Talk:Skarner/@comment-7881237-20150121002459/@comment-35229418-20150226194700

Do you even know how he was built before? Let me tell you. He used to pick 6 of these items: Ancient Golem, Mobility, Shurelya's Reverie, Frozen Heart, Banshee's Veil, Randuin's Omen, Spirit Visage, very rarely Wit's End (which anyway doesn't do a lot of damage alone). Iceborn Gauntlet was useless because of his Q, Trinity Force was too expensive at the time for a champion like him.

What damage would you have built then? Hextech? Too expensive, same as Trinity. Guinsoo? Don't make me laugh. Lifesteal? With that ult? AP? Whole build would be expensive as hell; not enough defenses. In fact, building any damage item meant your shield wouldn't be enough, so you would lose. Because, you know, it was tied to his AS steroid at the time.

Then they removed Shurelya's Reverie, so he went from weak because of nerfs and mobility creep to beyond useless unless other players were braindead.

You can have the biggest scalings in the game, but if you're a melee champion and your skills have a range like that, you're going to get blown up before even having the time to press R. Always. So yeah, his damage is now higher because he can build it. No, not shit like AP or high AD. New passive and Devourer made Wit's End actually useful for tons of magic damage. Slow removal on Q made Iceborn Gauntlet worth it and, alternatively, the possibility to build it made Black Cleaver+Q+Gauntlet a deadly combo for AoE armor reduction, with Warrior providing the same early game advantage as Elder Lizard while actually scaling in the late game. There's still the possibility of building full tank, and it's better than before because of the added stun.