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It will be hard to get all the items that have Skarner written all over them. Frozen Fist anyone?
Does anyone know how Skarner does in the new jungle? I've recently bought him and he's the champion I feel most comfortbale playing with by a landslide. I hope he will still be able to do well.
I didnt imagine that the changes to his ult will screw me over that hard btw. I don't mind that champs who get out of sight escape the ult but whenever I hear the full sound of the Skarner ult I expect it to be succesful. I had two occasions recently that I ulted someone who escaped into a brush /over a wall but I heard the sound and was totally confused what just happened for the next two seconds. Have to get used to it and not use to it I guess.
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On November 14 2012 12:18 Scip wrote:
Thing I am experimenting with:
Maxing E second after 1 point in W, because 18 CD is just completely ridiculous.
I still rush shurelyas for the mana BUT I build chalice of harmony afterwards. Because you have +15 manaregen from Shurelyas and 7.5 manaregen from chalice itself, that's a lot of friggin mana regen.
That makes FH build path very very awkward, so Aegis is the natural choice after chalice BUT
Athene's Unholy Grail provides CDR and quite a bit of damage. Might be a legit item to build on Skarner. So far did it in 1 game and it worked wonders, but the enemy teamcomp wasn't very good.
Also, possibly Rageblade instead of Wit's End for an eventual damage item? Rageblade was already a lot better damage wise but if you spam your E Ability Power is just that much more powerful. Especially the heal, omg is 0.3 great or what.
Would that work? It feels awfully awkward to max a self-heal spell second.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
I am pretty content with maxing E first, not sure on the item build yet. The difference between maxing W and E is that max W you move faster in jungle and clearing jungle is either a biit faster or it conserves a bit of mana. Max E is slower inside jungle but it is way stronger in combat. Max W is maybe a bit better for ganking but really you usually use it to run in just as you come into vision and then it breaks just as you close in on the target, so the main difference there really is 2% movement speed per level which is kinda negligeble, especially since you should hit the hard-ish movement speed cap by then IIRC.
But yeah, W is trash in fights now.
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what good is frozen fist when you're already spamming an aoe slow every few seconds?
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On November 21 2012 17:21 chalice wrote:
what good is frozen fist when you're already spamming an aoe slow every few seconds?
1) It's a tank upgrade from Sheen, and cheaper overall than Triforce by a long shot. It's a tank damage item that benefits him greatly.
2) You need to Q twice to get the slow off. Short of hitting some minions on your way to the champ (which even then is pretty hard to do consistently), the initial slow is pretty hard to apply. Iceborne Gauntlet (the new name, apparently) lets you run in with W and slow them before even hitting Q, which will be great for ganks.
You love Sheen, you love Glacial, you love being able to slow things instantly rather than waiting for the Q charge. It's a good item.
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On November 21 2012 23:19 Requizen wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 17:21 chalice wrote:
what good is frozen fist when you're already spamming an aoe slow every few seconds? 1) It's a tank upgrade from Sheen, and cheaper overall than Triforce by a long shot. It's a tank damage item that benefits him greatly. 2) You need to Q twice to get the slow off. Short of hitting some minions on your way to the champ (which even then is pretty hard to do consistently), the initial slow is pretty hard to apply. Iceborne Gauntlet (the new name, apparently) lets you run in with W and slow them before even hitting Q, which will be great for ganks. You love Sheen, you love Glacial, you love being able to slow things instantly rather than waiting for the Q charge. It's a good item.
Thing is, at what point would you build Triforce on Skarner. Yes, it's great, but he needs to be tanky. I cannot recall a professional level game where someone has chosen Triforce over things like Frozen Heart, Randuins, and all of those type of tanky items.
Also, someone said above about maxing E before W. I can't really comment because i haven't tried it, and I must admit, the heal is amazing in fights late game. However, leveling W affects your cd of it much more than you realize. It lowers cd anyway, it gives you more attack speed (which is significant) which with your passive lowers it even more. Plus, 260 shield every 4-5 seconds in a team fight is a lot more than you think. Also, if you think about it, when you're shielded, even 1 heal point will heal more (technically) because the shield will block out damage to your health entirely. Plus like you said, W is better for mobility and ganks in general.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
^^ That's all great and stuff, except that leveling W doesn't actually reduce it's cooldown. But I agree that IF it did then I would max it 2nd too.
W = 18 second cooldown at all levels
E = 10 second cooldown at all levels
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Sheen has always been the single best damage item on Skarner (followed by Wit's, I think), because he has the highest base damage in the game and spammable abilities. It's like it's made for him.
The issue with Sheen is that, while it gives you fucking absurd damage and one of the strongest dueling potentials in the entire game, one of three things happen when you buy it:
1) You upgrade it to TF. This gives a bit of Health, MS, and AS, which you like, but the rest of the stats are kind of meh. This is also really, really expensive and only viable if you get fed.
