This week we’ll see some crystalline muscles in action, stabbing some fools and bruising his way through the jungle!
This starting build is one I have refined over a few games already, and have come to like. There are a few obvious sticking points in this, and they mostly boil down to my playstyle. I personally go QEEWQR because having the two points in E makes you incredibly sustained. With a good leash on blue and wolves, you can clear the jungle without recalling once on top of getting a gank in. I also build him incredibly tanky, thus 0/21/9 and the tankier runes. I will be going through and optimizing this as the week progresses, and I will post the results here when I am done.
Statistics:
Here is the raw data over the 28 games I played as Skarner this week:
So what do these stats mean at all? Well the graphs drawn from the data show that over the course of my games, my K/D spread increased linearly from game to game. There are some bad games and some good games, but overall I am gaining .1 K/D per game, starting at 0.7 K/D. The same can be seen for my KDA (kills + assists / deaths), just with different results. This is a good indicator over my games because it shows improvement. My average deaths are lower than my average kills and I had a solid 10 assists per game. I had some pretty awful games starting off and then as I learned more about Skarner, the games averaged out.
Replays:
Conclusions:
What a busy week with Skarner. I actually loved every game with him and developed two builds that I use. Over the course of several games I have found Skarner to be a complete early game beast and one of the best late game initiators in the game. Running a 21/0/9 build allows him to do a ton of damage with a Sheen and going 0/21/9 makes him insanely beefy. I found that I could often take down two champions at a time on a gank early levels and that I was very resistant to counter jungling. He was either an extremely tanky initiator or a scary war machine coming into the mid-game and this resulted in a very fun, very strong character.
My Rating of Skarner:
Difficulty:
Jungling Speed:
Jungling Sustainability:
Ganking:
Ability to Deflect Counter-jungling:
Ability to Counter-jungle:
Post Jungling:
What a busy week with Skarner. I actually loved every game with him and developed two builds that I use. Over the course of several games I have found Skarner to be a complete early game beast and one of the best late game initiators in the game. Running a 21/0/9 build allows him to do a ton of damage with a Sheen and going 0/21/9 makes him insanely beefy. I found that I could often take down two champions at a time on a gank early levels and that I was very resistant to counter jungling. He was either an extremely tanky initiator or a scary war machine coming into the mid-game and this resulted in a very fun, very strong character.
Final Builds:
I settled on a few builds for Skarner. He isn't a one-dimensional character in that he's only good at a certain role. He does high damage with damage items and is extremely tanky with tank items. The build I prefer most (Team 1, build 2) is a combination of both worlds. A few common themes and answers that I will try to nip in the bud:
1. Why Wriggle's Lantern?
I run Wriggle's on Skarner because it makes him able to sustain himself without blue buff. It will give you higher life and a faster jungle and the ability to give your blue away to your AP carry. While Philo stone might be able to achieve the early sustain goals, the clearing speed is unmatched for Skarner. It also gives you a stronger Baron and Dragon presence.
2. Why Sheen/Trinity Force?
Skarner's abilities are extremely spammable and so the Sheen proc is amazing. Once that is a Trinity Force, your stopping power is immense. He deals a lot of damage and move extremely fast, which helps with his ultimate utility and teamfighting.
3. Why Warmog's?
This is something I didn't test out as much, but Skarner has one of the highest base life and gains in the game. He can use just that and build tanky sometimes, but I feel that Giant's Belt is such a great item that I always go Warmog's. It comes late enough in the game that it's still relavent and is only bad against teams stacking %health items.
My Rating of Skarner:
Pros
| Cons
|
The jungle is fine as long as you build a Wriggle’s. His ganks are a little tough because you have to time Q, but it’s on a short enough cooldown that even if you miss it, it’s fine. He has a shield and some good sustain in the jungle and after you hit 6 ganks are just popping ghost and stabbing someone. Overall not a very difficult character to play or get the hang of.
Riot gave Skarner some crystalline muscles in the Graves patch and his jungling speed went up accordingly. The reason this jumped from 3 to 7 is because you're now actually able to spam Q even without blue buff. The flattening of the mana cost means that he has AoE for free every other second. Combine this with a shield, AoE skillshot and his passive and you get a very quick jungler. He would be a bit higher if his AoE did more than 20 damage at level 1, so he takes a little bit of time to get into the "god mode" clear time.
Post-Wriggle’s, he’s great. Very low mana usage with Crystalline Exoskeleton and the movespeed/attack speed buffs from that make ganking high life/high mana for you. Since his Q mana has been fixed, he is really sustained even after spammage, also the "if a unit is killed by your Fracture you gain life" part of the patch helped a lot. He's a low-mana jungler with a shield and health returned on hit, although he wants his first two or more blue buffs for speed purposes.
His ganks before ultimate are good because he is able to kill 1-2 people on his own. He has a slow, two damage spells and a shield that grants movespeed. He will get in there and at least scare people off easily, which is the goal anyway. After he gets [[impale]] his ganks get amazing. While it may not have the range of Warwick, being able to stab, drag and then Q them for a slow proc right away is a guaranteed kill on anyone but Singed.
Entering Skarner's domain is a flat out mistake. He will slow you instantly and is a huge body early game. He is extremely durable and will force a summoner's if you get near him. Combine this with the fact that he's really sustained in his route and you get a hard to counter jungler. He wants the farm that the camps offer, but he is very resilient to invasion from anyone.
Take anything I said about deflection and apply it here. He can clear a camp relatively quickly and if caught will kill any jungler early on. While he's looking better after the patch buffs, he still isn't the most powerful or efficient in the aspects of the game where counter jungling is most effective. He wants to farm to level 6 more than he wants to pick fights most times.
His late game is absolutely monstrous. If you go Wriggle’s > Trinity > Tankiness (much like Trundle), he has some of the highest DPS I’ve seen and is unescapable. His base stats are also completely ridiculous, so really if you get to the late game without much issue, he is a game winner. His ultimate is still too short to offer as much utility as you would imagine in a teamfight (it isn’t long enough to bring a carry from the back, just to catch someone out of position). The buffs smoothed his early and mid game out a lot and made him overall a very strong pick. I don't feel he can carry a bad game, but he can influence an ok game to win.
