Skarner is a fantastric champ with a lot of utility, but a lot of his kit feels really slow.

- Q is a self stun, you pick up a rock, stun, then go in or throw the rock.
If you are chasing, and you decide to use Q? You better hit that rock or you have no chance of catching up. Keep this in mind.

- W is instant, no need to worry about this one

- E is great but it controls exactly like Nunu's Snowball, you can only make huge radius turns, the responsiveness to mouse control is sluggish, 9 times out of 10 you will be running straight lines. This leaves you free to get poked on your way in, if you feel like you're in danger at any point, cancel the E and disengage.

- R, this is the worst one of all, it does a reverse narrow cone in front of you. That part within itself isn't thaaaaat bad, but it does narrow at the end, so basically, the further away the target it, the easier to sidestep.
But the part that is the most frustrating is the channel time, it's roughly 1.5 seconds, it can be really easy to get out of the aoe.

To try and combat this, use your q first, then your R. By doing this, you will automatically throw the rock during R's channel time, making it easier to land.

Play Video This is a general idea on how to utilize Glacial Augment to the max while in lane, this can be done from the position in the video or across the lane in the furthest bush. The ADC (or Support) will have to cross the slow to get to their grabbed lane partner.

If the ungrabbed duo partner is ranged, they may be standing glacial augment slow which will give them a damage debuff and obviously the slow.

The closer you are to your target, the better, because we want to use most of our travel distance, holding a target with E.

Play safe til you get Heartsteel, poke with Q, wait for them to make a move and then target ADC with CC. This is the most important thing to remember.

Most bot lane matchups are ADC's alongside poke supports, you will lose if you overstep, pay attenton to cooldowns to secure bushes and cannon minions, you will be okay.

After you get Heartsteel you get to play the game a little bit more. Utilize bushes a lot to hide what your intentions are, wait for adc to step up and then punish them.

Once you get Iceborn (if you are able to use the standard or the armor heavy build) you can force a lot of fights (within reason)that will result in kills in lane.
If you can roam to mid to force a fight, do it, it will most likey result in a free kill for your mid laner due to your E being able to make them very far away from their safety zone.

Keep in mind that if you push people out of their safety zone, they will have to cross the glacial augment slow to get back to their safety zone (i.e. tower, allies) they will most likely look for alrternative routes or blow flash to escape.

If you and your ADC are doing well in bot lane, dont be afraid to roam to mid! The amount of utility that you provide with E is insane and can help your mid lane get ahead provided that you scan ahead for wards and nail that gank!

With this build, you are nothing but a displacement machine. You dont do damage, you are a huge punching bag keep that in mind.

Initiate as much as possible on high value targets, keep them locked down and let your team follow.

Try not to grab tanks. Grabbing tanks puts them in a position that they want to be in literally for free.

If you can get in range safely, try to make sure to displace the grabbed target as far away from their team as possible.


With this build, you will be very tanky, but dont let that go to your head! Keep in mind that it doesnt make any sense to use E and go straight into a 3-4 enemies because you grabbed someone and stunned them into a wall.

Play with your team, get a good position and play through walls so the enemy team has less time to react!

Also, using your E to make u-turns is just as helpful as stuns, if you can do both, even better.

- Heartsteel is really good here on Skarner due to the extra damage he gets from max HP, it also makes you into a major punching bag (as long as you get stacks), stacking is really easy especially with E. Simply wait til they have the heartsteel icon pop up, E in, pin then auto. Bingo, you just got the free-est stack in the world. Rinse and repeat.

- Merc. Treads Really nice for lowering the time that you will be stunned for and the extra MR is always nice, would recommend against stun heavy botlane. Can swap out for Plated Steelcaps for more AD heavy botlane.

- Celestial Opposition is a great option for Skarner, we will take some damage on our way in with E, this helps negate some of that damage up front and give us some damage resist as we go in a and single someone out. Especially helpful against high burst. Can be swapped out for Solstice Sleigh if theres not too much damage in botlane for that sweet movement speed burst for your ADC.

- Iceborn Gauntlet is our bread and butter for this build, it gives us a lot of CC capability. This with Glacial Augment makes it so you can have tonnnnnns of CC, Glacial Augment and Iceborne Gauntlet both proc off of E. Basically it goes like this,
E > Glacial procs on grab > ram them into a wall > auto attack for Iceborne Gauntlet and Heartsteel proc.

- Jak'shos is just a general sustain item during teamfights, nothing too special for this.

