Reworked and Remastered - Skarner Edition

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

            I’ve already gone over Nidalee and her rework, so now it’s time to take a look at Skarner. Skarner is a bit more straight forward and his kit didn’t receive as many changes as Nidalee. I feel more comfortable with Skarner, as he’s the first champ I ever put time into learning and for a long time I only played him. I’ve written guides for him and have spent a lot of time with all three of his different eras. So while Nidalee was more of a general look at what was changed, this will be a more in-depth analysis on how to play Skarner.

            Skarner is a champ that’s been around a long time. He was actually released a few weeks before I started playing the game in August of 2011. When he came out, he was immediately a strong pick. He had easily the fastest jungle clear in the game, along with a devastating gank pressure once he hit level 6. The trade off was that it was nearly impossible to gank someone before you had your ultimate. His Q (Crystal Slash) was a slow instead of a speed boost, and his E (Fracture) was a completely different ability. In short, the Skarner we know now, and the Skarner that was released, are extremely different champs.

           There were a lot of design issues with the original Skarner’s kit. First of all, the idea of his perma slow. As Skarner’s enemy, you basically were either stuck or not. There was no in-between or escape chance, especially during his release time when very few champions had dashes or jumps. It was a crippling slow, and not only that but it meant he was in range, meaning you could auto attack and lower the CD. Skarner could easily bring his Q down to a 1 sec CD and never let his opponent leave.

            Next in line is Fracture. Skarner’s E ability was widely known to be his weakest and most Skarner players didn’t even put levels into it until they were forced to. Essentially, he was a three ability champion. His Fracture used to mark enemies and heal Skarner when he auto-attacked them, consuming the mark. It just didn’t have a use when compared to putting more points in shield. Why would you pick something to heal you when you can get more speed and effective health from another ability?

Finally, there were the bugs with his ultimate. Skarner’s ult was known for pulling people who had gotten away. He would grab people who would flash or jump just before the grab and even midway through they would get pulled, usually wasting an important CD on their flash or escape. Actually, the reasoning behind this was an interesting little blip in the code design.

You see, Skarner’s ultimate, when cast, sends a small almost invisible projectile that - when it hits the opponent - will encase them and pull them to Skarner. However, the ability is targeted, meaning it can’t miss. So because there was a travel and cast time, there was a small time where the enemy could jump away before the projectile actually connected with them. Once it hit though, you were snared and pulled, no matter what the distance at the time, leading to a bunch of strange interactions. (I.E. Janna’s flying with Skarner after Monsoon, Trist being grabbed mid jump, anyone blowing flash but still stung.)

Riot put a small fix in for Skarner’s ultimate making it so that if the enemy got out of cast range before that projectile hit, the ultimate would not connect and would go on CD. It ruined most ultimates Skarner tried to get, effectively ending Skarner’s reign and putting him where he was until just recently.

Insert patch 4.2.

·         Q -- Loses slow, and gains attack speed stacks instead

·         W -- Small buffs, Movement speed ramps up now

·         E -- Now longer and slimmer, slows instead of mark/heal

·         R -- Now roots before ult, making it more consistent

           

4.2 was ultimately a failure. People felt like Skarner just didn’t have a niche anymore. His kit didn’t mesh well anymore, and all in all he just felt wrong. A lot of clamoring about how Skarner needed a re-rework and Riot put some time into it and put out a new new Skarner in 4.10, which is what I’m going to talk about today.

                                                         Patch 4.10

I’ll be the first to say that I was not looking forward to most of the changes happening this patch. The biggest thing for me was losing the original passive Skarner had. I understood it was to make him a more "lockdown dive the enemy" champ, but I loved being able to “farm” my ultimate back up, especially considering how important Skarner’s ultimate was to who he is as a champion.

