League of Legends - F2P MOBA (like DOTA) part 2

[crownjules]

Urgot Q does proc red buff but no item procs. He has a ranged grenade he can launch with a decent AoE area to hit a target. Pre-level 6 he gets into position under cover and launches. With terror shield + red buff he applies a massive double slow to targets every time his Q hits. He just continues to launch even as they run back to their tower. It's quite disgusting actually since the E grenade is doing poison damage and has taken a decent chunk of the armor as a percentage off. His Q will keep procing red buff for more dot damage, is an auto lock on so if they flash it doesn't matter, and will continue to proc slows from red buff and his terror shield if he activated his W before firing. He doesn't have a gap closer but then again he has very long range attacks and doesn't need the gap closer. If his Q didn't proc red buff then his viability as a jungler would drop way down.

You realize that almost everything you just said for Urgot applies to Malphite, yet one is good and one is not to you?

Both lack gap closers.
Both only have slows before 6 and strong ganks with their ults.
Urgot's ganks are mostly contingent upon him landing an AOE attack. Malphite's ganks are contingent upon him clicking his ability on someone. Urgot's has better range, Malphite's is a stronger slow when you account for the fact he steals that speed.
Probably about equal in speed. Malphite is AOE, Urgot can spam his missles.
Malphite is safer due to having both a 10% HP shield on 10s CD and W whereas Urgot just has his shield which starts on a rather long CD.

And Malphite is perfectly capable of jungling while leveling Q. Two ranks in W is all you need to jungle safely and with speed, because at that point you buy your Razor and it's a breeze through the forest.

 

[HumblePie]

You realize that almost everything you just said for Urgot applies to Malphite, yet one is good and one is not to you?

Both lack gap closers.
Both only have slows before 6 and strong ganks with their ults.
Urgot's ganks are mostly contingent upon him landing an AOE attack. Malphite's ganks are contingent upon him clicking his ability on someone. Urgot's has better range, Malphite's is a stronger slow when you account for the fact he steals that speed.
Probably about equal in speed. Malphite is AOE, Urgot can spam his missles.
Malphite is safer due to having both a 10% HP shield on 10s CD and W whereas Urgot just has his shield which starts on a rather long CD.

And Malphite is perfectly capable of jungling while leveling Q. Two ranks in W is all you need to jungle safely and with speed, because at that point you buy your Razor and it's a breeze through the forest.

Urgots range with his E for his grenade is MUCH greater than malphites Q. He can launch from the the river bush without revealing himself and still hit across the lane. Malphite MUST run out from the bush and show himself to get into range with his Q. After Malphite uses his Q it's on a longer cooldown. Pre-level 6 that means unless someone is REALLY pushed up, they have a good chance of getting away from Malphite. Just so you are aware, Malphite Q is 625 units or roughly 2.75 inches on a 1080p screen resolution. Urgots Q is 1000 units without the lock on. Urgot E grenade attack is 950 + 350 AoE range. His Q when in lock-on mode is 1500 units which is out of the fog of war. He can literally shoot you without being able to see you on his screen. Not even Xerath has that kind of range.

As far as safer, Urgot's passive makes his targets that he hits with damage deal 15% less damage which is pretty big even late game as a debuff against a team compared to just getting a 10% of max health shield every 10 seconds. a 3K health malphite is going to get a 300hp shield from his passive. Urgot's passive makes carries do way less damage than that.

Another major difference is that malphites Q does NOT proc red buff. It's a magic based ability which doesn't proc red buff unlike Urgots Q which counts as an auto attack for proccing red buff. It's a HUGE difference and distinction.


Malphite can't just tower dive people at level 4. Urgot doesn't have to. He can continue to hit people that somehow make it back to the tower, more so if they are still under the effect of his E.


Malphites level 6 gank is a bit more escape as well. Urgots is not. Malphite uses his ult and someone can flash out before it lands or flash afterwards if they survive the hit. Urgot's ult STOPS flashes if they are doing one when he starts his animation. It also swaps places with the enemy so even if they flash afterwards, they are only going to be right next to him. A good Urgot is also tossing out a grenade to land just as soon as his ult has gone off.


I'm not saying Malphite is bad. He's great and a good jungler. He's awesome in team fights against heavy melee AD teams because of his E. His ult is one of the best team fight initiators in the game. His damage trails off late game, and heavy AP teams can rip his a new asshole, but overall he's an asset to just about any team comp.

