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Brackern[]

Surrounded around the Shuriman Continent are several clans of Brackern, including clans in the Shuriman desert.

Dormun[]

The Dormun are gigantic, slow-moving creatures protected with large chitinous plates covering their body. In the harsh conditions of Shurima they have evolved to survive the perpetual drought by utilizing an unknown sense to locate hidden reservoirs of water. Incidentally, certain nomadic tribes have built themselves a permanent home upon the backs of these beasts where they clean the creature and hunt any airborne pests who venture near.

Eka'Sul[]

Desert goats that travel in herds.

Mwatis[]

Mwatis are goatlike creatures with large plated casques on their heads. Mwati wool and plate are prised for felting and insulation.

Kmiros[]

Gigantic scarabs that roam in swarms, looking for unfortunate travelers to feed on. They seem to be common prey for Rammus Rammus.

Outerbeasts[]

Beside the Xer'Sai, other creatures from the Void, referred to as 'outerbeasts', can be found in the desert.

  • Xer'Sai: Creatures from the Void that plague the southern deserts. They are the size of big dogs on average, but can be smaller or much bigger. Rek'Sai Rek'Sai, as the queen, is by far the largest and most dangerous of her species. Xer'sai burst from their small burrows and ravage anything nearby, to the detriment of desert caravans. Once dead, the Xer'sai decompose at an abnormally rapid rate and become inedible.

Ralsiji[]

Large and aggressive minotaur-like creatures. They are humpbacked quadrupeds with long limbs and thick horns.

Shuriman Camel[]

A breed of camels native to the deserts of Shurima and are used by caravans as well as common folk as primary mode of transportation. Despite being well-suited for lengthy travels in the desert landscape, they are still prey to a many predator such as the Xer'Sai.

Sandswimmers[]

Shurima Sandswimmers

Sandswimmers

Sandswimmers are massive quadrupedal creatures that traverse the Shuriman desert in cyclical patterns. They got their name due to their preferred method of travel. Their narrow bodies and webbed feet are perfectly design for swimming under the sand. They feed on bugs and other small creatures most desert beasts ignore. Scavengers will often memorize the predictable paths these creatures take, and jump onto their backs to ride as far as they wish.


Skallashi[]

The Skallashi are large quadrupedal herbivores. These hardy beasts of burden are common across Shurima, ideally suited to the harsh desert environment. Their key body feature is their long legs. Notoriously bad-tempered, they are nevertheless treated with great reverence. Their brown hides are often painted with sacred symbols of protection, and their horns hung with totems and charms. While these creatures are mostly used for travel and carrying heavy loads, on some larger skallashi people are able to built miniature rooms for more comfortable travel. To own one is often considered a sign of considerable prosperity.

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Skarner Concept 01
Skarner
Skarner (Universe)Skarner (Universe)
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Champion Sneak Peek - Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard[]

By Average Gatsby[1]

Skarner Teaser

While designing a champion for League of Legends, it's important to ensure that your concept appeals to a broad audience. For instance, if you're out to strike a chord with the monster enthusiasts, amateur arachnologists, and horror movie buffs, it's good to also incorporate something for those of a more refined mindset. And while we're on the subject of multifaceted design, allow me to introduce Skarner Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard. One part monster, one part crystal, Skarner is sure to please whether you're wearing a button up or wielding a butcher knife.

Of course, if you're having trouble persuading everyone to agree, keeping a gigantic scorpion waiting in the wings to menace them with the threat of impalement impalement on its massive tail isn't a bad backup plan.

Skarner Mechanics Preview[]

By Ryan 'Morello' Scott[2]

Greetings Summoners!

Today, I wanted to give a little sneak peek into the gameplay behind Skarner Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard.

The idea behind Skarner is to get on people, stay on them, and really capture that inevitability of being run down by a predatory creature. Additionally, we wanted to avoid an instant gap closing mechanic so there's appropriate counter-play.

The primary way Skarner accomplishes this mission is through his ability Crystal Slash Crystal Slash and his passive, Energize Energize. Crystal Slash Crystal Slash does a quick, point-blank AoE and empowers the ability if it hits. Empowered casts will do bonus damage and slow (making successive uses really useful for sticking to his target) His passive passive causes his spells to cool down faster each time he auto-attacks - a natural combination with the empowered Crystal Slash Crystal Slash.

