY need to pull 3 people into your team? The old ult was powerful exactly because it could ISOLATE one important target so your team could delete it, thus maiing every fight a four vs five. Pulling 3 people into your team only makes your stupid team be confused as who to focus, and then you are stuck with 3 members of the enemy team in the middle of yours
the new ult is good. its just worse compared to champs like amumu. If it did dmg so that solo ulting in a 1v1 had value I'd be satisfied. My only issue is that it does no dmg. Also that my team misses all there abilities while im moving them. I basically have to stand still or they'll miss everything
This, basically. Having 3 people inside your team's area is basically the same as fighting them head on or worse. Now some teammates are surrounded by enemies as well, so the net advantage is zero.
There was also that Zac rework to his ultimate where he squished himself down spreading out and then pulling all enemies on top of him with him in the direction. Which got reverted obviously.
@@JoViljarHaugstulen That Zac ult rework was the most fun I ever had on an already fun champion. It's a nonsense comparison to the actively harmful Skarner ultimate of today.
because non skarner players don't want to play new skarner because the champion is forced to be bad because of competitive play and old skarner players don't want to play new skarner because it's not skarner, what a great rework
I loved Skarner and played him since it came out in 2011.. It actually has 4 versions now? Each one making him less popular immo.. I did play the crystal spire Skarner as last reserve pick but never the new one. I can't understand why they keep reworking it and completely overhaul the kit (except ulti) all the time, while minor tweaks would've been so much better.
@@kalebdavis7080 What makes the entire thing worse is that the crystal-capture passive was only added in the first place to attach him to the crystal scar after the map was removed a map which wasn't popular due to Riot's own mismanagement. In a way, the history of Skarner represents everything that went wrong with league over the years - continually putting bandaids on real issues but massively overhauling for minor issues.
Its a casual champion review not a vgu video. Still im highly against his cass redesign mainly because it dosent tak eher personality to account and its that shes a selfabsorbed noblewoman who thinks shes a hideous monster despite it not being that drastic. Noblemen are arrogantly self-absorbed that any change or exposure of their true self immediately makes them cry. That the truth
As someone that played Skarner from Season 8 to when he was RW, this is the most concise way I've heard his decline explained. Skarner was the champion I felt most comfortable playing in LOL PERIOD. No matter the lane, I could play him. Autofilled? No problem. I honestly felt like he was idiotproof in terms of his build path because I knew his kit so well that I could build him however I wanted. Nothing felt better than baiting an assassin into diving you when they got hit with an E, Ult, E combo..locking then down for 4.5 secs. 6 secs if Everfrost was around. Full AD Skarner was a menace. Prowler's Claw was HILARIOUS. Full AP Skarner had an unbreakable shield thanks to his 80% AP scaling on his W. Protobelt actually worked during his ult too. This is one of those times where honestly I'd want Riot to just revert their changes to a champion entirely and go back to the drawing board. Skooch honestly had the best Skarner explanation vid out there.
@@motivateddad Don't even get me started on him. I literally cried when he, and old Morde got reworked. The version of Trox DIRECTLY before the rework was the best version of him we ever got.
its because it's pretty much a "delete an old champion and replace it with someone of the same name" type of rework. he went from a speedy tank that can lock down one particular person to a clunky raid boss with predictable abilities and significant delays on his abilities. not to mention retconning his relations with hextech crystals which left a sour taste on many lore enjoyers
TBH they should just uncapped his MS on E to make him speedy again. his fast movement WAS what skarner is most known for. Fastly engage on enemies and drag them back to your team. He used to be one of best lock down champions in the game. Its like they focus so much on his ult to be multi target they forgot to make him reliable. At least that's what i expected in that direction they will take him, but i was mistaken.
@@toastedmarsh6185 Because his E alone eats his power budget. Skarner E is a displacement ability (which is unaffected by Tenacity) that goes through walls that can stun you if you touch a wall while he Es you. In fact unless it's been patched Skarner E can interrupt Yone's E2.
@@riven4121 yeah exept you move 0,0000001 units per second when you start , it has small hitbox that you can easly dodge and if somebody has someone has stun you cant use it
As a Skarner Main going on 2 years, this is legit the BEST explanation of what failed with his rework. Thank you very much for explaining this for the mass majority of people. I miss the old Skarner Support build i was able to play. It was so funny to be an enchant skarner that somehow still worked even with no passive in the botlane
Bruh all of his old abilities were so charming to me. Q is low cooldown damage ability. W is one of the rare shielding ability that ACTUALLY scale with HP and E was super fun to play with. I didn't really like his ult but it has a use whenever i fall behind and can't solo kill(just grab the carry). He was the best user of the frost armor
@@supe_novalegit that damn passive was the one thing holding him back from being a relic of the past in terms of balance, I truly feel like they could’ve come up with something else and kept the rest of his kit
I feel like if they added a MS opportunity to his E and allowed it to travel further based on how much MS he had (similar to Warwick ult), he'd be a lot more versatile and viable in jungle.
God I miss old Skarner. He was pretty much the perfect Jungler for me. The dueling power of Trundle. The speed of Warwick. The CC lockdown of Leona. A mobile Malz ultimate. He even had max health split damage that indirectly scaled with attack speed. HE WAS THE PERFECT JUNGLER. God I miss the Crystal Vanguard...
@@tareyus2977people like to romanticize about the old Scarner but here's the thing. As soon as key targets got cleanse/qss he became obsolete and beyond useless.
@@toniyakovlev4403 You know this is a team fight game right? He's not the only one with CC. You know cleanse has a cool down right? One much longer than Skarners Ult. You know Skarner still has his E right? Don't pop the stun still they use cleanse. You shouldn't be anyways.
@@tareyus2977 oh I certainly know since I was playing him since S2 up until S10. He was a cool character that is unfortunately beyond useless when the enemy has any form of QSS.
They removed what made him unique as a champ, his passive, and made him a normal tank Therefore, no need to play that since you can play any other tank on the game and reach similar results He got nerfed, so he doesnt do the same damage as ksante for example, his ult is hard to hit on many targets so why play him instead of zac or something like that He doesnt tank that much like Sejuani or Rammus, doesnt have speed like Udyr He does a lot of things but he’s now like a duck. It can fly, walk and swim, but he does nothing exceptionally well to be considered
thats probably what riot wants tbh. champion identity isnt even a thing anymore for riot, at least from my observation. look at the recent champions they released, aurora, briar, smolder, hwei, naafiri, ksante. they all fundamentally play exactly how their class is meant to be played, with some differences to make them unique or give them their own little niches. hwei has multiple spell options, ksante's ult temporarily make him a skirmisher, naafiri has dogs. and thats it. theres no more innovation anymore. the unique champions that do exist are casted aside because theyre "outdated" or "too inaccessible".
@@inbeing3464I like how we go from “the champion is overload, they should respect the class system" to “ the champion is way too simple, they should go crazy and not respect the each class limit”. I honestly rather have them respect the class strength and weakness, while still make them feel unique compared to other within that class than whatever the fuck that is in 2020 to 2022 with no respect to class boundaries.
ngl the passive was the one thing that was incredibly unhealthy for the game, apart from that his old kit was perfectly fine imo Its just terrible champion design to have something with so much impact as skarners old passive in the game while you cant actually have any impact yourself on it (for example, if both junglers start bot their first fight will be around top scuttle, iirc the crystals unlocked at like 1:10? which means you have to rely on your solo queue top laner to capture the crystal for you because you wouldnt be able to capture it yourself and start your jungle at 1:30, and if it so happens that your top laner wont capture the crystal for you, you are instantly gonna lose that fight/you will have to give up scuttle for something that is entirely out of your control despite being part of your champions identity
I used to play him for his unique look and story. They changed those two things, and I refused to play him after that. I don't get why they would change the crystal part. It is literally what made him unique. Every other crystal-themed champ is healing or magic.
This right here. There was no reason to remove the crystal theme when its just a cooler and more unique version of earth magic. And his unique story with hextech was so interesting and had so much potential. Even with Seraphine in the game. Giving her the ability to hear the brackern and making it her mission to help skarner when she understands whats going on would have made her a much more interesting champion. But i guess being assosiated with old Skarner would be a stain on her plastic doll personality that riot invisioned for her in league...
You are the small, small, small minority who cares about lore. For every one of (((you))) there are 1000 more Asians that only care about meta and winning.
Riot needs to see this. They pushed him to be a "juggernaut" but lacks the damage, and tankiness to be one. Darius gets HP back with his Q, Skarner gets a 8% shield. Darius passive can kill you from full if you aren't careful, skarner's "burn" can maybe secure a minion if you're lucky.
Darius is a bad example because he has 0 mobility or utility, trading all of it for damage. Skarner is a tank with a long engage ability that ccs, a cc ultimate and two poke abilities. He is much more similar to sejuani than to darius.
The worst part is that now that he isn't overtuned anymore and with the rework out, riot will not give a shit about fixing him any time soon. I strongly belive skarner's VGU is like top 3 worst in the game, they took over 2 years to release it, he ended up having nothing super unique to justify that delay and completely killed the identity of the old one.
The delay was cause the moment they removed old skarner, the whole game crumbled since so many systems were connected to the files of old skarner. This is what happens when you do not make a full rework of the game to improve systems.
The delay was unironically because riot had no direction on Skarner. They didn't decide on his looks or lore until over a year into the VGU because they utterly deleted the entire champ even from lore. Then Riot fired the narrative team XD
I fermly believe that the only problem skarner had was the fact that he didnt fit in what the game has become. I always bring out his old kit in this argument because if your read it to someone without saying who you are talking about, they would definitely think of a post season 11 champion, but still, he could not truly be a champion in league, and also the fact that he was probably the least favorite of everyone didnt help. So when they rewoked him riot didnt bother to just throw him away, turning him whatever he is now. At least with someone like udyr they tried to simply redesign him for a modern League, but with skarner they simply replaced him, i may be a crybaby for hating on the rework so much, but this was no rework, this was the death of a champion that i truly loved for how unique he was. No resemblance, absolutely blank gameplay with no variety and he is still an underpicked champ, if this is what became of him, just go back to the old one and try again with actual care this time riot. And with that said, R.I.P skarner, the Crystal vanguard, 2011-2024.
Yeah, that is precisely how i feel about aatrox rework. The new aa is absolutely nothing like the og, even though the new one is good. I loved to play him, his abilities actually costed health so you has to be careful on how to use them, his w being either a damage amp OR a heal was really fun, cause it was up to you what would be best at the moment. But the worst part of new aatrox is that, when he released, he still had the essence of old one (his revive passive/ult) but then istead of adjusting the rest of his kit they decided to remove the revive completely, thus truly KILLING the old aatrox. Dont get me wrong, there were some older champios that REALLY needed to just be worked from scratch, like old sion. But for most champs this is not the case
@@NeuviletteBRat least when you look at Aatrox now, it still looks like Aatrox. Skarner was a crystal scorpion: A unique design, found no where else. Why would the toss out his looks?!? I can't think of the new rework to be Skarner, at all.
