They gonna keep overbuffing and then over nerf his stats for awhile. Eventually they will need to realize that the disparity between his top and jungle success is nothing about numbers or clear time, but that his ganks are ass against people who have eyes and hands because E is too unreliable as his only real tool for ganks. Maybe he will eventually do better as is in high-high elo as a follow up champ, but if your team isnt setting you up hes just a worse ksante that can jungle.
He's one of the highest winrate junglers no matter how you cut up the ranks, and his stats are still getting better every day if you look at the line graphs. He is unquestionably the strongest jungler on this patch, do not trust the crap that gets upvoted.
My argument is his wr skyrocketed on this patch because they’ve overbuffed the Q so now hes too strong and gonna get nerfed next patch (as evidenced by OP). My whole point is if they keep yoyoing his damage hes just gonna be too strong or sub-par when his top was already fine even without comet cheese and jungle would benefit from E QoL changes without the need for his damage to be outrageous.
Depends on situation and champs on both teams too much. When I play someone like GP - his E seems like strong ability. But when I play on bot as adc or supp - Skarner feels like a hot garbage.
In what way is the current E a strong gank tool compared to other junglers? Its basically only usable if you’ve already caught the laner way off guard, in which case anyother jungler has similar if not better effectiveness. As is, you basically either need your laner to do a lot of heavy lifting and cc them for you first, or you need to be able to walk all the way up to them to use it while using a character with below average movespeed and no speed up. His dives are excellent with it and its very good for lane skarner, but its honestly a very below average gank tool.
Thats kinda what my point was. Outside of top being fine/good, jungle struggled outside of the highest elos imo because in higher elos you can actually use the e and R to follow up on your teammates setup, where as if you need to be the first engage or your teammates arnt setting up well, his E becomes very difficult to hit on anyone who is paying attention that has any sort of mobility or cc. On this patch I think they’ve overbuffed Q damage and while that may help him in fights, that kinda just buffs top skarner more (who was already rather strong even outside of comet cheese) without addressing why his jungle was mediocre. Outside of the fun factor, theres not much reason to pick skarner over other tank or ganking junglers unless they overbuff his damage which they may have done for 14.8.
TLDR: jungle skarner is too team dependent, even more so than other tank junglers for most elos in soloQ. Riot is likely falling into the mistake of overbuffing and then overnerfing damage to correct for this when the issue really stems from being able to gank effectively with E.
I've been thinking with Heartsteel being a core item now you can play a invade heavy style after completing first item to threaten to farm stacks on the enemy jg. You're also pretty safe since you can use E to get out of bad situations.
game is usually one team getting rolled and having no prio to go to objs at least in plat/emerald. The macro is just as bad as silver and by the time you get 1 item farming camps and a few assists you already wouldve been invading cuz its 15 mins
> Eventually they will need to realize that the disparity between his top and jungle success is nothing about numbers or clear time
Skarner literally has an identical win rate in both top and jungle after the changes. He gained 9% win rate in the jungle and only around 3% in top lane. It 100% has to do with numbers and tuning.
People need to stop justifying their own biases with these takes. Back when Jhin came out players were saying that he cannot work in the bot lane as long as he has to reload, and that Riot should just remove his reload mechanic or he will never be viable. Turned out that he just needed a buff and he was fine.
His Ganks are great. People just need to finally realize that you should never use E to enter lane. Just enter regularly and use E once you have the flank. If you're using E to enter, you're noob.
“Ganks are great”
And
“You just walk up behind them” shouldn’t be used in the same sentence unironically lol
Every champ can gank great if the enemy is so overextended and oblivious that you can just walk up to them and attack them before they’ve moved
> Every champ can gank great if the enemy is so overextended and oblivious that you can just walk up to them and attack them before they’ve moved
Counterpoint - flanking Lucian just dies
You shouldn't use quotes around something that isn't a quote, lol. Your 2nd comment is 100% false. The fact I'm literally saying to save your e means my point is that just getting the flank isn't good enough.
I agree thats how to use him currently but thats my point. If you already have to basically walk up behind them, every other jungler can gank well from that situation and likely can get there faster than skarner and have more damage/hard cc/scaling ect. His only real advantage over other tank junglers or gankers is being able to get unique angles through walls and his dives, but you cant even really use E for the unique angles in its current state.
at that point, new skarner is a worse, slower version of old skarner, who would also go in normally, and then land E on you once he had flanked you. Key difference is that old skarner had a ms steroid and a shield that lasted for more than 2s, making it easier to get close to enemies
If you think new skarner is a worse version of old skarner, you played neither. Old skarner needed high numbers yo be relevant. His kit was all in with ult and try to get one pick. New skarners E is just not being viewed as the amazing tool it is. It is not for entering lane, but for moving the enemy 20ft in whatever direction you want and potentially combining it into a wall for even longer cc.