- Thornmail just for general healcut, can swap this out if the enemy team doesn't have a whole lot of healing potential. Dead man's plate is a good replacement for extra damage, movement speed and general tankyness against AD.

- Heartsteel is really good here on Skarner due to the extra damage he gets from max HP, it also makes you into a major punching bag (as long as you get stacks), stacking is really easy especially with E. Simply wait til they have the heartsteel icon pop up, E in, pin then auto. Bingo, you just got the free-est stack in the world. Rinse and repeat.

- Merc. Treads Really nice for lowering the time that you will be stunned for and the extra MR is always nice, would recommend against stun heavy botlane. Can swap out for Plated Steelcaps for more AD heavy botlane.

- Celestial Opposition is a great option for Skarner, we will take some damage on our way in with E, this helps negate some of that damage up front and give us some damage resist as we go in a and single someone out. Especially helpful against high burst.

- Banshee's Veil, for the obvious MR but mainly for the spell shield that you get with it, using your E means that your movement and intentions are going to be easily predictable making you more succeptable to ranged stuns and stuns in general. Grabbing Banshee's Veil helps lessen that issue.

- Jak'shos is just a general sustain item during teamfights, nothing too special for this.

-Kaenic's Rookern is a REALLLLLLLY nice item due to the MR amount and the shield that it provides scales off of %11 max hp, and we have alot of health.

- Heartsteel is really good here on Skarner due to the extra damage he gets from max HP, it also makes you into a major punching bag (as long as you get stacks), stacking is really easy especially with E. Simply wait til they have the heartsteel icon pop up, E in, pin then auto. Bingo, you just got the free-est stack in the world. Rinse and repeat.

- Plated Steelcaps for early game armor.

- Celestial Opposition is a great option for Skarner, we will take some damage on our way in with E, this helps negate some of that damage up front and give us some damage resist as we go in a and single someone out. Especially helpful against high burst. Can be swapped out for Solstice Sleigh if theres not too much damage in botlane for that sweet movement speed burst for your ADC.

- Iceborn Gauntlet is our bread and butter for this build, it gives us a lot of CC capability. This with Glacial Augment makes it so you can have tonnnnnns of CC, Glacial Augment and Iceborne Gauntlet both proc off of E. Basically it goes like this,
E > Glacial procs on grab > ram them into a wall > auto attack for Iceborne Gauntlet and Heartsteel proc.

- Jak'shos is just a general sustain item during teamfights, nothing too special for this.

- Thornmail just for general healcut, can swap this out if the enemy team doesn't have a whole lot of healing potential. Dead man's plate is a good replacement for extra damage, movement speed and general tankyness against AD.

Play Video So, you have decided that you want to hurt people.

This build is WIP AF, use at your own risk, like so WIP I have only tested it out in practice tool.

But here goes.

- Heartsteel is really good here on Skarner due to the extra damage he gets from max HP, it also makes you into a major punching bag (as long as you get stacks), stacking is really easy especially with E. Simply wait til they have the heartsteel icon pop up, E in, pin then auto. Bingo, you just got the free-est stack in the world. Rinse and repeat.

- Merc. Treads Really nice for lowering the time that you will be stunned for and the extra MR is always nice, would recommend against stun heavy botlane. Can swap out for Plated Steelcaps for more AD heavy botlane.

- Iceborn Gauntlet is our bread and butter for this build, it gives us a lot of CC capability. This with Glacial Augment makes it so you can have tonnnnnns of CC, Glacial Augment and Iceborne Gauntlet both proc off of E. Basically it goes like this,
E > Glacial procs on grab > ram them into a wall > auto attack for Iceborne Gauntlet, Heartsteel, AND Sundered Sky proc.

- Celestial Opposition is a great option for Skarner, we will take some damage on our way in with E, this helps negate some of that damage up front and give us some damage resist as we go in a and single someone out. Especially helpful against high burst. Can be swapped out for Solstice Sleigh if theres not too much damage in botlane for that sweet movement speed burst for your ADC.

- Sundered Sky, this allows us to do some fun amounts of damage between, Heartsteel, Dead Man's Plate, and Iceborn Gauntlet. It allows us to crit on the first attack against every new UNIQUE target, think Miss Fortune passive.

- Dead Man's Plate is also really nice for being able to chase down targets (especially after self stunning with Q) and further slowing targets with the passive bonus damage.

(This concept is still a WIP I will add more information and tweaks as I see fit! Have fun! :) )