@@YesThisIsCrass yeah, that is totally fucked up, the crystal motif was really unique, and then they made a scorpion kaiju that looks like something out of american godzilla movies
There were SO MANY THINGS you could do with old skarner. His entire playbase, no matter how small it was, was full of people ready to invent a new tech on a whim, depending on the game. I've been rolled by an on-hit lethal tempo hypercarry skarner once. With triforce and black cleaver, you could be a good dps/bruiser while keeping a lot of the movement speed aspect of his gameplay. His new abilities aren't bad on a simple premise scale. Really, they're very cool in concept and work well in tandem. IN CONCEPT. Q's cast time is bonkers. E having absolutely no way to modify it completely negates any amount of ingenuity. W has both of these issues. The passive is completely uninteractive too. The R would've been very good on old skarner. The cast time allows for counterplay; preventing skarner from moving also gives a window of counterplay to it; it forcing people to stay in the direction they were grabbed also negates the glitchy turnaround techs you could do with old impale; and it keeps relevancy by being able to hit multiple people... but they HAD TO MAKE IT SLOW SKARNER. COMPLETELY NEGATING THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES THIS SPELL INTERETING. FFS. Oh and also he's unstoppable during it's cast because riot llama HAD to try and remake his first creation K'sante (you know, the champion that was deemed to be a complete design failure by nearly everyone even after a rework of his kit)... Aatrox's rework was relatively poor because they removed old Aatrox from the game, but at least the new iteration is genuinely interesting and has a lot of personnality. New skarner also doesn't have a personnality. It's Malphite without the silly aspect of being a mountain. You're a rock. Playing new skarner is playing as a boring-ass rock that no child would pick up on their way home from school.
The R... slows Skarner? What? Did you actually read the description? Have you even played him? He gets increased move speed when he hits at least 1 champion with his ult.
Incels hated Sera so much that they found the smallest thing to complain about and forced Riot to change the lore. Idk which is more pathetic, the basement dwellers crying about something they would never give a crap about if it was a male champ, or the the multi billion dollar company giving in to their cries
I was essentially a skarner one trick from 2015 til this year. I played about 30 games of reworked skarner and though he was okay, but he wasn't my boy anymore. I'm a Teemo jungle one trick now. That's how much Skarner's rework has broken me. I've stooped so low.
I thought the point of reworks was to make a champion more appeling to the vast majority of players, yet they somehow made new skarner more boring than old skarner. 2 and a half years wasted for nothing i guess
Well, they tried to do anything with Skarner. But given how long they were working on it and the quality we got, it's clear to see it wasn't the passion project. They just released him because they couldn't figure out anything better and to calm down the players who were (rightfully so) outraged for the amount of time it passed since the rework began. Shame, but it seems like Skarner won't get its deserved glory anytime soon.
The time it took to make the rework actually has nothing to do with the champion himself, but rather Riot's spaghetti code. Before the rework, EVERY. SINGLE. SPELL. AND. ENTITY. had multiple lines of code interacting with Skarner's R. If you changed litteraly anything on Skarner before actually fixing the code, the game would break
@@Synlo That isn’t the main cause of the absurd amount of time it took. They barely released concept art of his rework 1 year after the vote -> they didn’t care.
Imo main problem with skarner rework is the way his kit works and scales they're begging you to build bruiser but then his ult is purely for utility. He can't auto during his ult so you suppress the target for 1.5 seconds after landing a really risky skill shot which does no damage since it scales with AP and all you can do is walk back to put them in a worse position. His ult is almost completely useless in 1v1 scenerios and in team fights you're completely relying on your team to follow up and do damage. In the meantime skarner can't do anything besides walk around so any enemies that aren't suppressed can just use all their abilities and kill them. Therefore his ult makes way more sense as a pure tank rather than a bruiser who solely relies on hp. However he has a 3 auto passive and a 3 auto basic ability that's begging to make him go bruiser. Either rework his ult so he can auto during it or something that makes more sense for a bruiser or rework passive and q so it makes more sense to go pure tank.
its really messed up how riot fumbled this rework, and to be fair, if his backstory at least made him protect his kind and live with them in the jungles of ixtal (as that one amazing concept art of the rework was showing) it at least would be a great cut for me, but like WHY they thought xenophobic scorpion king kong was any better?
As an old Skarner main, the rework has made me really sad. I was hopefully optimistic going into the rework but it has killed everything I liked about old Skarner. 1st was his design. I really liked the old crystal design. Removing it kinda just makes him into any regular fantasy scorpion monster. It feels less special now. 2nd was his lore. Old Skarner had some of the best lore in the game with the hextech crystals and ethics of what Piltover was doing to the Brackern. Now he's been reduced to an old boomer who lives in Ixtal's basement. He went from a hopeful hero to a crabby old man. Finally, was his gameplay. I really like how fluid old Skarner felt with landing E into R. There was also skill expression in stuff like the "butt wiggle" tech on his R too. The new kit feels incredibly clunky to me. His E is slower than old Skarner and incredibly clunky to control. His Q self rooting him also makes it feel bad to chase anyone. The ult being less consistent completely removes the kidnap fantasy that Riot initially wanted to keep. Skarner went from a champ that was really good at getting pick-off kills to just another generic teamfight tank. It makes me really sad to see that my highest mastery is in a champ I never want to play again because of how he was changed.
It's really the main issue, using Skarner feels like driving a truck and it is frustrating in modern league. You can't just release Skarner and then release a bunny ranged mage with 3-4 dashes and a stealth.
"I really liked the old crystal design. Removing it kinda just makes him into any regular fantasy scorpion monster. It feels less special now." Man, this just speaks right out of my soul, when I read the dev log about why they dropped the crystal look I was already majorly turned off. I can get that they want to remove the Hextech connection because it just doesn't fit with Arcanes narrative. But not having him be a living Hexcrystal anymore doesn't mean they needed to remove the crystals completely. Like I would have minded them making him into another creature but keeping the crystals less than what we got. Like how the F did they believe that "being a Scorpion" was more essential to his character than "Living Crystal Creature". And that implies something of these concepts had to be removed in the first place. Like they could just give current Scarner a crystal makeover and he would be 10 times more interesting. Like we already have multiple champs with moves that use rocks, but we only have my boy Taric flailing around with crystals that is even somewhat comparable.
Because they asked normies who don't like Skarner if they want him reworked, while literally deleting the champion of the people who DID play him. The end result is that nobody plays Skarner, it's very simple.
To make it simple, they over buffed him then nerfed him into the ground even making his so called "bug" caused by his E. Honestly I thought it was a hidden mechanic like Riven auto Q reset
Skarner rework sufferred from "This is how we imagine this Champion must be like" syndrome that riot has. Skarner now joins many others like: Gragas, NIdalee, Aatrox, Aurelion Sol, Graves etc..
Can I just say I was 100% right about why skarner should not be reworked. "new" riot just cant make kits without synergy thats why the only good rework of a kit without synergy was fiddle because they just left it alone and buffed basically everything. Every other time they either kill the champion completely (poppy, aatrox, urgot) or they try give the kit a theme to work with for syngery around one core aspect which sometimes works (caitliyn headshots) and sometimes fails (Sol spaced based damage, swain changing from a dot zone control mage to a weird.... all in team fight but also scouter with his w?)
I still think all Riot needed to do right after his rework was to just 2 things, make his Q an Auto Attack Reset, making Titanic Hydra a really good item for clear speed and damage, and make his E scale with Movement Speed, something like starting out at 20% of MS increasing up to like 200% MS over the duration (numbers need to be balanced, but the idea of that)
New Skarner isn't what I had hoped for when they said they would be giving him a rework. But one way I think they can at least do to help is by giving the grab on his e and his q an AP scaling and his Ultimate an AD scaling. To at least make bruiser Skarner something that can have an impact in games over him just stacking HP and then just face-tanking everything thrown at him. At least when I played old Skarner, the speedy bruiser build of Skarner was what made him so fun. You just run in, kidnap someone, most likely kill them, and then continue the team fight as a 4v5, but Riot seems to have not noticed that this was one of the best ways to play him and decided to basically just remove a champion and then added a new one. This was hardly a rework in my opinion, and more of a replacement of a champion.
-Allow Q to be cast while moving and give it better AD scaling. -Remove slow on W and just bring back the bonus movement speed. -Allow E to scale with movement speed and make it start speeding up faster. -Make R bigger and add a Nunu-like slow to the wind up so it's easier to land. Also allow him to turn enemies around like before. I think that would go a long way.
I used to love playing old Skarner with Omnistone. He was one of the few champions who could take massive advantage of all the keystones, so getting access to all the keystones during a game more or less when you needed em was a ton of fun. I miss Omnistone, and I miss Skarner, but both were too umpopular for Riot.
The most fun I’ve had with new Skarner is with a buddy that’s a god with Kallista and then we cheese bot lane. Kallista ult into guaranteed multi person Skarner ult. 😂
They removed the very thing that made Skarner feel smooth to play. Being able to cast your abilities while moving. He can with his current W but nothing else. Old Skarner only had to stop moving to auto for his E proc during fights or to reduce his Q CD which imo wasn't worth doing if you were not going all in as the CD was so short anyway. He was a mobile tank without having any direct mobility abilities and this was thanks to Phase Rush (and his W). Many people went predator, grasp, after shock, etc... on him which in the end just made you a punching bag, once you were in, you were not getting back out safely. Phase Rush let him do his combo, leave and dodge abilities, come back because his CDs are so short and go again, or you just use the phase rush move speed to yank somebody with ult. Skarner was a fantastic duelist with several build paths and ways to play. Current Skarner just feels like a bumbling idiot. Lame 3 hit passive. His Q breaks all flow of your combo or movement by forcing you to stop in place, W feels like it has no impact at all, and his E while it can be fun just feels clunky most of the time. Then his ult, that hitbox is so inconsistent, if they fix that, then I'd have no gripes with it other than the wind up but for such a strong ability, that's fine for balance sake. He just feels like your standard boring tank. He has no identity now. Riot said that a crystal scorpion was a generic and lame design and that's why they wanted to change him. HOW THE HELL IS A CRYSTAL SCORPION LAME? It's so cool. He is so dull now. Overall, this rework is fine as much as I make it seem like it's not. But he's nothing like old Skarner.
How is a crystal scorpion a generic design? I can't think of a crystal scorpion that I've seen anywhere else. I think it's a completely unique design. It was nice to look at. I still, literally, can't believe they would completely throw out that original look.
riot: a big crystal scorpion is just too generous and lame also riot: ahh~yes, a giant rock scorpion, this is totally peak and not lame at all, also we give him earth-element power but makes all of his earthpower-like ability to be done by physicals impact, cuz why not at this point ?
