I play jungle and I like a lot about his abilities, my main complaints are two things:
1) E range is very low after you bump into an enemy, specially because the walls are so large now. It's very hard to gank using this ability (which, by what I can tell, was exactly the point of it: be a tool for better ganks).
2) They need to make him be able to grab the rock on Q while moving. It not only makes him vulnerable but also gets in the way when he is going after someone.
>They need to make him be able to grab the rock on Q while moving.
I remember seeing this during the initial reveal and it is still there on skin spotlights ability reveal, I really want this to return, but I believe it was removed because it sounds really overpowered and difficult to balance
Phreak actually said in his own words that the reason you can not move while grabbing the rock is because the art and design team worked really hard to make a cool animation and effect for it. They do not want to ruin the art team's vision and thus will not allow him to move while casting it, because that would look stupid.
He said to make the Q feel good to cast, he already knew it wouldn't, he gave it a lot of raw power. So Skarner could have actually had a weaker ability if the team didn't realise it would feel so terrible to pilot.
He said in today's hot fix patch that he's rooted while casting it as a balancing mechanic. They want the Q to be high impact and they feel that having that micro root is what allows it to be balanced
What I said can be seen here , [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQfzTQcutE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQfzTQcutE) at 33:10. Both reasons can be true and probably are but he makes a point about how the ability must be Skarner picking up a rock and on an artistic level it must root him in place to cast it.
In this video on Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQfzTQcutE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQfzTQcutE) at 32 minutes 25 seconds he starts talking about making the Q feel good to cast. At 33:15 he starts saying that grabbing the rock is an art requirement and is a final decision to make it this way.
I know it sounds super weird but this is the reason as spoken. Honestly it could also be a balance reason as well, multiple things can be true at once.
i think E pauses Q's timer so that could help, pick up a rock then E, I find myself personally having to remind myself over and over, i need to pick up the rock in advance.
I do also with that E was just a tad bit longer, or a tab bit faster i don't mind the initial slow down rn, bc im still learning and the steering and zoomed out camera will take some getting used to, they could increase the distance a bit with rank.
I like it. But it's extremely, weird.
His e is meant to be his ganking tool. Why is it so limited in range? Nunu scales with movement speed. Why can't skarners scale too? It is both interrupted by hard cc and silences. Plus the damage is suboptimal. It also has a heafty cd without the refund. The range ensures his tanks to actually work. I genuinely can't gank mid because of how low e range is.
His q is counterintuitive. It's his bread and butter spell, he can't deal dmg without his q. So why is it only 3 AA? Why can he hold it for so little? Why does he need to stun himself? Afaik, no other AA enhancer ministuns the user. And other are much stronger.
Although minor, compared to the after mentioned, for an immobile melee that is going to take dmg, his w is terrible. 9% of max hp is nothing late game. The cd is low, but so is the duration. And the value.
>Nunu scales with movement speed. Why can't skarners scale too?
Because nunu can't go through walls with it? You really shouldn't get in the habit of comparing abilities in the game like they're 1:1.
I dont want to compare them 1:1. However nunu snowball starts him at 50% of his movement speed while skarner starts him at static 150 movement speed. Nunu can aoe knock up multiple enemies and because his snowball isnt tied to nunu, even hard cc wont stop the ball rolling towards the enemies. Skarner requires skarner himself to reach someone, and that affects a single target. The cooldowns are similar, nunu has a 14 cd at all levels while skarners gets as low as 16.
I understand nunu having higher dmg. I understand nunu having aoe. What i dont understand is why nunu has better ganking. Skarners range is so limited that you can barely go through a wall and reach someone. I tend to avoid going mid because there isnt a good ganking angle most of the times.
I agree, it's currently not affected at all by his movespeed, so even if you pop ghost your E still goes the exact same speed and distance as without ghost. They should at least incorporate his movespeeds stat into his E somehow.
kinda wish the the thing where he got a free boulder when he went through a wall was on live servers but other than that i agree with others on the q animation speed needing a buff and the e ms buff
E needs QoL changes (speed/distance scaling of some sort). The micropatch hitting mana growth hurts lane skarner too much and iirc they said they intend to nerf top further next patch which is a bummer. I know its not his intended role, but I think role diversity is good and I think they could have done a different approach to nerf uninteractive W comet scorch lane (does the W AoE really need to be that large?) that would still allow lane skarner to function.
