@@i_saidmeow2469 Like that wouldn't be the coolest shit ever, having this manipulative shadowy assassin who is playing everyone in Piltover like fiddles chased down by an unstoppable force of nature who can't be deceived like the rest.
@@otakujiji dont resent over arcane, Riot made the decision to make the show the basis for the ongoing canon after it's release when it was a show with it's own narrative. This is an overall tough (and Imo a bad) decision, because now the writers for the show have to deal with that pressure and essentially probably will have less freedom with it and because something similar happened 2013 or -14 with the lore retcon. Brand still breaks the 4rth wall, we don't know what Shaco is (or what role they fullfill) and plotholes threats and stuff that want to end the world such as the Watchers in the Ice or Mordekaiser, Zyra just to name a few wich don't feel like a threat at all because those plots don't get driven forward anymore. Showing that Riot cannot be trusted when it comes to continuety and making this shift.
@tamas9554 crystals have edges and sharp lines that might be a little complicated to fit in skinlines On top of that he is a monster while lux is just a generic blonde witch and yasuo is just a samurai Just look at the characters for the crystallys motus line
He has 0,6% pickrate in jungle and so low pickrate on top that most apps do not even consider him toplaner anymore. Riot removed everything unique from him and turned him into yet another ooga booga health tank like Mundo, but he is still super unpopular. A lose - lose situation for everyone. Peak failed rework.
They reworked him to make him popular just to make him less XD. Old kit was so much more fun. Used to do full cd tank and being able to spam skills and lock people makes it such an enjoyable champ in a game that is now full of people dashing around like flies
@@philmienus2382 he also was into zoomy category with Rammus, Hecarim and so on, which made him really dynamic and fun to play. New Skarner is slow and clunky and doesn't resemble pre-rework play style in the slightest. First Aatrox, now Skarner, good job riot. Oh and also his new '"lore" just reeks of being uninspired and basically being a filler for Ixhtal region, because they don't have enough champions from there compared to others 🤣
My biggest grievance with the current state of League is Riot thinks there should be "a correct way to play" and the worst part is this is dictated not by the players but by the designers and if you dare fall out of line, they will force you to play the way they want. What doesn't help is the current head of balance (Riot Phreak) is a meta slave and a numbers guy, which means he doesn't care about how a champion feels to play of if they're fun at all; all that matters is if the numbers in their data are what they want them to be, i.e. sooner or later they will balance the fun out of the champion Edit: I think I should add that I don't mean only Skarner; it applies to all champions. I pretty much onetrick Aurelion Sol and I have to say, whether they're deserved or not, having your champion get nerfed 12 times in a span of one year feels terrible. The flaws of his CGU were hidden behind how strong he was but now it genuinely feels bad to play him. 14.4 was supposed to push him into more of a duelist playstyle but then he got nerfed so many times that he loses almost any 1v1 and we're back to square one except he's even weaker than he was before 14.4. And the best part is, they won't revert him to his 14.3 state because **his numbers show it was a success** even though he feels a lot worse to play.
They’ve been doing that since they started balancing around pro play as well instead of just solo q. Part of the fun of the game was all the off meta or strange picks you’d see. Now pro play you only see the same champs until maybe the finals at worlds.
@@TacoZ24 you would think balancing around pro would open up more stuff in pro play too. But it's still not too great in variety vs it's competition in pro. Best part of the game was the solo q stuff instead of seeing the same stuff in pro anyway tbh.
There will always be a "correct" way to play characters, however if they aren't actually managed by the game dev they become a nightmare balance wise. Sometimes I feel like they are diconnected with the playerbase though, Aurora is just another ranged top for example, but its widely known that playing against ranged champs on top is unfun as hell
@@kf532 The developers of halo 3 made and balanced halo with the players in mind. The pros come in and take that chaos and make metas out of it. Halo 3 was massively successful in the competitive gaming landscape. There’s something to making a game for the players and letting the pros figure it out. But a lot of pros are cry babies and demanded balancing catered to them and it really takes a lot of surprise and fun out of the pro scene. And hurts solo q. That’s just my opinion. I disliked it since they announce it and everytime I saw in patch notes something was changed for pro play I thought what a joke. Make a game for you players make it good make it fun. It’s the pros job to take that and make something out of it. We don’t see wild off meta picks that work like we use to because there’s no experimenting in pro play and it’s all so linear now. Just really took some of the fun out of it for me.
@@TacoZ24 you have to pick one or the other tbh going both is kinda cursed league doesnt focus completely on pro so it's lacking in some places. Dota committed to pro so it has insane variety compared to league and keeps that niche for the players that like that but league doesn't gate players as badly as dota does so imo it would be better to stay casual focused anyway and stop gutting chars just because of pro.
I used to run into Merthos and FACECHECKSKARNER in soloq all the time, but ever since the rework I haven’t seen facecheck at all and Merthos was playing adc last time I saw him. All the skarner one tricks are pretty much gone at this point, most of the new skarner one tricks are new skarner one tricks only and never even played old skarner. Riot won’t fix this champion, they never fix anything, they just change shit until people forget what used to exist in its place. Rip skarner.
Fiddle and Ww are the only reworks that actually fixed the champions the rest were either bad or the champion was in need of rework to begin with.Aatrox for example I would consider his rework a success if riot took away power from other abilities and kept his revive that was what made him aatrox they aways either dont fix the problem or remove the uniqueness from the champion.
@@metalhydra273 I probably have ran into you at some point, but merthos was well known and played an insane amount, and any time I vsd facecheck it looked like he was playing ultimate bravery while running around one shotting everyone, so it was quite terrifying seeing him in any of my games. 😅
Conceptually the passive pisses me off so much. The crystals were not great but an extremely unique passive. We lost that for...a 3 hit passive. Really drinking our creativity juices riot
Old Skarner Lore - A member of a wise and ancient species who have survived the Rune Wars by hiding from the world, and are now facing extinction as Piltovan wealthy families exploit and genocide them for progress and profit, literally flaying them alive to turn their chitin into crystals. Rising up to protect his people Skarner sets out into the Shuriman desert in search of his fallen kin's souls, which are now trapped in Hextech. In short, though he might be monstrous in appearance, Skarner is undeniably one of the good guys. New Skarner Lore - Mean Galio, but in Ixtal. Also, his species is no longer endangered apparently, and are super huge kaijus, but Skarner is the only one we know anything about, so that leaves a huge plot hole due to the question of where the hell all of the other giant scorpion kaijus are living? If they form Clans (plural), then do they have a society? Do they live underground? Is Runeterra a hollow planet or something? How come nobody outside of Ixtal has ever mentioned giant scorpion creatures roaming about? Who knows!
it is litterally said that the other brackerns still live underground so yes, there's some kind of hollow world in the underground of runeterra that could have the possibility to be explored. also no one mentioned giant scorpions roaming around cuz they don't know their existence since skarner is the only one who wanted to visit the surface
@@madnard8744so basically monsterverse hollow earth? And ok normal people will fail to find them, but the literal shurima gods? The void consuming air, earth and sea? That could devour it's way to this hollow earth? Or what about piltover theres no tecnology for that now? Or idk Kayle mother is so ancient that she should atleast now them, like is not Even that hard to find a planet size cave with kaijus in it i think
@@changeling6450 Runeterra is briming with so many larger than life mythical creatures that I honestly find it believeable for some to remain hidden. In a world of giants even titans can hide.
imagine if they took skarners lore in the following way: he is a part of a race of tiny crystal scorpions and when one dies their crystaline body is then fractured and combined with that of the other scorpions, so in a way when one of them dies he just becomes one of the pack , you can also make them sentient and believe in reincarnation and how that is some kind of spiritual returning to the whole or something. then pollution happens and they slowly die out, resulting in only one of them being left, having absorbed the crystal bodies of his entire species he grew to massive sizes. last of his kind, believing he is the accumulation of his entire species bodies and souls, fully knowing his race is beyond salvation, he roams the world looking for someone to teach about the ways of his people.
I had mastery 7 on old skarner and what made me play him was that he was super fast and could bring people super far away with his ult. Now he's just a slow awkward to play tank with nothing remarkable in his kit. Not only did they scrap bascially all of his abilities, but they also changed his playstyle visuals and lore. If it wasn't for the somewhat similar ult, you wouldn't even be able to tell that old skarner and new skarner were the same champion.
I was an udyr main, they changed the lore, the kit and his fucking dialog, there is no more a monk with a trouble background and peace in his heart. And I am sure that they changed this cus china don't like Tibetan monks 😢. I leave that game after that
Yeah it almost feels like malphire rework if You only count Q, W and E, and i don't like it at all, skarner was super speedy and it was the funniest part of the champ, having the Crystal, the dead plate, and active the blue rune of speed and you literally could dance in the middle of enemies and mini mini mani moe ult someone
@@eduardo_carvajalyeah the Udyr rework was horrible. He looks so fucking weird now, and his kit being based around Anivia, Volibear and Ornn make him feel leas unique than before. He is literally just a fat amalgamation of three other, better champs now. Sad to see, as he had a distinct and fun playstyle before the rework.
Why they had to change the lore, people wouldn't shut up about Seraphine abusing the crystals of Skarner's race. Can't have that, can't make Riot's golden child have flaws.
It's not just due to Seraphine, they retconned the problematic junk less than a week after her release. The entirety of Piltover was powered by the souls of the deceased, and frankly Skarner's story couldn't really be progressed further than that because his people were dead
@@pvinkreverieThere are so many damn ways for skarners story to continue like searching for his lost family (The stuff powering plitover) and have him encounter champs/characters
All Riot had to do was rework his passive. I hate playing jungle but Skarner felt awful in any other role, specifically top so I was excited when Riot said Skarner's secondary role would be top. Playing it felt terrible though. I wasn't winning because I was better, I was winning because my range and stats were higher. Ironically old Skarner had the same issue with me losing because my stats were lower and I had no ranged damage to poke or cs. I hope eventually down the line Riot does a partial revert, I miss being a danger-ball of Q spam.
