User blog comment:Telaruhn/Dolomitak, The Bone Shaman/@comment-4080931-20120304220343/@comment-4773210-20120305022628

I see what you mean. Spirit Bolt is entirely dependent on Skeletal Cage to deal effective damage. I'm gonna follow your idea and alter the damage distribution. Also, the silence will be reduced.

As for Clobber, here's how I see it: During the laning phase, Skeletal Cage is used as a gap closer of sorts, allowing you to approach the enemy and achieve lock-on with Spirit Bolt to double the damage while the opponent is snared. The silence ensures that they can't escape or prevent you from reaching them. And then... WHAM! Clobber knocks the enemy champion backwards away from the minions, allowing you to continue farming and preparing yourself for the next offensive while the enemy licks their wounds. Any damage you recieve would be regenerated by your passive. Another option is, if your opponent is low on health, knocking them AWAY from their base after throwing Skeletal Cage on them, usually causing the snare to proc after the knockcback. Then, throw Spirit Bolt on them and autoattack away to their death, if they don't die the combo first. Clobber's knockback is entirely situational. You can knock enemies through thin walls, into your turret, or away from allies that are getting focused on. It has both offensive and defensive capabilites, and requires a lot of prediction and to be used effectively. It is a very effective anti-gank mechanic, allowing you knockback one enemy while slowing and snaring the other with Skeletal Cage. Besides, a stun isn't going to stop an Olaf with Ragnarok activated, but at least a knockback will give you or allies near death little room to run away from the focus. . As you can see, the three basic abilites are for single-enemy harass, whereas the ultimate is much more useful isolating teams ememies of enemies in teamfights. As an example... The enemy carry becomes exposed. Throw Skeletal Cage on him until he's snared, and then silence him with Spirit Bolt. Then, throw your ult up while the enemies are distracted by your teammates. With the right placement, you should be able to isolate the carry from the rest of the team. If he doesn't die from the nova, Hit him with a few autoattacks, and then Clobber him over the terrain and away from his teammates, deactivating the terrain if it hasn't crumbled already. In this way Dolomitak can isolate her enemies much like Jarvan, even though she doesn't have any other AoE spells. Again, this ability requires good timing and also needs cooperation from your teammates to increase its effectiveness. I will lower the nova's radius of effect and its damage slightly, however. The main purpose of the large AoE is just in case the champions manage to flash out of the impassable terrain, the ability still does damage to them.

As you put points into Skeletal Cage, the duration of the slow decreases as the duration of the snare increases, so there's always 4 seconds of CC. Sure, Leblanc's is a skillshot, but it has a much longer range and, when maxed out, has 4.2 seconds of CC and a 2.2 second snare. Ryze's snare is instant and has a max duration of 2 seconds. I feel that Skeletal Cage is a combination of those two abilities, with a delayed snare that is a target ability. Don't forget that Dolomitak, unlike LeBlanc or Ryze, is melee, and really requires to be in close range to do well, and a long snare would allow Dolomitak to close the gap, as she lacks any other way to catch up to a champion.

Thanks for the feedback, and sorry for so many words... lol I hope everything made sense.