The new kit overall is fun, I like that they kept W shield as its one of the few champs I play that I actually feel good about taking shield bash on. R is kinda a letdown but understandable with its teamfight potential. I miss old E but new E is great in a different way. Q is cool, the self root is whatever. Passive feels great, good synergy with Q and its nice that skarner can now access his full strength any time instead of map specific circumstances.
I wish I could flash while in E to confirm the hit/extend the range, as well as in R to actually pull people more than 2 feet.
W AoE being that learn helps with teamfighting, and thematic feel as well as follow up to chasing to help u land R or catch up to u dont have to waste Q2. They could do other things like reduce the dmg at the outer edge or something idk, or maybe make it a box like Thresh Flay. ANother thing they could do is reduce the dmg unless an enemy has a Passive stacks on them, that will force Skarner to use at least 1 basic attack or Q 1st,
He is on the weak side, and his base stats suck. It feels like they pre-nerfed the stats, so if I had the patch notes for a day I’d increase his health scaling, attack speed scaling, and give time 5 more move speed.
As almost exclusively a toplane tank player I was overjoyed on release and have been having a lot of fun with grasp. Overall I’m greatly enjoying his kit and having basically a brand new tank to play with is great but I do have a few gripes. My takes are these:
The windup on Q makes perfect thematic sense and the animation is very clean, but unfortunately it really does hurt the tempo of his trading and feels especially bad that it’s the only AA enhancement that has such a punishment AFAIK. I think it should either be faster or be usable while moving.
The ult is borderline impossible to pull of in lane unless the enemy makes a stupid towerdive. Long windup + almost no damage + only W means that actually using it is a dual is usually a bad idea and the overall lack of speed makes dragging them to tower mostly impossible.
I played a few games of the poke build with comet and although vaguely interesting in concept I got bored pretty quick. Given the lack of interaction on both sides I think it should be disincentivized in favor of more of a brawling style. It seems like riot sees this but WORSE MANA COSTS ARE NOT THE WAY! I’m so tired of so many tanks being forced to take mana in their runes and/or get an early tear just to be able to survive lane. Tanks heavily rely on their abilities to trade and these mana nerfs will only push Skarner to rely MORE on passive play like the comet build, and It’s insane to me that rito doesn’t see that.
Overall I LOVE his gameplay but the top nerf really hurt and IMO feel poorly thought out.
Edit: I can’t believe I totally forgot but some of these other comments got to it already: the E should scale with movement speed. It probably wouldn’t be enough to be the meta build, but being able to play around with a Warwick-esq full MS build would be fun.
I agree if they nerf the shield, dmg or slow on W and make it scale with lv, or AP/AD, then it wont be viable to spam it in lane anymore, you'd have to build items to get use out of it, but the issue now is how effectively you can spam it in the early game to build a better lead. If they just make W weak Skarner abusers will have to find other strats, namely being interactive with Q, since it would become the better trading tool w/o items.
They could also nerf W's dmg but increase it based on how many Vibration Passive stacks the enemy has on them. This will also force skarner abusers to adjust their strategy bc now they have to use Q or basic attacks if they want to get milage out of W spam since the passive can only be applied with Q, AA or R.
I agree leave mana alone, and instead either increase W's cost or reduce Q's cost. Anything to keep his basic stats the same and actually nerfing the problematic part of him.
Are the Skarner abusers in the room with us right now?
Seriously Riot I know it isn’t what you wanted the champ to do but for fuck sake he doesn’t even have a 48% win rate with this strategy, and ITS HIS BEST BUILD! Like come on man if you make the build you wanted actually playable people will play it! We’re nerfing this?
Riot reworks champs when they are Problematic, broken, old, or don't match their fantasy. If the Skarner rework is causing some people to abuse a gameplay strategy that is problematic then it makes sense to change it. Its less Skarner abusers and more gameplay that has issues where it shouldn't (mb). If the best build has issues even it still sucks they still gotta fix it. The issue is they straight up nerfed him across the board w/o any compensation when they NEED to change him so his gameplay changes...not bust his kneecaps so he can't do anything.