Honestly it's getting to the point with these unique monster champion playstyles of the past being reworked that I want them to be ignored. The second they rework them they become so stale and practically X champ but better or worse. Case and point Aurelion Sol is just Veigar but flame turret, they completely gutted his old identity to be the literal opposite of what is was for "accessibility". I find him to actually be harder to play now without his E cc to get out of sticky situations since assassins hard counter him now more than ever.
Old skarner main here, I was a skarner top main for like 4 years and I started playing him when I was plat after the fiddlesticks rework, because for me the rework kinda killed my fiddle style. From the beginning of the announcment of the rework I was having some doubts about his rework cause of the instant wording of it being a 'galio style rework'. When anybody asked me about it I was just thinking about how much longer can I play my champ. After they said the realise date i wnet on the last grind with him and got challenger. I am so happy to expirience the old skarner and I gave a fair shot for the new one but it aint it. The old skarner even tho he was pretty weak in lane had much more skill expresion. His e was my favourite ability cause you could use it like irelia q by hitting a lot of minions and getting it back faster so you just permastun somebody, but the new skarner has 1 thing that is sometimes fun to use which is his e and now they removed that by making him not pull people behind him. Like Vars said the only bad thing in his kit was his passive. The champ as a whole was one of the most fun I had playing this game. So yea rework bad :(
Skarner was my favorite champion when I first started playing league. Prior to his first rework. His original kit was so damn satisfying. Sticking to targets and running people down was always a good time
I got Skarner at release. Loved his lore and character. The new design is a generic beast, and I don't want to play them even if they are good. . . But they're not even good! Excellent description of the problems. I think just removing his old passive, and rebalancing existing abilities was what was needed. He looked so unique before 😢
Skarner was my first main, so I there's a special place in my heart for the little guy. Unfortunate he's been left to the roadside, but I still love him.
They just need to do one change per ability 1- bring back his old E: infinitely more consistent CC tool and a very unique one at it, his Q still asks Skarner to AA so it's not like it doesn't belong to the kit. Let's you guarantee the ult onto a singular target too, but with the slow of the skillshot you might up your chances for multihits. On this ability you could easily get AP scalings on the beam like it had and AD scalings on the stun AA to allow more aggressive builds and remove base stat reliances 2- Getting a hit on W should give Skarner speed, not slow enemies. Again, just like old Skarner, but making use of the little modernization from the VGU. Mostly because with adding old E he would have a little too many stuns but also because he needs some source of MS outside of ult hits (which feels like it's there out of pity) 3- REMOVE THE STUPID STUTTER TO PICK THE ROCK ON Q. Why riot why? Why is it that he has to stop himself to use his main damage ability? What's the point of this shit? If it does too much you can pull things like the slow or some damage out, but why does it need to be one of these shitty self sabotaging abilities? 4- Let Skarner turn around during a successful ult, I feel like riot was too scared of making this ability's reward too good, but it's so hard to land that it should have a major reward. Honestly the 180° E R kindap into turret combo is the only part where I feel like old Skarner doing E R AA cheese on toplane
@@bidoof4426yeah because he was an old champ, and the problem with old champs is how over tuned they are because old skarner would be in the same game as someone like ksante. With the rework they needed to make him fresher
I loved 1v1s in the jungle with Skarner, it was so much fun to bait someone into a spire and then when they realized they needed to leave the spire you would pull them back in for NO ESCAPE!
Yeah, I myself play some very weak and old champions, and I always wanted a rework like Fiddlesticks had But after seeing what happened to both of those characters...I just hope they never decide to rework any of my mains.. At the end of the day, they just created new champions, with the same name, and deleted the old ones.
@@VarsVerumhe doesn't and while Baus knows how to maximize Sions strengths, most of his success actually comes from his game sense and macro knowledge. There's a reason why even Baus isn't consistent challenger with Sion and even he admits the champ is kinda dog. I remember him showcasing how he's basically the only high Elo (Masters and above) sion left, bc the rest just get abused by people who know what they're doing.
we are literally only talking about the laning phase here and sion does have a safe laning phase, 3 AOE abilities that one shot waves super early and passive to continue getting waves. no one's saying anything about him being an actual good champion right now but he's literally one of the only champs top lane that can still remain in the game after dying so much because all he needs is farm for his passive and items @@Cattildo
They really just removed a lot of what I liked about skarner and turned him into something I didnt like. I loved the skarner has a 3 second cc chain which was guaranteed as long as you hit e. I loved that skarner could build assassin or bruiser and pop out of bushes to oneshot/beat you up. I loved the he could cheese you with his ult and 1000ms to drag you around. I loved that he could just stand there and brawl with bruisers unlike a lot of other tanks. Now he is still as much of a stat checker if not more. He doesn't scale with movespeed at all. All his damage scalings got ruined so he has been forced into a tank role and he doesnt stand out very much among tanks for me. I loved skarner because he would scale with ms, cdr, ad, ap and health could always make something out of the vast set of item which he has access to.
Between new and old skarner, the new version is definitely more visibly ‘strong’ but lost a lot of niche fun aspects. I will always miss the ability to swing the enemy around with my r especially as a skill mechanic at the last second. Whilst old skarner felt like his basic abilities were not very visually impactful, his ult honestly was one thing they should not have changed or at least minimally changed. In general, the types of ‘fun’ gameplay I find are either high speed gameplay, a simple I do big funny number (which is more related to the build path), or I can afk/turn off brain whilst just maximising the basic elements of the game. Old skarner leaned into more of a high speed gameplay fantasy but lacked ‘impact’ on his basic abilities, whilst new skarner kinda sits in the middle of everything, and whilst this means new skarner lacks weaknesses, he also lacks any form of niche ‘fun’.
"Skarner could impale you and drag you all the way to Brazil" my god I forgot this sentence was a thing, yes we are withholding old Skarner hostage, together with old Volibear, and we want passion fruit mousse as ransom.
The best way i can discribe it is this. Old skarner was an old clunky car but worked well just needed a new set of wheels and a new light so you take it to the shop but the mechanic ska riot in this case, tells you it's trash and upsold you a new car that is automatic when you knew only manual driving. So now you have a new car that feels off and is most likely to brake down and stuf because it's a new modern car
Oddly enough this seems to brign back the problems of the first (pre-crystal) skarner: Just being a stat check. While the crystal spires were annoying (another side objective to contest as a jungler on top of what you're usually juggling), it did keep most of the champion thematically the same, while this rework just went in a middle of the road way. I am saddened by the loss of skill expression and character identity. This may as well have been a different champion altogether.
I think Riot just made Skarner a Jack of all trades, now look at his kits he has the potential of a Jungler with his AOE damage and ganking abilities such as E and R but he lacks the element of surprise, he has to walk in a lane in order to gank although his E can go through wall but only effective when he behind the enemy line, with a good ward control and teammate doesn't help him to set up gank, it is difficult for him to go in R someone and pull them back not to mention his R can be outplayed by flash or any dashing ability. So the player pick him as a cheesy top lanner who can poke, tank, trade, punish with W, E and Q. We all see a Skarner who poke u down with Q, tank your trade with W while farming, and u decided to go in too deep he just E back or take u with him back to the turret or just poke u low enough that he can R u back then froze the wave make you have to be extra careful. But since he is a Jack of all trades meaning he is not good at anything, he is a tank and a tank role is to make play for his teammate like Orn cc chain, Sion and Volibear all in. Skarner he does has the make play potential but require his teammate to help him not just like 3 tank i just mention just R or Q in. He can only CC 3 enemy teammate in a area and usually a team composition is 3 melee and 2 range. So if he just R 1 tank and 2 Juggernauts then it is useless and of course they wont let him get to the back line without flash or beating the living soul out of him, using his ult to counter a assassin to protect the ADC-> too slow. So now you can see why he is not popular, he not as tanky as true tank, he can't deal as much damage as a Juggernauts and he can't make play by himself. Unlike his old version, his job was simple go in snatch someone out while being tanky and can deal DPS, that is what tank do, you make play for the team and do as much damage as possible before you die. The rework requires his teammate involved, he goes in flashed and R the ADC, well the enemy front line can do that too and do it better, Volibear R in and rundown the ADC, Sion R in and do what sion do. Skarner while using R he cant do anything else after that he dont has the sufficient DPS to kill the ADC or mid and his kits only has W to make him more tankier while other champs has their skill to deal tons of damage while increase their durability like Orn E, Sion W, Volibear E and W, Shen passive shields, Mundo E. Skarner is a bad play maker in my opinion.
In a world of champions with multiple dashes, nearly unmissable combos, and better ratios... a champion who can miss nearly everything and needs teammates nearby to shine will never get much play. Champions that rely on nearby teammates to shine should be stronger than solo menaces, but RIOT doesn't believe this to be true and so a lot of excellently designed champions like Skarner see almost no play in favor of ones like Akhali and Yone that take virtually no real skill to use. Maybe on day RIOT will weight champion strength based on how much teamwork they require to function....
Akali takes no skill to use? Too funny. I've been playing long enough to hear that cope for every champ (mainly bruisers) throughout the years. I remember when people used to say riven was a "skillless champ" until high elo folk (masters and above) spoke some truth and changed the perception. No such thing as a skillless champ. Just overloaded kits and unhealthy game design.
Honestly, old Skarner was so similar to Rammus they could not stay like that. Same region, same base role, same class, both monster champions going fast, locking a guy and making the ennemy team panic when you rush at them. Not the same, but still pretty similar. They had to rework one of them, period. Still, what they did wasn't the best option, as they failed to retain his old identity without giving him a new one that stand from the rest. The lore, visual, music is cool, but gameplay wise he lacks a speed build option, and a true bruiser build option. just a few things to modify, some scaling there and some ratio here, and it's good.
Back in the day i really liked to play old Skarner on top, i still can't comprehend who could even think about the pillar passive as a good idea. His current iteration is kinda fun, but i think he just doesn't have enough knobs to balance. Imho returning his Q to more AA-scaling nature would be good (making initial cast to not actually freeze him, with some change that allows it to scale further from auto-attack, like reducing cooldown per each passive damage tick), fixing his wild menagerie of scalings (both ad and ap is just nonsensical on him, something has to be done here so that he can actually go bruiser), making E to scale with MS and R cast time/duration to scale with something, all this would introduce enough balance levers to make him actually balancable.
I played skarner ALOT until they implemented the Crystal Spire changes in his passive. At the time I played him, crystal venom was his passive, and you gave some a stack of it with each ability hit. At 3 stacks, the next basic would stun and deal bonus magic damage. His Q had the same Hecarim style spam, but gave him movespeed and attack speed buffs with each hit up to a cap. This was back before they did the visual overhaul on the rift itself though. So it's been quite a while.
Lowkey, I'm kinda mad at how they change his passive in a way to make him fit in more with top laners. I think they saw Skarner top and notice people liked to off pick him there, but they didn't understand that it was because his playstyle was unique and made the role feel different.
My fix to this new Skarner: Revert impale with clicking R one time. Keep new ult if you keep the key pressed. Fix the issues with new E or just change it. Give it proper damages and CC for a tank. Basically I'd do a mini rework.
