Overview
Are you a professional kidnapper? Well, first of all, go turn yourself into the authorities. After you’ve served your time, you can then come back to League of Legends and lock in Skarner -- this champion is designed with the express intent of snatching enemies from their team to drag them back into yours, where you will proceed to, well, kill them. With the right team around him, Skarner has excellent pick potential and can be a nightmare to deal with for enemy carries. Click here for the latest data on his best builds, including Runes, Items, Summoner Spells, and more.
Keys to Remember About Skarner
You're not immune to CC while using your abilities, so you need to keep track of enemies that can disrupt you -- or, perhaps even better -- make sure they're one of the targets you Impale [R].
While the CC is very strong on Impale [R], you aren't going to be doing damage with it, so you have to be sure there's proper follow-up from your team. And you also need to be wary of dragging too many tanks into your team -- it may just lead to an easy counter engage for them.
Strengths
Impale [R] is one of the strongest pick tools in the game as it can drag multiple enemy champions away from safety -- this can be followed up on with hard to hit AoE abilities from your team or follow-up CC abilities to extend the duration in which enemies are not allowed to play the game. He can also find some creative angles for ganking or engaging team fights with Ixtal’s Impact [E] throughout the course of the game, which means he’ll need to have a good understanding of which terrain is good for him to pass through.
Weaknesses
He’s very susceptible to being CCed and being knocked out of the animations on his Ixtal’s Impact [E] and Impale [R], which means you’ll need to be very careful about when you choose to use your abilities. Teams will always be wary of his ability to abduct them, so they spread out against him, then it can be very difficult for him to actually generate kills. And unlock previous iterations of him, you’ll really want to hit multiple people with the ultimate to maximize the value on it.
Game Plan
Early Game: His goal is to rush level 6 so that he can start using Impale [R] to generate kills -- it’s much easier to land it early on before the enemy team can help each other deal with him.
Mid Game: The above continues to be true as you enter the mid game -- he can be especially strong with good vision control before objectives if enemies are forced to facecheck bushes.
Late Game: Once enemy teams start to consistently group, it’s going to be much harder for him to find value. He can be burst down on his approach, and flanking can be difficult because the positioning is a little counterintuitive to how he wants to pull enemies towards his team.
