Upcoming League of Legends Skarner Rework Preview
We barely got news about Skarner since Riot Games announced that the champion was up for a rework.
At the beginning of 2022, the community voted for Skarner to receive the next gameplay and visual update. Most know of Skarner as one of the oldest League of Legends champions. Released on August 9, 2011, it’s safe to say that his abilities kit is out of date, resulting in barely getting in picked in professional play and solo queue. While the champion did receive minor updates in the past, the meta changed over the years, and the tweaks aren’t enough to make him relevant for players with LoL accounts.
Skarner is one of the least-played jungle champions in the MOBA. He mainly depends on his spires, but what can Riot do to adjust his unique selling point and biggest weakness simultaneously?
Players Want Change
In February 2022, Riot Games put up a poll to help determine which champion they should give a spa treatment to next. Getting a VGU (visual and gameplay update) takes a lot of work and time. It’s not something where they can simply whip up concept art immediately like an AI. A look of thought goes into the process, and the first step is finding out what the people with League of Legends accounts want. Of the five candidates—Shyvana, Kog’Maw, Tryndamere, Skarner, and Nocturne—Skarner was chosen as the next champion. The Crystal Vanguard received 33.4% of the votes in the poll, while the other four champions barely hit the 20% mark.
Checking Out the Concept Apt
Once Riot Games did the poll and revealed the results, we saw little to no updates about the much-awaited Skarner rework. There is, however, initial concept art we can look at that was released a few months back by a developer at Riot Games. The developer has a couple of options regarding how they want to tackle the visual aspect of Skarner. Based on the few sketches released in the roadmap shown in April 2022, we got a sneak peek at how the devs could re-invision the VGU for the jungler.
One sketch shows that Riot Games can still keep Skarner’s old design, and they can instead add more fantastical elements to his body frame. In this concept art, Skarner becomes a scorpion-like character with wings. It certainly gives him a frightful look that spices up his visuals.
Another option that Riot Games has thought about is rebooting The Crystal Vanguard. This could potentially mean that Skarner would become a species utterly different from what they’re known as in the original lore. However, since we’re only seeing preliminary sketches now, we can’t say how Riot would alter Skarner for his rework. If you ask us, keeping his original scorpion-esque design while adding more alien and insectoid feels is the best game plan if they still want to keep things “authentic.”
Changes to Expect for Skarner’s Abilities
Riot has yet to share details regarding Skarner’s reworked abilities for League of Legends. At the very least, they have highlighted the directions they want to take for The Crystal Vanguard. Spoiler art: the ever-iconic Impale—Skarner’s ultimate—is here to stay. The rest gets a fresh coat of paint, including the Crystal Spires that the champion is known to have.
According to lead champion producer Ryan ‘Reav3’ Mireles, Skarner has a lot of potential to be something special in the growing League roster. He stated in Riot Games’ official blog post on February 2022 that they’re looking to keep his ult while they will rebuild the rest of the champion from the ground up. Skarner is still likely to be housed in the jungle with the same nippy speed he’s known for. He’s also expected to still be a tanky champion in the MOBA.
Fast forward to today, we see a tooltip for Skarner’s ultimate leak. We know Skarner’s Impale is a targeted ability that can only be bound on one champion. However, if we were to believe the leak, the ability would soon become a small AoE that has the potential to abduct more than one champion.
According to Redditor known as CelestineWish (also a moderator in the r/SkarnerMains subreddit), this leak is most likely a fake. The reason is that not only does the leaked tooltip have a different transparent background compared to official screenshots from past reworks, but there are also a lot of formatting errors on it.
Much like many leaks on the internet, it’s hard to determine what’s real and fake, so take this bit of information with a grain of salt. But the point still stands that players are eagerly looking forward to a new version of Skarner.
The Release Date
Even though Skarner won the League of Legends Season 12 VGU Poll, players with LoL accounts will most likely have to wait until 2023 for the rework of The Crystal Vanguard. Given that these projects usually take around a year to complete, we can expect a Season 13 release if no delays happen. If you want to be one of the first to try the rework, you can get yourself a PBE account to gain exclusive excess to updates and new skins before they head to the official servers.
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