Properly utilizing Skarner's passive passive is central to his gameplay as a whole. For example, Skarner's ability Crystalline Exoskeleton Crystalline Exoskeleton puts up a shield that grants additional movement and attack speed while it's up. The bonus attack speed will help greatly decrease the cooldown time of his abilities, leading to additional Crystal Slashes Crystal Slashes or more up-time on this steroid.

Skarner's marquee ability is Impale Impale. This ultimate ultimate causes him to skewer an opponent with his tail and drag them around for a few seconds. The positional manipulation of the ability can turn a teamfight by peeling an enemy off of a wounded ally, or dragging a greedy enemy into a tower.

Players have been asking for another monster champion for a while, so we're happy to deliver Skarner, our own weaponized arachnid.

Gameplay update: juggernauts[]

By Colt 'Ezreal' Hallam[3]

Skarner has one of the coolest ultimates ultimates in the game and we think that's A Good Thing, but we also wanted to give him a few more toys to be excited about when kidnapping kidnapping isn't on the docket. We wanted Skarner to have something truly unique to him - here's where we ended up:

Whenever Skarner is in a game, six Crystal Spires Crystal Spires appear on the Rift. They're located by red buff red buff, blue buff blue buff, Baron Baron, and Dragon Dragon. These Crystal Spires Crystal Spires are capturable, just like the altars on Twisted Treeline. When someone on the lonely scorpion's team captures a spire, it creates a zone that gives Skarner (only Skarner!) pretty significant boosts to his movement and attack speed. The enemy team can capture them too and, when they do, they gain gold, a short burst of vision, and temporarily lock Skarner out from his super meaningful buffs. That's the key - with these changes, Skarner becomes a neutral objective control king, and super useful for teams looking to overcome their enemies with buff and map control.

Full Relaunch[]

Choose a Champion Update[]

By Ryan 'Reav3' Mireles[4]

Skarner

Skarner is one of the least played champions, and honestly he needs a lot of work. We’d aim to fully reimagine his kit and theme, similar to older VGUs like Sion and Urgot. Like his Brackern kin, Skarner’s generic crystal scorpion fantasy is the relic of a bygone era, and we’d strive to give him a clearer, more exciting source of power. This would likely result in big changes to his visuals and story.

As for his kit, the fact that his playrate remains so low despite past reworks is indicative of deep-rooted issues we’d aim to address with a complete overhaul. While certain basic elements and ideas might remain the same, you can expect his new kit to deliver on new and exciting themes in ways his current kit simply cannot.

Skarner OriginalSkin old HD

Voting Results: Champion Update & Thematic Revamp[]

By Ryan 'Reav3' Mireles[5]

Your votes are in: Skarner and Gothic are the winners of the Season 2022 polls!

Skarner the Crystal Vanguard

With a decisive victory, the champion that will receive the next VGU will be Skarner!

Skarner Poll 01

Loads of you gave the Rift’s one and only scorpion some love this time around. Skarner stood head and shoulders (do scorpions even have shoulders?) above the other contenders, claiming the top spot in the global polls by a wide margin.

Ryan “Reav3” Mireles, Lead Producer of Champions: We’re super excited that Skarner won the VGU vote, as we think he has 'tons of potential to be something truly special on the League roster. We’ve tried smaller reworks of Skarner’s kit in the past, but it never really increased his playrate, so we’ll be looking to do a massive reboot of his kit, theme, and visuals (similar to Sion Sion and Urgot Urgot). We’ll look to keep his kidnapping ult in some form, but otherwise we’ll be rebuilding him from the ground up.

The Brackern don’t have tons of lore currently, and we’re looking forward to diving deeper into their world and backstory. It’ll still be a couple months until we get started, but once we do we’ll share our progress in dev blogs so we can get your feedback on our scorpion friend. So keep an eye out for one of those later this year.