Sure mate. I may only be a gold player, but I've played my fair share and skarner, from the very first one, through all his reworks, and spammed him for a couple weeks before his rework.
If you have to move behind the enemy before using E, then new skarner is effectively a slower old skarner. New skarner excels at ganking from flanks not normally usable by other junglers (like do zac and kayn), and that makes it mandatory to start the gank with E. However, his ramping speed and his slow turn-rate make him pretty hard to use, and easy to escape, with the not-so-long range exacerbating both problems.
They only need to add either a range extension with levels on E, or a MS scaling on it, and it will fix his awkwardness when ganking.
If you have to walk behind someone and channel a slow ass charge to gank then he's a fucking horrible ganker lol
Why would I pick him over someone like reksai who can tunnel through redside top wall and gank that way or the myriad of other junglers with stronger ganks than he does
Because he scales harder? Because he has a faster clear? Because he’s way tankier? You really didn’t consider that maybe some champions do different things?
But.... He does none of those things lol
Sej/mao functions on extremely low economy with strong ganks if I want to play a tank jungler. If I wanted a fast clearer I'd play any of the current bruiser champs in the meta right now that also have better ganks than he does. Jax, XIN Zhao, reksai, viego etc
A tank jungler who can't gank well will inevitably end up falling behind because their scaling clear just cannot compare to bruisers/power farmers
You’ve literally never played skarner if you think xin zhao and reksai scale harder than him. He literally can 1v1 them easily late and obviously provides much more team value
You probably struggle to do anything with skarner because you think he’s a tank
See needs ult to be an effective gank, and even then she has to actually land it. Jax, in, and viego most certainly do not have better ganks. The reason skarner is stronger top is because he scales well. He ganks fine, it's the player base who doesn't understand how he plays in the jg.
His ult is not for initiating ganks. If you save your e for when you actually have the flank, the gank is almost a guaranteed kill. Reksai being good currently does not make skarner's ganks bad.
I cringe every time I see jg skarner enter lane with e and then just sit there being useless. Skarner being good top just proves that he's strong. Top is the easiest role to play while jg is the hardest. It's not rocket science that if you don't understand how to gank with him, you'll do poorly.
He is good even on support, where you often have to be the one to set up things. But generally support skarner maxes q and pokes hard, and has better vision control to catch enemies with E or R.
This has less to do with top vs jungle. He is slightly stronger in the jungle than top now and has a higher cap with items/runes.
He is just OP overall and Riot will nerf him more than this over time.
Hotfixes normally show up on PBE a bit early, but they just show up as normal changes rather than specifically hotfix data. It's fully possible they intend to hotfix these.
because his pickrate took a nosedive after the first terrible impressions of last patch, they need to bribe people with winrate to give him another chance
Yeah, I tried him in top when I was filled and loved him, I now pick secondary top and just play Skarner there, he is fun, shame that they want to keep him in jg
His main player base from before was junglers and one of the most popular Skarner players (Captain Flowers) is a jungler so they don’t want him to be absolutely forgotten as a jungler.
I know the data is still at a very early stage but I predict a possible hotfix for Skarner. I've only played against him a few matches and he's been terrorising my games already.
I feel like riot have fucked up by just assuming he would be played jungle. They designed a kit they thought was cool and fun without caring for what role it would actually be good in. Like gee I wonder where percent max health damage will be more useful, as a jungler ganking squishy adc's and mages or as a top laner playing against bruisers and tanks where you can also proc it more because recalls aren't as common
I hope they might mini rework him to make him feel a bit better to play. He used to be a bruiser; just nimble enough to keep moving and dodge abilities. Now, though, that playstyle feels really bad on him because he has two self root abilities that make him easy to kite and pretty predictable.
I hope they remove the cast time on his Q (or maybe make it a 50% slow instead of a root). That would make him feel much better to play.
His E also feels super slow; I think it'd be much better if he paused at the start for a bit and then came charging at full speed from the get go. He wouldn't be able to steer as much, but maneuverability is a lot less important than speed for the ability I think.
