Skarner Build Guide by bling2021

Hello, and welcome to my Skarnobe Jungle Guide! I am Halfafrocan and have been playing League of Legends since season 6! I got into League of Legends while in my sophomore year of college after a friend told me I should check it out. I became immediately hooked on the game and its competitive nature!


I peaked in Season 7 at Silver 1 Promos but went on a horrible losing streak that I unfortunately did not recover from. I stumbled on Skarnobe around mid way through Season 6 when I was in my, "let's try out some underplayed weird champs phase!" I fell in love and proceeded to main him for the rest of the season and held a 67% win rate!



As previously stated, I struggled in Season 7 and did not complete my goal of reaching Gold.I still however, had a 53% win rate! Season 8 was a lost season for me as I became fed up with the game and my play and quit playing for months and then started playing sporadically and casually for the rest of the season!

Now my purpose in making this guide is because I thought it would be fun and also I think I really understand Skarnobe's kit. This leads me to finally addressing why I call Skarner, Skarnobe. The name is a combination of my favorite NBA player of all time, Kobe! I like to draw a lot of comparisons to basketball and LoL because they are similar. Both are 5v5 games in which each position has a designated role that makes the team successful but can also be carried by one superstar player. Skarnobe and Kobe are similar because Skarnobe's kit is so versatile just like Kobe's skills. I also love that Kobe was all about winning and did whatever he thought necessary to win a game. That is how I play Skarnobe and the reason I named him that. I want to get better at League and I want others to get better at League so this is by no means an expert guide. It is a guide meant to give less experienced players a different perspective on how to play my favorite champion and a place for others to give me tips on how to be a better player so ENJOY! DON'T FLAME JUST DISAGREE AND SUGGEST!

Skarnobe is a great 1v1 duelist, especially at early levels in his Crystal Spires. His high mobility thanks to Crystal Spires and Crystalline Exoskeleton, allow for fast clears and easy ganks or picks! Skarnobe can build almost any item which allows him to fit into most team comps and against most enemy comps. His game-changing ult allows Skarnobe to stay relevant in all metas and his easy yet effective kit make him a joy to play!

Crystal Spires give Skarnobe a huge power spike but are located in 6 spots only in the jungle. The ability that makes Skarnobe so useful, Impale has a very small cast radius thus making him pretty Flash reliant. This means that Skarnobe can be somewhat reliant on teammates to make picks late because he has no built in escapes and you had to blow Flash to initiate the pick. Couple this with the fact that he is a melee champ, and you become an easy kite for a decent ADC! :'(

Really Great Rune! Combine this with and you basically have with a slow that creates an icy zone at the end!

synergizes really well with this rune providing you with tankier stats while shielded and giving extra adaptive damage to make your stings hurt more!

This item saves the 300 gold spent on while giving you an extra 10 movement speed! What is not to like?

Overgrowth provides more overall health and is really good for those who continue to farm all game like I do! Feel free to throw in .

Allows you to get items faster! OP!

Starts you off with 5% CDR which means more abilities and then extends the max CDR to 45% which means even more like Impale. Also gives summoner spell CDR and item CDR just get it ok!

As stated above in the items section, Skarnobe is a versatile champ that can build whatever he wants so to speak. These 5 items however, have become standard for me in almost all of my games. You typically want to start with the starting items I have mentioned above and then work towards finishing your as quick as possible! From there you are going to look towards getting your mercury tread's so that you can starting scooting around to lanes and ganking mofo's. After this it becomes preference and situational. So long as the enemy team doesn't have any really fed players you can 1v1 almost any champ, especially when in a . So if you are doing well and want to keep the snowball going, go ahead and get that and start wrecking. For the longest time this is what I would do in every game however, recently I have been having success going for . I don't want to sound like a broken record and I don't want to make you read a wall of text, so i'm just going to say it one last time. Your build is your build and on Skarnobe it can be whatever you want it to be however, you should take into account what your team is lacking and try to address it. The best way to find out what works is to hop into a game and give it a try. Just consider making it a normal game if it is something that might be ridiculous, because nobody wants to deal with that in ranked!

Spawns 6 crystal spires in the jungle. 2 in the river, 2 at blue buffs, and 2 at red buffs. Makes you incredibly fast, gives huge attack speed buff, and regenerates mana every second! Make sure to pick fights here if you can. Plus ez 15 gold to whoever takes them so if you can't get there make sure to let teammates know to get them.

This will be your main damage ability and also the reason why you may need a new Q button for your keyboard lol. I am actually not kidding! When taking camps, csing, or fighting, you should always be hitting this button even when its on cooldown. This is because the cooldown will get to the point to where it is so short that it basically doesn't exist once you get CDR!

This will be the last ability maxed but it is an important one. This gives you an instant shield that is based off of % maximum health and a pretty big AP ratio as well. When cast, along with the shield, it also gives a movement speed buff which helps with clearing speeds cause you can get to camps faster and with ganking!

Amazing crowd control ability. This ability has a decently long cast length and will continue to spread to each enemy hit until it reaches the end of the cast length. Not only does this ability provide a slow but it also provides a debuff on the enemy called Crystal Venom, that stuns them when they are auto attacked by you! This is an absolutely perfect ability to gank lanes with because of its length and ability to travel and spread through minions, monsters, and champs. This ability is the reason why I left Quicksilver Sash off of the cons list for Skarnobe. This will be explained more in the combos section. I love this ability because it is the rare triple threat ability. It slows, stuns and does damage. This damage is done on initial cast as magic damage and again on auto attack as additional physical damage!

This ability is why Skarnobe is so iconic and relevant. It is a point and click suppression and an absolute game wrecker. Other suppression abilities in the game don't let you or the enemy move for example, Infinite Duress and Nether Grasp! Skarnobe, on the other hand, locks down the enemy but is allowed to drag them with him wherever he wants to go. This is why Skarnobe is such a devastating ganker because he can simply press R and click and drag you to his teammate or teammates. There are a couple problems though. First, the cast radius is quite small and second, it can be countered by a Quicksilver Sash. QSS typically isn't a problem at low elos because most players forget about the item at this level of play, but it can be quite annoying at higher elos. You can counter the QSS however, with a well executed combo.

As stated above this is by no means a Challenger guide but it is something cool that I wanted to do and share. This is just one potential build that you could try out on Skarnobe and have fun with. Skarnobe is my favorite champion in this game for all the reasons stated above and is a good try for someone looking for a new and exciting champ to play.