Preach. Oldskarner jusy needed a new passive and skin update. Being able to lock people for 5 sec by timing everything right close to your tower or in a midle of a chaotic tf is what makes him fun
Exactly!!!! My poor boy just needed to be a more fun champ to play for other people not just the few of us, idk Even a riven Q or a yasuo one sounds better than what we have now, and is totally correct new skarner is just a Big amount of CC and high stats, stats nerfed almost 10 times by now so almost not anymore, and rito just forget that what skarner needed was being fun not being stat op or a stat slave.
what i liked about old skarner is that he felt like a cockroach tanky enough to survive a nuke while telling you to get off his lawn and if you dont he will run at you faster than a pitbull seeing a unsupervised toddler and then proceed to freeze ray you and pick you up so you can get jumped by his buddies while building whatever the fuck he wants i liked being able to build tank, i liked being able to build collector and redemption, i liked being able to build full MS and now the only builds and health tank and maaaaaaaaaaaybe shojin and titanic hydra his kit is so one dimensional and has no scaling whatsoever there are 3 things i want from him build diversity his kit working with MS and having his abilitys scale off anything but HP also they should have given him a traditional skarner skin where he is still crystalized and the boulders he picks up from his Q are his spires
@@zeusjukem9484 no, they stopped doing them a long time ago. It’s just been hard to notice because this is the first rework with an entire visual theme change since then. We never even got stuff like traditional Sion or Galio either
@@metalhydra273 this isn't the first rework with an entire visual theme change. Galio (who you just mentioned) had that, too. he had it just as bad as Skarner. his silhouette isn't even remotely similar to his old one. look at how different every single one of Galio's skins look from the original, and then look how many of Skarner's skins stayed mostly the same.
@@carnage0685 I should’ve said in while. They kinda stopped doing them at a weird point where theme changing VGUs were still more common place, when champions like the ones mentioned probably would have gotten them ahead they been made a few years earlier. But we haven’t gotten a whole theme change in a very long time at this point compared to the other reworks to come out this decade
I really appreciate the emphasis on lack of in kit synergy aka combos and skill expression. Im a lore nut personally and also dont feel like his lore is expressed well at all in his kit.
The shame is when you ulted on old Skarner, you got an epic voiceline: "You'll never escape!". One that you can hear while you drag some unlucky soul into their death. Now when you ult on rework Skarner, you can barely hear him. He is like whispering it. Also, Riot loves adding self roots to character reworks. Xin Zhao used to be a nuclear missile where you spammed all your buttons. Now you have to press W to root yourself for 8 seconds cause you need to do an animation. That's what they did to Skarner. Added so many cast time animations that makes him feel clunky including the ult.
@philmienus2382 Or a Chinese moba. I tried one of the ones people suggested, nearly every single character had a dash ability that dealt damage in some way, a damage ability that interacts with the dash ability, and the ult which wound up being a dash 50% of the time. The one exception to this ability scheme was some dude with an anchor, who was completely immobile until he popped ult to naut hook someone. And every single ability was a roughly translated word vomit of a description with more flavor text than actual ability information.
His current abilities have way more impact and it makes sense they self root. Imo the main reason why he's so hard to balance is because his E doesn't self root. If it had like 1s startup time he'd be way less toxic in duels where he can basically full combo anyone that comes close to him with no counterplay after beginning the combo with E. They could then remove the self root on Q to make it up to him. Anyways, he'd then be hella easy to balance, idk why Riot refuses to do this one particular change and prefers shuffling numbers every single patch. Sooner or later they have to realize they're doing something wrong, right?
its crazy that it took them 2 years to make a generic scorpion with boring and unfun to play abilities when NO ONE wanted to play skarner before and no one does now. Meanwhile Nocturne exists who looks rediculous and is one of the most played champs for new players to the game (because he looks intresting) and the champ that everyone stops playing really fast cuz hes not fun.
it took that long because the pillars turned out to be a "support beam" of league's code. also it was closer to 1 year as they did the poll before udyr was released
Honestly, the fact that they been sitting on this rework for a year if I remember well, and the only thing they could come up is a stat stick even after doing a "erase the champion" type of rework... I can't decide either to be baffled or sad here.
The reason they took away Skarner's crystalline look is because of the Seraphine controversy when they fked up the lore by making her be able to talk to the hextech crystals which are powered by the eternal screaming agony of Skarner's familiars. So instead of making an interesting character for Seraphine to make it so when she presents herself as a cutie wholesome waifu she is actually a narcissistic sociopath who uses people for her own goals, instead they LITERALLY RETCONNED SKARNER'S LORE. Riot will burn their entire company before making their waifus look bad. Or make K'sante less of a boring cringe stereotype of anything black related.
That's not true at all the main reason why they had to drastically change Skarner is because they were trying to retcon the entirety of P&Z's story with Arcane. A series that has been in the works years before Seraphine was even thought of in the pinboard. Even though they said Arcane was in a different universe at first, it was obvious they were gonna make it to have some ties with League at some point. If anything Seraphine helped Skarner won that VGU poll due to the pity party that was happening at the time.
You forgot the part where he used to have a way more lockdown with his E. That used to make him one off the strongest duelist champions. Great video tho
I dislike the rework because I feel forced into building full tank or getting a little AD. Pre-rework you could build just about anything on Skarner and feel good about it. You weren't a one-build wonder.
@@mattgibson9337 Not really, Old Skarner had moments where he was just plain amazing. His Qs refunding CD on hit made him compatible with atk speed and scaled off AD and AP so it was nice to have no matter what. W scaled both off AP and HP while being a movement speed steroid, E refunded its cd for every hard cc proc you did and Ult was reliable and a major boon for combo setups. Each variation of Skarner had different win cons and was a menace once he got a lead. The only reason he was ass was because of his passive.If they just replaced it and bumped his starting stats to match the rest of the cast, he would've been fine.
damn that's sad that Facecheck and merthos stopped playing the game used to watch them time to time. i really enjoyed playing old skarner never got tired of playing him but after the rework he just feels horrible to play from old skarner to this garbage. completely stopped playing after rework, unfortunately i don't really enjoy other champs to keep playing league like i used to with old skarner
For real man. It just needed a skin update in my opinion and possibly a rework on passive. Not every champ needs to be over complicated. Plus the new ult is a disgrace imho
@@philmienus2382 agreed. also yes the ult feels horrible to use no turning around or fast kidnap. now its just feels very awkward how the R works, from fast satisfying impale to this garbage
@Kaml1810 like no sense on puting a long delay on a very small aoe when they keep adding champs with multiple forms of dashes that are sometimes uninteruptible
Btw Merthos is still on it seeing as his last streams were 2 and 3 days ago for me, but it just doesn't have the same vibe of cooking builds anymore, to me Can't even blame the man cuz what else is there to cook lol
Tbh he could've been cool if they went harder with the tribal markings that are on him, but for some reason they instead made the ones he already has super desaturated and we ended up with a Skarner who just has near 0 visual sauce to him
Skarner in lore could be a character more wise since he help the first people of Ixtal and can have a dilemma of open the gates to the globalization or open the gates to enemies. Being literally a grey discussion about people or trust But nah is just Galio like is not even deep is just Galio with tail, why no he is big already
another thing that i think that make new skarner feel bad is the fact that riot make his ult a cast time skill shot instead of instant point and click yeah i can now ult 3 people but against any decent player ,you can barely get 2 on average and riot low effort thinking of "skill shot mean skill expression" really show here and we know how that goes with morderkaiser who now has more skill show what i like about old skarner is that even tho he's a worse tank and worse engage than other tank ,at least you can guarantee an engage with him with the ult by running up and ulting someone which is now not guarantee anymore due to the ult cast time and being a skill shot and is also now no longer immune to displacement and that's why the E also feel so bad in the new skarner is that you can't just "run" up to the enemy with W speed boost anymore ,u have to drive there which make it harder for you to dodge enemies' ability and give the enemies a big ass warning saying "skarner is coming in with E from that direction and this is the maximum range btw" making his engage soooooo much worse and harder
Riot proving once again that some things are just better left alone as niche. I am ok with them modernizing some kits, pantheon is a big example, but he was already quite popular in low elo and his kit is much more easy to make appealing. Champs like Skarner don't really need that much of a change, they are unique, interesting, fun to play, viable and have a lot of ways to be played so players feel engaged. But I guess we rather have things look shinny and modern that have meaning, just to still being on the side due to Riot being horrible at balancing.
I cant think of any other rework (aside from maybe Asol) that has ONLY had a negative impact on the champ playrate and general fun. Volibear rework kept him a very similar champ, with the same amount of build variety with an updated look that doesnt stray from the old champ Mundo gave him quality of life and (incredibly minor) skill expression, with an updated look, that again doesnt look entirely different. Morde, Sion, Urgot, all 3 of these champs were heavily changed on rework, but were still praised due to the genuinely more engaging gameplay (aside from maybe morde) and AGAIN they can still be recognized as their old champion, even through skins. Skarner Has lackluster abilities that not only completely throw away his old "fast single target lock down scorpion" but are also clunky and so heavily restrictive that he just turns into GENERIC TANK MONSTER CHAMPION 5000. At least Ornn has combos in his kit and some semblance of item variety due to masterwork items. Skarner instead turned from crystal scorpion thats the last of his race with an engaging passive and self synergistic kit into big rock monster that does damage based on his health. Skarner had so much opportunity to become ANYTHING. Instead he turned into nothing
It needs an Aurelion Sol level Gameplay rework, not K'Sante level in my opinion. Nothing was functionally kept from how old Skarner played, so might as well scrap everything he has now and try to make an interesting fighter or tank from the ground up, or try to revive some aspects of the old Skarner.