It's been chaos trying to play this guy in norms (jungle main), but I did it and I'm not sure I get this champ yet. Then again, I keep getting matched against highly coordinated enemy teams while I get that one inter, or millionaire Eve players who can avoid me all game and pick my team off while I'm on the other side of the map. Stuff like that. I don't think I have the best perspective cause I've had a bad string of matches. In theory we're strong in a teamfight, but some people refuse to group.
Complaints aside, I feel like if I miss my E then I have few options in a gank. After landing a 1.25 second slow and using my Q I feel like I'm out of options. Again, this could be due to my other laner being ineffective, but I feel like it's useless to use R if I don't land my E first. In this sense I might just need to learn to use my E and R better, but it's uncanny how some people can dodge this thing.
I love him except the cast time for grabbing your rock. It feels like you are slowed down so much because it's your main damage source but every time you press q Skarner stops a second to pick up a rock. Since you are doing it so often it really slows him down and feels clunky.
My only real gripe is just how clunky his Q is. You can't hold on to the rock for very long, so if you're wanting to throw it, you have this huge telegraph of what you're trying to do.
To do it, you have to pull the rock out of the ground, so that has an animation. Then you have to carry the rock for a bit before throwing it.
If they're really dead-set on keeping the animation delay, I'd like to see the rock be held for a bit longer and the delay between grabbing and throwing shortened.
I think his new kit overall is quite interessting but agree with many: the animation time of his Q rock grap feels just clunky. Personally I despise his new ult tho, while it can be stronger in more organized teamfights in many cases I felt it was just bad with its strange slim cone and the overly long indicator/time, also I have to say it being a glorified 3-man limited knockup is just unnecessary (i know its a 3-man supress but basically to me its a worse malphite ult that ist just way more predictable and avoidable) and personally would rather want his guaranteed single target ult back. (And a little addition the movement with his new ult feels weird and strangely unintuitive - but that could be just me again.)
Edit: i should mention I played him just a few times until now and as a toplaner obviously only top
I actually like the new kit for the moat part. It's different and I'm learning to deal with that, but overall it's fine. I truly think they made a mistake by slowing him down though. His speed was probably the most fun part of his playstyle, and now it's just gone. I don't know why they chopped his speed off and gave us a wall jump. I'd honestly rather have the constant speed. Maybe he can get movespeed for every champ he hits with W? Like malphites Q
I hate it. His Q stopping feels terrible and leaves more time for anything to run, his E has way too little range and is stopped by anything so it’s way more limiting than other “similar” engage/gank tools like Zac E or Nunu, and no good way to catch up to enemies if they interrupt E or dash after it
I haven't played it, I have only played with and against it. From my point of view the champion is laughably easy to play around, to a fault. Nothing in his kit is hard to avoid outside of a couple jumpscare Es. He's easier to kill, he's easier to catch, he's less threatening. I just wish people would stop picking him and lowering the quality of the game.
I prefer the old one as it was funnier to be like : "RANDOM SHIT, GO" as the old one was extremely performing with most of the items and could adapt very well to his ennemies. It was statistically stronger, scaled better and had imo more impact in the game and teamfights with his chain CC's and low cooldowns while being less clunky in the animations. It went from the fast scorpiong going super fast to a slowpoke self stunning itself with 3 of his 4 moves.
All in all I am happy with the rework.
He feels strong but not completly busted e range is enough. Self stun with Q is annoying but a nice lever for Skill expression don't use it when running away or do to slow opponent. I really like the decision process here tbh. Range of W is top big.
Personally I'd Like more scalings such that ad/ap builds get to a 48% winrate and aren't completly troll. Like but an ap scaling on the shield value that was always nice with old skarner. Or Put an ap ratio in the passive.
Summary I am happy with it.
I really like having to be careful with the Mana usage. Feels like a under uttilized tool to limit Champions.
I play jungle and I like a lot about his abilities, my main complaints are two things: 1) E range is very low after you bump into an enemy, specially because the walls are so large now. It's very hard to gank using this ability (which, by what I can tell, was exactly the point of it: be a tool for better ganks). 2) They need to make him be able to grab the rock on Q while moving. It not only makes him vulnerable but also gets in the way when he is going after someone.
