Talk:Skarner/@comment-8468980-20140604032302

This is what they're looking at on PBE at the moment:

"Hey Skarners,

Skar is up on PBE with a few gameplay and art changes. We're increasing Skarner's power with more CC and stickiness without creating the old gameplay problems. Additionally, he will be able to consistently bring value to his team, even when behind. He also has upgraded character textures and some new particles for his passive and W.

Full List of Changes:

[NEW] Crystallizing Sting Crystal Slash Crystalline Exoskeleton Fracture Impale \o/
 * Skarners damaging spells apply Crystal Poison to enemy Champions and large monsters
 * If Skarner attacks a target with 3 stacks of Crystal Poison he will deal an additional 20-105 damage and stun the target for 0.5/0.75/1 seconds
 * After a stun, targets will not receive Crystal Poison for 6 seconds
 * [NEW] Crystal Energy Bonus: Skarner now gains 3/4/5/6/7% Movement speed per stack
 * [NEW] Auto attacks reduce Crystal Slash's cooldown by .5s (doubled against Champions)
 * Base physical damage reduced from 25/40/55/70/85 to 20/30/40/50/60
 * Base physical ratio reduced from 0.8 to 0.4
 * Bonus magic damage reduced from 24/36/48/60/72 to 20/30/40/50/60
 * Bonus magic ratio reduced from 0.4 to 0.2
 * Cooldown lowered from 16 to 13 seconds
 * Base damage lowered from 80/120/160/200/240 to 40/60/80/100/120
 * AP ratio lowered form 0.7 to 0.4
 * Cooldown lowered from 14 to 12 seconds
 * Cooldown lowered from 130/120/100 to 100/90/80
 * Impale consumes all stacks of Crystal Poison and deals 50/75/100 damage per stack consumed to the target

Scruffy" tl;dr They decided to go with the lower damage / higher utility option.

He has lower cooldowns, he can stun targets at level 1, he has lower base damage and scaling but now has a little more built in damage from his new passive.

It's interesting to me that they went with a suggestion Xyph made years ago by removing his passive that reduces cooldowns and simply cutting his base cooldowns by a little.