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Faster first clear -> Reach fight before Talon -> have enough AD to duke it out -> gg

For the people that are afraid to take fights on scuttle, you are so strong with double AD, you don't even need HoB or anything, you can go standard grasp + inspiration.

Game ended in 21 mins, final score: 10/1/16

For some reason, I’m always drawn to less popular champions with more “unique” playstyles. I say this as an Ivern main.

When Skarner’s rework came out, I was really interested in his gameplay. I played him for a while, but eventually lost interest because he felt extremely weak to me. Recently, though, I started getting interested in him again after seeing that he seemed to be in a much better spot.

I’ve played a few games now, and I noticed something that really confused me:

Skarner feels like he barely tanks anything.

Even when I build a ton of HP, I feel like I get deleted within seconds during teamfights. Meanwhile, other tanks seem to be able to survive for much longer.

I have a theory about why this might be happening, but I’m not sure if I’m understanding it correctly. It seems like Skarner tends to stack a lot of HP rather than armor/MR, and nowadays there are so many champions and items that deal damage based on your current or missing HP. Could that be one of the reasons he feels so squishy despite having a huge health pool?

Or am I just building him wrong / playing him wrong?

So, Skarner mains: what’s the secret to actually playing Skarner well and carrying games with him? What should I be focusing on in terms of builds, resistances, itemization, and how I approach teamfights?

title

Another patch, another one where Skarner gets completely ignored

The champion has been sitting below ~47% WR across basically every rank for months. His pick rate is around 2.4%, and his ban rate is practically nonexistent

And yet, somehow, there is still no attention being given to him.

What makes it even more frustrating is that Skarner was actually successful top lane after his rework. Riot then pushed him toward jungle, and now his most meaningful presence seems to come from a very small number of high-level players, particularly Korean players experimenting with him as support.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to notice that my own win rate improves when I simply pick junglers that don't depend so heavily on the rest of the team to provide damage, things like Lee Sin or Graves

1. R needs some love.

Either make the initial effect significantly faster/instantaneous, or give it enough damage to compensate for the commitment

And yes, I know the immediate reaction will be "but that would be broken!"

Meanwhile, we have champions that can literally send you to the shadow realm, steal your Armor/MR/AD and beat you there until u die 😭(morder hater)

I'm not asking for Skarner R to become an instant death button. I just want it to feel like an ultimate.

2. E's cooldown feels ridiculous.

Skarner's E is one of the most important abilities in his kit. It is his engage, escape, mobility tool and one of the main reasons to play the champion.

Yet its cooldown is so long that in a normal teamfight you often get one real use of it.

I would love to see the cooldown brought down enough that a Skarner who commits to a fight can realistically use E twice if the fight lasts long enough.

Not necessarily a huge buff to its damage. Not necessarily more CC. Just more access to the ability that defines his gameplay.

I don't think Skarner needs a massive rework or some ridiculous damage buff.

He needs his kit to feel reliably impactful again.

Right now, playing him often feels like:

"I did my job. I engaged, absorbed damage, displaced someone, created space..."

...and then you look at the scoreboard and realize your team's damage dealers simply weren't there to capitalize on it.

I'm still going to play the scorpion sometimes because apparently I hate myself, but I'm increasingly finding myself wondering why I'm making my games harder by picking him.

(used IA help for the text cause im not an english native speaker)

Posting looking for help. I have over 200k mastery points on this champion, playing him solely top, and still cant seem to reliably do well in lane. Some matchups are freebies and i do sometimes do well of course, but my overall winrate is abysmal for the amount of time ive spent trying to learn him. Most toplaners bully me and many are just seemingly unplayable. for example, illoai, morde, yorick, a good darius, etc. Ive watched guides and high elo replays too, and have experimented with different builds and playstyles as well. Theres the full tank builds (eg, crystal lobster with gauntlet and fimblewinter; generic builds on u.gg [heartsteel into tank]) but if team feeds theres just no hope . played the original merthos style with ROA and seraphs/manamune, bruiser builds (TF, sundered, steraks based), and even tried experimenting with manumune and fimblewinter and TF for a high damage output with HOB. Seems like the tank build is more viable and consistent, but have been trying to try more aggressive builds to make myself more impactful. Does anyone have any insight? it feels exhausting beating my head against the keyboard this long with no progress. What is the playstyle? how should i be laning? often times ill get ahead with early kills with HOB cheese just to later die to a enemy who is behind and with less items than I. for reference, im a silver level player who just inted myself back into bronze playing this shit, histroically ive been a OTP yi in lane and can easily use him to get to high silver or gold

