ok this is my first ever guide on mobafire so please have patience with me and as some of the the things you see you may disagree with i would be happy to hear your comments and questions so feel free to ask away in the comments section

this is a LANE build with blue buff usage (when you can get it)

i choose the greater mark of intellect because in the begining skarner has a rather limited amount of mana and seeing as you use your Q spell quite often for creep score you need to constantly have a high amount of mana so the marks give you that extra boost to stay in lane longer

i use the greater glyphs of force to constantly increase your AP as you level up (obviously) so that you can dish out alot of damage and heal yourself with your e, q combo for what you lose when fighting and once you reach maximum level its a substantial bonus of 27 AP or so

the great glyphs of knowledge are used to give you a constant boost in mana that you need as skarner levels up to keep his combos going (w, e, q) throughout the game

most of the offense masteries are pretty self explanatory, mental force for the extra flat AP that helps early game the CD reduction which (even though skarner has a passive CD reduction ability i find is rather helpful. magic penetration is an obvious one, a intresting one is havoc which i use to increase ALL of his damage out put (AD and AP). and then the extra ability power in tiers 4 and 5 along with the overall damage increase in tier 6 is obvious

i open out with the boots of speed a health pot and 2 mana pots because skarner has high health in the begining and doesnt really need a health increase item to help him, however he does have low mana and is rather slow (seeing as hes generally played as a tank) so the boots allow him to get back to the fight quicker after jungling a blue buff quickly or coming back from base

i HIGHLY reccomend getting a kages pick ASAP so that your passive gold gain is increased and helps you get your other items faster (it breaks even at 25 min)

hextech revolver is a very important item and if you want you CAN rush this item instead of kages pick, i use revolver mainly to increase the survivability of skarner so that all his abilities give him health even if u happen to not have your e spell avalible

then for boots i reccomend whatever bests goes for the situation, i used ninja tabi in the example because i generally am facing a AD heavy team but, if the team is AP heavy get mercurys treads, if you need more magic pen because they are trying to lower your damage output get sorrceors shoes BUT NEVER GET BERSERKERS GREAVES they really do not help and mess up your build late game

giants belt is then a great choice seeing as it increases your health so you can take on just about anyone in your lane and survive even if you dont get a kill and generally gives u that extra escability you need and it builds into sunfire cape which gives u health, armor, and extra passive damage all of which u need as a tank

i then upgrade hextech revolver to hextech gunblade so that u get increased AP some bonus AD and spell vamp/ life steal (it also increases your q spell's damage)

towards late game the enemy team usually starts to notice the amount of AP you have and try to counter you with items like force of nature, mercurs treads, etc and void staff, along with say sorrcerors shoes and your 10% magic pen from masteries will cut through even the heaviest magic resist your opponets can get without sacraficing their build

zhonya's hour glass is always a great choice for high AP and decent armor advantage and the stasis active it has is a LIFESAVER if your in a team fight and someone like pantheon is using their ulti, go into stasis and then procede to kick their *** with no damage to you

and as an endgame (or earlier) item i get lich bane which is a great item because you use you q spell so often in fights that your constantly gaining its passive extra damage which, though it seems minor, has a large impact on a fight

i will finish off this guide within the next few days im just curoious if any more expierenced players have any thoughts on how my guide seems so far and if you think theirs any thing i could do to improve upon the build, if so just leave a comment :)

- king arthurs knight,

sir lanceolot