LoL devs admit Skarner rework has “failed” but vow to fix him

Skarner post-rework has been an unstoppable force in LoL pro play, but his win rate is abysmal in normal matches. Riot dev Phreak admitted he “failed” with the rework while promising changes.

Reworking characters is natural for a game that’s been around as League of Legends. Some champions like Shyvana have kits over a decade old and many characters like her need to be brought into the modern age.

Skarner’s rework entirely redid his visuals, lore, and gameplay to preserve his unique engage playstyle. According to Phreak, he failed his goal of keeping that style alive with the rework in a way that’s healthy for the game.

The conversation starts at 8:04

“Skarner has room to be buffed. We’re working on a larger scope change list that solves more of his issues. These are things that are, to be fair, on me. It became my project. I failed to take the slow off W when I made it so he could cast it while moving. I failed to find a good solution for backwards E, I have one now,” he explained.

“I wish I had done a better job and got these before he came out. Unfortunately, Skarner’s been on a very large balance roller coaster. The final thing I wanna say, though, is that I don’t think Skarner should have remotely close to a 50% win rate for most players.”

Phreak explained that Skarner is a bit of an “elite-skewed” champion and that any changes they make will likely result in Skarner sporting a low win rate across most skill levels. But what makes him so good?

LoL pro Eric ‘Licorice’ Ritchie showed off a few things that make Skarner incredibly strong in the top lane on an LCS segment. The flash/E maneuver Phreak is trying to remove is displayed immediately as his first tip that makes Skarner such a menace.

However, that isn’t the only issue, as Skarner’s E not doing immediate damage lets him pull people from under towers as well. Licorice cited this as an issue the balance team should address as well.

The tech that makes Skarner such a good top laner is hard to pull off and works best in an environment where you’re working around your team. Not to mention, his slow jungle clear keeps him from being a viable jungler at high levels of play.

Thus, the champion is bad in solo queue and subpar in the role he was meant for, but strong as a top laner in pro play. Skarner seems on track to end up in the same balance vortex K’Sante landed himself in.

Additionally, Skarner isn’t even getting changes on patch 14.14. The dev team needs more time to figure out how to balance him so the champions won’t see substantial changes until at least 14.15.