While I love the rock scorpion look of his update as someone who played him after that it felt like I didn't do enough. The shield was laughably small and I was too slow to really engage on fights. Also it was VERY hard to try to land the R because it has such a long wind up. Everything about him just feels too slow to be effective. While I love the feel of a fortress type rock scorpion, literally hitting all my buttons, he's just too slow and weirdly not tanky enough for me to do anything. It's why I like Ornn better, that ult is dangerous and I like the forgemaster feel too with upgrading my peeps. He's also spooper tanky.
Some ideas to make new Skarner feel better and more versatile : -Add AP ratio to the passive so it's possible to go either full AP for fun, or AP bruiser. Also add AP ratio on Q3. -Add AD ratio on E -Q cast time to all parts (picking up the rock, the 2 enforced autos, and the throw) is reduced by attack speed -Convert a portion of bonus MS to faster travel time for E, up to a limit (if they don't want him to be a rocket it's fine, but it could still be fast if you buy items like Dead man's plate for example) -Ultimate now deals AD dmg, has a HP and AD scaling, and immediately applies passive. With this, I could see Black cleaver and Titanic hydra being core on him, then the usual full tank like a usual juggernaut.
Ideas to fix him Passive: reduce % damage, but only requires 1 instance of damage to trigger. For each enemy affected, gains movement speed. Q: slow is doubled if used as melee, throw’s slow remains the same. W: increase shield based on number of champion hit R: increase damage on single target hit.
Making a Skarner rework who plays NOTHING like the original was a huge mistake on their part. I have been using Skarner ever since it was introducded in season 2, before the "map flags" and everything and I dont like the new one AT ALL
His old kit just needed some polish but it was overall fun. His old kit only needed: Basic Attack: Make it more fluent akin to how legendary skins do it on old champions. Passive: Make it so that in late-game no one can get your territories. Maybe make it a reward for slaying Baron. Q: is fine W: Make it go faster the closer you get to enemies E: He does no longer stop walking when he shoots it. Basically he can shoot while running without losing momentum. R: He can use basic attacks on his supressed target That is all he needed. Work with what you got and not what you do not, but that is the problem with unpopular champions: Riot Games never fully plays name, such as with Aurelion Sol.
THIS IS SO REAL! Great vid and awesome analysis, exactly what I was thinking as a former and current skarner main especially considering how now he is just a basic tank that tanks worse than all other tanks in the game basically.
i think a good change to bring him closer back to pre-rework while making him a little better would be just remove the cast time from his abilities again and would bring back some of his old speed while being more fun and less clunky
They gutted my boy. Freezing someone from a bush then running at them over 9000 mph just to drag them to hell was one of the most fun times in league for me. R i.p skarner and his laugh spam
300k mastery points skarner, I really appreciate the insights you gave in this video, it really reflected what I felt when first playing the rework, skarner was a dynamic and flexible champion, whilst now it's rather the opposite, only builds tank, clunky af and it just doesn't feel nice to play given how inconsistent R is. I also liked to play a weird full heald and shield power build in arena but now it's useless because he doesn't have ap scalings on W shield. Another banger of a video, keep it up man ❤
While I love his new design and OST and climbed from E4 to D4 with Skarner with a 19 game win streak (not an exaggeration) I think his rework was flawed. He’s either so weak that he’s not fun to play or feels so unfair that he’s infuriating to play against. I also miss old Skarner and think there was a cleaner solution to his problems. Should’ve just given him a HP->MS or MS->resistances ratio like Heca as a passive and made his Q activate his E stun
To be honest, I do think his playstyle still gives the same vibes as old Skarner and I think his E change isn't actually that bad. The thing I do have a problem with however is the reliance on E to do anything. Before, his passive was a huge drive for his gameplay and his ult did a lot to make him what he was. The problem is that now his passive is not as important and his ult doesn't really work the same way. This leads me to believe that Skarner changed too much for diehards to be happy but not enough to attract new players. Honestly, the biggest sin for me personally is what they did to his character, like it's complete ego death imo. LIKE WHY DOES HE HAVE TO BE SOME EVIL OLD MAN?!?! The reason why his character was interesting was because due to the irony of his looks vs. his personality. I'm also gonna really be sad if they make hextech crystals just some magic rocks, like that shit better still have to souls of the dead in it or Imma have to go talk to these writers one on one.
Another thing to point out is that this isnt even the same guy as old Skarner. This is a different being with different lore sharing the same name. Skarner is dead.
I have two ideas on how to fix him, 1 make his e scale with movement speed, 2 make his r like a pantheon q, either 1 target bit instant or hold for his current version, so 3 people
Imo the main thing that made skarner skarner was his huge build diversity, for christ sake we had 1 guy rushing redemption first on him and it worked. Give new skarner uncapped ms in e, and let his passive scale of ap/bAd and Give his sheild an ap ratio. This would make him have that build diversity again while also having the potential to go tank
was waiting for this vid from you. loved the old skar so much, fast champ fun champ and very versatile to this slow boring garbage that can go only tank
All they had to do was to rework the original Fracture, which had no synergy whatsoever with the rest of his kit. It was *literally* the *one* thing Skarner players complained about. The real reason the Devs went out of their way was because people didn't like to play _against_ Skarner, because they didn't like the perma-slow on Crystal Slash. That was the whole idea behind Skarner. He was supposed to have a hard time catching people, but once he did, escaping him was nearly impossible. The second version (the one with Crystal Venom as the Passive) was a decent middle ground. He lost the perma-slow on Crystal Slash, but he kept his sticking power by getting faster each strike, so on practice it had nearly the same effect and his identity was preserved. It still felt like you were playing Skarner, especially with Frozen Gauntlets giving his perma-slow back if you needed it. And then, for no reason at all, they decided "lets play Dominion", striped him of all of his capabilities, and put them under those small areas in the jungle where they're useless most of the time. I mean, Lore-wise, it was a great idea. Gameplay-wise, which is what matters at the end, it was terribly implemented. They could've make it work if there was a way for him to move the Spires into other places, place them like a ward or something, but they never touched that possibility.
I think every time you touch a button you self stun is incredibly unfun. Same things they did with Xin Zhao where he went from a nuclear missile where you spam your keyboard to root yourself for 10 seconds doing the W animation. As for Skarner. Feels terrible to whiff your ult (and expected to whiff it cause it has 900 year cast time so Ahri can dash 8 times before the cast finishes). Feels horrible to try to hit someone with E when you aren't already in their mouth. His passive is uninteresting that just does damage. His Q roots him for some reason. His ult also roots him and they removed the unstoppable. They removed all the skill from the character. You auto combo and forced to remain "fair" with a cast time self-root on literally everything. You can't even be Malphite where yes everything is auto combo but at least the ult is completely unfair and MOST IMPORTANTLY very RELIABLE. Malphite with zero reliability and arguably less reward is very boring. Even worse when you happen to whiff an E or R because they aren't reliable. Let me also add Skarner used to to say his voice line when he ulted. New Skarner is extremely quiet when he ults. Just loses the luster of kidnapping a poor soul.
i have a few problems with this explanation, one you arent locked into using grasp triumph or press the attack work well on him as well. he has certain damage items he can build such as titanic or bloodmail. his new ult has so much play potential with the ability to hit three people. but i do agree, he lost alot of his personality and funny builds but i feel like we gained quite a bit. but im no challanger and this is just the way i see things😊
I know I'm one of those rare Skarner top mains, but man the feeling of running around and pulling people under the turret is satisfying. Now I'm trying to fulfill that hole in my heart with K'sante...
![[Live] : ONE 168 วันนี้!! "โจนาธาน vs ซุปเปอร์เล็ก"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0jIN65KgJsI/mqdefault.jpg)
![[UNCUT] The Loyal Pin ปิ่นภักดิ์ EP.6 (2/4)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/GgeGQOP10RQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I will forever miss building max ms, running up to a guy at mach 20, giving him the middle stinger, and dragging him back so my 4 teammates and I can jump him.
Those were the good times
Oh boy it was so nice ❤
Even being on the receiving end of a speed skarner was fun cause every time you knew his ult was up, your team had to figure out who was getting yoinked at the speed of light
The laughs with my buddies, i wa like "kidnap express in 3...2...1..."
Oh god that hilarious. Or running away at the speed of sound when procing phase rush with E😂
For me the main problem is that riot THOUGHT that his new ultimate is really powerful so they took power from him from everywhere essentially, when actually his new ult sucks ass.
When will you ACTUALLY need to pull 3 people into your team? The old ult was powerful exactly because it could ISOLATE one important target so your team could delete it, thus maiing every fight a four vs five.
Pulling 3 people into your team only makes your stupid team be confused as who to focus, and then you are stuck with 3 members of the enemy team in the middle of yours
the new ult is good. its just worse compared to champs like amumu. If it did dmg so that solo ulting in a 1v1 had value I'd be satisfied. My only issue is that it does no dmg. Also that my team misses all there abilities while im moving them. I basically have to stand still or they'll miss everything
This, basically. Having 3 people inside your team's area is basically the same as fighting them head on or worse. Now some teammates are surrounded by enemies as well, so the net advantage is zero.
There was also that Zac rework to his ultimate where he squished himself down spreading out and then pulling all enemies on top of him with him in the direction. Which got reverted obviously.
@@JoViljarHaugstulen That Zac ult rework was the most fun I ever had on an already fun champion. It's a nonsense comparison to the actively harmful Skarner ultimate of today.
True
because non skarner players don't want to play new skarner because the champion is forced to be bad because of competitive play and old skarner players don't want to play new skarner because it's not skarner, what a great rework
PERFECT explanation
I loved Skarner and played him since it came out in 2011.. It actually has 4 versions now? Each one making him less popular immo.. I did play the crystal spire Skarner as last reserve pick but never the new one. I can't understand why they keep reworking it and completely overhaul the kit (except ulti) all the time, while minor tweaks would've been so much better.
Galio be like:
(Yes I'm fucking pissed his rework was an assassination like Aatrox's)
@@ForgottenGamespre-VGU skarner just needed a real passive, like Shyvana just needs a real passive
@@kalebdavis7080 What makes the entire thing worse is that the crystal-capture passive was only added in the first place to attach him to the crystal scar after the map was removed a map which wasn't popular due to Riot's own mismanagement.
In a way, the history of Skarner represents everything that went wrong with league over the years - continually putting bandaids on real issues but massively overhauling for minor issues.