Crystallizing Sting

·         CRYSTAL VENOM----Skarner's damaging spells apply a 'Crystal Venom' debuff to enemy Champions and large monsters for 5 seconds

·         UTILITY----If Skarner lands a basic attack on a target with 3 stacks of 'Crystal Venom', he will deal an additional 20-105 magic damage and stun the target for 0.5/0.75/1 second

·         CRYSTAL VENOM----After being stunned, targets cannot be debuffed by Crystal Venom for 6 seconds

            Skarner got a brand new passive that’s completely unrelated to his old one. His passive now revolves around hitting spells on the enemy. After three spells connect, Skarner can stun them with an auto. It’s a really cool passive that plays up to his theme of being a scorpion; encasing his enemies in crystal. It also cements him into a champ who specializes in locking people down.

            It has a lot of uses, the most obvious being stunning a target to kill them. Keep in mind of all the other possibilities though. For instance, this actually makes Skarner a very deceptive duelist in the jungle. Not only will his damage increase over time through more attack speed, but he can stop you from doing anything mid fight. Leading to sometimes surprising wins.

Crystal Slash

           

·         UTILITY-----Basic attacks reduce Crystal Slash's cooldown by 0.5 seconds (doubled against Champions)

·         CRYSTAL ENERGY----Crystal Energy now additionally grants +2/3/4/5/6% movement speed per stack (up to 3 stacks)

·         BASE PHYSICAL DAMAGE----25/40/55/70/85 (+0.8 attack damage) ⇒18/28/38/48/58 (+0.4 attack damage)

·         BONUS MAGIC DAMAGE-----24/36/48/60/72 (+0.4 ability power) ⇒18/28/38/48/58 (+0.2 ability power)

            Skarner kept his old passive as a passive on his Q, which was necessary for his ability to pump out damage, proc his new stun and jungle clear. It may not seem like much, but if you try to continuously use Q without basic attacking, you’ll notice a difference. It will also help his sticking power, which I’ll get into later.

            The old Q used to slow the enemy and this was what kept Skarner in his all important melee range. When he originally got reworked he had no way to stay in range. He had a slow, but it was on a long CD and didn’t let him stay in range. His newest Q basically has the opposite effect of what his old one did. He now has his old stickiness by speeding himself up instead of slowing the enemy. Great design change. They kept the fun sticky part of Skarner, but made it rewarding for him and not displeasing for the other player. It was also great to keep it on his Q because it’s his pivotal skill. As some have put it, it’s the “heartbeat” to playing Skarner.

            They also lowered both the base damage and scaling damage of the ability in exchange for this. Riot did this to push Skarner more towards the CC oriented tank role over damage dealing duelist role. Surprisingly though, this doesn’t hurt his clear time much.

Crystalline Exoskeleton

·         COOLDOWN16 seconds at all ranks ⇒ 13/12.5/12/11.5/11 seconds

           

            A welcome buff to the shield/speed boost. It’s good to note that this was secretly buffed by adding movespeed to Crystal Slash as well. Move speed grows multiplicatively, which means when you add more you get a lot more. Basically, if you have full stacks on your Q and pop your shield you will fly towards people, and if they don’t have a jump or dash, you will be all over them. Outside of that, there really isn’t much to say about changes. Do remember to use this a little before you want to engage so you get full speed by the time you charge in.

Fracture

·         MAGIC DAMAGE80/120/160/200/240 (+0.7 ability power) ⇒40/60/80/100/120 (+0.4 ability power)

·         COOLDOWN14 seconds at all ranks ⇒ 12 seconds at all ranks

            In actuality, this is a straight nerf. You can’t even really claim that the CD buff is worth anything, because you easily get it lower with Skarner’s old passive. AP Skarner was pretty much ruined with this change, and even though I never tried it, I’m kind of sad about that. One thing I love about this game is how many different ways there are to play it. Any different build path is really interesting and the possibilities are un-ending in some cases.

            I’m pretty ok with this in the grand scheme of things though. It’s a small nerf to an ability that was a one point wonder in most cases, and everything that was gained in return was very much worth it. The slow wasn’t even touched, which is what the skill is used for anyway. Fracture’s come a long way from its original ability, but it feels at home now.