Usually as jungler that doesn't have a gap closer pre-level 6 and/or hard CC wouldn't be listed as one of the best junglers. The only reason Urgot is listed is because of his massive range and the fact his ranged abilities PROC the red buff, something rare in itself, is what allows him to ignore that weakness. His pre level 6 ganks are damn scary because of that range he has and the red buff procs off his ranged attacks.

 

[HumblePie]

Oh, another interesting bit. Malphites "Unstoppable Force" ult isn't unstoppable. Lee Sin's kick can knock him out of his ult for some reason.

 

[xSkyDrAx]

You realize that almost everything you just said for Urgot applies to Malphite, yet one is good and one is not to you?

Both lack gap closers.
Both only have slows before 6 and strong ganks with their ults.
Urgot's ganks are mostly contingent upon him landing an AOE attack. Malphite's ganks are contingent upon him clicking his ability on someone. Urgot's has better range, Malphite's is a stronger slow when you account for the fact he steals that speed.
Probably about equal in speed. Malphite is AOE, Urgot can spam his missles.
Malphite is safer due to having both a 10% HP shield on 10s CD and W whereas Urgot just has his shield which starts on a rather long CD.

And Malphite is perfectly capable of jungling while leveling Q. Two ranks in W is all you need to jungle safely and with speed, because at that point you buy your Razor and it's a breeze through the forest.

To be fair that's not a real close comparision.

Malphite needs to be upclose and personal to be able to help finish off the person.

If urgot hits his poision he can pelt them with his Q all the way back to tower and then some. Because of this his dmg output is less affect by MS than malphite since we all know that chasing a char and melee AA is not horribly efficient and if they're faster than you then you'll be hard pressed to get in one to two hits in after your CC unless you got a large one/double.

 

[xSkyDrAx]

Oh, another interesting bit. Malphites "Unstoppable Force" ult isn't unstoppable. Lee Sin's kick can knock him out of his ult for some reason.

It's probably because he knock up doesn't trigger till he reaches his targeted area. Between that point and his starting point I'm guessing he's like kennen doing a lighting rush. Fast but still targetable.

 

[HumblePie]

It's probably because he knock up doesn't trigger till he reaches his targeted area. Between that point and his starting point I'm guessing he's like kennen doing a lighting rush. Fast but still targetable.

I'm not sure of the reasoning. From what I understand he was not suppose to be targetable during his ult. Another fun fact about malphites ult is that it doesn't deal damage unless you travel about halfway of the maximum distance for the ults range. So if Malphite is standing right next to someone and they ult into them, they will knock the target up but actually deal no damage.

 

[crownjules]

Another major difference is that malphites Q does NOT proc red buff. It's a magic based ability which doesn't proc red buff unlike Urgots Q which counts as an auto attack for proccing red buff. It's a HUGE difference and distinction.

Red buff was changed in the patch at the beginning of December to be applied on any single target non-DoT ability. Doesn't matter if it's magic or physical based. For instance, it applies on Vlad's Q now as well. If it wasn't like this, Urgot's Q would not apply it either because it specifically states "does not apply any other on-hit effects" (referring to applying his passive).

But regardless of all this comparison, they're both good junglers on the same level with different advantages/disadvantages.

 

[CPA]

Strategy question on 5v5 Dominion: Why is so common to send 2 top, 2 bottom and 1 mid? knowing that the quickest way from point A to point B is a straight line, why not send 1 top, 1 bottom and 3 mid? What am I missing that it is so important to do the 2/2/1 strategy?

I was in a game yesterday and me and another guy helped take down an enemy hero in mid and then our mid hero told us "okay guys, you can go now". Why not push with the three of us?

 

[xSkyDrAx]

Strategy question on 5v5 Dominion: Why is so common to send 2 top, 2 bottom and 1 mid? knowing that the quickest way from point A to point B is a straight line, why not send 1 top, 1 bottom and 3 mid? What am I missing that it is so important to do the 2/2/1 strategy?

I was in a game yesterday and me and another guy helped take down an enemy hero in mid and then our mid hero told us "okay guys, you can go now". Why not push with the three of us?

I believe you're talking about SR (Summoner's Rift). Dominion is the ciricular map with control points.

To be honest, once you get more levels and in to the higher tiers of play the lanes will be more like this 1 top, 1 mid, 1 jungler, 2 bottom. This is a general layout that works with general team compositions. There are times where you can deviate from this but only certain champs can make this viable. The 1/1/1/2 set up offers maximum experience and gold potential for all the champions because the jungle acts as another solo lane in terms of gold and experience to a certain extent.

