Skarner is a great champion for team fights. Using this build you will be able to initiate team fights and use his ultimate for focusing.

As Skarner is currently underpowered I created this build in order to ensure he still kept his hybrid ways but had much more AD and a large amount of HP allowing him to survive tower dives, fights or chases.

This build is focused on skarner soloing top lane

Its really up to you how you distribute your runes.

You could go for AP runes, Attack, cooldown, armour or magic penetration. Just choose what you feel is best.

I start off in top solo lane with an amplified tone. Farm some minions and build a hextech revolver which works hand in hand with your skills. After that I go for Mercury treads as Skarner needs the tenacity it provides, especially as he will be soloing top lane. Continue farming away until you have enough gold to build a hextech gunblade which gives Skarner a fair bit of AP and AD.

At this point you will have roughly 1.5k hp, which in my opinion is pretty ****py. I would therefore confuse the hell out of my opponents who could potentially be building magic resistance to counter me and continue my build with AD items. Due to this I buy a phage which eventually turns into a frozen mallet. It provides a good chunk of HP and AD and its slow will definitely help in team fights.

Now that you're trying to turn yourself into a tanky AD character you'll realise when you begin fighting you become really low on Mana very early on. For this reason I buy a tear of the goddess and convert that into a manamune to supply skarner with a whole chunk of extra mana and yet again more AD.

At this stage you should be able to just start team fights by yourself with your shield. But one thing you lack which gives you an extra edge is attack speed. When the shield isnt activated Skarner has around 0.800 attack speed. For this reason I get a recurve bow giving me 40% extra attack speed and convert that into a sword of the divine which gives 60% attack speed. Now when you're in team fights and have your shield activated you should have around 1.450 attack speed.

To finish my build off late game I go with a more obvious item - Infinity edge. Take a B.F sword to start with and then buy an infinity edge when you have enough gold. You will now be able to have super high damage with amazing critical damage.

At this stage Skarner will have over 3k hp. You can initiate fights by just running in and using your ulty to focus on one person in particular and using your shield you should be able to take a load of damage whilst ploughing loads of damage back to them.

Hope the build has helped, skarner is still underpowered but using the build you should establish yourself as a strong team-based member and give your team the extra edge to winning.