Impale

           

·         IMPALEMENT----Impale consumes all stacks of Crystal Venom and deals 50/75/100 magic damage per stack consumed

·         COOLDOWN----130/120/110 seconds ⇒ 110/100/90 seconds

Skarner’s ult now has a really interesting interaction with his passive, but I’ll get back to that in a second. Let’s look at the CD reduction. Overall it’s great, but doesn’t help much. This is really more just to make up for the loss of the old passive. One of the things that I loved about the old Skarner was getting to level 6, using my ult, and then going back into the jungle and farming as hard as I could until it came back up. You can’t do that anymore, and it also makes Wriggle’s Lantern a much less viable buy. You’ll still get decent use out of it, but nowhere near as much as before.

Now for the interesting change. Skarner’s new passive has a different interaction with this spell. You can choose how to spend the stacks, either for a stun before/after the ult for more lockdown potential, or more damage.

It may not be obvious at first glance, but this is a huge decision to make. Let’s take it a bit deeper by looking at examples.

Say you’re ganking a lane:

·         In scenario A, your laner is a champion with good CC like Jax, Nasus, Renekton etc. Stack your passive up and before you stun them, use your ult. By level 16 you’ll get an extra 300 damage out of it. Even early on you get 150, which is a lot at level 6.

·         In scenario B, we’ll say your laner is someone like Teemo or Tryndamere. Essentially someone with no CC and especially on someone with no items or building tank, you’ll want to proc your stun before you use the ultimate, or in a perfect world, use your ult before hitting a spell. These champs need more help keeping people in range and generally have more than enough damage to take people down.

            Once again I really love this design idea and it let’s the player make choices that can impact how they involve themselves in the game. You can do more damage or stun. Plus, it rewards smart play with the damage by making sure you get 3 full stacks and then using ult. It gives you the ability to be what’s needed at the time, while not making Skarner overly powerful.

Conclusion

            So wrapping it all up, what’s been changed? Skarner was a sticky fast jungler before, and the first rework he received pushed him more towards a duelist with fast clear speeds and a kit that was wonky when put together. He got his slow moved to a longer CD ability and his trademark stickiness was lost in the crossfire. However, the attack speed move to his Q was great for his clear and damage.

            4.10 brought a new passive that enhanced his CC and lockdown ability, which more fits his theme. His clear was still held as fast, and now with two abilities that can speed him up, his stickiness was brought back by reversing his original Q ability.

            Skarner’s back! He’s not as damage heavy as he used to be, but he is a lockdown king and his ganks are scarier than ever. Your early gank pressure is now viable and you’ll still clear just as fast as you did before. Plus 4.11 is out and he was barely touched. My impression is that Skarner is here to stay.

Also, if you’re interested in learning Skarner and want to know how to play and/or build him, I’ve made a guide. It’s not perfect, and I’m not amazing player, but I love Skarner and I want to teach people more about how to play and dominate with him.

Skarner Guide

NA LCS Puzzle Time!

*Stumped? Scroll down for the answers!




















Our bespectacled players are:
1. Quas
2. Seraph
3. Imaqtpie
4. Meteos
5. XaoiWeiXaoi
6. Hai
7. Dyrus
8. LemonNation
9. Sneaky

10. WildTurtle

Reworked and Remastered - Nidalee Edition

By Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

Major reworks everywhere! Rito has just released two major kit reworks for vastly different champions: Nidalee, everyone's favorite spear chucking, slippery cat, and Skarner, the long-forgotten scorpion king of the jungle. Up ahead, I'm going to go over all of the changes that occurred and what they entail, as well as how well I think the change will go over in game.

First up is Nidalee. She's been an issue Riot has needed to address for a long time now. Her playstyle was really against what the core components of the game were, and this led to an unengaging experience. Her kit revolved completely around staying as far back as she could to stay out of range and maximize spear damage, which could have the possibility of one-shotting squishies late game.

If she was too close, she transformed to cougar form and pounced back to that range. Rinse and repeat. Add on to that, she had a large heal as well, meaning she could out-sustain you in addition to being able to run away from almost anything. In other words, if Nidalee was ahead, she had to misposition majorly to have a chance for the other team to win.