15:52 For fucking real man, it's satisfying to hear you emphasize this part out.. Used to love attending Merthos' streams/VODS religiously at work, or seeing another Facecheck cooked-up build post Now we've just lost 2 good niche scientists who made League more fun for me, the only thing I'm cooking now is how to build anything other than just ER Shojin RFC Smolder cuz fuck trying to steer the new Skarner
After what Skarner did to me and my toplane brothers after the rework, I don't want him to be a viable champion. Something like this shouldn't be in the game. Or at least he should stay underpowered and uninteresting just so he wouldn't break toplane again
I've never had so much fun playing league until I played the ap move speed facecheckskarner build, everything was peak, but idk, I used to kinda like the rework despite my disappointment, but now he just feels dull and boring, same game plan every game, meanwhile old skarner could just use ultimate bravery for his build and still be useful for the team. Good video metalhydra my beloved EDIT: HAPPY 13TH BIRTHDAY SKARNER
Old skarner was a champ I wanted to play and like. And every now and then I did pick and do stuff with him. New skarner I couldnt really care less about. I always thought the zones although gimmicky and potentially not something that can exist always made the map feel more interesting when around, I wish that they coulda brought that back and made them like kindred marks or something. Hell even make it a steroid for 15 seconds or something, that would encourage jungle fights.
The problem with new Skarner is what you see in popular tanks, reliable CC. Sejuani, Nautilus, Leona, Malphite, Amumu, all have good on-demand point-click or large area CC/engage. Skarner has slow position dependent CC, and by being forced to build HP items (Heartsteel/Warmogs) means he's susceptible to all %max health damage there's in the game nowadays. And if you give him too much base damage, he's too op and stat checker, but if you keep his numbers low, he's underplayed because he has underwhelming CC for a tank
@@chapocademesquit Yeah I may have been a bit mean there because I wanted this out as soon as possible with it being a hit topic now, so I didn’t go back and make the emphasis parts cleaner. I could probably bite the bullet and add a chapter for the good listeners out there to not blow out ears.
wow they fixed the E hitbox? no wonder no one plays him in aram anymore. the snowball into backwards E combo was basically his old R on steroids and just about the only thing he could do.
I would have been fine with all of this but they ruined Skarner for me because yet again that one macro fetishist on Riot's art team just couldn't resist making him stupidly big in his lore for no good reason.
The new skarner is boring, it's not the old dps with a bunch of mvspeed and shields. Now it's just a malphite 2.0. And the riot just did the same thing what killed the old skarner, so yeah, it's a shitty rework. The design is good, the abilities are good, but it's just everything made to be to op that riot have to nerf and made the champion a shit walking.
I used to play Skarner support around 2019-2020. It was awesome, especially when enemy team was also playing a melee support. This new Skarner looks like trash and I wouldn't be able to play it as a support.
A fix for his lackluster ult would be: After the ult rruns out, sharker turns the enemies into the direction of his cursor (so if the cursor is behin him, he spins 180 with enemies attached) at a fixed distance. This would then combo into his charge, if you did not engage with it, essentially giving him the old charge grab back but putting thee power of it into his ult. Then to diversify buildpaths, make the final hit of his 3 hit Q am activation trigger. Meaning it acts as if skarner used an ability to get trinity procs in. Nerf His HP scalings slightly and buff AD scalings. To enable juggernaut builds. And as a final Fun option: add AP scaling to his Q and E.
Feel like a big problem with Skarner is they completely changed his role with the rework. Instead of him being a juggernaut like he was before the rework (and before the spire rework) he's a tank now. He can't even build like a juggernaut like Darius, Garen, Illaoi, Sett, or even Morde. Before the rework he even had ap item options but now he's just a generic cc tank.
yeah they did the same thing to asol, removing literally all the skill expression out of his kit. not only that but they also removed his identity of a complicated spacing mage, making it so his gameplay is literally standing still and holding q. and there was a lot of skill in using his stun because it only popped when it was outside the range of his stars so you could do some really cool kites where youre dodging in and out to maximise damage AND cc. and being able to combo huge stuns with a w + q combo was a lot of fun. now his entire kit is completely point and click, and it actively discourages him moving around. very frustrating
Also wanted to add: the disappointment with how long the rework took is only amplified by how well they did with Udyr's rework... so sad for our scorpion
I agree the old lore was better, but his new gameplay is great, maybe my favorite Jungler. And the cast time of Q really isnt that bad, the power of his E easily circumvents most issues with it And saying E is bad for users is entirely an opinion thing, I have so much fun with it. And you want it to be unstoppable? Everyone gets countered by hard CC, absolutely everyone.
the fact they nerfed his ultimate is the worst part. his old ult was more powerful. although it only targeted one champion, it's more than enough as the effect is instantaneous and you can move it around freely. you can isolate one particular enemy and bring it into the hands of your team, making fights 4v5 in what cases do you need to bring 3 people? not to mention, once the effect expires, there's now 3 enemy champions at the middle of your team, which could be more disastrous than if you just didn't ult them in the first place
I love new Skarner. I've been having a lot of fun playing him support. Old Skarner was significantly more flawed than what they turned him into in my opinion.
Hey hydra, good to see you - this is WIIFM. Saw you a lot in merthos' chat back when he streamed and sad to see him quit entirely, but not surprised. Great video although I will say you're a lot more positive than I am about the rework, as I don't see a single silver lining in it. Old Skarner was one of the most misunderstood champions, where on surface he was simple yet had so much depth in the way you played - not just built, but the moment to moment actions you took. New Skarner is so binary, and it's tragically ironic to see all the reasons Riot gave on why he needed the rework such as "power budget on his R" and then spit out a kit with an undodgable lane wide nuke+slow in his W, leading to his E. Now they've gutted or removed all the "unique" things of his new kit - that were infinitely less fun than anything old Skarner would do - and he's a broken mess of a champion. You can't play effective backline defense, you can't skirmish in and out of threat ranges with your permanent W shield and high movespeed, your engage is one dimensional and after you press your buttons you're left sitting around hoping you managed to statcheck the opponent. New Skarner is the nail in the coffin for why I quit (although the game just being unfun, and Vanguard, sealed it shut). It took three years to make and it's clear that nobody on Riot either had the skill or desire to try to make the rework good, so they just pushed what they had out the door and called it a day. The gameplay has all the flaws of modern champion design where they shove more words and numbers into kits, the lore is generic and boring whereas the old Skarner (especially JoJ-era) had so much potential to be expanded upon. The art genuinely looks AI generated and uninspired in design. Everything Riot tried ended up worse than before and I'm glad people are realizing that after the honeymoon period of being left at 55-60% wr for months, he's just not a good rework. Unfortunately a revert simply isn't in the cards because of sunk cost fallacy, and none of the old guard will come back for as long as this abomination exists hiding behind the name of Skarner.
As a new skarner enjoyer... I agree some of his kit is jarring... however I view the e grab difference as a buff... as the only way it got me killed as I couldn't E to get away because I grabbed them and then face planted into a wall and die.
I love to see Edge of night one of the mandatory items for skarner, but this could result in more complicated situation. Making his rock deal magic damage could work; since most of his current items are related to magic damage like Sunfire & undying despair. Also, he could make a use of abyssal mask, which greatly enpowers AP bruisers like mordekaiser or galio. This change might diminish what differs himself to other tanks; being the master of displacement while dealing physical damages. Anyway, I'd like to see you skarner lover cooking his future build. Keep up your good work my man!
I dont Really think his design is flawed. More overloaded than flawed. He has 2 Hp% dmg as passive and Q. His W is a shield, a slow, and a poke tool. And his R is an AOE supression. Remove HP% of his passive and make it a burn, a 3 hit passive, or a sheen with target cd. Remove the dmg of his W, and revert the changes to his R and i think he will be fine.
He has zero damage as it is. He lacks any reliable cc. His only gapclose can be stopped by any cc and then he is a glorified siege minion. The only reason you would want to pick him is his R to set up for teammates.
The issue aren't even the abilities themselves, but rather the fact that you're about as mobile as nautilus. He's just not as fun anymore. Your own abilities stun you, you move slow, you have a large hitbox. It's just... boring to play him. You can get a champion who nobody plays even if he's strong, and you can get a champion who people play despite him being weak. Old skarner was fast. That's it. It was enough for some players, now they took away even that from him.
I dont understand why they can’t just leave champions to be lower pick rates. There wasn’t an issue with old skarner since not that many people played him. He was strong but not overtuned and it wasn’t an issue since his play rate was low. Reworking him like this just alienates the old players and as we can see, fails to bring in new players to stick with Skarner
Before the rework I played full damage Skarner toplane, Trinity, Muramana and a shit ton of armor pen. It was so fun because you will win almost every 1 vs 1 by oneshotting people in 4 seconds of cc. Hiding in the enemies jungle and picking an enemy up with Phaserush to their grave was fun I can only achieve with extremely off meta picks. I tried to play the new Skarner but man, that is an entirely different champion, he feels like Malphite, but your ult never goes off cd.
Really hoping they find a way to make him better. Aatrox was similarly problematic since his initial VGU for a good year or two even after his mini-rework, but did eventually settle down into a pretty good champ with a decent playrate. That kind of makes it hard for me to call this new Skarner a complete failure, even if things are looking ridiculously rough rn. I really like the concept of his new kit, but it feels like there's just so many forced restrictions and blatant pigeonholing in there that he ends up being unfun to play.
