Counter Guide

How to Beat Skarner

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Skarner comes through the wall, grabs you, slams you into the next one, and his team is already waiting on the other side.

He doesn't need to kill you. He only needs to carry you somewhere worse. The charge goes straight through terrain, so a wall that should protect you is the thing he stuns you against, and if you get away from that, the tails pick up three of you at once and walk you back into his team. It feels impossible to escape, and once he's in range it pretty much is. The junglers who beat him handle that problem head on: they stop the charge, steal the tails or tear through the health he builds. Our solo queue tier list covers how he's doing this patch.

Matchup Snapshot Skarner, the Primordial Sovereign

Where You Meet HimJungle

Damage TypeMixed

Why He Is FrustratingHe carries you into his team

MobilityA charge through walls

Biggest ThreatImpale [R]

Hardest CounterShyvana

What a Counter Needs

Crowd control that can end his charge early
Damage based on maximum health, since he builds a lot of it

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Skarner on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Skarner

Shyvana432 games54.9%
Kayn530 games54.3%
Sylas531 games52.2%
Cho'Gath403 games52.1%
Wukong403 games52.1%

Picks Skarner Beats

Graves547 games48.8%
Lee Sin954 games49.3%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the jungle against Skarner. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 13,152 Skarner games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Skarner Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

Ixtal's Impact [E] passes through terrain. He charges for up to 2.75 seconds, picking up speed, and if he hits a champion he carries them until they hit a wall and get stunned.
Impale [R] takes three people. It suppresses up to three of the closest enemy champions in front of him for 1.5 seconds, and they're dragged wherever he walks.
Shattered Earth [Q] doubles as a throw. Instead of swinging the boulder, he can hurl it as Upheaval [Q] from 1050 units away, slowing whoever it hits.
His damage scales with your health. Threads of Vibration [Passive] burns a slice of your maximum health once he's hit you three times.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

The charge breaks easily. If he's stunned, rooted, grounded or silenced partway through Ixtal's Impact [E], it ends and he drops whoever he was carrying.
Impale [R] doesn't reach far (625 units in front of him), and it's on a 120-second cooldown at rank one.
Ixtal's Impact [E] is slow to come back (22 seconds at rank one, cut by 35% if he lands the wall slam).
He's a tank. Anything that deals damage off maximum health gets more out of him than it would out of a mage.

Countering Skarner

One of these is enough:

Interrupt the charge. A fear, a stun or a silence on Skarner mid-charge frees your teammate.
Take his ultimate from him. A champion who can copy or dodge Impale [R] removes half his engage (Sylas does it best).
Punish his health bar. Percentage damage turns his bulk into a weakness.

If your jungler has none of those, you're not out of options.

Playing Into Skarner Without a Counter

Fight in open space. Ixtal's Impact [E] needs a wall to stun you against (without one, he just carries you until the charge runs out), and in the middle of a river there's often nothing close enough.

Spread out when he has his ultimate. Impale [R] picks the three closest champions (not the three he'd like best), so a team standing in a clump gives him all of them.

Track his charge. Once it's down, he can't get through walls and has to walk in like everyone else.

Best Skarner Counters

Three junglers, three ways to take his engage apart.

Shyvana Fears the Charge Away

Dragon's Descent [R] is a dash (she needs Fury to cast it, and she's immune to displacement during it) that breathes fire in a cone and fears everyone it hits for 0.75 seconds. A fear stops Skarner from casting, and Ixtal's Impact [E] ends the moment he's hit by one. Whoever he was carrying falls out.

She's also built to fight a tank. Once she's learned Emberstrike [Q], every attack she lands deals bonus magic damage based on the target's maximum health, and in Dragon Form the third Emberstrike [Q] cast bites for true damage. Inferno Aegis [W] shields her while she does it.

Sylas Steals His Ultimate

Hijack [R] copies Skarner's ultimate (it can't target the same champion again for a while, so pick the moment), and Sylas can hold onto it for up to 90 seconds before using it. That means Skarner's engage belongs to both teams now. Sylas can wait for Skarner to commit, then drag Skarner's own carries somewhere they don't want to be.

In the meantime Kingslayer [W] heals Sylas more the lower he is, which suits a long skirmish against a champion who doesn't burst anyone down.

Kayn Rhaast Eats Tanks

Skarner is melee, and melee champions drop the orbs that push Kayn toward Rhaast. In that form Reaping Slash [Q] hits for a percentage of the target's maximum health, Rhaast heals off the physical damage his abilities deal to champions, and Umbral Trespass [R] deals and heals a slice of Skarner's maximum health while Kayn hides inside him (untargetable, so no Impale [R] on him).

Itemizing Against Skarner

Quicksilver Sash removes crowd control on use (airborne excluded), which is the carry's way out of being dragged. Everything else here is about his health bar. Black Cleaver shreds his armor by up to 30% over five hits, and Lord Dominik's Regards deals up to 15% more damage to champions with a lot of bonus health. For mages, Liandry's Torment burns 2% of his maximum health per second after every damaging ability.