2) You never upgrade it and it takes up a slot. While it gives you damage, now you're just wasting a slot for the proc since the AP and Mana are mostly negligible after a certain point. This isn't really efficient at all if your game goes long, but is usually fine if you end it early.
3) Lichbane.
Now, you can keep the proc (and get the better, 150% base AD version of it over Sheen's 100%), but also get tanky stats in that slot (especially since you're going to be buying Glacial in most games anyway) and the extra slow. This is a straight buff to any bruiser/tank/whatever that builds Sheen but can't afford/doesn't need Triforce.
I perhaps won't rush it (Randuin's/Wit's/GA/etc being higher priority for survival), but at least it won't just sit as a Sheen until I'm rich enough to afford TF. If you end up filling more of a damage role for your team (like Shen/Malph top with low damages) and you need armor as well, this is probably the best item in the game.
On November 22 2012 00:05 Scip wrote:
^^ That's all great and stuff, except that leveling W doesn't actually reduce it's cooldown. But I agree that IF it did then I would max it 2nd too.
W = 18 second cooldown at all levels
E = 10 second cooldown at all levels
In a sense it sort of does, since more shield (so up longer) and faster AS = more autos = shorter cooldown.
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But you're probably going to want to be upgrading the Glacial Shroud into a Frozen Heart and not a Frozen Fist (I assume you didn't mean to say Lichbane then proceed to talk about Frozen Fist) - you use the additional features FH gives you (AS slow, better CDR, better armor) you don't use any of the additional features FF gives you (aoe slow, which you already have, marginal improvement on sheen proc, no improved CDR over glacial) and the FF is more expensive.
Frozen Heart is one of Skarner's best core items currently (along with shurelia) and honestly, you make NO usage out of the "extra slow." You end up adding 10% or so to your current slow, and it has a shorter duration.
I'd much rather sit on the sheen (if I bought it in the first place) - if I bought it AT ALL - until 5th/6th item Triforce. Besides - you vastly underplay which parts of Triforce are useful for skarner. All of them are perfectly useful for Skarner except like... crit, and phageproc... (AD, AP, AS, MS, HP, Mana, Improved sheen are all great.)
On rageblade - I've built this item before in games where I got fed early/mid, and it's pretty boss. You can easily have all 8 stacks up before any fight, giving you a lot of damage/AS and 100 AP to power both your Qspam and your shield strength. It's a bigger AoE threat and more damage than Wit's End, but without the MR.
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I'm not saying Triforce is bad on him. It's great if you're getting fed or the game goes 50+ minutes. But Iceborne Gauntlet allows you to have another Armor/CDR item in your inventory while keeping the Sheen proc, so I think it really depends on how the game is going. I would never say Iceborne over TF 100% of the time, nor would I say the other way around. It's just a good option.
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The issue isn't iceborn over triforce, it's iceborn over FH. FH is such a great team item, i don't know how you can pass it up.
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That's what I was trying to get across as well. You're going to CDR cap off of masteries + Shurelia + FH, and upgrading Glacial to FH is more important of an upgrade to skarner than upgrading the sheen is. This seems even more true with the new FH, which also has a warden's mail component to it.
Unless jungler roles change to the point that Skarner is building a lot more offense vs. defense than current, upgrading the Sheen is not a top priority for him (I don't even find myself building it every game, especially when it's far from the only offensive option.)
And once you already have FH+Shurelia, I think I can confidently say TF>Iceborn 100% of the time.
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On November 22 2012 00:05 Scip wrote:
^^ That's all great and stuff, except that leveling W doesn't actually reduce it's cooldown. But I agree that IF it did then I would max it 2nd too.
W = 18 second cooldown at all levels
E = 10 second cooldown at all levels
Greater attackspeed on skarner translates to lower cooldown. Also greater uptime on the shield (because it doesn't break easily) means you have that greater attackspeed for a longer period of time, which continues to translate to lower cooldown. The shield STRENGTH is really one of the big reasons leveling it is so effective - keeping your big steroid for a longer period of time is important.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
On November 22 2012 04:29 sylverfyre wrote:
Greater attackspeed on skarner translates to lower cooldown. Also greater uptime on the shield (because it doesn't break easily) means you have that greater attackspeed for a longer period of time, which continues to translate to lower cooldown. The shield STRENGTH is really one of the big reasons leveling it is so effective - keeping your big steroid for a longer period of time is important.
On November 21 2012 23:59 LOLItsRyann wrote:
...However, leveling W affects your cd of it much more than you realize. It lowers cd anyway, it gives you more attack speed ...