At any rate the reason for the 2/1/2 lane layout is that:

1. bottom lane is close to the dragon objective which you usually want 2 people there to help guard/take it when it's available.

2. mid is the safest lane as it has a short distance between towers vs bot/top where there is a large distance. this makes it harder for ganks to happen on mid.

3. putting 1 person on the safest lane also allows them to level up the fastest because experience is shared by champions of the same team in lane meaning the person in mid wiill outlevel the other lanes. usually mages go to this lane as mages scale damage wise with their levels unlike AD(attack dmg) carries which require items(through farming) to gain their damage.

example: mages like annie have high damage potential at level 6. often capable of killing a person outright in one spell combo. Capitalizing on this ability early on will give your team an advantage through the midgame. this compared to say a tristana or ashe who would not be able to do that without a good amount of items by level 6.

EDIT: Forgot to talk about top laners. Top is usually solo but if it's duo it's usually for the same reasons as bot. In that situation it's better to give that middle lane as much advantages as possibles with gold and experience. If there's 2 on top for both sides then it's really because there's no where else for them to go.

Top as a solo lane is usally because there's no major early game map objective near top lane and offers another solo lane advantage to that team. This allows them to just mainly farm and possibly grab a kill or two.

4. 3 people in one lane doesn't work too well because when you have more people in a lane it reduces the experience each champion (on the same team) gets. it also reduces the amount of gold that each champion in that lane gets.

for example: if you have 3 people vs 1 person in the middle lane what usually happens (if the 1 person knows what they're doing) they will very quickly out level the 3 since they don't have to share experience. also early on 3 champions will not be able to take a tower fast enough to make a significant difference.

The 3 people on mid will also be susceptible to being ganked by champs from the other lanes since even they will be higher level than the 3 on mid and will ultimately be at a disadvantage.

(all this is under the assumption that both teams are on more or less equal footing skill wise) If the other team is awful and your team can coordinate a 3 mid vs 1 mid then it can work but this is not something you can predict with random teammates/enemies and thus unreliable.

The complexity of the game is more than throw as many champions as possible in one lane and push straight to the nexus. Mainly because early on there is not enough damage for any group of champs to take that many towers fast enough without being outleveled then beaten by the enemy team unless they are largely incompetent and let you free push without recourse.

You may have noticed this already but champion death respawn timers are very short early on but noticibly longer later. This makes it hard to keep a champion out of lane for very long early on but late game a loss of a champion is often crippling enough for a team of 5 to easily take an objective or force an unfavorable fight.

Also to answer the second part of your question about the champion not want to push mid it can depend on a variety of things. (was the first tower down?)

Firstly it could just be that the person is new as well and does not know when to push the advantage.

Another thing might be that they (if the first tower is down) they did not want to push the lane of minions past the first tower as it would cause them to increase their own distance between them and the tower and lowering their safety (this is called overextending)

If the player is more experienced they might have figured that a 3 man push at that moment in time (maybe it's early game with short respawn timer) would not do any significant damage to the tower and would cause his lane of minions to be pushed to the enemy tower. This would also cause him to be overextended and susceptible to being ganked from other lanes as he has to stand further from his tower.

 

[zebano]

Regarding junglers, Skarner is still absolute top tier. He has a speed boost a slow and does great damage while building tanky. He has a 100% ban rate in my games. I've just started jungling Panth and he has crazy good ganks early on though I haven't tried him in ranked yet.

Based on playing both some Panth and Karthus jungle I could absolutely see Urgot being nasty if he doesn't get too hurt on the initial clear. My main concern is that he is massively mana intensive so you might be taking more than the initial or first two blues rather than giving them to your mid.

 

[HumblePie]

Philostone and either Chalice or ToG->Manamune works well with Urgot Jungle.

As for skarner, he still doesn't have good pre level 6 ganks. No hard CC, no gap closer, and no real range. His small ranged attack is an AoE so it doesn't apply red buff. His slow only works when he can hit twice with his Q which has a cooldown of 3 seconds or so. That leads to some abysmal pre level 6 ganking from skarner. However, he can clear the jungle ridiculously fast allowing him to get to level 6 at about the same rate as mid or top lane. Sometimes even faster. That is the difference between skarner and warwick jungle. Neither of them have good pre level 6 ganks. Both of them have good sustain in the jungle. The difference is skarner can clear the jungle 10x faster than warwick.

 

[xSkyDrAx]

Humble would you happen to know the typical build for a jungle urgot off the top of your head. I havent tried him out yet but his initiate clear would seem slow to me. I can see his q benefiting from sheen and if it applies on hit then witsend could also be good on him.

