Thanks for the vote =)

As a head's up to anybody still reading this; I've more or less given up on the scorpion. I've played a dozen-or-so games with Skarner and ended up coming to the same conclusion that everyone seems to have ended up on; he seems underpowered. His problem isn't as much in his stats or abilities, it's more that he fits a niche that never occurs.

Skarners damage is good enough for a Mordekaiser-style beefy melee DPS, but his health and survivability don't allow him to play this role. Skarner feels a lot like a weak Mordekaiser at times; you are dancing around the frontlines of your team in order to get some harass/minion kills off whenever possible and jumping in and dishing out damage whenever the fight breaks loose. The difference is that Mordekaiser has his shield, while Skarner has effectively nothing. What ends up happening is that you're dancing around the frontlines of your team in a 5v5 standoff, but can never really do any poking without immediately dropping to 50% hp. If you really go in, you die, and if you wait for the fight to break lose and then go in, your damage is too low for you to really be effective. And you will still die the second you get focused.

Skarner's problem is that he's consistantly stuck in "no man's land", having to choose between running around and not contributing or going in and dying. This could possibly be prevented by going tanky off the bat, but that would leave you consistantly mana starved. The only way I could really see him work well is if someone follows up the Manamune and Triforce with pure tank items, like Warmog's; his role would in the best case be that of a tank with bad initiation and CC capabilities.

If anyone has found a way to make him work well, do share.

+1, an interesting experiment. ^_^