Talk:Skarner/@comment-24969467-20150419193658/@comment-35229418-20150420201411

You're right in a way, Skarner isn't the best at carrying games. If you snowball early you can wreck havoc on the enemy team for quite some time, but your team has to take advantage over it, because you're gonna fall off sooner or later. You'll still be able to win duels against most champions, but come late game, you'll be as dependant on your team as your team is dependant on your CC.

So, the argument takes a different direction: what do you do if you want to carry the game early on?

Well, Skarner is a good duelist at all stages of the game. At the same time, he's a good ganker for all the three lanes (great top ganker before 6, especially good bot after 6). And of course he's a good clearer. What I usually do is try to take a kill ganking top/mid (sometimes even bot) at level 3 after I got red buff (Gromp > Blue > Red), clear some more, back, gank any lane I can (clear if there's no lanes to be ganked), and I always try apply a lot of pressure bot from level 4-5 to take a Drake asap (this will help you and your team keep the pace). Also, while Skarner is not the best at counterganking, do it if you can at least save your teammate (you can also turn the gank in your favor after 6).

So yeah, basically this is it. Nothing special really. I sometimes help my laner take down a tower if it has low HP and we've killed the opposing laner, but that's it. Also, I find Skarner to be very good in jungle skirmishes (3v3 or even 4v4) but quite lackluster when it comes to early teamfights. You can become a teamfight beast when you hit your full build, but before the 5th item you're not the best at 5v5s.

For reference, here's my last game with Skarner, where I did just what I said here. If you want to potentially snowball the early game, Devourer provides you with a good amount of magic damage that will make you a scary duelist late game (note that you'll deal more magic than physical damage). If you want to be a teamfight wrecker, I'd go for Warrior+Gauntlet+Cleaver when the new patch comes out (you'll shred the armor of entire teams, obviously you shouldn't buy Ionians and you shouldn't take the Sorcery mastery if you go for that build). I find Cinderhulk to be very good for more of a supportive tank role (like Amumu or Maokai), which means good presence for all the game, but I actually don't know how much damage you'd really do with it. You'll surely be unkillable though, and they'll think twice before coming near you. Probably same teamfight presence as with Warrior but for different purposes (classic tank as opposed to physical damage booster), and I don't think you'll be as good of a duelist as with the previous two builds.

Honestly, if you're looking for hard carrying games, Skarner can't help you for the whole match. He's more of a champion that transitions to different roles while the game proceeds. The roles you play depend on your build.