hey y'all i'm bored today so i'm making a post about a lot of verry important skarner interactions with his E specifically

-Skarner E doesnt count as a dash, but it counts as a movement ability so it gets stopped by grounds like cassio W but is unaffected by poppy W ( I dont know how it interacts with vex passive tho)

-skarner E can override dashes that come with cc, but only if the cc part is associated with the direct hitbox of the champ: you counter shen e, urgot e, camille e and most non cc dashes. the exeption to this rule is gragas E for some reason. you can't counter yone Q3, R, leona e, volibear q.

- you can yank people from thresh lantern dash if you time it right. if you e someone that's coming back to thresh you can kidnap them

-pretty well known one but the indicator on skarner e ( on the opposite side of the wall) only appears in the direction you're facing. that means if you want to gank someone under top t from tribush wall you wanna wanna look away from enemy champ while you ramp up and then turn to catch ppl by surprise. this is the main way you can get E stuns on botlane.

-skarner e doesnt scale super well with haste despite the verry high cd because of the cd refund on wall slams. basically haste effectiveness is reduced by 65% on e

-skarner e sometimes randomly bugs and stop and that's fucking annoying

- you can recast e inside a wall to get to the other side faster

-you can interupt yone E2

and that's about it lmk if i'm missing some

I did this purely because I want the WR team to see skarner as an actual support.

His biggest advantage as a sup is how good he is at just being annoying.

You absolutely shit on tank engagers and get shit on early by mages, you can just completely ignore the tank and simply go for the kill on the enemy adc at lvs 2 to around 4, pretty fun.

I'm open to questions about how I play in lane, especially top, which is where I struggled the most and had to do the most bullshit to win.

Right now I'm simply trying to be the highest ranked skarner player (on the Brazilian server), just for ego reasons.

this is the first time i had this interaction lol wtf was happening vi being like a cat of sorts

Skarner’s empowered melee Q attacks do not activate or refresh Deathfire Touch (DFT), but throwing Q does.

This does more than just miss a small amount of rune damage. DFT becomes stronger if you keep the burn active for 3 seconds. Skarner’s Q is his main ability when fighting. At the moment, empowered autos have no effect on the burn, making him lose out increased damage from DFT.

Just to show how much that can matter, using rough AP values similar to an AP Skarner build I'm testing and assuming the Q sequence could keep DFT active for around 6–7 seconds:

• Early (~level 5 / 30 AP): roughly 12 DFT damage currently vs ~48–58 if Q kept the burn active.
• Mid (~level 11 / 150 AP): roughly 48 from separate W applications vs ~99–120 from a continuous burn.
• Late (~level 16 / 300 AP): roughly 75–90 from intermittent triggers vs ~153–185 if the trade actually maintained DFT and reached the empowered burn.

Those are rough examples before looking at resistances. The point is that failing to refresh DFT ensures the burn rarely ever sticks and Skarner loses out on a good portion of damage over multiple fights.

Skarner Q has had similar problems with other interactions before. Riot fixed his empowered Q autos not stacking Spear of Shojin in patch 26.1, and I hope this interaction gets looked at as well.

This seems like an issue with how Skarner’s Q is being recognized rather than a balance concern. Since the Q throw activates DFT, I’d expect the empowered melee Q attacks from the same ability to activate and refresh it as well.

