Skarner rework leaks? Here's what we know about the Skarner rework so far

Nov 1, 2022

Skarner is one of the oldest champions in League of Legends. He was released in August 9, 2011, but because of his outdated abilities kit, he barely gets picked both in solo queue and in pro play. Skarner received small updates over time, and as the meta changed throughout the years, players have tried to thread him into the meta.

*Peanut's stats for 2022 LCK Summer split [via Gol.gg]*

The most recent case of Skarner being played to success was by the jungler for Gen.G, Han “Peanut” Wang-ho. During the LCK Summer split 2022, he proved that Skarner’s potential was always there by winning with him in a pro league that’s arguably considered the best in the world. However, the fact of the matter was that there were other newer champions that did the job better in the jungle, mostly due to his outdated kit.

*With 33.4% of the votes, Skarner won the worldwide VGU poll*

In February 2022, Riot Games held a poll to determine which champion should get the next VGU [Visual & Gameplay Update]. Out of five champion candidates, Tryndamere, Shyvana, Skarner, Kog’Maw, and Nocturne, Skarner was chosen as the next champion to receive the update. He received 33.4% of the votes in the poll, while the other four champions failed to even break the 20% mark.

Since then, there’s been little to no updates on the Skarner rework. Other than the initial concept art released seven months ago by a developer at Riot Games [BravoRay], there have been no updates on the rework. Fans speculated that the rework will come sometime in 2023, due to such large-scale champion updates usually taking around a year.

Many months forward to present day, the tooltip for Skarner’s Ultimate has been leaked. Currently, Skarner’s ult is a targeted ability that can only abduct one champion, but according to the leak, the ability is now a small AOE ability that can now abduct more than one champion.

*Leaked tooltip of Skarner's new Ultimate. Is it real or fake?*

Just like many leaks on the internet, it’s hard to determine whether or not this leak is real or fake. A moderator from r/SkarnerMains on Reddit who goes by CelestineWish pointed out why they think it’s fake; not only does the leaked tooltip do not have the same transparent background like they normally should, there are also a lot of formatting errors on it.

The fans and the internet detectives will almost never know if it’s real or not. However, the point stands that people are eagerly looking forward to the new Skarner, and many are looking at Riot Games for news on it like hungry baby birds.