Simple Nickyboi Didn’t upload a Skarner Video
Fr
I mean he did just a little too late
Its a casual champion review not a vgu video. Still im highly against his cass redesign mainly because it dosent tak eher personality to account and its that shes a selfabsorbed noblewoman who thinks shes a hideous monster despite it not being that drastic. Noblemen are arrogantly self-absorbed that any change or exposure of their true self immediately makes them cry. That the truth
@@Art51151that’s actually valid, but I still think his cass is still better designed than actual design
@@Art51151 the original design is still shit
As someone that played Skarner from Season 8 to when he was RW, this is the most concise way I've heard his decline explained. Skarner was the champion I felt most comfortable playing in LOL PERIOD. No matter the lane, I could play him. Autofilled? No problem. I honestly felt like he was idiotproof in terms of his build path because I knew his kit so well that I could build him however I wanted. Nothing felt better than baiting an assassin into diving you when they got hit with an E, Ult, E combo..locking then down for 4.5 secs. 6 secs if Everfrost was around. Full AD Skarner was a menace. Prowler's Claw was HILARIOUS. Full AP Skarner had an unbreakable shield thanks to his 80% AP scaling on his W. Protobelt actually worked during his ult too. This is one of those times where honestly I'd want Riot to just revert their changes to a champion entirely and go back to the drawing board. Skooch honestly had the best Skarner explanation vid out there.
As who mained Old Aatrox, I feel you.
@@motivateddad Don't even get me started on him. I literally cried when he, and old Morde got reworked. The version of Trox DIRECTLY before the rework was the best version of him we ever got.
its because it's pretty much a "delete an old champion and replace it with someone of the same name" type of rework. he went from a speedy tank that can lock down one particular person to a clunky raid boss with predictable abilities and significant delays on his abilities. not to mention retconning his relations with hextech crystals which left a sour taste on many lore enjoyers
That's what was planned to happen from the start. A complete overhaul.
you forgot to mention old skarner did 0 damage as a result and was even more USELESS
Ok.
VGU was still good and needed.
@@x-nimator9997 tell me you didn't play old skarner without telling me you didn't play old skarner
tthe thing is he wasnt a speedy tank ONLY. Old Skarner's build diversity is unmatched and never will be.
TBH they should just uncapped his MS on E to make him speedy again. his fast movement WAS what skarner is most known for. Fastly engage on enemies and drag them back to your team.
He used to be one of best lock down champions in the game. Its like they focus so much on his ult to be multi target they forgot to make him reliable.
At least that's what i expected in that direction they will take him, but i was mistaken.
I found it really odd how the e distance didnt scale with ms like a lot of other fast movement like ww, pyke, nunu, and kayn.
The only problem is that it would be broken as current skarner e
@@toastedmarsh6185 Because his E alone eats his power budget. Skarner E is a displacement ability (which is unaffected by Tenacity) that goes through walls that can stun you if you touch a wall while he Es you. In fact unless it's been patched Skarner E can interrupt Yone's E2.
@@riven4121 E2 interaction was patched
@@riven4121 yeah exept you move 0,0000001 units per second when you start , it has small hitbox that you can easly dodge and if somebody has someone has stun you cant use it
As a Skarner Main going on 2 years, this is legit the BEST explanation of what failed with his rework. Thank you very much for explaining this for the mass majority of people.
I miss the old Skarner Support build i was able to play. It was so funny to be an enchant skarner that somehow still worked even with no passive in the botlane
All they had to do is remove crystal spires, where did it all go wrong 😭
Bruh all of his old abilities were so charming to me. Q is low cooldown damage ability. W is one of the rare shielding ability that ACTUALLY scale with HP and E was super fun to play with. I didn't really like his ult but it has a use whenever i fall behind and can't solo kill(just grab the carry). He was the best user of the frost armor
as an old Asol main, I feel for you man
@@supe_novalegit that damn passive was the one thing holding him back from being a relic of the past in terms of balance, I truly feel like they could’ve come up with something else and kept the rest of his kit
Based, chemtank skarner was one of my favourite ways to play the game ever
That must hurt riot, I also like that you use castel crasher music
What's the name of the song?
@@alucard5841 Mudholes
@@alucard5841 Mudholes
@@alucard5841 Mudholes, 5th track if you click on the "castle crashers ost" playlist
@@alucard5841 Mudholes
I feel like if they added a MS opportunity to his E and allowed it to travel further based on how much MS he had (similar to Warwick ult), he'd be a lot more versatile and viable in jungle.
God I miss old Skarner. He was pretty much the perfect Jungler for me. The dueling power of Trundle. The speed of Warwick. The CC lockdown of Leona. A mobile Malz ultimate. He even had max health split damage that indirectly scaled with attack speed. HE WAS THE PERFECT JUNGLER. God I miss the Crystal Vanguard...
His early game prett bad
@@jackspinner4727 Yet you'd still beat most of them if you were smart and fought within your spires
@@tareyus2977people like to romanticize about the old Scarner but here's the thing. As soon as key targets got cleanse/qss he became obsolete and beyond useless.
@@toniyakovlev4403 You know this is a team fight game right? He's not the only one with CC. You know cleanse has a cool down right? One much longer than Skarners Ult. You know Skarner still has his E right? Don't pop the stun still they use cleanse. You shouldn't be anyways.
@@tareyus2977 oh I certainly know since I was playing him since S2 up until S10.
He was a cool character that is unfortunately beyond useless when the enemy has any form of QSS.
They removed what made him unique as a champ, his passive, and made him a normal tank
Therefore, no need to play that since you can play any other tank on the game and reach similar results
He got nerfed, so he doesnt do the same damage as ksante for example, his ult is hard to hit on many targets so why play him instead of zac or something like that
He doesnt tank that much like Sejuani or Rammus, doesnt have speed like Udyr
He does a lot of things but he’s now like a duck. It can fly, walk and swim, but he does nothing exceptionally well to be considered
That duck allegory is fire 🔥
Riot nerf his Q so much that his clear from 3:22 dropped to 3:31, some new jungler players can't even clear camps at 3:37
thats probably what riot wants tbh. champion identity isnt even a thing anymore for riot, at least from my observation. look at the recent champions they released, aurora, briar, smolder, hwei, naafiri, ksante. they all fundamentally play exactly how their class is meant to be played, with some differences to make them unique or give them their own little niches. hwei has multiple spell options, ksante's ult temporarily make him a skirmisher, naafiri has dogs. and thats it. theres no more innovation anymore. the unique champions that do exist are casted aside because theyre "outdated" or "too inaccessible".
@@inbeing3464I like how we go from “the champion is overload, they should respect the class system" to “ the champion is way too simple, they should go crazy and not respect the each class limit”.
I honestly rather have them respect the class strength and weakness, while still make them feel unique compared to other within that class than whatever the fuck that is in 2020 to 2022 with no respect to class boundaries.
ngl the passive was the one thing that was incredibly unhealthy for the game, apart from that his old kit was perfectly fine imo
Its just terrible champion design to have something with so much impact as skarners old passive in the game while you cant actually have any impact yourself on it
(for example, if both junglers start bot their first fight will be around top scuttle, iirc the crystals unlocked at like 1:10? which means you have to rely on your solo queue top laner to capture the crystal for you because you wouldnt be able to capture it yourself and start your jungle at 1:30, and if it so happens that your top laner wont capture the crystal for you, you are instantly gonna lose that fight/you will have to give up scuttle for something that is entirely out of your control despite being part of your champions identity
I used to play him for his unique look and story. They changed those two things, and I refused to play him after that.
I don't get why they would change the crystal part. It is literally what made him unique. Every other crystal-themed champ is healing or magic.
This right here. There was no reason to remove the crystal theme when its just a cooler and more unique version of earth magic. And his unique story with hextech was so interesting and had so much potential. Even with Seraphine in the game. Giving her the ability to hear the brackern and making it her mission to help skarner when she understands whats going on would have made her a much more interesting champion. But i guess being assosiated with old Skarner would be a stain on her plastic doll personality that riot invisioned for her in league...
You are the small, small, small minority who cares about lore. For every one of (((you))) there are 1000 more Asians that only care about meta and winning.
The crystal scar is weeping, and nothing is left to even remember it by :(
Riot needs to see this. They pushed him to be a "juggernaut" but lacks the damage, and tankiness to be one. Darius gets HP back with his Q, Skarner gets a 8% shield. Darius passive can kill you from full if you aren't careful, skarner's "burn" can maybe secure a minion if you're lucky.
Darius is a bad example because he has 0 mobility or utility, trading all of it for damage. Skarner is a tank with a long engage ability that ccs, a cc ultimate and two poke abilities. He is much more similar to sejuani than to darius.
@@aprofessionalateverything7585 Volibear then.
The worst part is that now that he isn't overtuned anymore and with the rework out, riot will not give a shit about fixing him any time soon.
I strongly belive skarner's VGU is like top 3 worst in the game, they took over 2 years to release it, he ended up having nothing super unique to justify that delay and completely killed the identity of the old one.
The delay was for his crystal passive actually, not from the mechanic or design part
The delay was cause the moment they removed old skarner, the whole game crumbled since so many systems were connected to the files of old skarner. This is what happens when you do not make a full rework of the game to improve systems.
The delay was unironically because riot had no direction on Skarner. They didn't decide on his looks or lore until over a year into the VGU because they utterly deleted the entire champ even from lore. Then Riot fired the narrative team XD
@@gkarak1996 I won't be surprised if it's actually true
All those things are true
I fermly believe that the only problem skarner had was the fact that he didnt fit in what the game has become. I always bring out his old kit in this argument because if your read it to someone without saying who you are talking about, they would definitely think of a post season 11 champion, but still, he could not truly be a champion in league, and also the fact that he was probably the least favorite of everyone didnt help. So when they rewoked him riot didnt bother to just throw him away, turning him whatever he is now. At least with someone like udyr they tried to simply redesign him for a modern League, but with skarner they simply replaced him, i may be a crybaby for hating on the rework so much, but this was no rework, this was the death of a champion that i truly loved for how unique he was.
No resemblance, absolutely blank gameplay with no variety and he is still an underpicked champ, if this is what became of him, just go back to the old one and try again with actual care this time riot.
And with that said, R.I.P skarner, the Crystal vanguard, 2011-2024.
Yeah, that is precisely how i feel about aatrox rework. The new aa is absolutely nothing like the og, even though the new one is good.
I loved to play him, his abilities actually costed health so you has to be careful on how to use them, his w being either a damage amp OR a heal was really fun, cause it was up to you what would be best at the moment. But the worst part of new aatrox is that, when he released, he still had the essence of old one (his revive passive/ult) but then istead of adjusting the rest of his kit they decided to remove the revive completely, thus truly KILLING the old aatrox.
Dont get me wrong, there were some older champios that REALLY needed to just be worked from scratch, like old sion. But for most champs this is not the case
@@NeuviletteBRat least when you look at Aatrox now, it still looks like Aatrox.
Skarner was a crystal scorpion: A unique design, found no where else. Why would the toss out his looks?!? I can't think of the new rework to be Skarner, at all.
@@YesThisIsCrass yeah, that is totally fucked up, the crystal motif was really unique, and then they made a scorpion kaiju that looks like something out of american godzilla movies
There were SO MANY THINGS you could do with old skarner.
His entire playbase, no matter how small it was, was full of people ready to invent a new tech on a whim, depending on the game.
I've been rolled by an on-hit lethal tempo hypercarry skarner once. With triforce and black cleaver, you could be a good dps/bruiser while keeping a lot of the movement speed aspect of his gameplay.
