I’ve had the chance to play Skarner in a couple games now, enough to give some baseline impressions of his skills and playstyle anyway. I’m going to try to avoid comparisons to Sand King from DotA as much as possible, but I’m going to say this – Sand King had much more flavor. There, I’m done. Let’s talk about Skarner.
I’ve only played Skarner in the jungler, and I think for good reason. His kit is designed around standing on top of his enemies, but he doesn’t have the early durability or sustain to really do that. He is surprisingly fast in the jungle, though, thanks to the constant damage from his Q. It’s fairly easy to pick up both buffs and still have enough health left over for a gank. That can’t be said for every jungler, and it can throw off enemy laners if they aren’t paying attention to your time.
As good as Skarner is in the actual jungle, he’s terrible coming out of it, even at level six. Without any sort of serious dash or ranged CC, Skarner has a pretty tough time getting into position. He’s okay once he has five ranks of his shield and a Trinity Force, but by that point, lane ganks aren’t happening much. His ult also has incredibly short range. It’s fantastic for catching overconfident opponents or when used in conjunction with Flash, but it’s certainly not any sort of reliable initiation or gap-closing skill.
That’s not to say it isn’t strong. There are enough champions that are both position- and cast-dependent that Skarner has plenty of targets to drag around. My personal favorites so far have been Fiddlesticks and Kassadin, though I also snagged a Sona once or twice. I’m glad to see that the duration is pretty short. Also, I’ve heard a couple people say that his ult has too short a cooldown, but 110/100/90 seconds isn’t really anything to laugh at. Granted, he’s got some extra help from the blue buff he’s getting in the jungle, at least at early levels, but I don’t think it really needs nerfed.
If anything surprises me about Skarner it’s that there’s so little chatter about him. We’re only two days past release and already the forums seem fairly devoid of conversation about him. That could mean that people are content with him, but to me it seems as though there aren’t many people that are excited about him. I’ve been able to pick him in most games after 20 seconds or so. So why the low-decibel response?
To put it bluntly, Skarner’s kind of boring. He’s spammy, but his spammy skills don’t do anything that’s all that exciting. He also has a sort of confused set of skills. It doesn’t really make sense that his Q scales off physical damage for the first half but magic damage after. Everything else he does is magic. I haven’t tried out an AP build yet, mostly because Skarner doesn’t seem like he would fair well in lane. That’s next on the test list.
How’s the scorpion been treating you this week?