Would he go a tanky dps build or standard urgot builds?

 

[CPA]

I believe you're talking about SR (Summoner's Rift). Dominion is the ciricular map with control points.

To be honest, once you get more levels and in to the higher tiers of play the lanes will be more like this 1 top, 1 mid, 1 jungler, 2 bottom. This is a general layout that works with general team compositions. There are times where you can deviate from this but only certain champs can make this viable. The 1/1/1/2 set up offers maximum experience and gold potential for all the champions because the jungle acts as another solo lane in terms of gold and experience to a certain extent.

At any rate the reason for the 2/1/2 lane layout is that:

1. bottom lane is close to the dragon objective which you usually want 2 people there to help guard/take it when it's available.

2. mid is the safest lane as it has a short distance between towers vs bot/top where there is a large distance. this makes it harder for ganks to happen on mid.

3. putting 1 person on the safest lane also allows them to level up the fastest because experience is shared by champions of the same team in lane meaning the person in mid wiill outlevel the other lanes. usually mages go to this lane as mages scale damage wise with their levels unlike AD(attack dmg) carries which require items(through farming) to gain their damage.

example: mages like annie have high damage potential at level 6. often capable of killing a person outright in one spell combo. Capitalizing on this ability early on will give your team an advantage through the midgame. this compared to say a tristana or ashe who would not be able to do that without a good amount of items by level 6.

EDIT: Forgot to talk about top laners. Top is usually solo but if it's duo it's usually for the same reasons as bot. In that situation it's better to give that middle lane as much advantages as possibles with gold and experience. If there's 2 on top for both sides then it's really because there's no where else for them to go.

Top as a solo lane is usally because there's no major early game map objective near top lane and offers another solo lane advantage to that team. This allows them to just mainly farm and possibly grab a kill or two.

4. 3 people in one lane doesn't work too well because when you have more people in a lane it reduces the experience each champion (on the same team) gets. it also reduces the amount of gold that each champion in that lane gets.

for example: if you have 3 people vs 1 person in the middle lane what usually happens (if the 1 person knows what they're doing) they will very quickly out level the 3 since they don't have to share experience. also early on 3 champions will not be able to take a tower fast enough to make a significant difference.

The 3 people on mid will also be susceptible to being ganked by champs from the other lanes since even they will be higher level than the 3 on mid and will ultimately be at a disadvantage.

(all this is under the assumption that both teams are on more or less equal footing skill wise) If the other team is awful and your team can coordinate a 3 mid vs 1 mid then it can work but this is not something you can predict with random teammates/enemies and thus unreliable.

The complexity of the game is more than throw as many champions as possible in one lane and push straight to the nexus. Mainly because early on there is not enough damage for any group of champs to take that many towers fast enough without being outleveled then beaten by the enemy team unless they are largely incompetent and let you free push without recourse.

You may have noticed this already but champion death respawn timers are very short early on but noticibly longer later. This makes it hard to keep a champion out of lane for very long early on but late game a loss of a champion is often crippling enough for a team of 5 to easily take an objective or force an unfavorable fight.

Also to answer the second part of your question about the champion not want to push mid it can depend on a variety of things. (was the first tower down?)

Firstly it could just be that the person is new as well and does not know when to push the advantage.

Another thing might be that they (if the first tower is down) they did not want to push the lane of minions past the first tower as it would cause them to increase their own distance between them and the tower and lowering their safety (this is called overextending)

If the player is more experienced they might have figured that a 3 man push at that moment in time (maybe it's early game with short respawn timer) would not do any significant damage to the tower and would cause his lane of minions to be pushed to the enemy tower. This would also cause him to be overextended and susceptible to being ganked from other lanes as he has to stand further from his tower.

ahhhh, so much to learn. A lot of that makes sense to the 2/1/2 strategy then. And yes, I meant Summoner's Rift. As for your points:

1) I have only played on game where the Dragon became an objective during the game - and I'm the one who led the charge. I will chalk that up to most players are noobs.

2) Regardless of who kills the Dragon or any other objective, do all of the teammates share in it's advantages? I didn't think they did.

3) Experience/gold sharing in the middle lane making for a disadvantage makes things much clearer.

 

[Firsttime]

Skarner does have pre 6 ganks. He has a move speed buff and a perma slow even without red. How is that not a good gank? His ganks require the lane to blow their flash which makes his ganks at 6 that much better. He is one of the top 3 jungles in the entire game right now.