His new abilities aren't bad on a simple premise scale. Really, they're very cool in concept and work well in tandem.
IN CONCEPT.
Q's cast time is bonkers. E having absolutely no way to modify it completely negates any amount of ingenuity. W has both of these issues. The passive is completely uninteractive too.
The R would've been very good on old skarner. The cast time allows for counterplay; preventing skarner from moving also gives a window of counterplay to it; it forcing people to stay in the direction they were grabbed also negates the glitchy turnaround techs you could do with old impale; and it keeps relevancy by being able to hit multiple people... but they HAD TO MAKE IT SLOW SKARNER. COMPLETELY NEGATING THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES THIS SPELL INTERETING. FFS. Oh and also he's unstoppable during it's cast because riot llama HAD to try and remake his first creation K'sante (you know, the champion that was deemed to be a complete design failure by nearly everyone even after a rework of his kit)...
Aatrox's rework was relatively poor because they removed old Aatrox from the game, but at least the new iteration is genuinely interesting and has a lot of personnality.
New skarner also doesn't have a personnality. It's Malphite without the silly aspect of being a mountain. You're a rock. Playing new skarner is playing as a boring-ass rock that no child would pick up on their way home from school.
The R... slows Skarner? What? Did you actually read the description? Have you even played him? He gets increased move speed when he hits at least 1 champion with his ult.
Remember: They made Skarner into an Ixtali champ just so they could make Seraphine and the Arcane champs look better
skarner suffering for arcane is worthwhile, net positive
Incels hated Sera so much that they found the smallest thing to complain about and forced Riot to change the lore. Idk which is more pathetic, the basement dwellers crying about something they would never give a crap about if it was a male champ, or the the multi billion dollar company giving in to their cries
The most pathetic are the Seraphine stans lmao
@@candycornshrimpdislike parasocial seraphine marketing = incel lmao
Most of Seraphine's mains are incels themselves, or e-girls
I was essentially a skarner one trick from 2015 til this year. I played about 30 games of reworked skarner and though he was okay, but he wasn't my boy anymore.
I'm a Teemo jungle one trick now. That's how much Skarner's rework has broken me. I've stooped so low.
from skarner to teemo, these are dark times indeed
I thought the point of reworks was to make a champion more appeling to the vast majority of players, yet they somehow made new skarner more boring than old skarner. 2 and a half years wasted for nothing i guess
XD cuz he isnt fast now?
Well, they tried to do anything with Skarner. But given how long they were working on it and the quality we got, it's clear to see it wasn't the passion project. They just released him because they couldn't figure out anything better and to calm down the players who were (rightfully so) outraged for the amount of time it passed since the rework began.
Shame, but it seems like Skarner won't get its deserved glory anytime soon.
The time it took to make the rework actually has nothing to do with the champion himself, but rather Riot's spaghetti code.
Before the rework, EVERY. SINGLE. SPELL. AND. ENTITY. had multiple lines of code interacting with Skarner's R. If you changed litteraly anything on Skarner before actually fixing the code, the game would break
@@Synlo So another day for Riot. Still doesn't excuse the quality we got.
@@Synlo That isn’t the main cause of the absurd amount of time it took.
They barely released concept art of his rework 1 year after the vote -> they didn’t care.
Imo main problem with skarner rework is the way his kit works and scales they're begging you to build bruiser but then his ult is purely for utility. He can't auto during his ult so you suppress the target for 1.5 seconds after landing a really risky skill shot which does no damage since it scales with AP and all you can do is walk back to put them in a worse position. His ult is almost completely useless in 1v1 scenerios and in team fights you're completely relying on your team to follow up and do damage. In the meantime skarner can't do anything besides walk around so any enemies that aren't suppressed can just use all their abilities and kill them. Therefore his ult makes way more sense as a pure tank rather than a bruiser who solely relies on hp. However he has a 3 auto passive and a 3 auto basic ability that's begging to make him go bruiser. Either rework his ult so he can auto during it or something that makes more sense for a bruiser or rework passive and q so it makes more sense to go pure tank.
its really messed up how riot fumbled this rework, and to be fair, if his backstory at least made him protect his kind and live with them in the jungles of ixtal (as that one amazing concept art of the rework was showing) it at least would be a great cut for me, but like WHY they thought xenophobic scorpion king kong was any better?
As an old Skarner main, the rework has made me really sad. I was hopefully optimistic going into the rework but it has killed everything I liked about old Skarner.
1st was his design. I really liked the old crystal design. Removing it kinda just makes him into any regular fantasy scorpion monster. It feels less special now.
2nd was his lore. Old Skarner had some of the best lore in the game with the hextech crystals and ethics of what Piltover was doing to the Brackern. Now he's been reduced to an old boomer who lives in Ixtal's basement. He went from a hopeful hero to a crabby old man.
Finally, was his gameplay. I really like how fluid old Skarner felt with landing E into R. There was also skill expression in stuff like the "butt wiggle" tech on his R too. The new kit feels incredibly clunky to me. His E is slower than old Skarner and incredibly clunky to control. His Q self rooting him also makes it feel bad to chase anyone. The ult being less consistent completely removes the kidnap fantasy that Riot initially wanted to keep. Skarner went from a champ that was really good at getting pick-off kills to just another generic teamfight tank.
It makes me really sad to see that my highest mastery is in a champ I never want to play again because of how he was changed.
It's really the main issue, using Skarner feels like driving a truck and it is frustrating in modern league. You can't just release Skarner and then release a bunny ranged mage with 3-4 dashes and a stealth.
"I really liked the old crystal design. Removing it kinda just makes him into any regular fantasy scorpion monster. It feels less special now."
Man, this just speaks right out of my soul, when I read the dev log about why they dropped the crystal look I was already majorly turned off. I can get that they want to remove the Hextech connection because it just doesn't fit with Arcanes narrative. But not having him be a living Hexcrystal anymore doesn't mean they needed to remove the crystals completely.
Like I would have minded them making him into another creature but keeping the crystals less than what we got. Like how the F did they believe that "being a Scorpion" was more essential to his character than "Living Crystal Creature". And that implies something of these concepts had to be removed in the first place. Like they could just give current Scarner a crystal makeover and he would be 10 times more interesting. Like we already have multiple champs with moves that use rocks, but we only have my boy Taric flailing around with crystals that is even somewhat comparable.
In their pursuit to give him a new identity, they gave him no identity
Because they asked normies who don't like Skarner if they want him reworked, while literally deleting the champion of the people who DID play him.
The end result is that nobody plays Skarner, it's very simple.
To make it simple, they over buffed him then nerfed him into the ground even making his so called "bug" caused by his E. Honestly I thought it was a hidden mechanic like Riven auto Q reset
Riven resets are also a bug, but they don't change it cuz would make Riven weaker
His E feels so awkward to use unless you are standing right literally on the enemy.
@@andresruiz2947 Should've done that with skarner as well cause without that bug, skarner E is just a worse version of poppy E in top lane
@@peterkosmod967 exactly, quicker animation activation time would fix it I suppose
Ironically, the E bug fix makes standing on top of the enemy more likely to miss when you first cast it.
Skarner rework sufferred from "This is how we imagine this Champion must be like" syndrome that riot has.
Skarner now joins many others like: Gragas, NIdalee, Aatrox, Aurelion Sol, Graves etc..
Old ASol was awful.
New atrox is great
Gragas plays basically the same, aatrox was deeply unpopular before his rework, asol and graves were resounding successes, what are you on?
@@jackspinner4727 New aatrox is a completely different champion though
@@Ekaidseaky yea I think it’s ok to have a flawed champion and basically make a new one with the rework.
Can I just say I was 100% right about why skarner should not be reworked. "new" riot just cant make kits without synergy thats why the only good rework of a kit without synergy was fiddle because they just left it alone and buffed basically everything. Every other time they either kill the champion completely (poppy, aatrox, urgot) or they try give the kit a theme to work with for syngery around one core aspect which sometimes works (caitliyn headshots) and sometimes fails (Sol spaced based damage, swain changing from a dot zone control mage to a weird.... all in team fight but also scouter with his w?)
I still think all Riot needed to do right after his rework was to just 2 things, make his Q an Auto Attack Reset, making Titanic Hydra a really good item for clear speed and damage, and make his E scale with Movement Speed, something like starting out at 20% of MS increasing up to like 200% MS over the duration (numbers need to be balanced, but the idea of that)
New Skarner isn't what I had hoped for when they said they would be giving him a rework. But one way I think they can at least do to help is by giving the grab on his e and his q an AP scaling and his Ultimate an AD scaling. To at least make bruiser Skarner something that can have an impact in games over him just stacking HP and then just face-tanking everything thrown at him. At least when I played old Skarner, the speedy bruiser build of Skarner was what made him so fun. You just run in, kidnap someone, most likely kill them, and then continue the team fight as a 4v5, but Riot seems to have not noticed that this was one of the best ways to play him and decided to basically just remove a champion and then added a new one. This was hardly a rework in my opinion, and more of a replacement of a champion.
-Allow Q to be cast while moving and give it better AD scaling.
-Remove slow on W and just bring back the bonus movement speed.
-Allow E to scale with movement speed and make it start speeding up faster.
-Make R bigger and add a Nunu-like slow to the wind up so it's easier to land. Also allow him to turn enemies around like before.
I think that would go a long way.
i don't think that will work, the animation will be a mess if you look at it,
8:48 for me this is literally his only problem.
Like imagine playing a jungler with Grasp, it just doesnt really work
I used to love playing old Skarner with Omnistone. He was one of the few champions who could take massive advantage of all the keystones, so getting access to all the keystones during a game more or less when you needed em was a ton of fun. I miss Omnistone, and I miss Skarner, but both were too umpopular for Riot.
The most fun I’ve had with new Skarner is with a buddy that’s a god with Kallista and then we cheese bot lane. Kallista ult into guaranteed multi person Skarner ult. 😂
They removed the very thing that made Skarner feel smooth to play. Being able to cast your abilities while moving. He can with his current W but nothing else. Old Skarner only had to stop moving to auto for his E proc during fights or to reduce his Q CD which imo wasn't worth doing if you were not going all in as the CD was so short anyway. He was a mobile tank without having any direct mobility abilities and this was thanks to Phase Rush (and his W). Many people went predator, grasp, after shock, etc... on him which in the end just made you a punching bag, once you were in, you were not getting back out safely. Phase Rush let him do his combo, leave and dodge abilities, come back because his CDs are so short and go again, or you just use the phase rush move speed to yank somebody with ult. Skarner was a fantastic duelist with several build paths and ways to play.