Before I go, I wanted to talk about our forever-a-bridesmaid, Shyvana. We know a lot of you are disappointed that our favorite half-dragon lady keeps getting so close to winning without ever taking the crown. Like many of you, we really want to see her updated because a badass half-dragon shifter has so much potential. As you know we don’t do votes for every VGU, like with Mundo. So while we can’t promise that Shyvana will be the next big VGU we do, she is a pretty strong contender for the next one we explore outside of a VGU vote.

Be sure to keep an eye out for updates on Skarner’s VGU this year, and we’ll be sure to share any plans for updating other champions as they come up!

Skarner OriginalSkin old HD

Champion Roadmap: April 2022[]

By Ryan 'Reav3' Mireles[6]

Digging Deep Beneath the Sand

Let’s talk about the champion that won the VGU poll earlier this year: Skarner. We haven’t yet officially started on Skarner’s VGU (it will start very soon), but that sure didn’t stop Larry “BravoRay” Ray from doing some high-level sketches for inspiration. BravoRay is a huge fan of Skarner and couldn’t help himself so I thought it would be worth sharing some of his explorations.

Skarner Roadmap 01

The first two rows are attempts to keep Skarner’s theme pretty much the same as live while making him more unique on the League roster by adding other fantastical elements rather than just a traditional scorpion body structure.

The third row contains explorations of a full reboot of the Brakern. It explores them as ancient protectors of the old Shuriman civilization before it was lost to the sand. The idea is that they are constructs built from crystals housing thousands of elite warriors' souls.

The last row is an exploration of a version of Skarner where his current lore is continued. We haven't committed to this yet, but in those versions he is captured by Piltover and experimented on in order to create a Hextech guardian they can control. But he regains his memories, escapes Piltover, and is now hellbent on destroying the city for what they did to him and his people. And now he has sweet Hextech augments to help him do it. Piltover will soon have a taste of their own medicine, and it is bitter.

Keep in mind these are all super early ideas coming out of BravoRay’s crazy head, so we aren't locked onto anything yet.

Shortly after we officially start working on Skarner we will do a bigger /dev blog with a lot more information from game design and narrative as well. For now let us know what you think of these explorations and if anything sounds exciting to you.

LoL Pls: Season 2023[]

It's been a while since we last we spoke about everyone's favorite crystal scorpion. The Skarner VGU team has started exploring ways to dial up his scorpion fantasy. At this phase, we're leaving no arthropod-hiding stone unturned to find exciting themes, kits, and stories. We'll be releasing a /dev blog later this year with more information on his progress.
Alexia 'Lexical' Gao[7]
Separator


Searching for Skarner's Sting[]

By Skarner VGU Team[8]

Skarner Update Concept 14

The latest on Skarner’s rework, including an update on his narrative, art, and gameplay.

Hello hello, Lexi “Riot Lexical” Gao here with an update on Skarner’s VGU with some of the Champions team! Last time we checked in we showed some of the wide visual explorations on the skittering scorpion. This time around we’ve got a lot more in store, but I wanted to start by diving into a breakdown of his position in our champion roster before looking at goals of his rework. Then we’ll shed some light on the arthropod’s rework development process before he scurries back under a rock.

Skarner’s been on the radar for a VGU for quite a while at this point, and it’s been a while since he won the VGU vote last year. We always knew that Skarner would be a challenging and large rework, but he is admittedly a bit more challenging than we had anticipated.

Going into this we knew that the crystal scorpion had some of the lowest scores for thematic enjoyment, thanks to player surveys. We also knew that many of you wanted to know more about his lore and what exactly makes the scorpion tick.

Fun fact! Skarner scored THE lowest of all champions in the following categories:

  • Visual appeal
  • One of your favorite champions
  • I like this champ's personal style
  • Visual fit with character
  • Clear understanding of the character

Bottom four of these categories:

  • Emotions for the champion
  • Enjoy his power fantasy
  • Consistent champ story
  • Hero or Side Character (Aka Most Likely to be Side Character)
  • Interest in overall theme

Surprisingly, Skarner is not at the bottom for familiarity with backstory. This tells us it is not that players don’t know who he is that is the causation. He also isn’t at the bottom 4 of “Would Romance this Champion”...eehm... Okay, moving on.

And in terms of overall popularity, Skarner has the lowest breadth and depth out of ALL League champions across ALL regions. In short: Skarner is one of the least popular champions in League in all areas that we survey.