Riot trying not to release champion for specific role that is completely overpowered on different roles challenge. I swear 90% of new champs and reworks suffer from this
New-ish player, here. Skarner was the first character I played after Yuumi, and while neither champion's kit is... Good... I did find a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment out of playing the scorpion. His ult always felt lackluster compared to every other ult in the game, but in general, the rest of the kit made up for it. Looking back, I definitely see the faults, but I'm not sure I ever had a truly "bad" experience playing the character, except when I made bad decisions. I tend to like giga-tanks, I like being a team player, and being able to solo first dragon on spawn is always funny to me, whenever I get put in Jungle
Recently I had an hour to waste, because I was waiting for a delivery, so I decided to design his mini rework for fun. It turned out not so "mini" but it would use all his current animations and VFX with small necessity to add only one new "mark" visual. Passive: Quaking can be applied only by damaging abilities. Instead of burning it deals on-hit magic dmg equal to small % of enemy max hp. Additionally every stack grants additional AS vs affected target (tail stinging attack animation removed). Q: Picking a rock grants bonus MS instead of AS till the end of its duration. Third attack stuns main target for 1.25 sec and marks other enemies hit by its AOE. Attacking marked targets stuns them for the same amount (tail stinging animation would be used here). Throwing a rock marks all target hit by its AOE. E is controversial: Can't grab and push enemies anymore. Passing threw marked enemies consumes mark and stuns for additional time. Using E while Q is active upgrades it. Now colliding with enemy champion or large monster causes immediate AOE explosion, similar to Q's third attack but instead of marking hit targets, it would stun them all (Q's rock is used). W and R can stay as it is in functionality. Maybe ult could additionally extend marks duration.
I really liked old skarner gameplay. Although he wasn't strong in normal games, I believe he was one of the strongest in aram. The crystal tower defense was really funny/frustrating, but it would become really reliant to winning or losing (if you're winning they're better and if you're losing, you'll lose harder). What I felt was bad for his old kit was his passive, a area buff that stretched to the start of a lane or new crystals positions would make it a lot better, since he could get some buffs ganking or while laning. The new skarner feels like a go in and hope you can tank long enough to kill or wait until your team win, just like a sion, and his ult is just a cc that stops the enemies long enough for them to aggro to you, or reposition around it. One thing I don't think the video mentions is how bad his mana ratio is at the early game (until around level 5-6) his q uses relatively a lot of mana, and since he always want to be using it, feels like a mf burning her mana through her q, making it unreliable. I also miss his old e, where a good placed e could win a teamfight or make it easier for kidnapping an enemy player, his new e can reposition an enemy player, but will most of the time be a frontliner or a tank, like a braum or zac (I really the the skarner e response for zac e though, where he just kidnaps zac from the air) and will not affect the enemy team that much, and it is hard for a flank in a teamfight since you'll be tanking for your team. As a person who like to build strange builds in champs, skarner lost a lot, we can't have an adc skarner, since no abilities benefits from it (q cast time is really long for an adc, and his passive is a joke), ap skarner is a meme build and bruiser is just weaker than a tank skarner.
They should replace Skarner's W with Ornn's Q ability That would allow Skarner to set up E stuns away from walls while removing the zero counterplay AOE damage and uninteractive shield of current W
I like how on PBE ( on release) skarner q used to do the following things: Used to have an .6 ratio. Used to count as ability damage and auto which stack conq on 3 autos,double manamune proc,insta proc eclipse. The max health on the roc scale with ability level rather than insta 15%. Since riot change/delete those not only eneded being Profe that we’re wrong and totally pointless like the ad ratio nerf xd but helped to improve this max w thing in skarner xd. While killing any possible way to go ad on him.
My biggest problem with the Skarner balancing is his W damage they nerfed it a bit but imo it should only deal 5 base damage so that clearing jg is not gutted but top Skarner cant just fart on people for free all the time. His Q and E are the skill expression and could have been nerfed way less if his W did basically no damage. Also why the hell did they remove Q refreshing on wards making support more annoying to play! Its just a random QOL removal.
Honestly, w doesn’t do enough damage to be a problem imo. He can last hit minions and that’s about it. However, it doesn’t really need to do damage, and its range is kind of needlessly big. Most of W’s numbers have had to be gutted and it only scales with cooldown and damage, so it’s just in a very sad state. It needs more changes imo
boohoo old is good new is bad boohoo. aight jokes aside you are right new skarner kinda feels weird and slow to play and I dont feel the same fun when I played with old skarner.
9:10 wow that killed Skarner for me. Its the most fun thing about him especially on support but also a bit on top. Adcs have no clue of that cheese so u could get a lot of angels with it but now the main fun thing about him is removed... At least now Im not mad that Battlecast is his only good skin even after the rework.
They nerfed the hitbox of E, but never try to understand why people are mad about the changes. it's simple, E is not worth using at max range because of how hard it is to steer. If they fix it, people will happily pick him up in the jungle.
I think taking away his spires took away one of the "fun" parts of his kit. Getting a speed boost just made jungling more enjoyable. Now he just feels like a tank
I wish they kept him as a bruiser. Now 3 out of 5 abilites are pretty much a fodder, and there's no doubt about it with his passive. I wish they screwed on his R part, and focused more on him being a cooler Garen, that synergises with sheen and muramana. I hated how I was easily outrun as a jungler, but the new kit leaves me pissed, at how rito didn't even bother to make him somewhat skill expressive. Freakin' 2 3 hit abilities xD. Pretty much a launch design. I like him but come on. Building shojin makes me too squishy. Edit: I'm especially pissed, because the worst and most lazy rework happend to be Skarner's. I just want to play a freakin giant 🦂
I played Arena yesterday. Skarner counters Tristana completely. He's too tanky to be killed quickly, his E and R completely cancel Trist W, so you can't jump over him. Overall unfair matchup.
Wouldn’t the idea with Tristana just be to w earlier? You play to sidestep e or w out of the way early, and if you really need a failsafe, your ult hard counters his e and r.
@@metalhydra273 I get your point. As I said I experienced this in Arena, where you don't have the most space to run from an angry scorpion. And the way I see it: Using R is only a temporary solution, because he can get back to me pretty fast. And for some reason the scorpion deals a ton of damage, while taking none.
@@arandominternetperson4462yeah, you probably have to itemize pretty specifically to beat him. Kiting in arena is likely harder than usual. Skarner’s damage isn’t great, but its enough to deal with squishies
Can't have the 300 dashes, high mobility, insane dps, half a year invulnerability overloaded ADCs and Assassins get outdone by an unpopular scorpion, now can we? Time to gut him like a fish, they're the ones who sell skins!
as an old skarner enjoyer I can agree with almos everything said here, they killed my boy, skarner is not the same, it used to be so fun running around at mach speed while kidnapping people and now it feels slow and clunky, I cant build him ful defenses or bruiser or ap or lethality, they took away all the fun from his kit to make a lifeless bearly movile rock, I want the true skarner back so bad :c
Removing his old lore is the biggest L, they literally took the last crystal scorpion and his abused peoples souls and deleted them so now piltover isnt as horrid of a place. I liked that dark aspect of the lore and wished they finally do a story event around it but that was obviously asking for something good and LoL cant just have a good thing.
Shyvana is one of my favorite champions ever and i am so scared of them ruining her like they did with my boy skarner, pleas keep her as a multi-build champ i beg because if they make her purely ad or ap i am gonna fucking lose it , it makes champions so much less fun if they are pigeonholed into 1 playstyle
New Skarner is fun but some things that old skarner did better ,the fast drag was way more fun could of added some speed scaling on his E,old W was more fun just because you beeing faster is way cooler than the enemy beeing slower,the ult stiffnes bad cone hitbox and no rotation make the fact that u can steal up to 3 people feel just like a sad compensation, Old Skarner with trinity and muramana spaming q and attacking really fast with the E as steroid was more fun than anything i did with the new one
![[ENGSUB] UNPRODUCTIVE DAY ใช้ชีวิต (เปื่อยๆ) ด้วยกัน 1 วัน! | OUROAD CLOSEFRiEND SS2 EP.9](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pyYKZ3kra9w/mqdefault.jpg)
personally I think the reason why they reworked skarners lore is that so it doesn't impact arcane
Otherwise we would see Skarner chasing after Camille to take the crystals
@@i_saidmeow2469 Like that wouldn't be the coolest shit ever, having this manipulative shadowy assassin who is playing everyone in Piltover like fiddles chased down by an unstoppable force of nature who can't be deceived like the rest.
Honestly I am starting to resent Arcane because league lore was overall stronger before with bracken crystals and stuff
@@otakujiji???
@@otakujiji dont resent over arcane, Riot made the decision to make the show the basis for the ongoing canon after it's release when it was a show with it's own narrative.
This is an overall tough (and Imo a bad) decision, because now the writers for the show have to deal with that pressure and essentially probably will have less freedom with it and because something similar happened 2013 or -14 with the lore retcon. Brand still breaks the 4rth wall, we don't know what Shaco is (or what role they fullfill) and plotholes
threats and stuff that want to end the world such as the Watchers in the Ice or Mordekaiser, Zyra just to name a few wich don't feel like a threat at all because those plots don't get driven forward anymore. Showing that Riot cannot be trusted when it comes to continuety and making this shift.
i feel like the main reason they made him earthy instead of crystally is to be able to fit him into more skinlines tbh
Why? Doesn't make much difference tbh. Look at Lux or Yasuo, light and wind, and its very easy to do skins with them both
@tamas9554 crystals have edges and sharp lines that might be a little complicated to fit in skinlines
On top of that he is a monster while lux is just a generic blonde witch and yasuo is just a samurai
Just look at the characters for the crystallys motus line
@@VanessaCamburao You do understand that they can just do a completely new vfx for a skin? And they do the same tweaks for the base model as well
Nah. They had a problem with seraphim's lore.
@@tamas9554 🙏🙏 all praise riot 🙏🙏
they should've made him Korean with beautiful skin half human half scorpion centaur hybrid
Man-scoprion Tark, but gay.
They should’ve made his skin color change to be lighter every skin too
He has 0,6% pickrate in jungle and so low pickrate on top that most apps do not even consider him toplaner anymore. Riot removed everything unique from him and turned him into yet another ooga booga health tank like Mundo, but he is still super unpopular. A lose - lose situation for everyone. Peak failed rework.
They reworked him to make him popular just to make him less XD. Old kit was so much more fun. Used to do full cd tank and being able to spam skills and lock people makes it such an enjoyable champ in a game that is now full of people dashing around like flies
@@philmienus2382 he also was into zoomy category with Rammus, Hecarim and so on, which made him really dynamic and fun to play. New Skarner is slow and clunky and doesn't resemble pre-rework play style in the slightest. First Aatrox, now Skarner, good job riot.