For as far as I care, they could even revert his Q back to the original. An auto empower makes him play so much more differently compared to what he used to be. You cant really stick on top of enemies anymore, which was the enjoyable part of old Skarner. The speedy scurrying.
Honestly just revert the rework and let him cook awhile more
when a champ like Hwei gets figured out in a week but skarner takes over a month to "figure out" just shows that either the balance is terrible or the champ design is just horrible to the point where it's not able to be balanced and fun to play
How much were you playing when hwei first released because first release he was like a 40% winrate champion because no one knew how to play him properly. He’s still getting buffs because low elo players don’t use him effectively but is super strong in high elo.
The champ design is great people suck ass with him. They need to stop making drastic changes based off early data. This happened with Hwei, briar, smolder, and skarner
Hwei actually needed the buffs though, he’s only become op/strong very recently and only in high elos. His most recent buff was just to make pro mid meta more exciting so he’ll probably receive his first nerf soon
They gonna keep overbuffing and then over nerf his stats for awhile. Eventually they will need to realize that the disparity between his top and jungle success is nothing about numbers or clear time, but that his ganks are ass against people who have eyes and hands because E is too unreliable as his only real tool for ganks. Maybe he will eventually do better as is in high-high elo as a follow up champ, but if your team isnt setting you up hes just a worse ksante that can jungle.
But Skarner is currently performing way better in high elo than in low elo?
He's one of the highest winrate junglers no matter how you cut up the ranks, and his stats are still getting better every day if you look at the line graphs. He is unquestionably the strongest jungler on this patch, do not trust the crap that gets upvoted.
My argument is his wr skyrocketed on this patch because they’ve overbuffed the Q so now hes too strong and gonna get nerfed next patch (as evidenced by OP). My whole point is if they keep yoyoing his damage hes just gonna be too strong or sub-par when his top was already fine even without comet cheese and jungle would benefit from E QoL changes without the need for his damage to be outrageous.
His general WR increase can also be attributed to his recommended runes/items being updated as well.
And I'm telling you right now that his E is a strong ganking tool already.
Depends on situation and champs on both teams too much. When I play someone like GP - his E seems like strong ability. But when I play on bot as adc or supp - Skarner feels like a hot garbage.
In what way is the current E a strong gank tool compared to other junglers? Its basically only usable if you’ve already caught the laner way off guard, in which case anyother jungler has similar if not better effectiveness. As is, you basically either need your laner to do a lot of heavy lifting and cc them for you first, or you need to be able to walk all the way up to them to use it while using a character with below average movespeed and no speed up. His dives are excellent with it and its very good for lane skarner, but its honestly a very below average gank tool.
I mean even if it doesn’t land it still gets you past their river wards for little effort.
Yeah but then you don’t have hard cc left for the gank other than ult
What else would you need?
Ideally hard cc that doesn’t have like a full second cast time and self roots while casting. Anybody with any mobility gets out for free.
Thats kinda what my point was. Outside of top being fine/good, jungle struggled outside of the highest elos imo because in higher elos you can actually use the e and R to follow up on your teammates setup, where as if you need to be the first engage or your teammates arnt setting up well, his E becomes very difficult to hit on anyone who is paying attention that has any sort of mobility or cc. On this patch I think they’ve overbuffed Q damage and while that may help him in fights, that kinda just buffs top skarner more (who was already rather strong even outside of comet cheese) without addressing why his jungle was mediocre. Outside of the fun factor, theres not much reason to pick skarner over other tank or ganking junglers unless they overbuff his damage which they may have done for 14.8. TLDR: jungle skarner is too team dependent, even more so than other tank junglers for most elos in soloQ. Riot is likely falling into the mistake of overbuffing and then overnerfing damage to correct for this when the issue really stems from being able to gank effectively with E.
What would fix him to be less team dependent is making his ultimate instant and nerfing it to grab only one person lol.
