How to Play Reworked Skarner in Season 14

A Beginner Guide to Playing Reworked Skarner In LoL

On Patch 14.7, Riot Games will upgrade Skarner. The community voted Skarner a priority in Riot’s roadmap for upgrading champions. Skarner is a very old champion, first released in 2011. Since his launch, he has undergone several major changes, but his kit never really felt up to the standard of some of the other champions in the game.

In this Mobalytics article, we will introduce some useful tips and tricks to help you start playing the reworked Skarner for the first time. This guide is not intended to be in-depth but a useful guide to help you start to learn him. Naturally, we advise you to learn him in normal games first before heading into ranked, but we can’t stop you!

If you’re looking for more articles about Skarner or any other champion in LoL, why not head over to the Mobalytics Blog? We’ve produced a variety of educational content lately, including several other Skarner guides!

Skarner Rework Ability Breakdown

For those who don’t know what Skarner is or what his abilities are, we will break down and compare his old abilities to his new ones. The new Skarner abilities are quite similar to the old ones, but they’re more up-to-date and a lot more in line and up to date. His character also received a fresh lick of paint and looks quite high quality too.

Skarner’s Passive is Threads of Vibration

His basic attacks, Q, E and Ultimate apply stacks. Enemies who are afflicted with multiple stacks take magical damage. This Passive gives him extra trading power when fighting the enemy in 1v1s. It will also make it easier for his team to take down the carries if he focuses them.

Skarner’s Q is Shattered Earth / Upheaval

When you activate this ability, Skarner will rip a boulder from the ground, which them empowers his next 3 abilities. After the 3rd attack, he slams the rock onto the target, slowing them and dealing additional damage. When re-activating this ability, you can throw the boulder in a direction slowing and dealing damage to the target.

Skarner’s W is Seismic Bastion

Skarner gains a large shield. Simultaneously, he releases a shockwave that slows and deals a tiny bit of damage to nearby targets.

Skarner’s E is Ixtal’s Impact

His E is arguably his coolest new ability. The abilities so far are not anything we’ve not seen before, but this E is quite unique. The closest thing would be Sion Ultimate or Kayn E.

When he activates his E, he becomes ghosted and ignores the terrain. He charges in a certain direction. If he comes into contact with an enemy, he will stun them if they come into contact with terrain. You can recast this ability to end it earlier.

You can be interupted by silences, immobilizations and grounded abilities.

Skarner’s Ultimate is Impale

Skarner lashes his tail forward, impaling up to 3 enemies. They are then attached to him and suppressed. He can pull them in a certain direction. Unlike the previous Ultimate, this is a skill shot, and you need to be quite close to the enemy as it has a cast time (which is quite long at 0.75 seconds) to make it harder for the enemy to dodge it.

Skarner Rework Best Build

Skarner’s build is slightly different compared to his old build. The notable differences are that is scaling and abilities have changed, which means his build path must change too. This is currently the best build for Reworked Skarner in Season 14 of League of Legends. You can directly import this build into your LoL Client with the Mobalytics App.

Skarner Synergy

Skarner is a great champion in all honestly. He has a lot of tools to help you gank your allies. This means that he has good synergy with a lot of different champions in LoL. However, you will find that some champions are better with Skarner than others. Here are some of our recommendations for the best picks you could choose with Skarner.

Please note that these champions may not be statistically the best, but they’re great picks, and we highly recommend them.

Lissandra

Once Skarner goes in, Lissandra has a lot of follow-up potential. She can lock the enemy down and deal considerable damage. Post 6, it’s going to be an easy gank setup, especially as he could pull the enemy towards her tower, and then she presses R.

Renekton

Renekton is a strong laner and has good gank follow-up. Renekton is a good early skirmisher, too, so he can rotate to help with objectives or the scuttle crab fights. In the mid-game, he is also a diver, so he can go in with Skarner and follow up when he goes in.

Senna

Senna is currently a good champion in the Support role but isn’t as good in the AD role anymore. She has tools to set up ganks (her W) and follow up with her auto-attacks, and she will also deal considerable damage as the game goes along.

Milio

Milio is a champion that has good follow-up and empowerment tools. He can help keep Skarner and his allies alive and safe with his W, E and Ultimate. During the laning phase, he can help his ADC close the gap and deal a lot of damage when Skarner wants to gank.

Skarner Tips and Tricks

We will now discuss some basic tips and tricks to help you get started playing Skarner. We don’t want to overwhelm you, so we will only provide a few tips and tricks. However, we’ve created many other Skarner-related content, which you can find on the Mobalytics Blog.

• Get as close to the enemy as possible before activating your Ultimate, which will make it harder for the enemy to dodge.
• Think twice before using your Q when chasing the enemy, as it stops you from running briefly.
• Use your W on the middle of the camp to ensure you hit all the monsters.
• When clearing the jungle, it is better not to reactivate your Q. Throwing the rock isn’t as effective as the empowered auto-attacks.
• When using your E, try to get as close to the enemy as possible as this will ensure it doesn’t run out in time.
• Avoid using your E from camp to camp, especially early on, as the cost does make a difference, and it’s kind of useless.
• Try to fight in closed areas of the map, such as around objectives, in the jungle and under towers. It will make landing your Ultimate on multiple champions easier!

By the way, we’ve got a ton of extra information to help you play Skarner, which you can find on Skarner’s Mobalytics Champion Page.

Skarner Jungle Routes for Season 14

Learning how to jungle is a core feature of any Jungler. You must learn the best jungle routes for any champion to ensure you get the fastest, healthiest and most efficient clear. If you clear camps in a random order, then the likelihood of you getting your power spikes first is quite low, and you’ll soon find yourself behind the enemy Jungler.

This is the recommended route when playing Skarner on the Blue side of the map. You can copy this route for the Red side as well; just flip the map around (so start Red Buff on the other side of the map instead).

Final Thoughts

That about sums up our article on how to play Skarner. What do you think of the Skarner rework? Are you happy that Riot finally reworked him, or do you think that they missed the mark? I am very confident in this rework and think that Riot has done a great job on him. I can’t wait to play him more on the live servers.

For more articles to help you climb in Season 14, head to the Mobalytics Blog.