Skarner Build Guide by Glacialwrath

Hey man, thumbs up here. I haven't tried the build in game but i've built Skarner very similar in the past and do well. Good job with the layout of the guide, the loads of information, and making it somewhat easy to read. Theres always room to improve but its a solid build - keep it up.

Edit: Read your build a little closer, still looks good. I would recommend just a couple things to make it a bit nicer - 1. In summoner spells section, explain the application of Flash in a escape manner, not only as an offensive spell, and give an example of when ghost may work better or worse than flash, or simply mention that it comes down to personal preference. You left that a little empty :P , and 2. The last few chapters in your build look a little bit like a wall of text. Try to mess with some formatting (headings, colors, ect.) to try to make that look a little more broken down and easy to read. Theres my 2 cents :) Still looks good and is a solid build - good luck!

-1
your runes are perfect
your masteries are perfect
your strategy is perfect
your build is 1000% wrong. If you go trinity-force before shurelyas, you are doing your team a HUGE DISSERVICE. this is the #1 mistake I see on skarner players. The only time it is acceptable to go trinity force before shurelyas is if the game meets 4 parameters:
1. You cannot rely on your teammates at all, and they don't do damage
2. you're snowballed to hell: at least 5-0 before you start building trinity
3. You have beefy teammates: malphite, swain, irelia, etc
4. It's below 1300 elo

Otherwise, shurelyas. I don't recall if I saw randuins, but that's extremely important as well.

Also, flash is really your only option on skarner. Flash+ult is too good of an initiator, maybe one of the best initiations in the game.

If you would playtest my build or provide me with ample evidence for tf rush, or change it, pm me and i'll change my vote.

General ranked guide; how to win ranked games
Throatslasher's Tier list

A couple significant issues with your guide:

1. Cooldown Reduction and tankiness should be your two main priorities as Skarner, since building Trinity Force so early will make you less effective in teamfights. Cooldown reduction gives you huge damage increases, and generally comes with tankiness in the forms of Shurelya's Reverie, Frozen Heart, and Randuin's Omen.

2. Phantom Dancer is pretty bad on Skarner, as he dosen't benefit from the critical strike very much, and provides zero defensive stats. Skarner doesn't have a large amount of AD, so even when you crit, they won't be doing much damage.

3. Skarner's E is a huge noob trap. It has zero utility, damage, etc early game, and forces you to stop moving to use it. You'd benefit so much more from a second point in W, and skipping E until you absolutely have no choice but to take it. Mobility is one of Skarner's strong points, and E sacrifices this.

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Check out my Jungle Amumu Guide and feel free to vote and comment.


Thanks to Phil Collins for the amazing banner!

In fact, I did read your section on it, and I still don't believe the critical strike, and the added stats benefit more than something like a Frozen Heart which I consider pretty core on Skarner. 20% cooldown reduction goes long ways to benefiting your skill spamming, while giving you a passive that depending on your perspective can be OP or not, and 99 Armor. Because Skarner has a spammable shield, he benefits far more from resistances rather than added health, which one of the main reasons Frozen Heart is so good on him. As for the added movement speed, with the Shurelya's Reverie, Force of Nature, and your Crystalline Exoskeleton, you should be passing the soft cap of 500 during ganks and teamfights, while the rest of the time you will have an incredibly high base movement speed. After you hit that soft cap, all additional movement speed you buy gives diminishing returns, so it really isn't cost efficient in that sense. Even if you still won't remove the Phantom Dancer, choosing between Frozen Heart and the Randuin's Omen, I would tend to go the way of Frozen Heart, just for that cooldown reduction.

As for his E, I believe that once you have Philosopher's Stone, you should have no problems with sustain. About the time you hit level 4 and take his E, you will begin taking 0 overall damage from most camps. Your armor value and damage from Q will be high enough that by the time wraiths and wolves (and a couple levels later golems) break through your shield, they will be dead. This is especially true if you take that second point in W so it shields for even more damage. I highly encourage you to give it a try and tell me if what I say is as accurate as I believe. I'd be happy to reconsider if you could prove that E provides enough sustain to benefit more than the stronger shield.

Something else I noticed, is that you take Greater Glyph of Magic Resist over Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist. The reason Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist is useful is it provides scaling MR rather than flat, since all the jungle camps do physical damage. Yes, you will encounter some early game magic damage, but generally it won't be enough to severely affect you. By the time smaller skirmishes being breaking out involing the mid laner, your scaling runes will have about broken even with the flat since most dragon fights won't be occurring until about level 7-9 in my experience. Even if you don't prioritize these, I would suggest they be included as an option, since they are a lot of people's primary rune for this slot on junglers and should be acknowledged.

Lastly, I never found that taking Meditation over 4 points in Swiftness isn't optimal. After taking the initial blue buff and building Philosopher's Stone, I generally don't have mana troubles unless I'm spamming 2-3 Ws per camp. As time progresses, the wraiths and wolves won't even require you to W to clear them without taking damage. Swiftness , however, provides that coveted movement speed at a consistent rate that Skarner loves so much. Overall, in the late game with Shurelya's Reverie and a Sheen, (and possible Frozen Heart), Skarner will have zero mana problems, making this mastery somewhat less useful.

I look forward to your response :)

If my comment helped you, don't forget to +rep.
Check out my Jungle Amumu Guide and feel free to vote and comment.


Thanks to Phil Collins for the amazing banner!

I apologize deeply for not getting back to you yet!

I do plan to, either Wednesday or this weekend.

I wanted to last week, but college got in the way.

I wanted to last weekend (Yesterday), but I was (and am) sick :(

I definitely have a lot to say and a ton of updating to do; hopefully I can soon!

--Glacialwrath