• 
  Divine Sunderer is just a great item on Skarner right now because you get solid healing and sustain from the passive, but it also gives you a sheen proc to abuse, and the mixed pen fits in nicely with skarner's kit. It's one of the better mythics to buy for him at the moment, so I'm also picking it up.
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  I prefer Merc Treads in most matchups for the tenacity, but if it's a heavy AD comp or the carry is the ADC or another auto heavy champion then Steelcaps should be fine too.
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  Muramana is a staple item on Skarner and for good reason. It gives a solid amount of mana and enough AD to fully satisfy Skarner for the mid game. It's a solid purchase and a big part of this build.
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  Randuin's Omen has a solid amount of Armor, some health which works nicely for Skarner, and the AD reduction + the slow on active make catching up to enemies even easier and will help you stay alive in fights long enough to get a pick with your ultimate
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  Blade Of The Ruined King gives some sustain for Skarner as there are times where you're going to be in a side lane when nothing is happening and there's nothing better to do than farm. It also has a nice 3 hit passive and deals % health damage, helping to increase your damage against beefier opponents in the mid to late game.
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  Black Cleaver will be best for its health gain and for the armor shred it gives, allowing us to not only shred armor, but subsequently shred health bars. It'll be a nice pick me up in the late game to make sure you stay as relevant as a skarner can get these days.
  

  Alternative Items

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  Force Of Nature is a solid item on Skarner because it ties into the tenacity we're building by giving us stacking movement speed whenever we get hit with CC, also giving an additional stack when we're hit by immobilizing effects. It's also an incredible MR item as it gives 70 Magic Resist. This item can be swapped with Randuin's against AP heavy comps, or comps where you feel your current tenacity isn't enough to get you out of their hard CC chains.
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  Hullbreaker is going to be a good situational item when all you want to do is sit in a side lane and dual the enemy top laner for 30 minutes. It gives plenty of tank stats when you're alone and makes it easier to push lanes. This is really best to use when you just wanna split push, or the enemy team doesn't have good mobility, allowing you to go in and out of top or bot with ease.

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  Lethal Tempo is a good Keystone for Skarner as he's naturally going to favor high attack speed with his kit and at max stacks the bonus range helps him get more hits on enemies before they can get out. It also allows for some kiting if you're good enough to make it work on Skarner.
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  Presence Of Mind is a solid rune on Skarner as one of his biggest issues is mana. He spends it really quick in the top lane since we aren't making the best use of our spires so he needs some help maintaining his mana. Presence Of Mind will pair with Muramana to do that.
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  Tenacity will help us avoid getting locked down every teamfight and ensuring we can get close enough to drag a poor soul over with R and force a 1v4 before the fight.
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  It's going to be a pretty common occurence to be low hp or have a close fight during laning phase as you have to be on top of someone to deal any real damage and most meta matchups can punish you really hard for it. With Last Stand you'll have some bonus damage to make your trades feel more impactful when you're down to little health.
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  Conditioning is going to further solidify your tank stats so you can go in and rip **** up without being too easy to burst down. It also helps you stay tanky in the times when you have to group and lose hullbreaker passive for a bit.
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  Unflinching will also pair with Legend: Tenacity to help you get out of any hard CC the enemy team throws at you and keep you out of the infinite cc loop during teamfights.

Strong Late Game: This build turns you into a shredding MONSTER late game. Anyone who gets locked down by you is either dead immediately or doesn't have enough health to continue fighting. All it takes is one stun to destroy someone.

Cheap Build: This build is fairly cheap so getting to full build shouldn't be too hard with proper CSing and scaling. As long as you're not inting it shouldn't be too hard to at least get 3 to 4 items.


Early Mana: Up until you start stacking tear you're going to struggle a little with mana retention unless you can get ahead and make trips every now and then to the spire in top river.

Weak Early Game: Early Game is going to be a bit tough to outright win as we're spending most of this time establishing lane presence. Essentially just maintaining good farm and getting tanky to avoid going into the mid game with the same tankiness as the ADC. Things don't really pop off until mid game.