Talk:Skarner/@comment-4019444-20110811040526/@comment-3486816-20110811063148

AD is a little over twice as expensive as AP. The scaling on Q is a little deceitful; you get more damage per gold buying AP than buying AD (especially if you buy a deathcap, but i don't know why you would). Also, it does AP on every strike after the first, not on every other Q. His base AD is the second highest in the game (which is part of what makes Trinity Force amazing) and his base attack speed is pretty low, so you're better off building AS than AD if you want to buff his autoattacks, leading to the added benefit of extra CDR from his passive. Build AP/AS for best results imo. Madred's is a little strange to me. It's very expensive yet gives very little armor; if you're building defensively against physical damage I think you're better off just getting a tank item (sunfire (if you're doing well)/randuin's (if you need the initial slow)/frozen heart (if you need the cdr)) or something like Wriggle's/Atma's (Atma's could work with his very high base health, but I'd want to build a little more health from items before I bought one; I'll get back to you on that I guess). Wit's End is awesome, but I'm leaning towards getting a bit more permanent mr than it provides. It's probably more that I need to get used to figuring out when exactly to enter a fight, but I'm considering switching my glyphs back to mr/lvl from cdr or getting an extra null-magic-mantle just so that I can avoid getting nuked down before I have the chance to autoattack a couple times and build up wit's end stacks.

I agree with Iron that AA staff is a little strange. You want to go as hybrid as possible and in my experience you don't have many mana problems once you get sheen (although I do start with a doran's ring) and level up a bit. It's also, again, a lot of gold to spend on an item that offers very little in terms of survivability.

Basically from what I've seen he scales so well with Guinsoo's Rageblade and Trinity Force that you should probably build with primarily survivability in mind from there on out.