Skarner Graph

When breaking all this data down, there are several potential factors for Skarner’s low popularity:

  • (Un)popularity of Monsters: In general, monster champions are not as globally popular as humanoid champions.
  • (Un)iconic-ness of Scorpions: When asking players what characteristics come to mind when we talk about certain champions, generally we expect to see certain trending words that form the champ’s identity (a word cloud). With many of the popular champions, there’s a good mix of gameplay identifiers and thematic identifiers. But with Skarner, the majority of call outs (90%) are gameplay related, of which almost every single one is related to his ultimate, Impale. The only non-gameplay thematic element called out was that he’s a scorpion. This is starkly contrasted with more popular champions who have a handful of varied, unique identifiers.
  • (In)cohesiveness of the Crystal Thematic: With the right execution, sometimes we’re able to bring seemingly opposite themes together in unique and delightful ways. However, there are times when, even with the best execution, themes are just not coming together cohesively. Instead, they make the champion so eccentric that only an exclusive few can deeply love and appreciate them. Crystal is generally regarded as beautiful, magical and serene. Whereas scorpions are seen as badass, venomous and menacing.

With these three elements in mind, we knew Skarner needed a bigger revamp—not just to rectify the problems he already has, but also to make sure we don’t fall into some of the same pitfalls. We cannot change the fact that Skarner is a scorpion-esque monster, and instead of fighting against monster champions’ unpopularity, we want to lean into their monster fantasy to serve the small but passionate monster-loving segment of our players.

At the same time, we’re not trying to turn Skarner into some brainless monster. He’s an intelligent, sentient creature and his lore has a certain nobility to it that really sets him apart from some of the other monsters in our roster.

So the team dove headfirst into searching for an incredible monster archetype that Skarner could fulfill while remaining committed to some of his core truths. We looked at every region of Runeterra to see where it would make sense for a scorpion monster to exist. Eventually, the team landed in a region that had everyone excited... On the eastern border of Shurima, there’s a land filled with wonder, deep jungles, and a thriving population based on elemental magic: Ixtal.

Now I'll pass it over to Riot apothecarie to go a little deeper on narrative.

A New Home for the Brackern

Elyse “Riot apothecarie” Lemoine, Narrative Writer:

Skarner is the second VGU that I've had the chance to work on and I couldn't be more excited! Getting to be a part of Udyr's VGU through working on his Spirit Guard skin was an unforgettable experience and I'm excited to now get the chance to work on our favorite scorpion, Skarner.

For approaching Skarner's narrative, we wanted to explore the potential of what Skarner could become, especially in tandem with the art direction.

The Brackern

With Skarner's update, we wanted to take the chance to revisit the Brackern and reinvent what they are as a species, while maintaining their immense power and presence in Runeterra.

Where we landed was making the Brackern Runeterra's first earth elementalists, dating back to pre-civilization. Ancient and powerful, they're revered for their primal knowledge of earth, which they taught to the people of Runeterra long ago.

However, these changes aren't without a cost. Though we're approaching Skarner and the Brackern with the intention of patching up holes and solidifying their impact on Runeterra, the Brackern are tied to several regions and champions within Runeterra, meaning that we'll be working with other teams working in the Runeterra universe.

Skarner Update Concept 10

Shurima to Ixtal

Skarner currently resides in Shurima. However, with a new direction for the Brackern, we thought that Ixtal, with its deep connection to elemental magic, would be the perfect region for them.

With the Brackern as the first earth elementalists, we're exploring the possibility of them having taught the first Ixtali people how to harness the earth element, as well as the possibility of them building the first Arcologies. This would position the Brackern as a revered species in Ixtal, deeply connected to the region's origin and history.

Either way, in modern Ixtal, the Brackern keep to themselves, not interested in human affairs. Which gives us the perfect opportunity to create an interesting space for Skarner, who we'll be centering within the greater story of Ixtal.