Oh and also his new '"lore" just reeks of being uninspired and basically being a filler for Ixhtal region, because they don't have enough champions from there compared to others 🤣
My biggest grievance with the current state of League is Riot thinks there should be "a correct way to play" and the worst part is this is dictated not by the players but by the designers and if you dare fall out of line, they will force you to play the way they want. What doesn't help is the current head of balance (Riot Phreak) is a meta slave and a numbers guy, which means he doesn't care about how a champion feels to play of if they're fun at all; all that matters is if the numbers in their data are what they want them to be, i.e. sooner or later they will balance the fun out of the champion
Edit: I think I should add that I don't mean only Skarner; it applies to all champions. I pretty much onetrick Aurelion Sol and I have to say, whether they're deserved or not, having your champion get nerfed 12 times in a span of one year feels terrible. The flaws of his CGU were hidden behind how strong he was but now it genuinely feels bad to play him. 14.4 was supposed to push him into more of a duelist playstyle but then he got nerfed so many times that he loses almost any 1v1 and we're back to square one except he's even weaker than he was before 14.4. And the best part is, they won't revert him to his 14.3 state because **his numbers show it was a success** even though he feels a lot worse to play.
They’ve been doing that since they started balancing around pro play as well instead of just solo q. Part of the fun of the game was all the off meta or strange picks you’d see. Now pro play you only see the same champs until maybe the finals at worlds.
@@TacoZ24 you would think balancing around pro would open up more stuff in pro play too. But it's still not too great in variety vs it's competition in pro. Best part of the game was the solo q stuff instead of seeing the same stuff in pro anyway tbh.
There will always be a "correct" way to play characters, however if they aren't actually managed by the game dev they become a nightmare balance wise. Sometimes I feel like they are diconnected with the playerbase though, Aurora is just another ranged top for example, but its widely known that playing against ranged champs on top is unfun as hell
@@kf532 The developers of halo 3 made and balanced halo with the players in mind. The pros come in and take that chaos and make metas out of it. Halo 3 was massively successful in the competitive gaming landscape. There’s something to making a game for the players and letting the pros figure it out. But a lot of pros are cry babies and demanded balancing catered to them and it really takes a lot of surprise and fun out of the pro scene. And hurts solo q. That’s just my opinion. I disliked it since they announce it and everytime I saw in patch notes something was changed for pro play I thought what a joke. Make a game for you players make it good make it fun. It’s the pros job to take that and make something out of it. We don’t see wild off meta picks that work like we use to because there’s no experimenting in pro play and it’s all so linear now. Just really took some of the fun out of it for me.
@@TacoZ24 you have to pick one or the other tbh going both is kinda cursed league doesnt focus completely on pro so it's lacking in some places. Dota committed to pro so it has insane variety compared to league and keeps that niche for the players that like that but league doesn't gate players as badly as dota does so imo it would be better to stay casual focused anyway and stop gutting chars just because of pro.
I used to run into Merthos and FACECHECKSKARNER in soloq all the time, but ever since the rework I haven’t seen facecheck at all and Merthos was playing adc last time I saw him. All the skarner one tricks are pretty much gone at this point, most of the new skarner one tricks are new skarner one tricks only and never even played old skarner. Riot won’t fix this champion, they never fix anything, they just change shit until people forget what used to exist in its place. Rip skarner.
Yeah its tragic, same with aurelion sol he also lost his uniqueness
Fiddle and Ww are the only reworks that actually fixed the champions the rest were either bad or the champion was in need of rework to begin with.Aatrox for example I would consider his rework a success if riot took away power from other abilities and kept his revive that was what made him aatrox they aways either dont fix the problem or remove the uniqueness from the champion.
Dang you never seen me? 🥺 (that’s ok I don’t play nearly as much as they did)
@@metalhydra273 I probably have ran into you at some point, but merthos was well known and played an insane amount, and any time I vsd facecheck it looked like he was playing ultimate bravery while running around one shotting everyone, so it was quite terrifying seeing him in any of my games. 😅
@@riotkatarina951🦂
Conceptually the passive pisses me off so much. The crystals were not great but an extremely unique passive. We lost that for...a 3 hit passive. Really drinking our creativity juices riot
Old Skarner Lore - A member of a wise and ancient species who have survived the Rune Wars by hiding from the world, and are now facing extinction as Piltovan wealthy families exploit and genocide them for progress and profit, literally flaying them alive to turn their chitin into crystals. Rising up to protect his people Skarner sets out into the Shuriman desert in search of his fallen kin's souls, which are now trapped in Hextech. In short, though he might be monstrous in appearance, Skarner is undeniably one of the good guys.
New Skarner Lore - Mean Galio, but in Ixtal. Also, his species is no longer endangered apparently, and are super huge kaijus, but Skarner is the only one we know anything about, so that leaves a huge plot hole due to the question of where the hell all of the other giant scorpion kaijus are living? If they form Clans (plural), then do they have a society? Do they live underground? Is Runeterra a hollow planet or something? How come nobody outside of Ixtal has ever mentioned giant scorpion creatures roaming about? Who knows!
it is litterally said that the other brackerns still live underground so yes, there's some kind of hollow world in the underground of runeterra that could have the possibility to be explored.
also no one mentioned giant scorpions roaming around cuz they don't know their existence since skarner is the only one who wanted to visit the surface
@@madnard8744so basically monsterverse hollow earth? And ok normal people will fail to find them, but the literal shurima gods? The void consuming air, earth and sea? That could devour it's way to this hollow earth? Or what about piltover theres no tecnology for that now? Or idk Kayle mother is so ancient that she should atleast now them, like is not Even that hard to find a planet size cave with kaijus in it i think
@@changeling6450 Runeterra is briming with so many larger than life mythical creatures that I honestly find it believeable for some to remain hidden. In a world of giants even titans can hide.
imagine if they took skarners lore in the following way: he is a part of a race of tiny crystal scorpions and when one dies their crystaline body is then fractured and combined with that of the other scorpions, so in a way when one of them dies he just becomes one of the pack , you can also make them sentient and believe in reincarnation and how that is some kind of spiritual returning to the whole or something.
then pollution happens and they slowly die out, resulting in only one of them being left, having absorbed the crystal bodies of his entire species he grew to massive sizes. last of his kind, believing he is the accumulation of his entire species bodies and souls, fully knowing his race is beyond salvation, he roams the world looking for someone to teach about the ways of his people.
@@NeverDry999 this is actually very much like the galio rework. Pretty much any symbolence to the old champion is gone
I had mastery 7 on old skarner and what made me play him was that he was super fast and could bring people super far away with his ult. Now he's just a slow awkward to play tank with nothing remarkable in his kit. Not only did they scrap bascially all of his abilities, but they also changed his playstyle visuals and lore. If it wasn't for the somewhat similar ult, you wouldn't even be able to tell that old skarner and new skarner were the same champion.
I litteraly unlocked skarner the other day after reading about the abduction build, only to realize it's not a thing right now
I was an udyr main, they changed the lore, the kit and his fucking dialog, there is no more a monk with a trouble background and peace in his heart. And I am sure that they changed this cus china don't like Tibetan monks 😢. I leave that game after that
Yeah it almost feels like malphire rework if You only count Q, W and E, and i don't like it at all, skarner was super speedy and it was the funniest part of the champ, having the Crystal, the dead plate, and active the blue rune of speed and you literally could dance in the middle of enemies and mini mini mani moe ult someone
@@eduardo_carvajalyeah the Udyr rework was horrible. He looks so fucking weird now, and his kit being based around Anivia, Volibear and Ornn make him feel leas unique than before. He is literally just a fat amalgamation of three other, better champs now. Sad to see, as he had a distinct and fun playstyle before the rework.
Why they had to change the lore, people wouldn't shut up about Seraphine abusing the crystals of Skarner's race. Can't have that, can't make Riot's golden child have flaws.
It's not just due to Seraphine, they retconned the problematic junk less than a week after her release. The entirety of Piltover was powered by the souls of the deceased, and frankly Skarner's story couldn't really be progressed further than that because his people were dead
@@pvinkreverieThere are so many damn ways for skarners story to continue like searching for his lost family (The stuff powering plitover) and have him encounter champs/characters
All Riot had to do was rework his passive. I hate playing jungle but Skarner felt awful in any other role, specifically top so I was excited when Riot said Skarner's secondary role would be top. Playing it felt terrible though. I wasn't winning because I was better, I was winning because my range and stats were higher. Ironically old Skarner had the same issue with me losing because my stats were lower and I had no ranged damage to poke or cs. I hope eventually down the line Riot does a partial revert, I miss being a danger-ball of Q spam.
Preach. Oldskarner jusy needed a new passive and skin update. Being able to lock people for 5 sec by timing everything right close to your tower or in a midle of a chaotic tf is what makes him fun
Exactly!!!! My poor boy just needed to be a more fun champ to play for other people not just the few of us, idk Even a riven Q or a yasuo one sounds better than what we have now, and is totally correct new skarner is just a Big amount of CC and high stats, stats nerfed almost 10 times by now so almost not anymore, and rito just forget that what skarner needed was being fun not being stat op or a stat slave.
what i liked about old skarner is that he felt like a cockroach tanky enough to survive a nuke while telling you to get off his lawn and if you dont he will run at you faster than a pitbull seeing a unsupervised toddler and then proceed to freeze ray you and pick you up so you can get jumped by his buddies while building whatever the fuck he wants
i liked being able to build tank, i liked being able to build collector and redemption, i liked being able to build full MS and now the only builds and health tank and maaaaaaaaaaaybe shojin and titanic hydra
his kit is so one dimensional and has no scaling whatsoever
there are 3 things i want from him
build diversity
his kit working with MS
and having his abilitys scale off anything but HP
also they should have given him a traditional skarner skin where he is still crystalized and the boulders he picks up from his Q are his spires
ya they didnt even give him a traditional skin. isnt that a first?
