>>534008794
>skarner's best skill was not his R, it was his E.
thats debateable but anyways I'd go out on a limb to say 99% of the playerbase understood and played Skarner as

>Flash
>"NOW I'VE GOT YOU, MUWHAHAHA"
>everybody lends a hand to prolapse that anus and you split 300g
>scuttle off into a nearby brush and find something to do until a movement active and R is back up

and this sort of one-dimensional silver-plattering kills playstyle lacked solo agency which turned off most people from skorpinok.

as for teamfighting and frontlining I would love to go onto this wrong rant on how Skarner had no satisfying options because he needed to both frontline AND be a damage threat and how if you wanted to R a diver or assassin then you had to NOT be on the frontline but rather sitting in your backline instead and how fucking retarded Riot is with his ratios but I wont get into that because this is already a long winded post

my closing point is that Skarner was made at time when Riot was really just throwing shit at the wall to see what stick and his identity crisis really shows in so many ways. his kit was a mess and people didnt like him. R being the strongest ability in the game (a controller unplug) meant that he was still playable ON SOME LEVEL since thats one of the big 3 elements to determining the outcome of a skirmish in any PvE/P videogame but this is not to be confused with satisfaction.
3 iterations of Zac
3 iterations of Sejuani
3 iterations of Ryze
now we are on 3 iterations of Skar-Skar-Skarnaaar and I dont think regression is the answer here so much as continuing to iterate and HOPEFULLY see what works and doesnt work.