Her enemies weren't the only ones that suffered. Nidalee's kit was stronger the longer a siege took. More time sieging = higher % of spears hitting = less safe for enemy to hold towers without healing. Teammates were stuck sitting around in front of a tower waiting for Nidalee to hit enough spears to make the enemy run off. They couldn't leave her alone because she isn't enough of a threat by herself when taking a tower. It was boring, and the only person having fun that whole time was Nid. That goes for either side.

So how could Riot fix this without gutting her and making a whole new kit? Let's look at each change and compare the before and after.

(Note: I go pretty in-depth into changes to her kit here and what they entail for playstyles. If you feel you understand the new kit and what the changes mean, I've put a TL;DR that summarizes my thoughts on her kit as a whole and where she lies in the meta.)

·         First Nidalee has access to her cougar form at level 1.

Actually I think the important thing to note is that Nidalee will have access to her cougar form at levels 3-4.

           

Nidalee has to have at minimum two skills to use cougar, and three to be effective in most cases. This wasn't an issue before because she would have at least a point in every ability by level 6, but now she needs to level the human skill before she uses it in cougar. Nidalee used to be an easy gank pre-6, and the ult change is a slight buff to her early mobility, but nothing huge. Pounce doesn't cover a large area, and it received its share of changes as well.

Prowl

·         MOVEMENT---Moving through brush increases Nidalee's movement speed by 10% for 2 seconds, increased to 30% toward visible enemy champions within a range of 5500.

·         HUNTED---Damaging champions with Javelin Toss or Bushwhack marks them as 'Hunted' for 4 seconds, granting Nidalee vision of them, 30% increased movement speed toward them (within a range of 5500) and enhancing her next Takedown, Pounce, and Swipe against them.

I couldn't find any previous numbers but I believe Nidalee's base movespeed increase in brush was nerfed, while her bonus when chasing is higher than the static number in 4.9.

At her core, Nidalee is a hunter. Her old kit was more sniper than hunter though. The major attempt to fix this is through the passive change. It leaves some room to be overall faster in the jungle, but gives a much larger reward through chasing the enemy you've marked. A much more cohesive kit and theme.

In addition, Nidalee players had almost no use in going to cougar form outside of wave clearing alone and moving around the map. Why trade in someone's face when you can chuck spears from far away?

Sure the cougar form damage is more likely to hit, but even if you hit everything in cougar you could still lose the trade. If you chuck a spear from far away, you would either do just as much or more damage and, if you missed, it wasn't a problem because you only lost a bit of mana and a cooldown as opposed to a bunch of precious health.

The stall tactic needed to be addressed, but rather than trying to pull Nidalee's human form in line with cougar, Riot gave her more effects to tandem human form into cougar. Her offensive human spells mark her enemy. If Nidalee hits cougar spells on a hunted target, her cougar spells do additional effects. I'll explain the effects as I go over the cougar spell.

Credit to Surrender@20 for pic

Hitting a marked opponent with a cougar spell does not consume the mark in any way, shape, or form. In essence, if Nidalee marks a target, she has a much higher ability to duel that person. If you're Nidalee, it means you should look to fight. If you're marked, wait out the timer before you fight.

Ok, real skill time! I'm going to split her human and cougar forms into different sections since they're not related directly to each other and just share hot keys.

Nidalee's human spells all enhance as you level that specific skill (Q, W, E). Cougar form spells, on the other hand, are only enhanced by levels in her ultimate (R).

Human Form

Javelin Toss

·         HUNTED---Applies the 'Hunted' debuff to champions for 4 seconds

·         RANGE----1500 units (damage caps out at 1300)

·         MINIMUM MAGIC DAMAGE-----50/75/100/125/150 (+0.4 ability power)

·         MAXIMUM MAGIC DAMAGE-----150/225/300/375/450 (+1.2 ability power)

·         COST----50/60/70/80/90 mana

·         COOLDOWN-----6 seconds

·         WIDTH----Missile width 60 ⇒ 30

Big damage reduction overall on the spears, which was necessary. Basically you can still sit back and siege, but it’s going to be harder to chunk people and you’ll have to be more accurate. Oh, and about that accuracy. Spears are half the size now. You get a Hunted debuff on them, though, which is nice, but while you can still put a hurt on people, it’s harder. You’re better off using them to set up a cougar follow up.