Finding a Theme

Larry “The BravoRay” Ray, Art Director:

For Skarner’s art direction, we first broke him down into his basics and characterized him by the following visual cues:

  • Scorpion
  • Crystals
  • Good-aligned heroic archetype

Based on this the team then identified what was working and what wasn't. Scorpions are an excellent creature fantasy, but does applying crystals to a scorpion elevate Skarner’s theme or detract from it? Skarner’s whole being has revolved around him being a sad, defeated, lonely scorpion who misses his kind... which isn’t as aspirational of a design as we’d like. When put all together, some of those elements make others less appealing. So we looked at the individual fantasies to figure out where they add to each other, rather than take away.

Scorpion: Scorpions are a good design for a monstrous champion. They’re insectoid as well as somewhat crustacean-like. And when you look at them up close, they are otherworldly and alien.

Crystals: The recipe of insect and crystal could theoretically work, but we wanted to use Skarner’s VGU as an opportunity to evolve the material, and we felt like it would be too problematic and strange to keep him focused in his crystal thematic. Runeterra is a vast world that has evolved in the years since Skarner’s release, so keeping him tied to a thematic that wasn’t memorable or all that exciting didn’t seem like the right approach for his rework.

Good Hero Archetype: Skarner’s a lawful neutral character archetype with full sentience who is deeply intelligent—which sets him apart from many of the monster champions in the roster. He’s not just a monster who kills everything in sight. We sort of had a “King Kong” vibe—someone who wants to be left alone, but will protect his territory with extreme prejudice if needed. He’s not necessarily someone who is openly aggressive to everyone, but he can (and should) hold his own in a fight if need be. And we loved the idea of the people in Ixtal respecting and worshiping him as part of the land and its protector.

Skarner Update Concept 12

In the end we decided to amplify his good/lawful character archetype and scorpion fantasy, completely omitting his crystal theme. This allowed us to explore different power fantasies in the Runeterran universe, from Voidspawn to Hextech-empowered. But we decided to hone in on the elemental magic, as we felt it left a lot of creative freedom for every aspect of his development.

Skarner Update Concept 13

We brought in more of a crustacean’s heavily-weighted shell shape while leveling up his scorpion tail to a three-pronged stinger for grabbing his prey, making him appear like an intimidating indestructible beast to his enemies.

The Problem with Scorpions

Jacob “Riot Llama” Crouch, Game Designer:

Skarner has been a challenge to rework.

Looking back at other reworks, nearly all of them have had strong resonant themes to improve upon. Irelia Irelia is a “telekinetic sword dancer,” Galio Galio is an “anti-magic stone gargoyle colossus,” Fiddlesticks Fiddlesticks is a “spooky scarecrow.” Skarner’s core of “lonely crystal scorpion” just doesn’t seem to really excite... well, anyone. Our first goal is finding another theme or deepening his current themes to elevate his overall fantasy. Here are our first four attempts (that all were flawed) before we found something we really liked:

Skarner Update Concept 07

Poison (Editor’s Note: Actually it’s venom.): We leaned into what might make a scorpion special with an ability kit where all of Skarner’s damage was DoT (damage over time). While this was very unique we hit two big barriers:

  • UI limitations when telegraphing large amounts of DoTs with the LoL health bar.
  • What does a victim do once they have lethal amounts of DoTs? They would need some gameplay to engage in to stop themselves from dying, which League has very few answers to.

While I personally want to revisit these issues for another champion someday, Skarner is not the time to take on these problems.

Skarner Update Concept 05

Hextech: This kit encapsulates “What would a Hextech crystal play like?” as a champion. It was explosive with active/inactive phases that cycled rather quickly all hinging on a Hextech resource.

The big issue here was that Skarner’s gameplay started to feel like something non-Skarner-like. It was highly academic and flashy, and while this matched some of the (now gone) deep lore, the gameplay was so disjointed with what players feel the core of Skarner is and should be.

Skarner Update Concept 09

Skarnerlings: This kit provided the experience of “Rebuilding the Brackern” over the course of the match. Skarner would engage in some mechanics to use Impale (his ult) to grab/retrieve smaller vulnerable baby Brackern that had been scattered over Summoner’s Rift. While emotionally resonant, a big part of this kit felt unsatisfying because the gameplay execution was never quite there, and Skarner was constantly competing in the “Cute Followers” space against other in-development champions (Hello Milio Milio!) who were doing it quite well.