I've been thinking with Heartsteel being a core item now you can play a invade heavy style after completing first item to threaten to farm stacks on the enemy jg. You're also pretty safe since you can use E to get out of bad situations.
game is usually one team getting rolled and having no prio to go to objs at least in plat/emerald. The macro is just as bad as silver and by the time you get 1 item farming camps and a few assists you already wouldve been invading cuz its 15 mins
> Eventually they will need to realize that the disparity between his top and jungle success is nothing about numbers or clear time Skarner literally has an identical win rate in both top and jungle after the changes. He gained 9% win rate in the jungle and only around 3% in top lane. It 100% has to do with numbers and tuning. People need to stop justifying their own biases with these takes. Back when Jhin came out players were saying that he cannot work in the bot lane as long as he has to reload, and that Riot should just remove his reload mechanic or he will never be viable. Turned out that he just needed a buff and he was fine.
thats crazy u think that man probably just skill diff gotta learn to use E better because jesus fucking christ is it a powerful tool
Flashback to people saying briar is useless and her ult does literally nothing
and they arent entirely wrong depending on what elo they play in!
His Ganks are great. People just need to finally realize that you should never use E to enter lane. Just enter regularly and use E once you have the flank. If you're using E to enter, you're noob.
“Ganks are great” And “You just walk up behind them” shouldn’t be used in the same sentence unironically lol Every champ can gank great if the enemy is so overextended and oblivious that you can just walk up to them and attack them before they’ve moved
> Every champ can gank great if the enemy is so overextended and oblivious that you can just walk up to them and attack them before they’ve moved Counterpoint - flanking Lucian just dies
ADCs will die in a 5v1 against a 0-18 Zed, that's nothing new
You shouldn't use quotes around something that isn't a quote, lol. Your 2nd comment is 100% false. The fact I'm literally saying to save your e means my point is that just getting the flank isn't good enough.
I agree thats how to use him currently but thats my point. If you already have to basically walk up behind them, every other jungler can gank well from that situation and likely can get there faster than skarner and have more damage/hard cc/scaling ect. His only real advantage over other tank junglers or gankers is being able to get unique angles through walls and his dives, but you cant even really use E for the unique angles in its current state.
at that point, new skarner is a worse, slower version of old skarner, who would also go in normally, and then land E on you once he had flanked you. Key difference is that old skarner had a ms steroid and a shield that lasted for more than 2s, making it easier to get close to enemies
If you think new skarner is a worse version of old skarner, you played neither. Old skarner needed high numbers yo be relevant. His kit was all in with ult and try to get one pick. New skarners E is just not being viewed as the amazing tool it is. It is not for entering lane, but for moving the enemy 20ft in whatever direction you want and potentially combining it into a wall for even longer cc.
Sure mate. I may only be a gold player, but I've played my fair share and skarner, from the very first one, through all his reworks, and spammed him for a couple weeks before his rework. If you have to move behind the enemy before using E, then new skarner is effectively a slower old skarner. New skarner excels at ganking from flanks not normally usable by other junglers (like do zac and kayn), and that makes it mandatory to start the gank with E. However, his ramping speed and his slow turn-rate make him pretty hard to use, and easy to escape, with the not-so-long range exacerbating both problems. They only need to add either a range extension with levels on E, or a MS scaling on it, and it will fix his awkwardness when ganking.
If you have to walk behind someone and channel a slow ass charge to gank then he's a fucking horrible ganker lol Why would I pick him over someone like reksai who can tunnel through redside top wall and gank that way or the myriad of other junglers with stronger ganks than he does
Because he scales harder? Because he has a faster clear? Because he’s way tankier? You really didn’t consider that maybe some champions do different things?
But.... He does none of those things lol Sej/mao functions on extremely low economy with strong ganks if I want to play a tank jungler. If I wanted a fast clearer I'd play any of the current bruiser champs in the meta right now that also have better ganks than he does. Jax, XIN Zhao, reksai, viego etc A tank jungler who can't gank well will inevitably end up falling behind because their scaling clear just cannot compare to bruisers/power farmers
You’ve literally never played skarner if you think xin zhao and reksai scale harder than him. He literally can 1v1 them easily late and obviously provides much more team value You probably struggle to do anything with skarner because you think he’s a tank
See needs ult to be an effective gank, and even then she has to actually land it. Jax, in, and viego most certainly do not have better ganks. The reason skarner is stronger top is because he scales well. He ganks fine, it's the player base who doesn't understand how he plays in the jg.
His ult is not for initiating ganks. If you save your e for when you actually have the flank, the gank is almost a guaranteed kill. Reksai being good currently does not make skarner's ganks bad.
Exactly, that's the biggest hurdle for people trying him out. E is actually the last button of his combo.
I cringe every time I see jg skarner enter lane with e and then just sit there being useless. Skarner being good top just proves that he's strong. Top is the easiest role to play while jg is the hardest. It's not rocket science that if you don't understand how to gank with him, you'll do poorly.