WW is trash compared to skarner even before 6. His move speed buff and slow give his gank away and require the enemy to be low already. They aren't even comparable. Skarner outganks just about all the top tier jungles but Lee Sin and Rammus at all levels.

 

[crownjules]

ahhhh, so much to learn. A lot of that makes sense to the 2/1/2 strategy then. And yes, I meant Summoner's Rift. As for your points:

1) I have only played on game where the Dragon became an objective during the game - and I'm the one who led the charge. I will chalk that up to most players are noobs.

2) Regardless of who kills the Dragon or any other objective, do all of the teammates share in it's advantages? I didn't think they did.

3) Experience/gold sharing in the middle lane making for a disadvantage makes things much clearer.

The dragon gives everyone on the team 190g. It's a big advantage if you can get it more than the other team. It respawns on a 6 minute timer from the time it was last killed. Killing a tower also gives everyone on your team 150g plus some experience.

 

[CPA]

The dragon gives everyone on the team 190g. It's a big advantage if you can get it more than the other team. It respawns on a 6 minute timer from the time it was last killed. Killing a tower also gives everyone on your team 150g plus some experience.

Good to know. Thanks.

 

[HumblePie]

Skarner does have pre 6 ganks. He has a move speed buff and a perma slow even without red. How is that not a good gank? His ganks require the lane to blow their flash which makes his ganks at 6 that much better. He is one of the top 3 jungles in the entire game right now.

WW is trash compared to skarner even before 6. His move speed buff and slow give his gank away and require the enemy to be low already. They aren't even comparable. Skarner outganks just about all the top tier jungles but Lee Sin and Rammus at all levels.

For skarner to apply either his slow or the red buff proc he must be in melee range. That is why his pre level 6 ganks suck. Without a gap closer to get into melee range it isn't going to happen. Even if skarner uses flash to attempt a gank the person can flash away leaving skarner still in the position they were before. Which is not close enough to do a damn thing.

Skarner is one of more popular junglers not because he's an awesome ganker pre level 6, which he's not even remotely close to that, but because he can clear the jungle ridiculously fast and his ult damn useful in team fights. He scales REALLY WELL late game as he has the highest scaling base AD of all champs. His ult has a lot of utility and can pull people out of hiding from a tower to be killed safely. He's tanky and has dual damage types. He can get away fairly easy and chase down with move speed. He has a nice shield that allows him to initiate as well. He has a high damage AoE attack that applies a slow on every hit after the first to anyone he hits.

Again skarner is popular as a jungler not because he's awesome at low levels. He isn't at all. He's popular because he can race through the jungle, has great level 6 through 12 ganks, and is a good asset late game to a team.

 

[xSkyDrAx]

The dragon gives everyone on the team 190g. It's a big advantage if you can get it more than the other team. It respawns on a 6 minute timer from the time it was last killed. Killing a tower also gives everyone on your team 150g plus some experience.

Dragon also gives the participating members killing it bonus experience. It use to give experience to everyone on the team regardless of their involvment but that was deemed too strong.

 

[Firsttime]

His ganks are as good as just about everyone pre 6. Gap closers don't have to be instant to be effective. His move speed buff, which he levels as part of his normal build, is just as effective at ganking as just about anything else. Even post 6 he has to be just about in melee range to suppress, but his move speed buff allows him to get in melee range pretty easily. Even if he ganked at level 3 with nothing but boots he has like 440 ms. That's an effective gap closer, it doesn't matter what you say. The only common junglers who gank as hard pre 6 are Shaco, Lee Sin and Rammus.

There is a reason those 4 are permanently banned. It doesn't have to do with their late game, none are particularly strong late game. It's because they snowball games out of control with strong ganks throughout the game. If you're ganking for the first time at level 6 as any of those 4 jungles you've already lost your team the game.

 

[HumblePie]

His ganks are as good as just about everyone pre 6. Gap closers don't have to be instant to be effective. His move speed buff, which he levels as part of his normal build, is just as effective at ganking as just about anything else. Even post 6 he has to be just about in melee range to suppress, but his move speed buff allows him to get in melee range pretty easily. Even if he ganked at level 3 with nothing but boots he has like 440 ms. That's an effective gap closer, it doesn't matter what you say. The only common junglers who gank as hard pre 6 are Shaco, Lee Sin and Rammus.

There is a reason those 4 are permanently banned. It doesn't have to do with their late game, none are particularly strong late game. It's because they snowball games out of control with strong ganks throughout the game. If you're ganking for the first time at level 6 as any of those 4 jungles you've already lost your team the game.