Current Skarner just feels like a bumbling idiot. Lame 3 hit passive. His Q breaks all flow of your combo or movement by forcing you to stop in place, W feels like it has no impact at all, and his E while it can be fun just feels clunky most of the time. Then his ult, that hitbox is so inconsistent, if they fix that, then I'd have no gripes with it other than the wind up but for such a strong ability, that's fine for balance sake. He just feels like your standard boring tank. He has no identity now. Riot said that a crystal scorpion was a generic and lame design and that's why they wanted to change him. HOW THE HELL IS A CRYSTAL SCORPION LAME? It's so cool. He is so dull now. Overall, this rework is fine as much as I make it seem like it's not. But he's nothing like old Skarner.
How is a crystal scorpion a generic design?
I can't think of a crystal scorpion that I've seen anywhere else. I think it's a completely unique design. It was nice to look at.
I still, literally, can't believe they would completely throw out that original look.
We said
riot: a big crystal scorpion is just too generous and lame
also riot: ahh~yes, a giant rock scorpion, this is totally peak and not lame at all, also we give him earth-element power but makes all of his earthpower-like ability to be done by physicals impact, cuz why not at this point ?
Honestly it's getting to the point with these unique monster champion playstyles of the past being reworked that I want them to be ignored. The second they rework them they become so stale and practically X champ but better or worse. Case and point Aurelion Sol is just Veigar but flame turret, they completely gutted his old identity to be the literal opposite of what is was for "accessibility". I find him to actually be harder to play now without his E cc to get out of sticky situations since assassins hard counter him now more than ever.
Old skarner main here, I was a skarner top main for like 4 years and I started playing him when I was plat after the fiddlesticks rework, because for me the rework kinda killed my fiddle style. From the beginning of the announcment of the rework I was having some doubts about his rework cause of the instant wording of it being a 'galio style rework'. When anybody asked me about it I was just thinking about how much longer can I play my champ. After they said the realise date i wnet on the last grind with him and got challenger. I am so happy to expirience the old skarner and I gave a fair shot for the new one but it aint it. The old skarner even tho he was pretty weak in lane had much more skill expresion. His e was my favourite ability cause you could use it like irelia q by hitting a lot of minions and getting it back faster so you just permastun somebody, but the new skarner has 1 thing that is sometimes fun to use which is his e and now they removed that by making him not pull people behind him. Like Vars said the only bad thing in his kit was his passive. The champ as a whole was one of the most fun I had playing this game. So yea rework bad :(
Those aren't reworks. They are just replacing a champion with a different one with the same name
I miss old passive "aa's reduce cds by .25s for non champions and .5 for champions." I played skarner before update and not once since.
Skarner was my favorite champion when I first started playing league. Prior to his first rework.
His original kit was so damn satisfying. Sticking to targets and running people down was always a good time
I got Skarner at release. Loved his lore and character.
The new design is a generic beast, and I don't want to play them even if they are good. . . But they're not even good!
Excellent description of the problems.
I think just removing his old passive, and rebalancing existing abilities was what was needed. He looked so unique before 😢
Skarner was my first main, so I there's a special place in my heart for the little guy. Unfortunate he's been left to the roadside, but I still love him.
every rework is the most requested vgu until it actually gets made and the title gets shunted to the next one in line
They just need to do one change per ability
1- bring back his old E: infinitely more consistent CC tool and a very unique one at it, his Q still asks Skarner to AA so it's not like it doesn't belong to the kit. Let's you guarantee the ult onto a singular target too, but with the slow of the skillshot you might up your chances for multihits. On this ability you could easily get AP scalings on the beam like it had and AD scalings on the stun AA to allow more aggressive builds and remove base stat reliances
2- Getting a hit on W should give Skarner speed, not slow enemies. Again, just like old Skarner, but making use of the little modernization from the VGU. Mostly because with adding old E he would have a little too many stuns but also because he needs some source of MS outside of ult hits (which feels like it's there out of pity)
3- REMOVE THE STUPID STUTTER TO PICK THE ROCK ON Q. Why riot why? Why is it that he has to stop himself to use his main damage ability? What's the point of this shit? If it does too much you can pull things like the slow or some damage out, but why does it need to be one of these shitty self sabotaging abilities?
4- Let Skarner turn around during a successful ult, I feel like riot was too scared of making this ability's reward too good, but it's so hard to land that it should have a major reward.
Honestly the 180° E R kindap into turret combo is the only part where I feel like old Skarner doing E R AA cheese on toplane
Revert him now
Skarner didn’t get reworked. Old skarner got deleted and new skarner got added, they are completely different
Skarner is like most of the new champs, nobody wants to play him because he's boring. He's only played when he's broken for sweats to gain free LP.
Old skarner was the same had wad one of the least picked champions but when he was broken everyone used him
@@bidoof4426yeah because he was an old champ, and the problem with old champs is how over tuned they are because old skarner would be in the same game as someone like ksante. With the rework they needed to make him fresher
Man, just seeing old Skarner's E makes me sad, it was the most satisfying ability in the game
I loved 1v1s in the jungle with Skarner, it was so much fun to bait someone into a spire and then when they realized they needed to leave the spire you would pull them back in for NO ESCAPE!
I stopped playing both Asol and Skarner after the rework because they deleted my two favourite characters.
Yeah, I myself play some very weak and old champions, and I always wanted a rework like Fiddlesticks had
But after seeing what happened to both of those characters...I just hope they never decide to rework any of my mains..
At the end of the day, they just created new champions, with the same name, and deleted the old ones.
Same, woth Evelyn. I was otp
10:35 "Safe laning phase... Sion"
Baus: erm actually 🤓🤓🤓
That is exactly what safe laning phase is.
If you think about it, the fact that Baus can intent feed and still carry games shows that Sion really DOES have a safe laning phase lol
@@VarsVerumhe doesn't and while Baus knows how to maximize Sions strengths, most of his success actually comes from his game sense and macro knowledge. There's a reason why even Baus isn't consistent challenger with Sion and even he admits the champ is kinda dog. I remember him showcasing how he's basically the only high Elo (Masters and above) sion left, bc the rest just get abused by people who know what they're doing.
we are literally only talking about the laning phase here and sion does have a safe laning phase, 3 AOE abilities that one shot waves super early and passive to continue getting waves. no one's saying anything about him being an actual good champion right now but he's literally one of the only champs top lane that can still remain in the game after dying so much because all he needs is farm for his passive and items @@Cattildo
7:00 did that kaisa just evolve mid fight
Hahah yea
They really just removed a lot of what I liked about skarner and turned him into something I didnt like.
I loved the skarner has a 3 second cc chain which was guaranteed as long as you hit e.
I loved that skarner could build assassin or bruiser and pop out of bushes to oneshot/beat you up.
I loved the he could cheese you with his ult and 1000ms to drag you around.
I loved that he could just stand there and brawl with bruisers unlike a lot of other tanks.
Now he is still as much of a stat checker if not more.
He doesn't scale with movespeed at all.
All his damage scalings got ruined so he has been forced into a tank role and he doesnt stand out very much among tanks for me.
I loved skarner because he would scale with ms, cdr, ad, ap and health could always make something out of the vast set of item which he has access to.
Between new and old skarner, the new version is definitely more visibly ‘strong’ but lost a lot of niche fun aspects. I will always miss the ability to swing the enemy around with my r especially as a skill mechanic at the last second. Whilst old skarner felt like his basic abilities were not very visually impactful, his ult honestly was one thing they should not have changed or at least minimally changed.
In general, the types of ‘fun’ gameplay I find are either high speed gameplay, a simple I do big funny number (which is more related to the build path), or I can afk/turn off brain whilst just maximising the basic elements of the game. Old skarner leaned into more of a high speed gameplay fantasy but lacked ‘impact’ on his basic abilities, whilst new skarner kinda sits in the middle of everything, and whilst this means new skarner lacks weaknesses, he also lacks any form of niche ‘fun’.
"Skarner could impale you and drag you all the way to Brazil" my god I forgot this sentence was a thing, yes we are withholding old Skarner hostage, together with old Volibear, and we want passion fruit mousse as ransom.
You should do one of these with Neeko too. She's barely played support (1.6%), and that's where she sees the light the most.
The best way i can discribe it is this.
Old skarner was an old clunky car but worked well just needed a new set of wheels and a new light so you take it to the shop but the mechanic ska riot in this case, tells you it's trash and upsold you a new car that is automatic when you knew only manual driving. So now you have a new car that feels off and is most likely to brake down and stuf because it's a new modern car
Oddly enough this seems to brign back the problems of the first (pre-crystal) skarner: Just being a stat check. While the crystal spires were annoying (another side objective to contest as a jungler on top of what you're usually juggling), it did keep most of the champion thematically the same, while this rework just went in a middle of the road way. I am saddened by the loss of skill expression and character identity. This may as well have been a different champion altogether.
I think Riot just made Skarner a Jack of all trades, now look at his kits he has the potential of a Jungler with his AOE damage and ganking abilities such as E and R but he lacks the element of surprise, he has to walk in a lane in order to gank although his E can go through wall but only effective when he behind the enemy line, with a good ward control and teammate doesn't help him to set up gank, it is difficult for him to go in R someone and pull them back not to mention his R can be outplayed by flash or any dashing ability. So the player pick him as a cheesy top lanner who can poke, tank, trade, punish with W, E and Q. We all see a Skarner who poke u down with Q, tank your trade with W while farming, and u decided to go in too deep he just E back or take u with him back to the turret or just poke u low enough that he can R u back then froze the wave make you have to be extra careful.
But since he is a Jack of all trades meaning he is not good at anything, he is a tank and a tank role is to make play for his teammate like Orn cc chain, Sion and Volibear all in. Skarner he does has the make play potential but require his teammate to help him not just like 3 tank i just mention just R or Q in. He can only CC 3 enemy teammate in a area and usually a team composition is 3 melee and 2 range. So if he just R 1 tank and 2 Juggernauts then it is useless and of course they wont let him get to the back line without flash or beating the living soul out of him, using his ult to counter a assassin to protect the ADC-> too slow.
So now you can see why he is not popular, he not as tanky as true tank, he can't deal as much damage as a Juggernauts and he can't make play by himself. Unlike his old version, his job was simple go in snatch someone out while being tanky and can deal DPS, that is what tank do, you make play for the team and do as much damage as possible before you die. The rework requires his teammate involved, he goes in flashed and R the ADC, well the enemy front line can do that too and do it better, Volibear R in and rundown the ADC, Sion R in and do what sion do. Skarner while using R he cant do anything else after that he dont has the sufficient DPS to kill the ADC or mid and his kits only has W to make him more tankier while other champs has their skill to deal tons of damage while increase their durability like Orn E, Sion W, Volibear E and W, Shen passive shields, Mundo E.
Skarner is a bad play maker in my opinion.
LOVE the castle crashers music
In a world of champions with multiple dashes, nearly unmissable combos, and better ratios... a champion who can miss nearly everything and needs teammates nearby to shine will never get much play. Champions that rely on nearby teammates to shine should be stronger than solo menaces, but RIOT doesn't believe this to be true and so a lot of excellently designed champions like Skarner see almost no play in favor of ones like Akhali and Yone that take virtually no real skill to use. Maybe on day RIOT will weight champion strength based on how much teamwork they require to function....