So that's the part I responded to.
What it sounded like to me was that:
It lowers its cooldown AND
the increased attack speed means less cooldown.
Which I deduced from the sentence "leveling W affects your cd of it much more than you realize", implying that I realize at least one factor that reduces W's cooldown, but not all of them. Given that there are 2 total factors that are so intertwined (+attack speed bonus and strength of the shield) I assumed he meant the actual cooldown of the spell. Which I thought to be further confirmed with the sentence
"It lowers cd anyway, it gives you more attack speed (which is significant) which with your passive lowers it even more." The "even more" at the end says that there are other cooldown decreases separate from the attack speed increase, which could be the shield's strength, but since the shield strength to cooldown reduction relation was never explicitly mentioned in the post, despite shield strength being mentioned later, I dared to assume he thought that leveling W decreases the cooldown.
Apologies to LOLItsRyann for making him a victim of semantics discussion.
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He isnt wrong. He says it lowers cooldown because of the attack speed. Reread it. He doesnt say lowers he says effects
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I really like Q>E>Q>W or Q>E>W>Q for opening on Skarner now. The shield CD nerf is huge at the early levels because you don't have enough base AS growth or base armor growth to make the shield last long enough that you can get near constant refreshes.
I don't get great leashes at my elo, so doing Blue->Wolves->Wraiths->Wolves->Red->Wraiths leaves me at <1/2 HP even if I'm very diligent about managing CDs to maxing shield uptake, whereas before I'd be at almost full HP burning just 2 HP pots.
Just played a game with E 2nd and I flew through the jungle clear. The heal is much less than the maximum damage shielded, but the upfront damage lets you clear much faster and the CD comes up more often, especially since your shield gets broken. Plus the biggest thing is mass heal off small camps so that while you have perhaps less eHP/s vs big camps (haven't checked the math) you end up with more HP to start the clear with.
Not sure about E max vs W max after, since in terms of jungle clear there are like 0 issues after first clear since its mostly Q that does all the work.
Edit: math
Assuming lvl 3 and vs Red buff with +13 AR and +15% AS and blue buff
Old W: effective CD 4.7s, raw HP/s 14.6
Cur E: effective CD 3.1s, raw HP/s 19.2
Cur W: effective CD 6.6s, raw HP/s 10.6
Lvl 2 and vs any of the small camps, E outperforms (both new and old) by far since you can heal off multiple creeps. The lower damage incoming and thus increased uptime of W doesn't make up for it.
Vs small camps, the bonus AS from W will usually allow you ~1 extra AA which evens out with the upfront damage of E. Since that also reduces CD from Q, W 2nd may outperform E 2nd in terms of raw DPS vs small camps by very little (but W vs no W is a difference of .9 vs .7 total AS, plus the bulk of Q CDR comes from blue buff)
Vs large camps, old W gives you more dps than E, but new W is about par, while old W gave you approximately the same eHP, new W is way worse than E
So old W was justified in maxing 2nd for MS boost and shield strength, but with new W, shield strength is no longer roughly on par with E for jungle clears, definitely not on par with E for fights, and so primary purpose for maxing would be the MS bonus
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Why are you doing wolves after blue?
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
On December 01 2012 16:20 Craton wrote:
Why are you doing wolves after blue?
On December 01 2012 03:31 xes wrote:
...I don't get great leashes at my elo, so doing Blue->Wolves->Wraiths->Wolves->Red->Wraiths
Probably this, doing wolves after blue is slower, but with a bad pull it leaves you with quite a lot more hp.
It's interesting, you do Red Buff faster with QE than with QW by 4-5 seconds (travel time from blue -> red factored in ofc). The problem is that you really want that lvl2Q for increased damage and also increased slow (!!) and you really want lvl1 W for a gank, so leveling E second is probably only a good idea if you aren't going to be active at all until lvl4. That doesn't happen often at all but still, a good thing to know if you are purple side and enemy toplane is Elise and midlane is Morgana. :3
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Oops I mean Wolves->Blue. Blue -> Wolves -> Wraiths -> Wolves wouldn't make sense since Wolves doesn't respawn in time for the 2nd clear to hit lvl 3.
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How do you build Skarner now? Im so confused.
Shurelya gut nerfed a little but still feels like a must-buy on Skarner. I'd have no problem rushing Philostone but if you start Machete you want to build it into Spirit Stone (which is exactly like Philo) -> Ancient Golem, am I right?
So you end up with a ton of regen stuff but are relatively week at fighting.
Ancient Golem gives you Tenacity too, but does it stack with Merc Treads? If not, there is no way to get MR from but Aegis.
I wonder if you can get away w/o Machete ... Havent tried yet
tl,dr: Machete builds feel awkward at Skarner
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EPT