No it's not. Remove your character bias. How is skarner with no CC and no gap closer pre level 6 better at ganking that lee sin? Lets see, Lee sin has a range attack that ends up being a gap closer that allows him to apply red buff with the range attack. It then allows him to get in close to reapply red buff. Then it allows him to hit his slam for yet another slow to be stacked on. This allows him to deal damage as his target attempt to fight or flee. This gives lee sin a high percentage chance of a successful gank pre level 6.

Xin Zhao has a gap closer that applies a slow on hit to a target. It allows him to be in range to apply his Q which can knock up targets as a hard CC while applying red buff. It gives him a high percentage chance for a kill with a gank pre level 6.

Maokai has a gap closer that is a range attack which both roots the target and applies red buff. He then has a knock back attack as a hard CC to use right after his root ability. It allows for a high percentage chance of a kill ore level 6.



Skarner has NONE of those abilities those other junglers have pre level 6 to give him a high percentage chance of a kill with a gank pre level 6. HIS PRE LEVEL 6 GANKS SUCK in comparison to other junglers. Get over it.

Yes Skarners have in the past and will in the future get kills pre level 6 off gank attempts in a lane. Why? Because people are stupid. I've made successful kills with Soraka jungle pre level 6 gank attempts. Whoop dee frikking doo. It doesn't mean soraka is a bad ass pre level 6 jungle ganker. She is not. It just means she, like any other champ, can make easy kills off idiots when they do stupid things.


A jungler pre level 6 that is melee without a gap closer and/or hard CC is not going to be a good early level ganker. Period. It is what it is and no amount of arguing or anecdotal justification experiences are going to change that fact.

 

[HumblePie]

For reference, a high percentage kill attempt with a gank is usually applied to the scenario where the lane is not pushed in either direction. Where it is sitting squarely in the middle of the lane and there are players from both sides nearby. Enemy players pushed up are going to be easier to gank and those near their tower are going to be harder regardless of who is doing the gank attempt. Still, some junglers have an increased percentage chance of a successful kill on a gank based on their skill set more than others.

The top tier junglers ALL have a higher percentage chance to make a successful kill with a gank attempt pre level 6. That is one of the aspects that sets them apart from merely a good jungler. Skarner just doesn't have that ability. Which is why he's not the best of the best.

 

[HumblePie]

Meh, just because something Firsttime said, made me do some math.

Level 3 Skarner can have at max rank 2 W for 17% bonus. So lets calculate his move speed.

Skarner has a movement speed base of 320. Boots 1 add 50 move which flat are applied first.

With boots skarner is at 370 movement speed. Most junglers for 21/0/9 route with skarner. Some take the movement talent and some take the mana ones. Those that take the movement don't do more than 2 points so 1% extra movement speed.

So when skarner activates his rank 2 W ability he will gain 18% on top of 370.

370 x 1.18 = 436.6 movespeed.

However any value over 415 has a softcap applied to it. Which means any raw score points over 415 will be reduced by 20%. The raw points over are

436.6 - 415 - 21.6 raw points x .8 = 17.28 adjust score

415 + 17.28 adjusted score = 432.28 actual movement speed for a level 3 skarner with 1% movespeed talent and no movespeed runes.

Decent movespeed for sure to have at level 3 which is why he clears the jungle so insanely fast. Only Shyvana is faster really. While that high a movespeed is nice over long distances, over a short distance to catch someone it may not allow you to catch someone in time. A target foe with a base movement speed of 320ish (most common), no boots, and no escape ability is still going to make it back to tower range safely from the middle of the lane before either a skarner or an even faster shyvana can catch them when coming from the river in a race.

However, if the target is pushed up some and away from his tower a significant distance then skarner/shyvana will easily catch their prey before they make it back to the safety of the tower.

 

[crownjules]

I'm sure most of the melee junglers with no dashes run movespeed quints to help with that. That puts him at 445. Add a Janna and he's up to 454!

 

[xSkyDrAx]

For any with questions about basic mechanics and more abstract ideas this is a good read:

http://realelohell.wordpress.com/articles/

 

[Firsttime]

I'm sure most of the melee junglers with no dashes run movespeed quints to help with that. That puts him at 445. Add a Janna and he's up to 454!

It's true, MS quints are op. Skarner with boots and Shurelia's is just dirty. He gives no fucks if you flash. You could even get away with running deep defense tree with him. His MS is just insane.