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On July 30 2013 13:11 ticklishmusic wrote:
This seems to assume that your team is at an advantage, and even then that Skarner can be *carried* by drafting appropriately but another champ would ultimately be a better option.
It assumes your team is neutral and not dominated by a vastly superior team as all strategies should. you should not be able to design a strategy that lets an inferior team consistently beat a superior team.
Its not a carrying from drafts. When you draft a late game comp you aren't carrying your vayne/ryze picks you are complementing them based on the appropriate counter play to your strategy.
Its an effective strategy that skarner uniquely benefits as he can both help at clearing towers quickly as well as being one of the better junglers for creating very quick picks. Is it the best strategy in the game? no. but its just as viable as any of the other strategies being used around the world, and has its weaknesses and strengths same as the others.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
The way you play against a splitpushing strategy (which seems to be what you're describing there) is that you play defensively until you are strong enough to take baron quickly. Which is exactly why I am confused that you would reccomend Skarner for that composition.
Skarner has none of the waveclear you correctly consider important, none of the poke that is oftentime used in 4+1 comps and nothing to help his team disengage. He is one of the worst Baron taking junglers in the game and due to lack of AoE he is one of the worst for teamfights around Baron that you WILL have to fight or distract unless you manage to snowball out of control.
I guess you could suggest using Skarner for picking off the solo laner at an opportune time, creating 3-2 vs 4-1 all of a sudden, but there are better choices for that too. Evelynn is the most important one, but Nocturne, the original champion used for this purpose, is likely going to do better too.
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I feel that in the context of solo queue, every champion is viable (Skarner being no exception) bar extreme cases. In other words, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone become extremely proficient with any of the 100+ champions and hit challenger with it.
Of course, some champions could be labeled stronger than others because it is perceived easier to become proficient with them or that more players are proficient with them than other champions. However, individual players might find perceived low-tier champions to fit them personally more than the Fotm OPs.
But, none of that applies to competitive play, if that is the true purpose of TL LoL GD (Is it a cutting edge think-tank?)
Skarner also has a decent win rate in Dia+ according to elobuff. ( Not sure how accurate or meaningful that is, but those winrates generally conform to my views on what is strong and weak)
I do agree that I feel Skarner is weak, but that may be just associating unplayed champions with being weak. Like the last time I remember seeing Skarner was Meteos carrying with him maybe half a year ago?
On second thought, it is probably not wrong to believe that whatever is popularly played is strong. My point is that I would never discount any of the champs.
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Am I reading this discussion wrong or is Prince saying skarner is good at taking towers?
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
Skarner has been one of the higher winrates today, but if you look at the graph you'll see that it changes every day and goes from 40% to 60% without order and without reason. Not unexpected given he sees about 200 games a day in diamond ranked soloQ (all regions combined)
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On July 30 2013 13:21 Scip wrote:
The way you play against a splitpushing strategy (which seems to be what you're describing there) is that you play defensively until you are strong enough to take baron quickly. Which is exactly why I am confused that you would reccomend Skarner for that composition.
Skarner has none of the waveclear you consider important, none of the poke that is oftentime used in 4+1 comps and nothing to help his team disengage. He is one of the worst Baron taking junglers in the game and due to lack of AoE he is one of the worst for teamfights around Baron that you WILL have to fight or distract unless you manage to snowball out of control.
I guess you could suggest using Skarner for picking off the solo laner at an opportune time, creating 3-2 vs 4-1 all of a sudden, but there are better choices for that too. Evelynn is the most important one, but Nocturne, the original champion used for this purpose, is likely going to do better too.
split pushing is uniquely different from pick and push in that the split pushing isn't the goal, but a tool used to force mistakes. you see the enemy grouping up and preventing the pick, so you turtle up and split push hoping they split people off to try to stop you this leads to a pick-off from skarner + 1-2 provided you react well. more often than not they will try to push the tower to trade, hoping that you instead make the mistake of getting caught as 4, or take a goal and accept a minor defeat. With your ward advantage granting you have relative safety in this. unless the enemy goes as a group to remove wards, you are going to have this advantage since the strength of your sudden picks on weaker characters is so strong. Its a way to play the game. Things like nocturne/eve can do similar things to skarner as well, they fill the same roles skarner does with minor variations on the theme. Eve and skarner both have separate advantages that let the choice of a jungler to fill the role be determined on your plan going into the game. Evelynn is better at earlier parts in the game thanks to her passive granting her the ability to bypass regular wards, but significantly worse at picking off a lone dewarder (as evelynn cannot attempt the pick nearly as often. a failed pick often means a lost tower with little to no trade) Nocturne has a stronger laning timing and team fighting, but significantly worse at actually causing the pick to end in success, even if he can attempt the pick relatively as often.
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For the win rates thing how OP is Brand on those sites?
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Is the weekly winrate on elobuff based on a 7-day period or just an arbitrary start of the week? Looking at the monthly winrate, Skarner is on the low-side, but not in the garbage tier.
On July 30 2013 13:37 Parametric wrote:
For the win rates thing how OP is Brand on those sites?
Says he is at 51.49% in Dia+ for the month, which is in the middle of the pack after accounting for the system including games between Dia and non-Dia.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
Unlike Evelynn or Nocturne though, Skarner can be seen with wards. A pretty big disadvantage.
Also, the scenario you seem to be describing there seems somewhat unrealistic. Why would a team group and try to push against a splitpushing team with excellent wave clear? As I said, the way to play against that is to be very defensive until either team is strong enough to take baron in reasonable time (before bottom inhib tower would die, basically).