@@zeusjukem9484 no, they stopped doing them a long time ago. It’s just been hard to notice because this is the first rework with an entire visual theme change since then. We never even got stuff like traditional Sion or Galio either
@@zeusjukem9484 no.......... the first was almost 10 years ago.
@@metalhydra273 this isn't the first rework with an entire visual theme change. Galio (who you just mentioned) had that, too. he had it just as bad as Skarner. his silhouette isn't even remotely similar to his old one. look at how different every single one of Galio's skins look from the original, and then look how many of Skarner's skins stayed mostly the same.
@@carnage0685 I should’ve said in while. They kinda stopped doing them at a weird point where theme changing VGUs were still more common place, when champions like the ones mentioned probably would have gotten them ahead they been made a few years earlier. But we haven’t gotten a whole theme change in a very long time at this point compared to the other reworks to come out this decade
I really appreciate the emphasis on lack of in kit synergy aka combos and skill expression. Im a lore nut personally and also dont feel like his lore is expressed well at all in his kit.
The shame is when you ulted on old Skarner, you got an epic voiceline: "You'll never escape!". One that you can hear while you drag some unlucky soul into their death. Now when you ult on rework Skarner, you can barely hear him. He is like whispering it.
Also, Riot loves adding self roots to character reworks. Xin Zhao used to be a nuclear missile where you spammed all your buttons. Now you have to press W to root yourself for 8 seconds cause you need to do an animation. That's what they did to Skarner. Added so many cast time animations that makes him feel clunky including the ult.
That is if you even freaking hit anyone with a ult windup that takes a whole day and everyone dashing around like a chinese kung fu movie
Self-rooting Asol says hi. Feels like ass
Pretty sure he says “feel my sting”
@philmienus2382 Or a Chinese moba. I tried one of the ones people suggested, nearly every single character had a dash ability that dealt damage in some way, a damage ability that interacts with the dash ability, and the ult which wound up being a dash 50% of the time.
The one exception to this ability scheme was some dude with an anchor, who was completely immobile until he popped ult to naut hook someone.
And every single ability was a roughly translated word vomit of a description with more flavor text than actual ability information.
His current abilities have way more impact and it makes sense they self root.
Imo the main reason why he's so hard to balance is because his E doesn't self root. If it had like 1s startup time he'd be way less toxic in duels where he can basically full combo anyone that comes close to him with no counterplay after beginning the combo with E. They could then remove the self root on Q to make it up to him. Anyways, he'd then be hella easy to balance, idk why Riot refuses to do this one particular change and prefers shuffling numbers every single patch. Sooner or later they have to realize they're doing something wrong, right?
its crazy that it took them 2 years to make a generic scorpion with boring and unfun to play abilities when NO ONE wanted to play skarner before and no one does now. Meanwhile Nocturne exists who looks rediculous and is one of the most played champs for new players to the game (because he looks intresting) and the champ that everyone stops playing really fast cuz hes not fun.
it took that long because the pillars turned out to be a "support beam" of league's code. also it was closer to 1 year as they did the poll before udyr was released
I miss old Skarner so much, I loved it in jungle.
Honestly, the fact that they been sitting on this rework for a year if I remember well, and the only thing they could come up is a stat stick even after doing a "erase the champion" type of rework... I can't decide either to be baffled or sad here.
it was because of tech issues (removing old skarner caused a lot of structure problems to the code)
The reason they took away Skarner's crystalline look is because of the Seraphine controversy when they fked up the lore by making her be able to talk to the hextech crystals which are powered by the eternal screaming agony of Skarner's familiars.
So instead of making an interesting character for Seraphine to make it so when she presents herself as a cutie wholesome waifu she is actually a narcissistic sociopath who uses people for her own goals, instead they LITERALLY RETCONNED SKARNER'S LORE.
Riot will burn their entire company before making their waifus look bad.
Or make K'sante less of a boring cringe stereotype of anything black related.
That's not true at all the main reason why they had to drastically change Skarner is because they were trying to retcon the entirety of P&Z's story with Arcane. A series that has been in the works years before Seraphine was even thought of in the pinboard. Even though they said Arcane was in a different universe at first, it was obvious they were gonna make it to have some ties with League at some point. If anything Seraphine helped Skarner won that VGU poll due to the pity party that was happening at the time.
You forgot the part where he used to have a way more lockdown with his E. That used to make him one off the strongest duelist champions. Great video tho
Instead of Skarner, you can just play Poppy. She basically does what he does with less jank and more build diversity.
I dislike the rework because I feel forced into building full tank or getting a little AD. Pre-rework you could build just about anything on Skarner and feel good about it. You weren't a one-build wonder.
You felt good no matter what you built cause the champ was bad regardless of items
@@mattgibson9337 good* he did well with every stat
@@mattgibson9337 Not really, Old Skarner had moments where he was just plain amazing. His Qs refunding CD on hit made him compatible with atk speed and scaled off AD and AP so it was nice to have no matter what. W scaled both off AP and HP while being a movement speed steroid, E refunded its cd for every hard cc proc you did and Ult was reliable and a major boon for combo setups.
Each variation of Skarner had different win cons and was a menace once he got a lead. The only reason he was ass was because of his passive.If they just replaced it and bumped his starting stats to match the rest of the cast, he would've been fine.
damn that's sad that Facecheck and merthos stopped playing the game used to watch them time to time. i really enjoyed playing old skarner never got tired of playing him but after the rework he just feels horrible to play from old skarner to this garbage. completely stopped playing after rework, unfortunately i don't really enjoy other champs to keep playing league like i used to with old skarner
For real man. It just needed a skin update in my opinion and possibly a rework on passive. Not every champ needs to be over complicated.
Plus the new ult is a disgrace imho
@@philmienus2382 agreed. also yes the ult feels horrible to use no turning around or fast kidnap. now its just feels very awkward how the R works, from fast satisfying impale to this garbage
@Kaml1810 like no sense on puting a long delay on a very small aoe when they keep adding champs with multiple forms of dashes that are sometimes uninteruptible
Btw Merthos is still on it seeing as his last streams were 2 and 3 days ago for me, but it just doesn't have the same vibe of cooking builds anymore, to me
Can't even blame the man cuz what else is there to cook lol
Skarner's rework makes me fear what they are going to do with Shyvana
They changed him from a cool unique crystal scorpion to a regular boring scorpion.
Disagree. There are no boring scorpions.
@@redwingchronicle7974counterpoint: new skarner
Tbh he could've been cool if they went harder with the tribal markings that are on him, but for some reason they instead made the ones he already has super desaturated and we ended up with a Skarner who just has near 0 visual sauce to him
Skarner in lore could be a character more wise since he help the first people of Ixtal and can have a dilemma of open the gates to the globalization or open the gates to enemies. Being literally a grey discussion about people or trust
But nah is just Galio like is not even deep is just Galio with tail, why no he is big already
we just got a bio of his character stop thinking it's all he is
@@madnard8744 and his interactions
Still
Galio
But grey
he's galio but racist
another thing that i think that make new skarner feel bad is the fact that riot make his ult a cast time skill shot instead of instant point and click
yeah i can now ult 3 people but against any decent player ,you can barely get 2 on average
and riot low effort thinking of "skill shot mean skill expression" really show here and we know how that goes with morderkaiser who now has more skill show
what i like about old skarner is that even tho he's a worse tank and worse engage than other tank ,at least you can guarantee an engage with him with the ult by running up and ulting someone which is now not guarantee anymore due to the ult cast time and being a skill shot and is also now no longer immune to displacement
and that's why the E also feel so bad in the new skarner is that you can't just "run" up to the enemy with W speed boost anymore ,u have to drive there which make it harder for you to dodge enemies' ability and give the enemies a big ass warning saying "skarner is coming in with E from that direction and this is the maximum range btw" making his engage soooooo much worse and harder
And they keep adding crack champs with multiple forms of dash too.
I haven't touch him since rework I used to play him top all the time
Riot proving once again that some things are just better left alone as niche. I am ok with them modernizing some kits, pantheon is a big example, but he was already quite popular in low elo and his kit is much more easy to make appealing. Champs like Skarner don't really need that much of a change, they are unique, interesting, fun to play, viable and have a lot of ways to be played so players feel engaged. But I guess we rather have things look shinny and modern that have meaning, just to still being on the side due to Riot being horrible at balancing.
I cant think of any other rework (aside from maybe Asol) that has ONLY had a negative impact on the champ playrate and general fun.
Volibear rework kept him a very similar champ, with the same amount of build variety with an updated look that doesnt stray from the old champ
Mundo gave him quality of life and (incredibly minor) skill expression, with an updated look, that again doesnt look entirely different.
Morde, Sion, Urgot, all 3 of these champs were heavily changed on rework, but were still praised due to the genuinely more engaging gameplay (aside from maybe morde) and AGAIN they can still be recognized as their old champion, even through skins.
Skarner
Has lackluster abilities that not only completely throw away his old "fast single target lock down scorpion" but are also clunky and so heavily restrictive that he just turns into GENERIC TANK MONSTER CHAMPION 5000. At least Ornn has combos in his kit and some semblance of item variety due to masterwork items.
Skarner instead turned from crystal scorpion thats the last of his race with an engaging passive and self synergistic kit into big rock monster that does damage based on his health.
Skarner had so much opportunity to become ANYTHING. Instead he turned into nothing
first aatrox, and then asol, and now skarner. almost all traces of old league is completly gone.
Asol is not an old champ u virgin
..chogath
i guess
Twisted treeline, Old Kayle, Sivir and Diana says hi
It needs an Aurelion Sol level Gameplay rework, not K'Sante level in my opinion.
Nothing was functionally kept from how old Skarner played, so might as well scrap everything he has now and try to make an interesting fighter or tank from the ground up, or try to revive some aspects of the old Skarner.
15:52 For fucking real man, it's satisfying to hear you emphasize this part out..