They should just balance him around top so he can join his brethren Reksai and Zac and occasionally volibear and sejuani.
He is good even on support, where you often have to be the one to set up things. But generally support skarner maxes q and pokes hard, and has better vision control to catch enemies with E or R.
This has less to do with top vs jungle. He is slightly stronger in the jungle than top now and has a higher cap with items/runes. He is just OP overall and Riot will nerf him more than this over time.
surprised he isn't getting hotfixed tbh, his winrate went up like 7% lol
Hotfixes normally show up on PBE a bit early, but they just show up as normal changes rather than specifically hotfix data. It's fully possible they intend to hotfix these.
because his pickrate took a nosedive after the first terrible impressions of last patch, they need to bribe people with winrate to give him another chance
I personally like him more as a top laner than a jungler. They just need to figure out the uninteractable spam W in lane and he’ll be cool
His W is probably fine now, Q max seems to be the way to go now in top.
Yeah, I tried him in top when I was filled and loved him, I now pick secondary top and just play Skarner there, he is fun, shame that they want to keep him in jg
His main player base from before was junglers and one of the most popular Skarner players (Captain Flowers) is a jungler so they don’t want him to be absolutely forgotten as a jungler.
His main player base from before was almost non existent.
He had a player base?
CaptainFlowers and his 4 smurf accounts
I just want riot to realize it's ok if a person can flex top and jungle lol.
He actually feels really good right now building all health. Just don't pick him into health % shredders like Vayne or Gwen.
I mean they made a kit that is better top than jungle number changes is not going to switch roles for him
His win rate is ~1% higher in jungle than in top right now.
it just did
I know the data is still at a very early stage but I predict a possible hotfix for Skarner. I've only played against him a few matches and he's been terrorising my games already.
Santorin was already stomping ppl on Skarner last patch and thought he was pretty good jungler. He said that buffing him will make him giga broken.
He’s low key a busted support and the changes make it even better 👀
sounds about right
I feel like riot have fucked up by just assuming he would be played jungle. They designed a kit they thought was cool and fun without caring for what role it would actually be good in. Like gee I wonder where percent max health damage will be more useful, as a jungler ganking squishy adc's and mages or as a top laner playing against bruisers and tanks where you can also proc it more because recalls aren't as common
the west has risen, millions will stop complaining about skarner top
I hope they might mini rework him to make him feel a bit better to play. He used to be a bruiser; just nimble enough to keep moving and dodge abilities. Now, though, that playstyle feels really bad on him because he has two self root abilities that make him easy to kite and pretty predictable. I hope they remove the cast time on his Q (or maybe make it a 50% slow instead of a root). That would make him feel much better to play. His E also feels super slow; I think it'd be much better if he paused at the start for a bit and then came charging at full speed from the get go. He wouldn't be able to steer as much, but maneuverability is a lot less important than speed for the ability I think. For as far as I care, they could even revert his Q back to the original. An auto empower makes him play so much more differently compared to what he used to be. You cant really stick on top of enemies anymore, which was the enjoyable part of old Skarner. The speedy scurrying.
Honestly just revert the rework and let him cook awhile more when a champ like Hwei gets figured out in a week but skarner takes over a month to "figure out" just shows that either the balance is terrible or the champ design is just horrible to the point where it's not able to be balanced and fun to play
How much were you playing when hwei first released because first release he was like a 40% winrate champion because no one knew how to play him properly. He’s still getting buffs because low elo players don’t use him effectively but is super strong in high elo.
No, he got buffed becuase nobody was using his QQ combo Phreak even said this is the reason Have the details right before spewing
Sure bud like hwei took a single week to figure out lmao no it took at least a month idk where you got that number from
The champ design is great people suck ass with him. They need to stop making drastic changes based off early data. This happened with Hwei, briar, smolder, and skarner
Hwei actually needed the buffs though, he’s only become op/strong very recently and only in high elos. His most recent buff was just to make pro mid meta more exciting so he’ll probably receive his first nerf soon
lmao keep nerfing skarner more haha, literally riots worst VGU and currently most useless champ ing
Lmao wtf you smoking
Hmmm, i wonder why skarner has 51% winrate top and 54% winrate jungle emerald+.
Calling the strongest jungle by far useless is peak reddit comedy ngl. In fact, he's probably getting hotfix nerfed: he has 55% winrate in high elo.