It's been a long time since Skarner was announced receive a VGU, so League of Legends finally communicated what's up with the Skarner rework.
Skarner Rework
Skarner won the community vote last year, and still we know so little about him. Champions Lead Lex “Riot Lexical” Gao took to a dev note to discuss where our favorite scorpion is and when we can expect the rework.
He's slated for a VGU, which means he will receive a comprehensive update to his characters, both visually and gameplay-wise. The most recent change in this category is Udyr. Now onto the most important question, how far along is Skarner's rework in the production pipeline? “We always knew that Skarner would be a challenging and large rework, but he is admittedly a bit more challenging than we had anticipated,” said Riot Lexical. “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.”
Through regular player surveys, the Champions team got a good idea about what the playerbase thinks about the brackern. Spoiler alert: it was not good at all. Skarner had the lowest score across all of the champions in the following categories:
- Visual appeal
- Visual fit with character
- One of your favorite champions
- Clear understanding of the character
- I like this champ's personal style
And he was also in the bottom 4 in these categories:
- Emotions for the champion
- Hero or Side Character (aka most likely to be Side Character)
- Enjoy his power fantasy
- Interest in overall theme
- Consistent champ story
What surprised the Champions team was the fact that he wasn't at the bottom for familiarity with backstory, or the “Would Romance this Champion” category. Not judging, though.
Skarner also has the lowest breadth and depth out of all of League's champions across all regions, and armed with the data they gathered, the Champions team identified potential factors for his low popularity.
- (Un)popularity of Monsters
- Monster champions in general are not as popular as the more human-looking ones.
- (Un)iconic-ness of Scorpions
- When players were asked which characteristics or factors came to mind when talking about certain champions, the Champions team expected to see certain words that would form the champion's identity to the public in the form of a word cloud. The more popular champions had a healthy mix of gameplay-related and thematic-related words.
- 90% of Skarner's word cloud were gameplay-related, almost all of which were related to his iconic ultimate ability Impale.
- The only prominent thematic call-out for Skarner was that he's a Scorpion.
- (In)cohesiveness of the Crystal Thematic
- The short answer might have been that Skarner is currently not a good vehicle to bring the clashing themes. The two themes, crystal, generally regarded as beautiful, magical, and serene, and scorpions, venomous and menacing, did not come together cohesively through Skarner.
Riot Lexical assured that Skarner will remain a “scorpion-esque monster,” despite him needing a bigger revamp and his identity issues. “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,” said Riot Lexical. “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 Skarner update team decided to relocate the brackern to a lesser explored region: Ixtal.
The New Skarner Lore
Narrative Writer Elyse “Riot apothecarie” Lemoine is in charge of working on the scorpion's new lore. “For approaching Skarner's narrative, we wanted to explore the potential of what Skarner could become, especially in tandem with the art direction.”
According to her, they wanted to take the chance to reinvent the brackern as a species while not changing the fact they are a prominent power and presence in Runeterra. The brackern's narrative, and in turn Skarner's, have been change to make them Runeterra's first earth elementalist – older than civilization itself. They are revered for their primal knowledge of earth, knowledge that they impated to the people of Runeterra ages ago.
However, this makes holes in some of the stories, regions, and champions in Runeterra where the brackern are tied to. The Narrative team are working with the other teams to patch up these holes left by the relocation.
Currently, Skarner is located in-universe in Shurima. With their move to Ixtal, the possibility of them teaching the first Ixtali people how to harness the earth is being explored. To the Ixtali, Brackern are to be revered, and are deeply connected to their history and origin.
Good? Crystal? Scorpion?
Art Director Larry “The BravoRay” Ray then discussed the basic characteristics of Skarner, and finally decided on three. Scorpion, Crystals, and his Good-aligned heroic archetype.
After discussing which of these fantasies and visual cues added and took away from Skarner's identity, the design team landed on their attitude towards each. “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.” But crystals didn't receive a similar favorable view from the team. “We felt like it would be too problematic and strange to keep him focused in his crystal thematic.,” said The BravoRay. “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.”
As for the good hero archetype, The BravoRay described a “King Kong vibe.” “omeone 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.”
The Challenge of Skarner
Game Designer Jacob “Riot Llama” Crouch also chipped in, mainly making a point why Skarner has been such a difficult champion to update. He referred to previous reworks, all of which had strong, resonant themes to build upon. Irelia is a “telekinetic sword dancer,” Galio is an “anti-magic stone gargoyle colossus,” Fiddlesticks is a “spooky scarecrow.” Skarner as a “lonely crystal scorpion” wasn't something you'd describe as exciting, so improving or completely changing his theme was something the Skarner VGU team looked into.
We get a glimpse of Skarner's new ultimate. It seems to retain its name, “Impale,” but they made it AoE for more oomph and playmaking ability.
This new Impale has lower reliability, since it has lower duration, a significant cast time, and is also no longer point-and-click. He might also be getting a mobility skill, since Riot Llama said that “the rest of Skarner's kit will help him get into a strategic position to use Impale.”
He also proceeded to describe the four failed attempts they had while doing so.
Poison/Venom: There was a version where all of Skarner's damage was Damage over Time, but they ran into two big hurdles.
- LoL has UI limitaitions when showing large amounts of DoTs.
- The game has very few counterplay against lethal DoT
Riot Llama added that he personally wants to revisit these issues for another champion sometime in the future.
Hextech: This approach was something that Riot Llama described as explosive, with big active/inactive phases. The gameplay was academic and flashy, but was disjointed with idea of what Skarner's gameplay should be.
Skarnerlings: This was an iteration of Skarner where he provided the experience of “rebuilding” over the course of the game. This was described as unsatisfying because the gameplay execution was not quite there, and he was competing with other champions in the “Cute Followers” genre, especially Milio.
Carapace: They also made Skarner… molt. They ran into some issues, especially when differentiating him from other Void monsters whose whole idea is “adapting and growing.”
We unfortunately did not get an expected release date for the Skarner rework in the dev note.
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