Used to love attending Merthos' streams/VODS religiously at work, or seeing another Facecheck cooked-up build post
Now we've just lost 2 good niche scientists who made League more fun for me, the only thing I'm cooking now is how to build anything other than just ER Shojin RFC Smolder cuz fuck trying to steer the new Skarner
Otp skarner bcuz of merthos top skrner full cd. Now that's gone.
I otp singed top too and love champs that gets tower bait kills.
If they just make him scales with AD or AP🗿
After what Skarner did to me and my toplane brothers after the rework, I don't want him to be a viable champion. Something like this shouldn't be in the game. Or at least he should stay underpowered and uninteresting just so he wouldn't break toplane again
yo the clip at 10:25 being at like 300% video volume was so unneccesary for an otherwise good video
It made me jump out of nowhere lmao
I've never had so much fun playing league until I played the ap move speed facecheckskarner build, everything was peak, but idk, I used to kinda like the rework despite my disappointment, but now he just feels dull and boring, same game plan every game, meanwhile old skarner could just use ultimate bravery for his build and still be useful for the team. Good video metalhydra my beloved
EDIT: HAPPY 13TH BIRTHDAY SKARNER
New skarner alienated old skarner players by not being fun and the rest of the community by not being good lol
Skarner feels like he lost so much compared to what his kit used to feel like
Old skarner was a champ I wanted to play and like. And every now and then I did pick and do stuff with him.
New skarner I couldnt really care less about.
I always thought the zones although gimmicky and potentially not something that can exist always made the map feel more interesting when around, I wish that they coulda brought that back and made them like kindred marks or something. Hell even make it a steroid for 15 seconds or something, that would encourage jungle fights.
im sorry riot decided to erase your favourite champion from the game but, man, the new skarner is cool
The problem with new Skarner is what you see in popular tanks, reliable CC. Sejuani, Nautilus, Leona, Malphite, Amumu, all have good on-demand point-click or large area CC/engage. Skarner has slow position dependent CC, and by being forced to build HP items (Heartsteel/Warmogs) means he's susceptible to all %max health damage there's in the game nowadays.
And if you give him too much base damage, he's too op and stat checker, but if you keep his numbers low, he's underplayed because he has underwhelming CC for a tank
I miss my kind.
Good video, nice overall. I hated the audio boom check at 10mnt tho, totally out of place on the volume
@@chapocademesquit Yeah I may have been a bit mean there because I wanted this out as soon as possible with it being a hit topic now, so I didn’t go back and make the emphasis parts cleaner. I could probably bite the bullet and add a chapter for the good listeners out there to not blow out ears.
wow they fixed the E hitbox? no wonder no one plays him in aram anymore. the snowball into backwards E combo was basically his old R on steroids and just about the only thing he could do.
Great vid hydra! Took everything I was feeling and put it articulately into a video
His kit suffers from the same thing 90% of new champs and reworks do. You either nerf him into uselessness or he makes half the old champs obsolete
They could have just let him be alternative mundo tbh.
He could be what mordekaiser rework became to Darius. Very similar but different enough.
your voice is identical to vandiril's voice
I would have been fine with all of this but they ruined Skarner for me because yet again that one macro fetishist on Riot's art team just couldn't resist making him stupidly big in his lore for no good reason.
The new skarner is boring, it's not the old dps with a bunch of mvspeed and shields. Now it's just a malphite 2.0. And the riot just did the same thing what killed the old skarner, so yeah, it's a shitty rework. The design is good, the abilities are good, but it's just everything made to be to op that riot have to nerf and made the champion a shit walking.
he can be dps with movespeed. its jank but fun
I used to play Skarner support around 2019-2020.
It was awesome, especially when enemy team was also playing a melee support.
This new Skarner looks like trash and I wouldn't be able to play it as a support.
A fix for his lackluster ult would be:
After the ult rruns out, sharker turns the enemies into the direction of his cursor (so if the cursor is behin him, he spins 180 with enemies attached) at a fixed distance.
This would then combo into his charge, if you did not engage with it, essentially giving him the old charge grab back but putting thee power of it into his ult.
Then to diversify buildpaths, make the final hit of his 3 hit Q am activation trigger. Meaning it acts as if skarner used an ability to get trinity procs in.
Nerf His HP scalings slightly and buff AD scalings. To enable juggernaut builds.
And as a final Fun option: add AP scaling to his Q and E.
Feel like a big problem with Skarner is they completely changed his role with the rework. Instead of him being a juggernaut like he was before the rework (and before the spire rework) he's a tank now. He can't even build like a juggernaut like Darius, Garen, Illaoi, Sett, or even Morde. Before the rework he even had ap item options but now he's just a generic cc tank.
yeah they did the same thing to asol, removing literally all the skill expression out of his kit. not only that but they also removed his identity of a complicated spacing mage, making it so his gameplay is literally standing still and holding q. and there was a lot of skill in using his stun because it only popped when it was outside the range of his stars so you could do some really cool kites where youre dodging in and out to maximise damage AND cc. and being able to combo huge stuns with a w + q combo was a lot of fun. now his entire kit is completely point and click, and it actively discourages him moving around. very frustrating
I'm going to cry
Also wanted to add: the disappointment with how long the rework took is only amplified by how well they did with Udyr's rework... so sad for our scorpion
I agree the old lore was better, but his new gameplay is great, maybe my favorite Jungler.
And the cast time of Q really isnt that bad, the power of his E easily circumvents most issues with it
And saying E is bad for users is entirely an opinion thing, I have so much fun with it. And you want it to be unstoppable? Everyone gets countered by hard CC, absolutely everyone.
Lol, lmao even. If this isn't bait, you are delusional
@@P1EMASTER I like going train mode through walls, sue me
the fact they nerfed his ultimate is the worst part. his old ult was more powerful. although it only targeted one champion, it's more than enough as the effect is instantaneous and you can move it around freely. you can isolate one particular enemy and bring it into the hands of your team, making fights 4v5
in what cases do you need to bring 3 people? not to mention, once the effect expires, there's now 3 enemy champions at the middle of your team, which could be more disastrous than if you just didn't ult them in the first place
Just like Kanye, I miss the old Skarner…
I love new Skarner. I've been having a lot of fun playing him support. Old Skarner was significantly more flawed than what they turned him into in my opinion.
He became boring Sand King
Old skarner was better if we talk about the kit, yeah he looks better and has cool skills but that's not the important thing :(
Hey hydra, good to see you - this is WIIFM. Saw you a lot in merthos' chat back when he streamed and sad to see him quit entirely, but not surprised. Great video although I will say you're a lot more positive than I am about the rework, as I don't see a single silver lining in it. Old Skarner was one of the most misunderstood champions, where on surface he was simple yet had so much depth in the way you played - not just built, but the moment to moment actions you took. New Skarner is so binary, and it's tragically ironic to see all the reasons Riot gave on why he needed the rework such as "power budget on his R" and then spit out a kit with an undodgable lane wide nuke+slow in his W, leading to his E.
Now they've gutted or removed all the "unique" things of his new kit - that were infinitely less fun than anything old Skarner would do - and he's a broken mess of a champion. You can't play effective backline defense, you can't skirmish in and out of threat ranges with your permanent W shield and high movespeed, your engage is one dimensional and after you press your buttons you're left sitting around hoping you managed to statcheck the opponent.
New Skarner is the nail in the coffin for why I quit (although the game just being unfun, and Vanguard, sealed it shut). It took three years to make and it's clear that nobody on Riot either had the skill or desire to try to make the rework good, so they just pushed what they had out the door and called it a day. The gameplay has all the flaws of modern champion design where they shove more words and numbers into kits, the lore is generic and boring whereas the old Skarner (especially JoJ-era) had so much potential to be expanded upon. The art genuinely looks AI generated and uninspired in design. Everything Riot tried ended up worse than before and I'm glad people are realizing that after the honeymoon period of being left at 55-60% wr for months, he's just not a good rework. Unfortunately a revert simply isn't in the cards because of sunk cost fallacy, and none of the old guard will come back for as long as this abomination exists hiding behind the name of Skarner.
As a new skarner enjoyer... I agree some of his kit is jarring... however I view the e grab difference as a buff... as the only way it got me killed as I couldn't E to get away because I grabbed them and then face planted into a wall and die.
I love to see Edge of night one of the mandatory items for skarner, but this could result in more complicated situation.
Making his rock deal magic damage could work; since most of his current items are related to magic damage like Sunfire & undying despair. Also, he could make a use of abyssal mask, which greatly enpowers AP bruisers like mordekaiser or galio.
This change might diminish what differs himself to other tanks; being the master of displacement while dealing physical damages.
Anyway, I'd like to see you skarner lover cooking his future build.
Keep up your good work my man!
I dont Really think his design is flawed. More overloaded than flawed. He has 2 Hp% dmg as passive and Q. His W is a shield, a slow, and a poke tool. And his R is an AOE supression. Remove HP% of his passive and make it a burn, a 3 hit passive, or a sheen with target cd. Remove the dmg of his W, and revert the changes to his R and i think he will be fine.
He has zero damage as it is. He lacks any reliable cc. His only gapclose can be stopped by any cc and then he is a glorified siege minion.
The only reason you would want to pick him is his R to set up for teammates.
The issue aren't even the abilities themselves, but rather the fact that you're about as mobile as nautilus. He's just not as fun anymore. Your own abilities stun you, you move slow, you have a large hitbox.
It's just... boring to play him. You can get a champion who nobody plays even if he's strong, and you can get a champion who people play despite him being weak.
Old skarner was fast. That's it. It was enough for some players, now they took away even that from him.
I dont understand why they can’t just leave champions to be lower pick rates. There wasn’t an issue with old skarner since not that many people played him. He was strong but not overtuned and it wasn’t an issue since his play rate was low. Reworking him like this just alienates the old players and as we can see, fails to bring in new players to stick with Skarner
Before the rework I played full damage Skarner toplane, Trinity, Muramana and a shit ton of armor pen. It was so fun because you will win almost every 1 vs 1 by oneshotting people in 4 seconds of cc. Hiding in the enemies jungle and picking an enemy up with Phaserush to their grave was fun I can only achieve with extremely off meta picks. I tried to play the new Skarner but man, that is an entirely different champion, he feels like Malphite, but your ult never goes off cd.
