Riot released a dev blog that goes into detail as to why Skarner is one of the least popular champions in League of Legends.
Patch 13.6 is upon us in League of Legends as Riot makes changes to keep the game fresh. Small but significant changes are coming as Yuumi is getting nerfed once more, along with some Dragon changes. Riot is shown that they follow the server trends and address them, albeit a bit late for many people’s taste.
Recently, Riot came out with a video that addressed the work they are doing going forward. Many different reworks were announced, like the ones for Rell and Ivern. The Neeko Rework is still ongoing, while the Skarner VGU is also in the works. Also, Riot revealed the tentative schedule for the reworks released into League of Legends.
Back to Skarner, it is great to see Riot being more transparent about the VGU works. A new dev blog lays out what they are thinking of and what to look forward to. In that dev blog, Skarner has been mentioned as one of the least popular champions in League of Legends. Here is what Riot has said about it and how they backed it up.
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Skarner Being One of the Least Popular Champions
In this dev blog, Riot talks all about Skarner. In terms of Skarner’s lack of popularity, Riot talks about it in great detail in terms of data and categories. All of that was gathered from player surveys. Let’s go into all of that.
The Thematic Unpopularity
In terms of theme, Skarner falls pretty short, according to the data gathered. According to Riot, Skarner ranks lowest in the following categories.
- Visual Appeal
- Visual Fit with Character
- Clear Understanding of the Character
- Amongst favorite champions
- Champion’s Personal Style
To players, the visual looks and such do not match the character and his Lore. While the favorite champion bit is debatable, themes are what draw players in. So the rest of the deficits cause players to not be bought into playing Skarner. There were more as Riot laid out the following categories where Riot ranked in the bottom four of all champions.
- Emotions For the Champion
- Consistent Champion Lore
- Hero or Side Character in terms of Lore
- Interest in Theme
- His abilities kit
He is outdated, and most people do not like how Skarner is portrayed. His relation to Hextech makes it even murkier, and there are some wholes in his overall story. However, Skarner surprisingly ranked well in terms of backstory. Thus, an overhaul is required for Skarner while keeping his backstory intact.
Why Riot Thinks Skarner is Unpopular
Riot moves on to talk about Skarner’s lack of popularity with a graph. The graph by itself is pretty hard to interpret in layman’s terms, but Riot goes on to talk about it in detail by breaking it down into several points.
The points Riot translated the data to determine why Skarner is unpopular are as follows.
- Monster Champions are unpopular
- lack of Iconic-ness of Scorpions
- Crystal Theme is not cohesive with Skarner
According to Riot, Monster Champions are less popular than Humanoid Champions. If you look closely at the graph they shared, it actually checks out, so there is an inherent unpopularity there. Next, Riot claims scorpions are not that iconic in terms of a theme.
Most of the other champions have keywords or unique themes that players gravitate to. However, for Skarner, it is only his Ultimate, Impale, that reminds him of a Scorpion. The rest of the abilities of Skarner do not really remind anyone of actual Scorpions. So that is a little negative towards Skarner.
Lastly, the crystal theme is not that cohesive for Skarner. While the Spires act as a crystal conduit of sorts, it’s just there, and people don’t pay attention to it as much as a theme. The crystal idea does not mesh with the scorpion theme, so Riot wants to do a better job at that. All of these three points contribute to the lack of popularity of Skarner.
The last point Riot made was that they know that monster champions are unpopular at a base level. Now, Riot is trying to lean more into the monster fantasy and give the small player base what they want from Skarner. Thus, we hope Riot can do it well, and we can play Skarner in all its glory.