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On July 30 2013 13:49 Scip wrote:
Unlike Evelynn or Nocturne though, Skarner can be seen with wards. A pretty big disadvantage.
Also, the scenario you seem to be describing there seems somewhat unrealistic. Why would a team group and try to push against a splitpushing team with excellent wave clear? As I said, the way to play against that is to be very defensive until either team is strong enough to take baron in reasonable time (before bottom inhib tower would die, basically).
When you turtle against a team with ward control you will end up hemorrhaging gold to them. if you feel the time you can move out together is relatively soon (like you need to finish an item on your carries or something) its an acceptable sacrifice because the effectiveness of you finishing your item would be greater than the enemy team buying an extra part at least theoretically. If you are forced to turtle for longer and longer you hemorrhage more and more gold and can end up significantly behind.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
No, you don't end up hemorrhaging gold as long as you are able to ward properly.
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On July 30 2013 13:58 Scip wrote:
No, you don't end up hemorrhaging gold as long as you are able to ward properly.
If you are warding properly as a group you aren't defending your towers, if you are sending a player out alone to ward/deward then you are risking a pick that leads to tower/inhib loss anyway. Pick and push thrives on taking ward control and keeping it.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
ward on your blue buff+the brush deeper than banana brush is enough to fully cover your blue buff jungle while on defense.
ward on the outside of wraith pit and (tribush) or (below golems+red buff) is enough to cover red buff side of your jungle while on defese.
if the enemy ends up pushing so much that you can't ward, then you don't need to ward, you see them already.
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On July 30 2013 13:26 Capricious_LoL wrote:
I feel that in the context of solo queue, every champion is viable (Skarner being no exception) bar extreme cases. In other words, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone become extremely proficient with any of the 100+ champions and hit challenger with it.
Of course, some champions could be labeled stronger than others because it is perceived easier to become proficient with them or that more players are proficient with them than other champions. However, individual players might find perceived low-tier champions to fit them personally more than the Fotm OPs.
But, none of that applies to competitive play, if that is the true purpose of TL LoL GD (Is it a cutting edge think-tank?)
Skarner also has a decent win rate in Dia+ according to elobuff. ( Not sure how accurate or meaningful that is, but those winrates generally conform to my views on what is strong and weak)
I do agree that I feel Skarner is weak, but that may be just associating unplayed champions with being weak. Like the last time I remember seeing Skarner was Meteos carrying with him maybe half a year ago?
On second thought, it is probably not wrong to believe that whatever is popularly played is strong. My point is that I would never discount any of the champs.
I'm just saying, but if we are making balance arguments, the answer, at least in my opinion, is that if a pick isn't optimal, its not viable.
What that means is, at that pick position (Amumu has never been an optimal first pick, but later on in some drafts he might be, or might have been), for the team comp you intend to run, vs. the team you expect them to run, its the best pick.
What we see in LCS right now, is a lot of the teams that are doing poorly (Dig, VES) have players that just cannot play the champion that the team SHOULD be picking. A great example would be Dignitas First picking Sona vs. TSM, giving them Twisted Fate AND Jayce. Then, they didn't even build a Sona Comp, picking Graves, Nocturne, Aatrox, and Kassadin (who, by the way were picked AFTER Lulu/Cait was locked in WTF?).
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On July 30 2013 14:03 Scip wrote:
ward on your blue buff+the brush deeper than banana brush is enough to fully cover your blue buff jungle while on defense.
ward on the outside of wraith pit and (tribush) or (below golems+red buff) is enough to cover red buff side of your jungle while on defese.
if the enemy ends up pushing so much that you can't ward, then you don't need to ward, you see them already.
And you just hope they don't ever buy oracles or pinks? you can push up to a tower and send people to farm the enemy jungle which hemorrhages gold slowly due to just more gold being available to the aggressor than the defender.
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The guy above was probably right about people being good with skarner just because they main him, that it isnt necessarily skarner but familiarity with the champ. This seems reasonable to me. I feel very in control when I play skarner, and I know what plays to make and what ones will fail, moreso then with any other champ. Every person probably feels this with their main champ or champs.
As he is now, I don't think he is garbage, his early game is better then you guys are giving it credit for, and his team fight is very simple: peel. A late game ult pick can straight-up win games as well (it has for me many times).
I was honestly surprised when I saw there was a riot thread looking for skarner feedback. He doesn't feel as strong as he used to, but he isn't weak enough I was expecting buffs anytime soon. But I will certainly take them.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
Yes, if you are very far ahead, you can do that. If you try that when you are even or only slightly ahead you'll likely just get chased off, the position closer to towers has an advantage there. Unfortunately Skarner doesn't help you to get to that point at all compared to all other currently played junglers.
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On July 30 2013 14:13 Scip wrote:
Yes, if you are very far ahead, you can do that. If you try that when you are even or only slightly ahead you'll likely just get chased off, the position closer to towers has an advantage there. Unfortunately Skarner doesn't help you to get to that point at all compared to all other currently played junglers.
You are trying to fit a strategy into the same mold that people currently play in. you can afford oracles relatively early with no issue on a team that thrives on vision denial. its not uncommon to see oracles within 8 minutes in korea right now, saying you NEED to be ahead to buy oracles doesn't do justice to what advantage you can create with good vision control.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
No, you don't need to be ahead to get oracles, and I agree that you generally see them too late in EU or NA games I've seen.
What you do have to be ahead for is splitpushing mid+sidelane for the purpose of taking their creep camps.
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What if they turned skarners E into lissandras W (?) except he went underground. I assume scorpions enjoy burrowing.
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EPT