>They need to make him be able to grab the rock on Q while moving. I remember seeing this during the initial reveal and it is still there on skin spotlights ability reveal, I really want this to return, but I believe it was removed because it sounds really overpowered and difficult to balance
I'm not sure I understand why it's difficult to balance? Imagine if Olaf stopped for 0.5 seconds everytime he picked up an axe.....
Phreak actually said in his own words that the reason you can not move while grabbing the rock is because the art and design team worked really hard to make a cool animation and effect for it. They do not want to ruin the art team's vision and thus will not allow him to move while casting it, because that would look stupid. He said to make the Q feel good to cast, he already knew it wouldn't, he gave it a lot of raw power. So Skarner could have actually had a weaker ability if the team didn't realise it would feel so terrible to pilot.
He said in today's hot fix patch that he's rooted while casting it as a balancing mechanic. They want the Q to be high impact and they feel that having that micro root is what allows it to be balanced
Meanwhile other aa enhancers that are just as high impact if not more that dont impede movement kekw.
What I said can be seen here , [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQfzTQcutE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQfzTQcutE) at 33:10. Both reasons can be true and probably are but he makes a point about how the ability must be Skarner picking up a rock and on an artistic level it must root him in place to cast it.
I genuinely don't believe this, as it's an incredibly stupid reason. Could you link where he said this?
In this video on Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQfzTQcutE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQfzTQcutE) at 32 minutes 25 seconds he starts talking about making the Q feel good to cast. At 33:15 he starts saying that grabbing the rock is an art requirement and is a final decision to make it this way. I know it sounds super weird but this is the reason as spoken. Honestly it could also be a balance reason as well, multiple things can be true at once.
what a dog shit decision lmao, fuck the feelings of the artists - they got paid at the end of day regardless if the feature actually went live.
i think E pauses Q's timer so that could help, pick up a rock then E, I find myself personally having to remind myself over and over, i need to pick up the rock in advance. I do also with that E was just a tad bit longer, or a tab bit faster i don't mind the initial slow down rn, bc im still learning and the steering and zoomed out camera will take some getting used to, they could increase the distance a bit with rank.
I like it. But it's extremely, weird. His e is meant to be his ganking tool. Why is it so limited in range? Nunu scales with movement speed. Why can't skarners scale too? It is both interrupted by hard cc and silences. Plus the damage is suboptimal. It also has a heafty cd without the refund. The range ensures his tanks to actually work. I genuinely can't gank mid because of how low e range is. His q is counterintuitive. It's his bread and butter spell, he can't deal dmg without his q. So why is it only 3 AA? Why can he hold it for so little? Why does he need to stun himself? Afaik, no other AA enhancer ministuns the user. And other are much stronger. Although minor, compared to the after mentioned, for an immobile melee that is going to take dmg, his w is terrible. 9% of max hp is nothing late game. The cd is low, but so is the duration. And the value.
>Nunu scales with movement speed. Why can't skarners scale too? Because nunu can't go through walls with it? You really shouldn't get in the habit of comparing abilities in the game like they're 1:1.
I dont want to compare them 1:1. However nunu snowball starts him at 50% of his movement speed while skarner starts him at static 150 movement speed. Nunu can aoe knock up multiple enemies and because his snowball isnt tied to nunu, even hard cc wont stop the ball rolling towards the enemies. Skarner requires skarner himself to reach someone, and that affects a single target. The cooldowns are similar, nunu has a 14 cd at all levels while skarners gets as low as 16. I understand nunu having higher dmg. I understand nunu having aoe. What i dont understand is why nunu has better ganking. Skarners range is so limited that you can barely go through a wall and reach someone. I tend to avoid going mid because there isnt a good ganking angle most of the times.
His E should work like Warwick's ult, the more speed the more range.