Bushwhack

·         HUNTED----Applies the 'Hunted' debuff to champions for 4 seconds

·         MAGIC DAMAGE-----20/40/60/80/100 + 12/14/16/18/20% current health (+1% per 50 ability power) over the duration of 4 seconds

·         DURATION-----2 minutes

·         COST-----40/45/50/55/60 mana

·         COOLDOWN-----17/15/13/11/9 seconds

·         CLARITY-----Only affects one target per trap

The important change here is the debuff no longer shreds MR and armor. This was probably the least known of Nidalee’s strengths. Hitting a trap would not only let her know where you were but make you more susceptible to all kinds of damage. A trap into spear was able to chunk out even the bulkiest tanks. Now, they apply the same Hunted debuff as spears.

Riot still wanted to keep an aspect of their tank shredding ability though. They did this by making the traps do % current health. It’s a nice touch to take away a large portion of Nidalee’s hidden power but still keep what her traps previously did in a sense. The traps were also made a bit more visually noticeable in what area they covered.

Primal Surge

·         HEAL---45/85/125/165/205 (+0.5 ability power)

·         ATTACK SPEED BONUS----20/30/40/50/60% attack speed

·         COST----60/80/100/120/140 mana

·         COOLDOWN----12 seconds

The base heal and ratio got hit hard here. Nid’s ability to not only poke like crazy, but shrug off any counter poke, solidified her as the top poke champ in the game. If you had already decided to poke but weren’t able to get Nidalee, it was GG, because even a whole team had trouble trying to counter her abilities.

She can’t sustain forever anymore, now, and because her heal was heavily decreased, the attack speed is more prominent and useful in the skill but overall her heal was straight-up nerfed.

Cougar Form

Takedown

·         HUNTED BONUS---The first Takedown targeting a 'Hunted' champion deals +33% increased damage

·         UTILITY-----Nidalee gains +75 attack range for the Takedown attack

·         MINIMUM MAGIC DAMAGE----4/20/50/90 (+0.24 ability power) (+1.0 attack damage)

·         MAXIMUM MAGIC DAMAGE----10/50/125/225 (+0.6 ability power) (+2.5 attack damage)

·         COST----No cost

·         COOLDOWN----5 seconds

And here is where a lot of new things come into play. Cougar spells get a lot of extra effects if used on a target just hit by a human form spell. This opens a lot of dueling/assassin play where Nidalee didn’t have that option available before, despite it being part of her theme.

At its core, Takedown, and what the spell did, haven’t changed. The two largest changes are the Hunted bonus and the ratio change. Takedown still is best used as an execute, but it has to be set up.

This is the spell that bruiser AD Nid fans were most upset about. This used to deal AD damage, but for the sake of simplicity, which some people are disagreeing with, it was changed to deal magic damage. This pretty much gutted the AD build. While it still has an AD ratio, the fact that it now deals magic damage makes Nidalee a lot easier to itemize against and she no longer gets anything out of building armor penetration. It wasn’t an overly popular build path, but some people still did it.

The second and more widely affected change was the addition of the hunted effect. Now if Nidalee uses Takedown on a hunted target, the damage is increased by 1/3rd. This is done instead of doing more damage based on missing health. It lowers her possible damage done, while still retaining the idea that it’s meant to be followed up after hitting a spear or trap.

Pounce

·         HUNTED BONUS----The first Pounce directly towards a 'Hunted' champions will have up to 700 range

·         UTILITY----Killing a unit in cougar form reduces the cooldown of Pounce to 1 second

·         UTILITY-----Nidalee now pounces in the direction of the player's cursor

·         MAGIC DAMAGE----50/100/150/200 (+0.3 ability power)

·         COST----No cost

·         COOLDOWN----5 seconds

Probably Nid’s most annoying skill both for her and her opponent. The jump was a little bit faster than just walking, so people spammed it anytime they moved anywhere and it only added on to her frustrating slipperiness with her passive. I can confidently say the only time that this was used for its damage was to clear waves or in times of desperation. Not for its dueling potential.

