Talk:Skarner/@comment-31827536-20170717104754/@comment-4091261-20170720072026

top must be played with. In fact, that is the reason why his ratios exist, for him to even function up there.

top excels at waveclearing. Outside of that, he is mediocre. He can duel fairly well since his has massive frequencies when slapping the champions. However, for the same reason it is quite draining on his.

is suprisingly useful for maintaining a duel. If you just walk up to their face and start slapping them, using makes it quite difficult for the enemies to flee from the slapping.

is the enabler of duels. Exactly in the same way as it is as a jungler. Nothing special there. It adds to his overall waveclear, but the sheer frequency of still makes it the brunt of all the waveclearing. However, it may be worth maxing against a ranged opponent with low mobility.

Reason why is mandatory on laning  is because all the gains by going  are pumped into his. Since he will not have immediate access to these spires while laning, he will need some more immediate gains to keep him going. Those immediate gains are found through.

The ratios on his, , and  are quite formidable. The ratio on  is lame, but it is the one of the two ways to empower the ability with CDR being the second.

His ratios are nowhere near as useful as some other champions, but it is enough to keep him going in laning phase. With and, he can still deal some significant DPS with his. Perhaps the largest problem with is his mandatory tankiness requirement.

Since he needs the full set of, , and , it's quite difficult to take advantage of his ratios early on. Unfortunately, early on is the only time when is relevant as later on the  scaling  and epic  on  surpasses the usefulness of the.

The best way to circumvent this issue is to completely eliminate the and  issue early on by getting flat / quints alongside the seals and glyphs respectively. Since there is a large ratio on his, he can survive well enough with  to invest in it. is your best friend in this regard, buy boatloads of it.

,, and are great items to start off with. They all give enough for him to use his abilities freely and empower his ability to trade with the enemy. Do not use. As tempting as it may seem, it is a terrible item to invest in since his ratios are only useful early on. Making the early sacrifice with is practically suicide for him.

While it is certainly possible to go glass cannon and actually do significant damage with, it comes at the cost of being useless compared to other champions since he requires consistent fighting for the optimal use of. He must always have sufficient tankiness to survive his duels.