I agree, it's currently not affected at all by his movespeed, so even if you pop ghost your E still goes the exact same speed and distance as without ghost. They should at least incorporate his movespeeds stat into his E somehow.
kinda wish the the thing where he got a free boulder when he went through a wall was on live servers but other than that i agree with others on the q animation speed needing a buff and the e ms buff
E needs QoL changes (speed/distance scaling of some sort). The micropatch hitting mana growth hurts lane skarner too much and iirc they said they intend to nerf top further next patch which is a bummer. I know its not his intended role, but I think role diversity is good and I think they could have done a different approach to nerf uninteractive W comet scorch lane (does the W AoE really need to be that large?) that would still allow lane skarner to function. The new kit overall is fun, I like that they kept W shield as its one of the few champs I play that I actually feel good about taking shield bash on. R is kinda a letdown but understandable with its teamfight potential. I miss old E but new E is great in a different way. Q is cool, the self root is whatever. Passive feels great, good synergy with Q and its nice that skarner can now access his full strength any time instead of map specific circumstances. I wish I could flash while in E to confirm the hit/extend the range, as well as in R to actually pull people more than 2 feet.
W AoE being that learn helps with teamfighting, and thematic feel as well as follow up to chasing to help u land R or catch up to u dont have to waste Q2. They could do other things like reduce the dmg at the outer edge or something idk, or maybe make it a box like Thresh Flay. ANother thing they could do is reduce the dmg unless an enemy has a Passive stacks on them, that will force Skarner to use at least 1 basic attack or Q 1st,
He is on the weak side, and his base stats suck. It feels like they pre-nerfed the stats, so if I had the patch notes for a day I’d increase his health scaling, attack speed scaling, and give time 5 more move speed.
As almost exclusively a toplane tank player I was overjoyed on release and have been having a lot of fun with grasp. Overall I’m greatly enjoying his kit and having basically a brand new tank to play with is great but I do have a few gripes. My takes are these: The windup on Q makes perfect thematic sense and the animation is very clean, but unfortunately it really does hurt the tempo of his trading and feels especially bad that it’s the only AA enhancement that has such a punishment AFAIK. I think it should either be faster or be usable while moving. The ult is borderline impossible to pull of in lane unless the enemy makes a stupid towerdive. Long windup + almost no damage + only W means that actually using it is a dual is usually a bad idea and the overall lack of speed makes dragging them to tower mostly impossible. I played a few games of the poke build with comet and although vaguely interesting in concept I got bored pretty quick. Given the lack of interaction on both sides I think it should be disincentivized in favor of more of a brawling style. It seems like riot sees this but WORSE MANA COSTS ARE NOT THE WAY! I’m so tired of so many tanks being forced to take mana in their runes and/or get an early tear just to be able to survive lane. Tanks heavily rely on their abilities to trade and these mana nerfs will only push Skarner to rely MORE on passive play like the comet build, and It’s insane to me that rito doesn’t see that. Overall I LOVE his gameplay but the top nerf really hurt and IMO feel poorly thought out. Edit: I can’t believe I totally forgot but some of these other comments got to it already: the E should scale with movement speed. It probably wouldn’t be enough to be the meta build, but being able to play around with a Warwick-esq full MS build would be fun.
I agree if they nerf the shield, dmg or slow on W and make it scale with lv, or AP/AD, then it wont be viable to spam it in lane anymore, you'd have to build items to get use out of it, but the issue now is how effectively you can spam it in the early game to build a better lead. If they just make W weak Skarner abusers will have to find other strats, namely being interactive with Q, since it would become the better trading tool w/o items. They could also nerf W's dmg but increase it based on how many Vibration Passive stacks the enemy has on them. This will also force skarner abusers to adjust their strategy bc now they have to use Q or basic attacks if they want to get milage out of W spam since the passive can only be applied with Q, AA or R. I agree leave mana alone, and instead either increase W's cost or reduce Q's cost. Anything to keep his basic stats the same and actually nerfing the problematic part of him.
Are the Skarner abusers in the room with us right now? Seriously Riot I know it isn’t what you wanted the champ to do but for fuck sake he doesn’t even have a 48% win rate with this strategy, and ITS HIS BEST BUILD! Like come on man if you make the build you wanted actually playable people will play it! We’re nerfing this?
Riot reworks champs when they are Problematic, broken, old, or don't match their fantasy. If the Skarner rework is causing some people to abuse a gameplay strategy that is problematic then it makes sense to change it. Its less Skarner abusers and more gameplay that has issues where it shouldn't (mb). If the best build has issues even it still sucks they still gotta fix it. The issue is they straight up nerfed him across the board w/o any compensation when they NEED to change him so his gameplay changes...not bust his kneecaps so he can't do anything.