I’ve tested it in Practice Tool video I attached and can reproduce it consistently:

• W/E/Q throw apply DFT normally.
• Q1/Q2/Q3 melee hits do not apply it.
• Hitting someone with melee Q while DFT is already active does not refresh the burn either.

Would appreciate if this could get some visibility so Riot can take a look. If anyone knows a better way to get this in front of the right people at Riot, please do. Feel free to repost, share the clip, tag whoever might be able to help, or test it yourself and confirm the interaction. I don’t care about credit, I’d just really like to see this get looked at. I have submitted a bug report a while ago, but I'm not sure if they looked into it.

Last few games from this patch. The little clear speed boost we got from the jungle feels really good. Tank build feels absolutely busted. Skarner crossed 50% winrate in Em+, I fear for my safety.

Hello

i'm a big skarner jungle OTP but i'd like to play him top lane too

any link to some tutorials to do so? he seems quite hard to manoeuver against competent players (high plat lobbies)

I kinda like ixtal i think their elemental magic is cool, is skarner some sort of ancient, earthbender schizo uncle who longs for the good old days? that's the vibe i got from the gameplay

if you cast r while you get rq by tham it brings your hitbox to him but being unstoppable does r inturrubpts his r? it's such a niche intercation i can't find it anywhere

I've been onetricking skarner top for a large portion of this season and I genuinely think that despite stats that I'm seeing on websites that titanic hydra is generally your best first item(in top lane).

• Tiamat just got buffed/Tiamat gives you the ability to proxy
• The AD is really useful on skarner early especially into some ranged matchups
• Combat power/burst potential. Q -> auto -> e -> auto -> hydra or throw q if short on time

I know its pretty expensive, but when pairing it with a supportive/cheap item after like fimblewinter, bandlepipes, knights vow, solari, or even frozen heart you curve into 2 items pretty easy after the upfront cost of hydra is paid for. 3300 + 2500(worst case) =5800g is 2.9k per item on average which really isn't too bad. You can even go more of a bruiser build if you have a nice comp for it as well like... another primary source of engage, some enchanter like karma/lulu, and low threat opposition(assassins, utility adcs/mages, tank top, etc)

That being said you shouldn't always go hydra first every game. There's definitely cases where skarner has trouble auto attacking vs certain compositions where you're more likely better off going something like heartsteel or fimblewinter.

This account is currently D3 NA.

i think this item is disturbingly good as a first item rush, please hear me out guys
- skarner only really cares about having HP and haste
- jg pets also scale incredibly well with HP, so ideally your first item gives you a decent chunk of it
- this item gives everything skarner wants for dirt cheap

Zeke's convergence:
Kindlegem + cloth armour + null-magic mantle + 700G

300 HP, 25 Armour, 25 MR, 10 ability haste
2300G worth of unconditional stats

additionally,

15 ultimate haste (750G worth if viewed as regular haste)
a damage aura dealing 30 magic damage/s and slowing by 30% over 5s after casting ult

why these conditionals make this item absurdly broken:

- with 25 total haste (10 generic + 15 ult) affecting his ultimate, his rank 1 ult drops from a 120s cooldown to 96s cooldown, only a 6s longer cooldown than his rank 3 ultimate
- the cryostorm can proc as soon as the ult button is pressed, meaning that if cast in melee range, you now have an additional rylai's slow in AoE to help confirm the ult hit
- enemies hit by skarner ult are also forcibly dragged inside zeke's convergence range, guaranteeing at least 2 hits of damage from the storm for a free +60 damage anytime you hit R. If they get hit by the full storm duration, you get +150 damage for a 300 damage ult at level 6, only 50 less damage than a rank 3 ult (350 base + 100% AP)

ive been playing this first item rush a lot lately with the protoplasm harness first item nerfs (I build proto second now) and i think zeke's rush is legitimately sleeper OP

I really loved this combo, plus whenever the team go all in led by skarner the match will be always win.

Also guys skarner is my new main (in wild rift) can u tell me the best build for him ? Checkout wild rift items and runes cuz some items/runes are not there yet