League of Legends is reworking Skarnet, The Crystal Vanguard, and changing his kit so much that many players think the update could shift the game's meta drastically.
Skarner's rework has been a long time coming and the newly anointed Primordial Sovereign has been crawling at the bottom of the tier list for quite a while. The character's dedicated player base has been hoping that the rework could bring him up to a respectable level against other champions.
Skarner Rework
(Photo : Riot Games / Screenshot taken from official website)
The new changes will peel away from Skarner's crystalline pillars and his clunky purple model. The champion's return to League of Legends' forefront is behind the idea of being a team fight monster that focuses on playing around with his teammates.
League of Legends lead champion designer Blake "Squad5" Smith said that the new Skarner wants to "get onto a priority target" and CC them into oblivion. This comes as the champion's newly reworked skills were designed for diving into the heat of battle, hitting stuns and suppresses, and slowing enemies down to a crawl, according to PCGamesN.
Skarner's passive, called Threads of Vibration, will have the champion's attacks and his three basic skills apply Quaking to enemies. When enemy champions have three stacks of Quaking, they take a percentage of max HP in damage over time.
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His Q skill, called Shattered Earth/Upheaval, has Skarner ripping a rock out of the ground and using it to empower his next three attacks. This would give him bonus damage, range, as well as attack speed. The third attack would also slam the rock into his target, which would slow them and deal significant bonus damage while also ending the effect.
Players can recast this skill to throw the rock instead as a projectile that would explode when it hits an enemy. That would deal the same damage and slow while still ending the effect. Skarner's W skill, Seismic Bastion, gives the champion a shield and has him slamming the ground, releasing a shockwave that damages and slows nearby enemies.
New League of Legends Changes
The E skill, known as Ixtal's Impact, will have Skarner charge forward and upon collision with a champion or monster, he can slam them into a wall. This would damage them and stun them for a short while, said EGamersWorld.
Lastly, Skarner's R skill, or his ultimate, is called Impale and employs the Crystal Vanguard's tails to suppress enemy champions on the field. This can impale up to three enemy champions that would damage them and suppress them for a duration. Skarner then gains bonus movement speed and carries the impaled enemies with him until the end of the effect.
All of these changes to Skarner's skills give him even more utility for prolonged fights and also make him more resilient during skirmishes. His ultimate, in particular, is devastating as it can suppress more than half of all enemy champions in one go.
The newly reworked Skarner is set to join League of Legends Summoner's Rift on the Public Beta Environment (PBE) on Mar. 19, 2024. Following that, the Crystal Vanguard will join live servers on Apr. 2, 2024, in an accompanying patch, according to ShackNews.
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