Skarner Update Concept 08

Carapace: Skarner would enhance his outer shell by molting off his current carapace and moving into a new one. While this was a really cool gameplay experience it ran into some issues of:

  • There’s a super cool version of this where players choose between multiple physical forms that drastically change gameplay and Skarner couldn’t take it as far as a new champion built for this concept could.
  • Skarner already has so many skins and if we give his base form multiple possible alterations we’re quickly setting ourselves up for a world of development pain both now and in the future.
  • We want to differentiate Skarner from Void monsters where “adapting and growing” gameplay (Cho'Gath Cho'Gath) is quite common.

With what didn’t work out of the way, let’s talk about what’s working!

Skarner’s theme has found an appealing home as a “revered, larger-than-life daemon” who’s highly protective of the place he calls home. Expect to see him easily rip through the Rift to hunt down intruders. One way he could do this is by picking up enemies and moving them where you want. And lucky for us, it just so happens that Skarner kinda already does that with Impale!

Impale is very effective, but often not satisfying to use so it’ll be receiving a small adjustment. The fantasy of the ability is moving from being a single target pick tool to being a teamfight tool to give it some extra “oomph” and playmaking ability. Basically what I’m saying is Impale is now AoE.

Skarner Update Animation Concept 01

While it has lost some reliability (lower duration, cast time, no longer point-and-click) against one target, Impale now gives Skarner a serious teamfight initiation threat if he’s able to get more than one target. This also adds a more strategic component to who, how many, and when to go in.

Skarner Update Concept 11

The rest of Skarner’s kit will help him get into a strategic position to use Impale and give him some additional things to do when Impale is active. I can’t wait to share them with you when they’re ready! Until then, keep scuttling, my scorpions.

Until Next Time

We know it’s been a long time since we talked about Skarner, and we’re sorry about the wait. But we hope that this look into the new-and-improved crystal scorpion gives you an idea of where we’re headed with him.

We’ll be sure to check back in more regularly in the coming months when we have more to share. See you then!

Champion Roadmap: April 2023[]

By Alexia 'Lexical' Gao[9]

Skarner Update Concept 15

It hasn’t been too long since we dove into Skarner and the multitude of paths we tried, iterated, and refined. While we have a direction that we are excited about, it will be awhile till we get to see our favorite Ixtali scorpion skittering across the Rift. We’re currently anticipating he will release sometime early next year, but we’re not 100% sure on the date yet.

Currently the design team is working hard on locking in his kit. Unlike the other disciplines, they have the extra burden of ensuring his gameplay is fun, interesting, and balanced, and that means lots and lots of testing.

We’re heads down making sure it works well and we’ll check back in later this year with another update on his progress!

Champion Roadmap: October 2023[]

By Alexia 'Lexical' Gao[10]

Skarner Update Sandscourge Concept 01

Many Limbs

Andrew “Riot Ubysi” Raabe, Producer:

Generally, the Scorpiones order in the Arachnida class have eight legs, two pincers, and two chelicerae (little mouth hands). However, having 12 appendages as well as 3 tails really clutters the read of the character—especially considering gameplay clarity. After testing and discussing the upsides and downsides, we decided Skarner should have six legs, with two positioned underneath his front bulk to help support his new gigantic status to give his silhouette some breathing room. Which, fun fact, makes Skarner a Hexapod (think flies, earwigs, or bees)!

The team is very confident about this direction—there’s nothing more terrifying than Skarner galloping out of a wall, boulder in hand, to gank your lane…

That also led us to wondering how his new form would interact with his new Ixtali earth magic thematic. But before we could answer that question, we needed to understand how his magic even worked to begin with.

Skarner Update Earthrune Concept 01

We looked at numerous sources for ideation, finding elements of creatures both magical and physical, and finally settled on the ability to manipulate and control the very ground on which you stand. It made sense to express that earth power in a similar way that Milio focused on fire, but in a manner that felt different enough to distinguish him from Taliyah.

Skarner isn’t pulling up a boulder with magical earth bending, he is reaching in and grasping it with his full body. His magical elements pull and release the earth so he can seize his prize: a gargantuan boulder to dissuade would-be attackers. The more we ingrained this mechanic, the more it became a core part of Skarner’s new kit and fantasy, resulting in something that I hope will become players’ favorite.

