Once in a while a champion item interaction comes around that completely breaks the game
to the point where both are gutted to the ground. While riot has done a pretty good job of limiting
this by making their design philosophy around very minor champion changes instead,
sometimes they still manage to fly under the radar. Today were going to looking at
a champion and item combo that has been taking over top level competitive and solo queue play,
but only sees 1% pick rate or less, especially in lower elos.
That champion is Skarner, hes criminally undervalued and underpicked right now for a
number of reasons, however, hes probably one of the stronger junglers in the game at the moment
and can absolutely dominate in solo queue to become an absolute terror.
The item however, is something you may or may not expect. Lucidity boots. Usually tanks prefer to
go merc treads or tabis to reduce the amount of damage that they take, but with season 11
item changes, not only is tenacity, armor, and mr more accessible early through items like chemtank,
you also get a lot of movespeed that you didnt previously get through items like force of nature
as well as deadmans plate. This reduces the need to get armor or magic resist boots and
lets us pick up an extremely good item in lucidity boots usually on our first base
for just 900 gold. The reason why this is so good is that skarner is an extremely flash and
ultimate reliant champion. And by picking up CDR boots early, not only do you get reduced cooldown
on those 2 things on their first use, you can stack it with the rune cosmic insight to further
reduce the cooldown even more. The end result is a flash that is over a minute shorter than usual,
and an ulti thats up for pretty much every gank. Your first item after CDR boots also gives 20
ability haste for a whopping 40 at 1 item and boots. additionally, you get extra CDR from
your mythic passive. in past seasons skarner would usually build defensive boots and the jungle item,
resulting in 0 CDR until 2 to 3 items into the game, meaning that the downtime you had before you
could use that combo again and really impact the map was much longer than it is now. As an added
benefit, you even get item cdr with this build so your chemtank active is also up more often.
additionally, with recent jungle nerfs, its even more important that youre able to function
at a lower level than before, and still be impactful, which being a tank, skarner excels at.
All of these things combine together to create the perfect storm for this jungler to really
stand out above the rest. Lets jump into some gameplay to really show you what we mean though
Starting off, skarner is capable of full clearing really quickly, something that has been a valuable
asset to have especially recently. If you look at all of the meta junglers right now
all of them have this trait in common, things like lillia, udyr, olaf, hecarim, and viego all
finish their camps extremely fast. being able to keep pace with that is really important.
The advantage that skarner has is he tends to scale better due to needing less gold to function,
and giving frontline utility to his team. Even if you fall behind, pressing R
on someone is always useful, and thats a hidden strength that a lot of players fail to recognize
After clearing quickly and creating a decent couple of skirmishes for our team i have
lucidity boots on my first base. and already youre going to see how strong this actually makes you
Movespeed is one of the most important stats for all junglers, but especially for skarner,
it lets you get to plays faster in general, but in ganks, youll have a ton more move speed that lets
you run down enemy champions to the point where they just give up on running and try to fight
their way out. Buying early boots is really good just because the enemies wont have theirs yet,
and this discrepancy is what makes even pre 6 ganks super effective on this champion
After clearing jungle for a bit and getting 6 after this play, im immediately looking to use
my ultimate and force a fight. Unfortunately it doesnt go that well and im forced to basically
run away with my tail between my legs. In most situations here i would die. But because i have
early boots im able to just scurry away and run easily from everyone that wants to chase me.
your early skirmish is really strong, especially for a champion that builds literally full tank
you can do a lot of damage even without spires. And again, your early movespeed
lets you take advantage of other champions very easily. I use my ulti in this skirmish,
not very well at that, and by the time i recall after farming a bit and am back on the map
again, its already back up, as well as my flash. Im able to immediately capitalize with it and if
you look at this ult cooldown, its absolutely absurd. 80 seconds is about the time it takes
to clear your jungle, and this is at rank one. you can essentially go to make a free pick, farm a bit
and come back, and your ult will be back up. Thats pretty much exactly what happens in
this game, we go back to farming and right as the dragon is coming up were ready to skirmish again.
because i just hit level 11, my ulti is now at just over a minute long cooldown.
Now i can go counter jungle a bit and by the time the enemy team respawns and shows up in a lane,
well, its skarner time. the amount of tempo and control over the game
that an ability like this creates is just really absurd. It basically makes
it so your team cant int because someone on the enemy team will always be dead instead.
with this pick we can secure baron and the game at this point is just easy mode.
In low elo especially this pick is so good because its very hard to mess up,
you just point click and you do your job. Even without ulti, just being someone to stand in front
and zone teams out creates space for your carries to do whatever like in the baron fight here
Creating space is a really important concept for front liners to understand as not letting people
approach your squishy backliners makes their life a lot easier. And if you know anything about
trusting your adc to not int their positioning, well, its not a bet you would normally take.
However, as a tank, you can just stand in an area that stops enemies from approaching from difficult
angles, and make it really hard for your teammates to int sometimes your only job is to sit there and
look scary, but its an important job nonetheless so that enemies dont just try to rush at your
carries. in this second clip i zone 4 people and morde ults me in order to stop my pressure and
allow his team to walk up. Because of how tanky i am i survive and get a few picks in the process
Another great interaction with this setup is that your normally run phase rush,
and what this allows you do to is to go in, proc phase rush, grab someone, and drag them REALLY
far away from there they want to be. Even getting slowed here im able to use my nimbus cloak and all
the movespeed i have from items to catch up here and create the pick that lets us end the game.
I essentially just rinse and repeated the exact same strat of getting a pick and using that pick
to snowball. Even if you cant manage to find these leads, the beauty of skarner is that the enemy
team has to invest 1300 gold into a qss to counter you. So if everyone on the enemy team is worried
about you running and flashing on them to ult at every opportunity they essentially just lose out
on a ton of gold. 1300 gold is massive, especially when multiple members of the enemy team buy it,
and it can be the difference between your adc having infinity edge for a fight,
and theirs sitting on a bf sword. Luckily, in most elos below diamond,
QSS is rarely purchased, and if they dont pay their tax to play the game,
this is a perfect example of what should happen. While skarners strengths may not appear obvious,
its these little things that really make this champion super oppressive to play against. Just
by existing in the game, you force enemies to play around you, and as weve mentioned before, thats a
quality that makes a champion quite strong. We hope that this video has inspired you to
try out the pick, or gave you a little bit of insight into why pros are starting to pick him up.
As always, thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.