Akali takes no skill to use? Too funny. I've been playing long enough to hear that cope for every champ (mainly bruisers) throughout the years.
I remember when people used to say riven was a "skillless champ" until high elo folk (masters and above) spoke some truth and changed the perception.
No such thing as a skillless champ. Just overloaded kits and unhealthy game design.
Honestly, old Skarner was so similar to Rammus they could not stay like that. Same region, same base role, same class, both monster champions going fast, locking a guy and making the ennemy team panic when you rush at them. Not the same, but still pretty similar. They had to rework one of them, period. Still, what they did wasn't the best option, as they failed to retain his old identity without giving him a new one that stand from the rest. The lore, visual, music is cool, but gameplay wise he lacks a speed build option, and a true bruiser build option. just a few things to modify, some scaling there and some ratio here, and it's good.
One point everyone forgot is that the e stun proc the passive of skarner which is why skarner top felt so good
Don't forget that old skarner R ignored cc immunity
Back in the day i really liked to play old Skarner on top, i still can't comprehend who could even think about the pillar passive as a good idea.
His current iteration is kinda fun, but i think he just doesn't have enough knobs to balance. Imho returning his Q to more AA-scaling nature would be good (making initial cast to not actually freeze him, with some change that allows it to scale further from auto-attack, like reducing cooldown per each passive damage tick), fixing his wild menagerie of scalings (both ad and ap is just nonsensical on him, something has to be done here so that he can actually go bruiser), making E to scale with MS and R cast time/duration to scale with something, all this would introduce enough balance levers to make him actually balancable.
I played skarner ALOT until they implemented the Crystal Spire changes in his passive. At the time I played him, crystal venom was his passive, and you gave some a stack of it with each ability hit. At 3 stacks, the next basic would stun and deal bonus magic damage. His Q had the same Hecarim style spam, but gave him movespeed and attack speed buffs with each hit up to a cap. This was back before they did the visual overhaul on the rift itself though. So it's been quite a while.
Lowkey, I'm kinda mad at how they change his passive in a way to make him fit in more with top laners. I think they saw Skarner top and notice people liked to off pick him there, but they didn't understand that it was because his playstyle was unique and made the role feel different.
My fix to this new Skarner:
Revert impale with clicking R one time. Keep new ult if you keep the key pressed.
Fix the issues with new E or just change it. Give it proper damages and CC for a tank.
Basically I'd do a mini rework.
While I love the rock scorpion look of his update as someone who played him after that it felt like I didn't do enough. The shield was laughably small and I was too slow to really engage on fights. Also it was VERY hard to try to land the R because it has such a long wind up. Everything about him just feels too slow to be effective.
While I love the feel of a fortress type rock scorpion, literally hitting all my buttons, he's just too slow and weirdly not tanky enough for me to do anything. It's why I like Ornn better, that ult is dangerous and I like the forgemaster feel too with upgrading my peeps. He's also spooper tanky.
Some ideas to make new Skarner feel better and more versatile :
-Add AP ratio to the passive so it's possible to go either full AP for fun, or AP bruiser. Also add AP ratio on Q3.
-Add AD ratio on E
-Q cast time to all parts (picking up the rock, the 2 enforced autos, and the throw) is reduced by attack speed
-Convert a portion of bonus MS to faster travel time for E, up to a limit (if they don't want him to be a rocket it's fine, but it could still be fast if you buy items like Dead man's plate for example)
-Ultimate now deals AD dmg, has a HP and AD scaling, and immediately applies passive.
With this, I could see Black cleaver and Titanic hydra being core on him, then the usual full tank like a usual juggernaut.
Ideas to fix him
Passive: reduce % damage, but only requires 1 instance of damage to trigger. For each enemy affected, gains movement speed.
Q: slow is doubled if used as melee, throw’s slow remains the same.
W: increase shield based on number of champion hit
R: increase damage on single target hit.
Making a Skarner rework who plays NOTHING like the original was a huge mistake on their part. I have been using Skarner ever since it was introducded in season 2, before the "map flags" and everything and I dont like the new one AT ALL
His old kit just needed some polish but it was overall fun. His old kit only needed:
Basic Attack: Make it more fluent akin to how legendary skins do it on old champions.
Passive: Make it so that in late-game no one can get your territories. Maybe make it a reward for slaying Baron.
Q: is fine
W: Make it go faster the closer you get to enemies
E: He does no longer stop walking when he shoots it. Basically he can shoot while running without losing momentum.
R: He can use basic attacks on his supressed target
That is all he needed. Work with what you got and not what you do not, but that is the problem with unpopular champions: Riot Games never fully plays name, such as with Aurelion Sol.
Malphite does what new Skarner's supposed to, but easier and with creazy AP scalings. That's why.
THIS IS SO REAL! Great vid and awesome analysis, exactly what I was thinking as a former and current skarner main especially considering how now he is just a basic tank that tanks worse than all other tanks in the game basically.
Start a petition to revert to old skarner
Not gonna happen
i miss the old skarner. his attacks always felt so snappy and satisfying
I really think what old skarner really needed was the ability to create a crystal spire on demand
Vars you are an absolute legend. These typs of videos are amazing and not only that you do it with three other channels. Keep up the work man
You forgot how his e could be chained if used right, giving him the longest cc chain in the entire game, even beating out leona's
i think a good change to bring him closer back to pre-rework while making him a little better would be just remove the cast time from his abilities again and would bring back some of his old speed while being more fun and less clunky
They gutted my boy. Freezing someone from a bush then running at them over 9000 mph just to drag them to hell was one of the most fun times in league for me. R i.p skarner and his laugh spam
300k mastery points skarner, I really appreciate the insights you gave in this video, it really reflected what I felt when first playing the rework, skarner was a dynamic and flexible champion, whilst now it's rather the opposite, only builds tank, clunky af and it just doesn't feel nice to play given how inconsistent R is. I also liked to play a weird full heald and shield power build in arena but now it's useless because he doesn't have ap scalings on W shield.
Another banger of a video, keep it up man ❤
first aurelion sol and now skarner...feels like the people responsible for champion updates have been missing the mark pretty badly recently
The First Rework of Skarner was my favorite, way back in Season 3.
While I love his new design and OST and climbed from E4 to D4 with Skarner with a 19 game win streak (not an exaggeration) I think his rework was flawed. He’s either so weak that he’s not fun to play or feels so unfair that he’s infuriating to play against.
I also miss old Skarner and think there was a cleaner solution to his problems. Should’ve just given him a HP->MS or MS->resistances ratio like Heca as a passive and made his Q activate his E stun
I played old skarner only for like 5 months. I miss it
To be honest, I do think his playstyle still gives the same vibes as old Skarner and I think his E change isn't actually that bad. The thing I do have a problem with however is the reliance on E to do anything. Before, his passive was a huge drive for his gameplay and his ult did a lot to make him what he was. The problem is that now his passive is not as important and his ult doesn't really work the same way. This leads me to believe that Skarner changed too much for diehards to be happy but not enough to attract new players. Honestly, the biggest sin for me personally is what they did to his character, like it's complete ego death imo. LIKE WHY DOES HE HAVE TO BE SOME EVIL OLD MAN?!?! The reason why his character was interesting was because due to the irony of his looks vs. his personality. I'm also gonna really be sad if they make hextech crystals just some magic rocks, like that shit better still have to souls of the dead in it or Imma have to go talk to these writers one on one.
Another thing to point out is that this isnt even the same guy as old Skarner. This is a different being with different lore sharing the same name. Skarner is dead.
his ult is so risky now compared to before like how many resources i take from the team to oneshot whatever guy you may pick with the ult
I have two ideas on how to fix him, 1 make his e scale with movement speed, 2 make his r like a pantheon q, either 1 target bit instant or hold for his current version, so 3 people
That castle crashers music goes hard
Imo the main thing that made skarner skarner was his huge build diversity, for christ sake we had 1 guy rushing redemption first on him and it worked. Give new skarner uncapped ms in e, and let his passive scale of ap/bAd and Give his sheild an ap ratio. This would make him have that build diversity again while also having the potential to go tank
was waiting for this vid from you. loved the old skar so much, fast champ fun champ and very versatile to this slow boring garbage that can go only tank
All they had to do was to rework the original Fracture, which had no synergy whatsoever with the rest of his kit. It was *literally* the *one* thing Skarner players complained about. The real reason the Devs went out of their way was because people didn't like to play _against_ Skarner, because they didn't like the perma-slow on Crystal Slash. That was the whole idea behind Skarner. He was supposed to have a hard time catching people, but once he did, escaping him was nearly impossible.
The second version (the one with Crystal Venom as the Passive) was a decent middle ground. He lost the perma-slow on Crystal Slash, but he kept his sticking power by getting faster each strike, so on practice it had nearly the same effect and his identity was preserved. It still felt like you were playing Skarner, especially with Frozen Gauntlets giving his perma-slow back if you needed it.
And then, for no reason at all, they decided "lets play Dominion", striped him of all of his capabilities, and put them under those small areas in the jungle where they're useless most of the time. I mean, Lore-wise, it was a great idea. Gameplay-wise, which is what matters at the end, it was terribly implemented. They could've make it work if there was a way for him to move the Spires into other places, place them like a ward or something, but they never touched that possibility.
I think every time you touch a button you self stun is incredibly unfun. Same things they did with Xin Zhao where he went from a nuclear missile where you spam your keyboard to root yourself for 10 seconds doing the W animation.
As for Skarner. Feels terrible to whiff your ult (and expected to whiff it cause it has 900 year cast time so Ahri can dash 8 times before the cast finishes). Feels horrible to try to hit someone with E when you aren't already in their mouth. His passive is uninteresting that just does damage. His Q roots him for some reason. His ult also roots him and they removed the unstoppable.
They removed all the skill from the character. You auto combo and forced to remain "fair" with a cast time self-root on literally everything. You can't even be Malphite where yes everything is auto combo but at least the ult is completely unfair and MOST IMPORTANTLY very RELIABLE. Malphite with zero reliability and arguably less reward is very boring. Even worse when you happen to whiff an E or R because they aren't reliable.
Let me also add Skarner used to to say his voice line when he ulted. New Skarner is extremely quiet when he ults. Just loses the luster of kidnapping a poor soul.
i have a few problems with this explanation, one you arent locked into using grasp triumph or press the attack work well on him as well. he has certain damage items he can build such as titanic or bloodmail. his new ult has so much play potential with the ability to hit three people. but i do agree, he lost alot of his personality and funny builds but i feel like we gained quite a bit. but im no challanger and this is just the way i see things😊
I know I'm one of those rare Skarner top mains, but man the feeling of running around and pulling people under the turret is satisfying. Now I'm trying to fulfill that hole in my heart with K'sante...
from the moment i saw that riot was gonna remake skarner i knew everyone was going to play it and then forget it again rip old skarner
I really liked about the old skarner that his R ignored displacement immunity, I read whole wiki about what I can cancel and what not