So Riot raised the cooldown of the skill unless you kill an enemy in cougar form. It means Nidalee can still clear with pounce well and use it to jump in and kill, but you can no longer fly around the map jumping everywhere. Still useful to run around, but much less so.

You might have noticed I said that this skill was annoying to both the enemy and Nidalee. Since Nidalee was released pretty early in comparison to other champs, her kit was a bit dated. That’s putting it nicely. The way Pounce was programmed, Nidalee jumped towards wherever she was moving. This is a much different thought process than most champs who have smartcasted movement abilities.

Riven, for example, dashes towards the players cursor when she uses her shield. Nid could jump through a lot of walls with Pounce, but the way that it worked meant you had to maneuver awkwardly so that you could move to the wall and  face it in a way to jump head on. Now, Nid just jumps towards the players cursor. It’s a bit strange to pick up on after getting used to having to aim the jump, but it will be easy enough after some adjusting.

I, personally, really enjoy the changes to Pounce. It was intended to be a way to initiate a fight and get in peoples faces, but people found more use in trying to run away with it. So in order to give you more incentive to jump into the fray, if you Pounce towards an enemy within 700 range you now jump on top of them. Here’s a picture to give an idea.

As you can see there’s an indicator showing how close you need to be to get the activation on the passive. It’s really useful and feels awesome to jump in and start wrecking people with cougar form now.

Swipe

·         HUNTED BONUS----The first Swipe that damages a 'Hunted' champion reduces the cooldown of Pounce to 1 second

·         UTILITY----Nidalee now swipes in the direction of the player's cursor

·         MAGIC DAMAGE----70/130/190/250 (+0.45 ability power)

·         COST----No cost

·         COOLDOWN----5 seconds

Swipe didn't see much of a change. If anything, it got a small buff through the new passive. Nidalee's main form of wave clear is to Pounce into Swipe on as many minions as you can. She now has access to that pre-6. Swipe had two things changed this patch and both are small, but one has a large impact.

I'll touch on the less important one first. Swipe got the same treatment that Pounce did. Instead of doing damage in front of Nidalee's current position, she now swipes toward the player's cursor. Most people already had her facing towards the cursor 95% of the time, but gone are the days where you would Pounce too far and miss Swipe as well, now she'll turn around if you aim correctly. Once again, it'll take a little to adjust to, but it's a quality of life adjustment that's been asked for.

Next, the one that should actually buff some cougar damage. If Nidalee Swipes a Hunted enemy champion, her Swipe cooldown decreases by 1 second. I'll reiterate that Riot really wanted to pull back some human form damage in favor of cougar, and this was the correct way to do it. Not by straight up damage buffs, but rewarding what they want her kit to do.

Conclusion--also TL;DR

How has Nidalee been changed since the rework? Can you still sit back and poke people out to win?

Well....yes and no. Her poke damage and sustain both got hit pretty hard. You can still do it for sure, but you get less out of it. In addition to less reward, it's also harder to do because of less MR shred on traps and smaller spears.

Her old strength is still there, but to get the most out of her kit, you have to follow up that poke with cougar form. Straight AP Nidalee still works since she has an easy way to dive deep in cougar, but AP bruiser could be a strat as well.

In short her damage has been funneled to be more reliant on cougar follow up than poke. Making a mastery of both forms more important than before and increasing her versatility in duelist ways while lowering it in safety.

The initial reaction I've had and others have told me is she's still a strong pick, and more fun to play as and against. However, in a meta that is increasingly moving towards wave control/AoE mages over assassins she'll most likely see a slow drop off from competitive play in favor of Ziggs.

Her win rate has taken a steep drop this past week, lowest in the game actually...Urgot pls. (Last week her new kit hit live.) Although, don't expect it to stay there long. A lot of people have to relearn how to play her, because the subtleties have all been tweaked.

By the way, Skarner article is coming soon......tm.


By Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis