We're really excited that the Skarner rework is now live, and we are playing him a ton on live, reading all of the forum feedback, and even watching a few Skarner streams. We are very passionate about him and we want him to be both a very healthy and fun champion for the game and a viable and balanced character.
These changes in 4.2 were targeted at improving his gameplay to accomplish a few goals:
-Enable more ability for Skarner and his opponents to display their skill
-Reduce the amount of feast/famine that Skarner can experience (when he's ahead he is unstoppable, when he's behind he has a hard time contributing at all)
-Create more defined windows of power for Skarner to create more interaction between him and his opponent
We think that the changes have accomplished these goals and we always try to release character in as balanced of a state as we can, but it is always a possibility that he is not balanced. The important thing here is that we are actively monitoring and planning on a follow up in the next patch for Skarner to make sure that he is balanced and viable.
Thanks again for all of your feedback, and we are always actively working to improve the game (and in this case Skarner). I'll come back to this thread to answer questions if you have any.
Skarners early game feels bad. I think his W movement speed early levels should be increased and his E's cooldown reduced would make a worlds difference.
We only have a small amount of data, but it does suggest that he struggles in the early game. If he needs buffs, this may be a good place to look.
I think what Skarner needs is the ability to cast Q while moving, because right now having to spam Q as well as autoattacking for damage just forces Skarner to stutter step everywhere and makes it next to impossible to chase anyone without the slow he used to have.
Just make Q and E able to cast while moving and see if that helps him. It certainly should make him able to keep up with champions like he used to without sacrificing DPS.
He is already able to cast Q while moving, but I have seen this suggestion for E from a few posters. I think that for a ranged slow like E, the cast time contributes to the risk/reward of the skill. A good Skarner that lands the E will catch up because of the payoff from the slow. This helps to differentiate skilled Skarners from the less skilled ones.
I see a lot of concern over his early game power and just power level overall. This is exactly what we are going to address in the follow up patch. We are totally committed to making sure Skarner is viable if he is not.
Something that seems worth clarifying is that with the rework we wanted to introduce some windows where Skarner's opponent has the opportunity to escape, but we also have increased the power and versatility of Skarner's CC when he does use it. Skarner has a stronger slow that he can apply at range without having to build up on a target, when used correctly this can be a very powerful tool (especially when setting up for an ult in a team fight).
Further increasing the CC/Power spike when Skarner makes his play is probably the area that we would buff him in if we saw that he was undertuned.
This thread is about follow up, and we are actively looking to improve the changes to make them something that Skarner players and all players are satisfied with.
The most frequent complaint I'm seeing is that a lot of the CC power that was core to Skarner's appeal is lowered, and that it's something that is core to his identity. So, with balance changes aside for the Skarner followup, this is something that we can try to bring back. His current pattern has more dueling/fighting power but less CC, but we can shift some of his power back into more impactful CC that will bring him closer to CC tank role that he had before.
Edit: if this is not a direction that you would like to see more of Skarner's power shifted into that is ok too, I'm collecting feedback.
This is one of the better critiques, also skarner does feel different and that is a fair critique, player attachment is what makes the game go round.
I think they should lower the slow on his E slightly and every time some one attacks a target or slashes them another slow is added for 1 second. So he can slow a bunch of people slightly then pick a target to stick too, increasing the duration of the slow on that target by 1 second. 3.5 second slow is more up time and an answer to the cool down increase on E, particularly if it affords skarner an extra auto or two to decrease E cool down.
This is a good point, and we try to retain the core appeal of a character when they get reworked and in this case Skarner may have shifted a bit too far away from the CC tank role that he had before. Strengthening his CC seems like the right direction in the follow up to make Skarner closer to what his fans really loved about him before.
This has been very useful feedback and looking at early data suggests that he's struggling much more in the early game than the late game. I'm tentatively looking to put together some changes for next patch:
-E missile width increase
-E slow values increased (especially at low ranks)
-Maybe mana cost improvements
A few things about these changes:
-We don't want to over buff him and have to nerf him again in the future, so keep that in mind.
-We want to make E a much better 1 point ability to help his early ganks
-We want to generally increase the CC payoff for hitting the E because of the difficulty/risk of landing it
These changes aren't final so please share your feedback.
What I'd imagine after those changes (if you include the mana cost reductions) would be:
-He'll have a better skill to leave at one point (E obviously) so he doesn't feel as weak until he's leveled all 3 of them
-His W will still feel underwhelming. Even if it's numerically balanced, the slow ramp up will make it feel weaker than it really is to the person playing him. I think the ramp up time should either be made quicker, made to go in the opposite direction (getting slower over time) or just completely removed in favor of a flat movespeed boost so that the ability feels more satisfying for the person playing as him.
-Without access to more long term CC than only his E which has a long cooldown, he will still be missing a major part of his identity. I understand you think his perma slow on Q was toxic (which I don't agree with), but it was still one of the biggest things that made Skarner feel like Skarner, without something similar to that he won't feel like the same champion anymore. This absolutely needs to be fixed if you want old Skarner players to feel happy about the rework.
-In lane, he still has not been compensated for losing his heal. Please do not forget about his ability to lane when making your changes.
I have some questions, if you could answer any of them I'd really appreciate it:
-What about the slow on his Q made it toxic? Why was it considered bad for him to have this in his kit when other forms of long lasting slows like Red Buff, Frozen Mallet, Frost Shot, etc. also exist?
-How does his win rate with Smite compare to his win rate without it (or more specifically, as a jungler compared to as a laner)? Do the two win rates change at different rates as rating goes up?
-Have you thought about keeping the mark his E used to apply, but possibly adding some other sort of effect (example: Hitting someone with the mark on them could extend the slow for a bit longer)?
To answer your questions:
-Yes getting permanently slowed by his Q was frustrating to play against, but there are actually other gains that we were trying to achieve with the change.
Permanent slow in melee range often only created two situations for Skarner, the case where he catches someone and they can never escape and the case where he can't ever engage on his target. The winner of fights often revolved around who had more items, not who made the better plays. We hope to create more situations where Skarner catches a target in the first place, but more opportunity for escape one the target has been caught.
-I don't have the lane vs jungle data yet, but I will definitely see if there is a significant discrepancy for his lane case
-The mark with E and hit for a longer slow is a reasonable idea, but in that case we would probably just make the E slow last longer baseline to reduce the mechanics clutter.
Against assassins, whoever has more items wins, not whoever made the better plays. How are slows more toxic? At least your team has time to respond with slows.
Explain pls
Btw, THANK YOU SCRUFFY. YOU FINALLY PERSONALLY ACKNOWLEDGED AN IDEA. I believe that the secondary CC should be a brief hard CC though. You'll never have time to reach 3 Q stacks even with that secondary effect as hard CC.
In the case of assassins, we are actively working to not make it the case that when an assassin jumps on you, the determining factor for the win is items not skill (looking at you kassadin).
I don't think anyone thinks slows are toxic, the design philosophy is that when both players have the opportunity to make plays and change a fight it results in more engaging fights and a more skill based game overall.
Skarner Rework Follow Through
We're really excited that the Skarner rework is now live, and we are playing him a ton on live, reading all of the forum feedback, and even watching a few Skarner streams. We are very passionate about him and we want him to be both a very healthy and fun champion for the game and a viable and balanced character.
These changes in 4.2 were targeted at improving his gameplay to accomplish a few goals:
-Enable more ability for Skarner and his opponents to display their skill
-Reduce the amount of feast/famine that Skarner can experience (when he's ahead he is unstoppable, when he's behind he has a hard time contributing at all)
-Create more defined windows of power for Skarner to create more interaction between him and his opponent
We think that the changes have accomplished these goals and we always try to release character in as balanced of a state as we can, but it is always a possibility that he is not balanced. The important thing here is that we are actively monitoring and planning on a follow up in the next patch for Skarner to make sure that he is balanced and viable.
Thanks again for all of your feedback, and we are always actively working to improve the game (and in this case Skarner). I'll come back to this thread to answer questions if you have any.
-Scruffy
Further increasing the CC/Power spike when Skarner makes his play is probably the area that we would buff him in if we saw that he was undertuned.
The most frequent complaint I'm seeing is that a lot of the CC power that was core to Skarner's appeal is lowered, and that it's something that is core to his identity. So, with balance changes aside for the Skarner followup, this is something that we can try to bring back. His current pattern has more dueling/fighting power but less CC, but we can shift some of his power back into more impactful CC that will bring him closer to CC tank role that he had before.
Edit: if this is not a direction that you would like to see more of Skarner's power shifted into that is ok too, I'm collecting feedback.
-E missile width increase
-E slow values increased (especially at low ranks)
-Maybe mana cost improvements
A few things about these changes:
-We don't want to over buff him and have to nerf him again in the future, so keep that in mind.
-We want to make E a much better 1 point ability to help his early ganks
-We want to generally increase the CC payoff for hitting the E because of the difficulty/risk of landing it
These changes aren't final so please share your feedback.
-Scruffy
-Yes getting permanently slowed by his Q was frustrating to play against, but there are actually other gains that we were trying to achieve with the change.
Permanent slow in melee range often only created two situations for Skarner, the case where he catches someone and they can never escape and the case where he can't ever engage on his target. The winner of fights often revolved around who had more items, not who made the better plays. We hope to create more situations where Skarner catches a target in the first place, but more opportunity for escape one the target has been caught.
-I don't have the lane vs jungle data yet, but I will definitely see if there is a significant discrepancy for his lane case
-The mark with E and hit for a longer slow is a reasonable idea, but in that case we would probably just make the E slow last longer baseline to reduce the mechanics clutter.
I don't think anyone thinks slows are toxic, the design philosophy is that when both players have the opportunity to make plays and change a fight it results in more engaging fights and a more skill based game overall.