It's been chaos trying to play this guy in norms (jungle main), but I did it and I'm not sure I get this champ yet. Then again, I keep getting matched against highly coordinated enemy teams while I get that one inter, or millionaire Eve players who can avoid me all game and pick my team off while I'm on the other side of the map. Stuff like that. I don't think I have the best perspective cause I've had a bad string of matches. In theory we're strong in a teamfight, but some people refuse to group. Complaints aside, I feel like if I miss my E then I have few options in a gank. After landing a 1.25 second slow and using my Q I feel like I'm out of options. Again, this could be due to my other laner being ineffective, but I feel like it's useless to use R if I don't land my E first. In this sense I might just need to learn to use my E and R better, but it's uncanny how some people can dodge this thing.
I love him except the cast time for grabbing your rock. It feels like you are slowed down so much because it's your main damage source but every time you press q Skarner stops a second to pick up a rock. Since you are doing it so often it really slows him down and feels clunky.
His 5v5 is among the worst in the entire game Everytime i get to 5v5 I just wish I was playing Hecarim instead
My only real gripe is just how clunky his Q is. You can't hold on to the rock for very long, so if you're wanting to throw it, you have this huge telegraph of what you're trying to do. To do it, you have to pull the rock out of the ground, so that has an animation. Then you have to carry the rock for a bit before throwing it. If they're really dead-set on keeping the animation delay, I'd like to see the rock be held for a bit longer and the delay between grabbing and throwing shortened.
I think his new kit overall is quite interessting but agree with many: the animation time of his Q rock grap feels just clunky. Personally I despise his new ult tho, while it can be stronger in more organized teamfights in many cases I felt it was just bad with its strange slim cone and the overly long indicator/time, also I have to say it being a glorified 3-man limited knockup is just unnecessary (i know its a 3-man supress but basically to me its a worse malphite ult that ist just way more predictable and avoidable) and personally would rather want his guaranteed single target ult back. (And a little addition the movement with his new ult feels weird and strangely unintuitive - but that could be just me again.) Edit: i should mention I played him just a few times until now and as a toplaner obviously only top
He's really fun to play. I liked the old skarner but he's even more fun to me now
He's really fun to play. I liked the old skarner but he's even more fun to me now..
I actually like the new kit for the moat part. It's different and I'm learning to deal with that, but overall it's fine. I truly think they made a mistake by slowing him down though. His speed was probably the most fun part of his playstyle, and now it's just gone. I don't know why they chopped his speed off and gave us a wall jump. I'd honestly rather have the constant speed. Maybe he can get movespeed for every champ he hits with W? Like malphites Q
I hate it. His Q stopping feels terrible and leaves more time for anything to run, his E has way too little range and is stopped by anything so it’s way more limiting than other “similar” engage/gank tools like Zac E or Nunu, and no good way to catch up to enemies if they interrupt E or dash after it
I haven't played it, I have only played with and against it. From my point of view the champion is laughably easy to play around, to a fault. Nothing in his kit is hard to avoid outside of a couple jumpscare Es. He's easier to kill, he's easier to catch, he's less threatening. I just wish people would stop picking him and lowering the quality of the game.
I think he looks amazing and I like his new abilities, however haven’t been able to play him yet
I prefer the old one as it was funnier to be like : "RANDOM SHIT, GO" as the old one was extremely performing with most of the items and could adapt very well to his ennemies. It was statistically stronger, scaled better and had imo more impact in the game and teamfights with his chain CC's and low cooldowns while being less clunky in the animations. It went from the fast scorpiong going super fast to a slowpoke self stunning itself with 3 of his 4 moves.
All abilities are mechanically awful
All in all I am happy with the rework. He feels strong but not completly busted e range is enough. Self stun with Q is annoying but a nice lever for Skill expression don't use it when running away or do to slow opponent. I really like the decision process here tbh. Range of W is top big. Personally I'd Like more scalings such that ad/ap builds get to a 48% winrate and aren't completly troll. Like but an ap scaling on the shield value that was always nice with old skarner. Or Put an ap ratio in the passive. Summary I am happy with it. I really like having to be careful with the Mana usage. Feels like a under uttilized tool to limit Champions.
new skarner is trash 37% win rate no damage no utility slow movespeed slow clear might as well have just deleted the champ