Unironically old skarner was more fun to play, they just had to change his q and his passive
New skarner is fucking resident sleeper shit
Really hoping they find a way to make him better. Aatrox was similarly problematic since his initial VGU for a good year or two even after his mini-rework, but did eventually settle down into a pretty good champ with a decent playrate. That kind of makes it hard for me to call this new Skarner a complete failure, even if things are looking ridiculously rough rn.
I really like the concept of his new kit, but it feels like there's just so many forced restrictions and blatant pigeonholing in there that he ends up being unfun to play.
Riot drops an “abject failure” at least twice a year at this point
Riot trying not to release champion for specific role that is completely overpowered on different roles challenge. I swear 90% of new champs and reworks suffer from this
They should change his scalings to open up more build options
New-ish player, here. Skarner was the first character I played after Yuumi, and while neither champion's kit is... Good... I did find a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment out of playing the scorpion. His ult always felt lackluster compared to every other ult in the game, but in general, the rest of the kit made up for it.
Looking back, I definitely see the faults, but I'm not sure I ever had a truly "bad" experience playing the character, except when I made bad decisions. I tend to like giga-tanks, I like being a team player, and being able to solo first dragon on spawn is always funny to me, whenever I get put in Jungle
Recently I had an hour to waste, because I was waiting for a delivery, so I decided to design his mini rework for fun. It turned out not so "mini" but it would use all his current animations and VFX with small necessity to add only one new "mark" visual.
Passive: Quaking can be applied only by damaging abilities. Instead of burning it deals on-hit magic dmg equal to small % of enemy max hp. Additionally every stack grants additional AS vs affected target (tail stinging attack animation removed).
Q: Picking a rock grants bonus MS instead of AS till the end of its duration. Third attack stuns main target for 1.25 sec and marks other enemies hit by its AOE. Attacking marked targets stuns them for the same amount (tail stinging animation would be used here). Throwing a rock marks all target hit by its AOE.
E is controversial: Can't grab and push enemies anymore. Passing threw marked enemies consumes mark and stuns for additional time. Using E while Q is active upgrades it. Now colliding with enemy champion or large monster causes immediate AOE explosion, similar to Q's third attack but instead of marking hit targets, it would stun them all (Q's rock is used).
W and R can stay as it is in functionality. Maybe ult could additionally extend marks duration.
I really liked old skarner gameplay. Although he wasn't strong in normal games, I believe he was one of the strongest in aram. The crystal tower defense was really funny/frustrating, but it would become really reliant to winning or losing (if you're winning they're better and if you're losing, you'll lose harder). What I felt was bad for his old kit was his passive, a area buff that stretched to the start of a lane or new crystals positions would make it a lot better, since he could get some buffs ganking or while laning. The new skarner feels like a go in and hope you can tank long enough to kill or wait until your team win, just like a sion, and his ult is just a cc that stops the enemies long enough for them to aggro to you, or reposition around it. One thing I don't think the video mentions is how bad his mana ratio is at the early game (until around level 5-6) his q uses relatively a lot of mana, and since he always want to be using it, feels like a mf burning her mana through her q, making it unreliable. I also miss his old e, where a good placed e could win a teamfight or make it easier for kidnapping an enemy player, his new e can reposition an enemy player, but will most of the time be a frontliner or a tank, like a braum or zac (I really the the skarner e response for zac e though, where he just kidnaps zac from the air) and will not affect the enemy team that much, and it is hard for a flank in a teamfight since you'll be tanking for your team. As a person who like to build strange builds in champs, skarner lost a lot, we can't have an adc skarner, since no abilities benefits from it (q cast time is really long for an adc, and his passive is a joke), ap skarner is a meme build and bruiser is just weaker than a tank skarner.
They should replace Skarner's W with Ornn's Q ability
That would allow Skarner to set up E stuns away from walls while removing the zero counterplay AOE damage and uninteractive shield of current W
@@thecanadiankiwibirb4512 Give him Anivia wall 😆
Now I need a SRB3K video
I like how on PBE ( on release) skarner q used to do the following things:
Used to have an .6 ratio.
Used to count as ability damage and auto which stack conq on 3 autos,double manamune proc,insta proc eclipse.
The max health on the roc scale with ability level rather than insta 15%.
Since riot change/delete those not only eneded being Profe that we’re wrong and totally pointless like the ad ratio nerf xd but helped to improve this max w thing in skarner xd. While killing any possible way to go ad on him.
My biggest problem with the Skarner balancing is his W damage they nerfed it a bit but imo it should only deal 5 base damage so that clearing jg is not gutted but top Skarner cant just fart on people for free all the time. His Q and E are the skill expression and could have been nerfed way less if his W did basically no damage.
Also why the hell did they remove Q refreshing on wards making support more annoying to play! Its just a random QOL removal.
Honestly, w doesn’t do enough damage to be a problem imo. He can last hit minions and that’s about it. However, it doesn’t really need to do damage, and its range is kind of needlessly big. Most of W’s numbers have had to be gutted and it only scales with cooldown and damage, so it’s just in a very sad state. It needs more changes imo
Skarner cant get ad ratios the second he gets he becomes a better mundo
boohoo old is good new is bad boohoo. aight jokes aside you are right new skarner kinda feels weird and slow to play and I dont feel the same fun when I played with old skarner.
9:10 wow that killed Skarner for me.
Its the most fun thing about him especially on support but also a bit on top.
Adcs have no clue of that cheese so u could get a lot of angels with it but now the main fun thing about him is removed...
At least now Im not mad that Battlecast is his only good skin even after the rework.
They nerfed the hitbox of E, but never try to understand why people are mad about the changes.
it's simple, E is not worth using at max range because of how hard it is to steer. If they fix it, people will happily pick him up in the jungle.
I think taking away his spires took away one of the "fun" parts of his kit. Getting a speed boost just made jungling more enjoyable. Now he just feels like a tank
I dont think ive ever seen a first clear as terribly executed as the one in the replay 💀
I hope our boy gets the treatment he deserves. Skarner is the first champ i have made my own builds for, and it pains me to see him in this state.
Old skarner E was really good. Lowkey made him able to fight with the likes of fiora in the 1v1 once you had a few items.
@@goldenarmour7975 old Skarner e might be my all time favorite ability
I wish they kept him as a bruiser. Now 3 out of 5 abilites are pretty much a fodder, and there's no doubt about it with his passive.
I wish they screwed on his R part, and focused more on him being a cooler Garen, that synergises with sheen and muramana. I hated how I was easily outrun as a jungler, but the new kit leaves me pissed, at how rito didn't even bother to make him somewhat skill expressive. Freakin' 2 3 hit abilities xD. Pretty much a launch design. I like him but come on. Building shojin makes me too squishy.
Edit: I'm especially pissed, because the worst and most lazy rework happend to be Skarner's. I just want to play a freakin giant 🦂
I played Arena yesterday. Skarner counters Tristana completely. He's too tanky to be killed quickly, his E and R completely cancel Trist W, so you can't jump over him. Overall unfair matchup.
Wouldn’t the idea with Tristana just be to w earlier? You play to sidestep e or w out of the way early, and if you really need a failsafe, your ult hard counters his e and r.
@@metalhydra273 I get your point. As I said I experienced this in Arena, where you don't have the most space to run from an angry scorpion. And the way I see it: Using R is only a temporary solution, because he can get back to me pretty fast. And for some reason the scorpion deals a ton of damage, while taking none.
@@arandominternetperson4462yeah, you probably have to itemize pretty specifically to beat him. Kiting in arena is likely harder than usual. Skarner’s damage isn’t great, but its enough to deal with squishies
Most people forget that league players play the anime champs more than any other champ, so if the lore for him sucks he wont even have appeal for them
here's the thing. riot had always been upfront it wa gonna be a galio/aatrox type rework even during the vgu poll.
Most reworks are mistakes(a few were necessary)
but then again so are most of the new playables for the past 2-3 years
Can't have the 300 dashes, high mobility, insane dps, half a year invulnerability overloaded ADCs and Assassins get outdone by an unpopular scorpion, now can we? Time to gut him like a fish, they're the ones who sell skins!
as an old skarner enjoyer I can agree with almos everything said here, they killed my boy, skarner is not the same, it used to be so fun running around at mach speed while kidnapping people and now it feels slow and clunky, I cant build him ful defenses or bruiser or ap or lethality, they took away all the fun from his kit to make a lifeless bearly movile rock, I want the true skarner back so bad :c
Removing his old lore is the biggest L, they literally took the last crystal scorpion and his abused peoples souls and deleted them so now piltover isnt as horrid of a place. I liked that dark aspect of the lore and wished they finally do a story event around it but that was obviously asking for something good and LoL cant just have a good thing.
ring racers shade lets goooo
Bro, if I actually do that video it could easily be twice as long 💀
A lot of similar issues to point out (but on a much worse scale)
This is like the Morde rework all over again
Shyvana is one of my favorite champions ever and i am so scared of them ruining her like they did with my boy skarner, pleas keep her as a multi-build champ i beg because if they make her purely ad or ap i am gonna fucking lose it , it makes champions so much less fun if they are pigeonholed into 1 playstyle
New Skarner is fun but some things that old skarner did better ,the fast drag was way more fun could of added some speed scaling on his E,old W was more fun just because you beeing faster is way cooler than the enemy beeing slower,the ult stiffnes bad cone hitbox and no rotation make the fact that u can steal up to 3 people feel just like a sad compensation, Old Skarner with trinity and muramana spaming q and attacking really fast with the E as steroid was more fun than anything i did with the new one
+ Old Skarner voice was so nice and the laugh on every Q was peack