Skip to content

Skarner Counters: Who Beats Skarner

Updated for patch 26.21. Ability details come from Riot’s official game data for this patch.

Skarner counters are champions who stay out of his grab or shrug it off: kiting junglers with range, fighters who ignore disables, and anyone with true damage or stat theft for his tank build. Skarner is a 150 range tank who lives on two engages, Ixtal’s Impact into a wall and the Impale suppression. Dodge those and he’s a slow rock.

The five picks below cover both his jungle and top lane games. We picked them from the kits, not from win-rate data, and each one answers at least one of his two engages.

Skarner counters: Skarner, the Primordial Sovereign, splash art

Why is Skarner hard to counter?

  • Threads of Vibration (passive): his attacks, Shattered Earth, Upheaval and Impale stack Quaking; at max stacks, enemies take max Health magic damage over the duration.
  • Shattered Earth / Upheaval (Q): a boulder that empowers his attacks and can be thrown as a projectile. Cooldown 8/6.75/5.5/4.25/3.
  • W (earthquake shield): a shield plus an earthquake shockwave that damages and slows. Cooldown 10/9/8/7/6.
  • Ixtal’s Impact (E): a charge that passes through terrain and slams a champion or large monster into the next wall for a stun. Cooldown 22/21/20/19/18.
  • Impale (R): his tails suppress enemy champions and drag them wherever he walks. Cooldown 120/105/90.

The typical Skarner gank comes from a strange angle. He charges through a wall with Ixtal’s Impact, picks up a laner and slams them into the next piece of terrain, then Impale drags them back toward his team. Quaking stacks the whole time, so the max Health damage lands even on tanks. Scary? Very, when it works. But both engages have long cooldowns (Ixtal’s Impact is 22 seconds at rank 1), and between them he has a boulder, a shield and not much else.

Which champions are the best Skarner counters?

Lillia

Lillia fights from 325 range and never wants to stand still, which is the opposite of what Skarner needs. Blooming Blows (Q) gives her stacking Move Speed every time a spell lands, so she keeps pace while poking, and its edge deals extra true damage. Dream-Laden Bough (passive) adds max Health damage over time to every skill hit, the same trick Skarner uses, aimed back at his tank stats. Swirlseed (E) slows, Watch Out! Eep! (W) hits hard in the centre, and Lilting Lullaby (R) puts anyone carrying Dream Dust to sleep. A sleeping Skarner can’t Impale anyone.

Master Yi

Wuju Style (E) adds bonus true damage to basic attacks, which skips all the Armor a tank Skarner buys. Alpha Strike (Q) teleports Yi through several units and makes him untargetable while it plays out, and basic attacks lower its cooldown, so he can reset his position mid-fight. Meditate (W) heals and reduces damage, handy while Quaking ticks. Highlander (R) adds Move Speed and Attack Speed and makes him immune to slows, which shuts off the slow on Skarner’s W earthquake. Double Strike (passive) rounds it out. The catch is Impale: Yi still has to avoid the suppression, and Alpha Strike’s timing decides that.

Trundle

Skarner builds Health, Armor and Magic Resist, and Subjugate (R) is a theft of exactly those three. Trundle takes a chunk at once, then twice as much over 4 seconds, so the tank ends the fight weaker than the troll. Pillar of Ice (E) is the fun part here: it creates impassable terrain, and Skarner’s Ixtal’s Impact slams targets into terrain, so place it carefully (a badly placed pillar becomes his wall). Chomp (Q) slows and saps Attack Damage. Frozen Domain (W) gives Attack Speed, Move Speed and extra healing. King’s Tribute (passive) heals Trundle when enemies die close by.

Olaf

Activate Ragnarok (R) and Olaf ignores disables for as long as he keeps attacking. That covers the wall stun from Ixtal’s Impact and Impale’s grab, Skarner’s whole engage. Its passive half also gives extra armor and magic resist. Undertow (Q) slows and lowers Armor, and catching the axe resets it, so Olaf can chase a Skarner trying to walk away from a lost trade (rare, but it happens). Reckless Swing (E) is true damage. Tough It Out (W) adds a shield and Attack Speed. Berserker Rage (passive) grows his Attack Speed and Life Steal as his Health drops. Honestly, few champions can simply walk through Skarner’s combo like this.

Graves

Graves clears fast, fights from 425 range and can bully an early Skarner out of his own jungle. Quickdraw (E) dashes and grants Armor and Magic Resist, with basic attacks lowering its cooldown, so he has an answer when Skarner charges in. Smoke Screen (W) cuts sight range, which makes Impale hard to aim at the right target. His Q shell blows up after a second, sooner if it touches a wall. Ult? Cone burst. Thing is, Graves wants short fights, and Skarner wants to drag them out.

How do you play against Skarner?

  • Stay away from walls. Ixtal’s Impact stuns only when it slams you into terrain, so open ground makes it a plain charge.
  • Count Impale. At 120 seconds on rank 1, a Skarner without it is far less dangerous for two minutes.
  • Don’t stack Quaking. Short trades keep the passive from hitting max stacks and its max Health damage.
  • Ward the walls near your lane, since he can charge straight through terrain.
  • Kill his boulder momentum by backing off when Shattered Earth is held; it empowers his next attacks.

Which items counter Skarner?

His big threat is the suppression (a grab that drags you along behind him), and only a few items remove it. For 1,300 gold, Quicksilver Sash strips every crowd control effect but Airborne (suppression included). Mercurial Scimitar keeps that active and adds 50 Attack Damage with 35 Magic Resist, so marksmen tend to prefer it. Quaking deals magic damage, so Force of Nature, which grants 70 Magic Resist after 8 champion magic hits, and Kaenic Rookern help tanks and bruisers. Fighting a tank Skarner? Armor Penetration from Lord Dominik’s Regards cuts through his stats. Every value is in our LoL items database, and Mercurial Scimitar has its own page.

When is Skarner at his weakest?

When both engages are down. Without Ixtal’s Impact and Impale, he has a boulder throw, a shield and 150 range. That’s it. A team that baits out Impale on a frontliner can then fight a Skarner who has nothing left to start with.

Open areas are bad for him too, well, mostly. Ixtal’s Impact needs a wall to stun, so fights in the middle of the river or in a wide lane remove half his threat, and kiting champions get free hits while he walks.

Still learning what the jungle and top roles ask for? Put simply, the guide to LoL roles answers that. His scorpion costumes are on the Skarner skins page, and on the Abyss he gets the Skarner ARAM guide. Long story short, Skarner counters keep away from walls, deny the Impale, and punish him in the long gap between his engages.

FAQ

Who counters Skarner the most?

Lillia, who kites him from range; Master Yi, whose Wuju Style deals true damage; Trundle, whose Subjugate steals his tank stats; Olaf, whose Ragnarok ignores disables; and Graves, who bullies him early.

When does Ixtal’s Impact stun?

Only when Skarner slams the target into a wall. He charges through terrain, and a champion or large monster he collides with is carried to the next wall he hits.

Can Quicksilver Sash remove Impale?

Quicksilver Sash removes all crowd control debuffs except Airborne, and Impale is a suppression, so it can.

What does Quaking do?

Skarner’s attacks and abilities stack Quaking. At max stacks, the enemy takes max Health magic damage over its duration.

How were these Skarner counters chosen?

We compared his patch 26.21 kit with each jungler and top laner’s abilities. No win rates were used.