So to answer our original question of how his new form would work with his powers... We needed to make sure that Skarner’s silhouette stayed readable when holding a rock, without him just looking like a rock with legs.

Skarner Update Earthrune Concept 02

A Scorpion’s Impale

Jacob “Riot Llama” Crouch, Game Designer:

Skarner has a really powerful and cool ultimate. Impale has been a clear asset that the scorpion brings to the League roster, and something we identified as high-value to keep. While its gameplay power and uniqueness are top tier, Skarner’s Impale does have some areas for improvement that we focused on:

  1. Power Budget: Skarner’s basic abilities are infamously weak to account for the sheer power his ultimate brings. It is important that Impale take one step backwards to share the spotlight with other cool scorpion maneuvers. The reliability of this spell is the main way its power budget has been drawn back from the point-and-click version.
  2. Satisfaction: While satisfaction is subjective, it often feels like comparable ultimate abilities use less gameplay power but feel better to use. Our goals here were to make it more fun to press this button even though the gameplay impact may be lessened.
  3. High/Low moments: Point-and-click single target impale does have some variance of experience but it is limited because of the nature of the ability. We wanted to explore a version of Impale that had awe-inspiring moments but could also get you question mark pinged by all 4 of your teammates.

Breaking from the gameplay talk for a second, I have fallen in love with this scuttling scorpion boi and while I would have loved to personally carry him across the finish line, a difficult hand surgery will prevent me from doing so. But he has a great new home and fantastic tech designer Brad “Riot Hoboboy” Gaffney, who will take this kit the rest of the way. As always, keep scuttling out there, my scorpions <3.

Back to Basics

Brad “Riot Hoboboy” Gaffney:

Hi friends! I’m here to chat a bit about where Skarner’s abilities are currently. Just a quick note that everything is still work-in-progress, but we love the chance to give you a little peek behind the curtain.

We’ve been trying to stick to Skarner’s primordial monster theme in the rest of his kit.

“Skarners core three abilities do the heavy lifting of making Skarner feel like he can really stomp all over Tokyo... Or Piltover.” - Riot Llama.

It’s a fun image, and it’s really been the driving logic behind how we try to shape what Skarner’s kit can do. Skarner is a powerful threat that performs unreal feats of strength bending the earth to his will.

Speaking of stomping, I’ll let Skarner’s new W speak for itself:

Skarner Update Animation Concept 04

Skarner’s Q is his moment-to-moment combat ability. Skarner tears a piece of terrain from the Rift itself and carries it around with him. We want this moment to be a bit costly for Skarner so he can then have a very forceful ability. We’re looking at a longer-than-average cast time to allow us to animate an awesome moment of him rending this boulder from the earth with his bare… claws?

Skarner Update Animation Concept 02

Skarner’s boulder empowers his auto attacks, but he can also throw the boulder for a slow and a big chunk of damage. It’s great for maneuvering through his clear and gives him one last shot at picking off the escaping priority target. A skillshot might feel too fine and precise for our forceful monster, but this boulder brings its full weight to bear.

Skarner Update Animation Concept 03

The real skill expression of using this ability is picking the moment to get the boulder and navigating the gameplay tension between holding the boulder or throwing it.

Skarner's new E ability is particularly gripping, well, at least to his victims. Skarner continually gains movement speed with limited controls and tries to collide with a target. If he finds a target to grab he has a short window to pin them to a wall for a stun and bonus damage. Skarner likes to think of terrain as merely a suggestion and will plow through any of it between him and his targets during this ability. Also, while he’s in there, why not grab another rock?

Skarner Update Animation Concept 05

We’re toying with A LOT of the levers on this ability to make sure we get it right. It’s bringing together a few elements other champions have played with but we’ve never had it all in one ability before so we want to make sure it gets the satisfaction that “rip through a wall and smash an enemy into another wall” promises.

We’ll have more about Skarner to share as we get closer to his release, but that’s it for now. As a reminder, this is all WIP and subject to change!

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Trivia[]

Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard
Skarner, the Primordial Sovereign Skarner, the Primordial Sovereign

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