Spirit of the Spectral Wraith why the hate?

[Marsal]

I just flicked through a few skarner pages and in all the guides they use the other 2 jungler items. And I have no idea why. It gives everything a skarner needs in jungle or in general. Gives AP, spellvamp, manareg, cd reduce which is awesome because skarner is practically still an ap champ and cdr helps pretty much. And thats the only item that reduces the smite cd. Combinated with the mastery page summoner cdr it gives you the ultimate jungler speed. So why, why the hate for this awesome item?

 

[Steel_Stallion]

Because it's likely your team needs you to be tanky. You don't pick up Skarnar for the damage output.

 

[Kanadaj]

Skarner is a melee champion without instant gap-closer. Getting Anvient Golem will give you +500hp for an extremely low price, so you get it rather early. It won't affect your damage output that badly compared to Spectral Wraith, but in late game you need to be tanky, and it helps when you gank as well - you won't die instantly if you are focused by, let's say, a lvl 6 LeBlanc.

The point is, right now the most powerful jungling item is Spirit of the Ancient Golem, then comes Lizard Elder - that's why they buy it even for Evelyn.

 

[Marsal]

But still, I'd rather go for a rylai and a spectral if i want to last that much.

 

[Kanadaj]

Oh man, you know that the other Spirit items give CDR as well, right?
If you play a tank, go with high CDR, HP, armor & MR and CC. That's all you need. Skarner is not a carry. He never will be, since he lacks gap closer. He is just too easy to focus. This is the same reason why you don't build Nocturne or Aatrox full AD - you will suck late game, and if the enemy laner knows what s/he is doing, you will die while you try to gank.

For AP tanks I always go Ancient Golem, Armor/MR/MS boots, Rylai, Randuin's Omen/Frozen Hearth and Sunfire Cape/Abyssal Scepter depending on the enemy team. This is a pretty general build, for AD I usually switch Rylai with Frozen Mallet. That is, if you play something like Malphite/Rammus/Skarner, who have a stupid amount of CC being a tank, so you cannot be ignored anyways.

 

[Marsal]

Why would anyone build skarner ad tank... it's totally futile. Still if you want to be that tanky you could just purchase spectral so you can jungle much faster and get more money for other tanky items. If you(and others) did your job right the lanes you gank wont have that much damage and you don't have to be that tanky to survive a tf.

 

[Paliouras]

The only damage item id get on skarner would be triforce/iceborn/hextech gunblade(unusual but works).Other are mostly tank items

 

[shadow2632]

Hello, having skanner as one of my most played champs, I will give you a few advices:

1. If you want to build some damage early game in skanner, I recommend you get Spirit of the Elder Lizard. I often do this. Why? If you manage to stick near to target you have perma-slow of you Q, you have a continuous source of pure damage through this item not to mention all the other great stats it gives you. The 500hp from Spirit of the Ancient Golem is good but not awesome, early game you maximize you Q and W which gives you a little health boost to tank. You basically ignore E so you can get this item as a first goal and then straight forward go for a Giant's Belt or just whatever tanky items you wanna build. I dont often buy any more damage items.

2. As skanner you need to be tanky and that is a fact. You will often be a meat shield, a tower diver, a iniciator and all these things mean you will take tons of damage. You need pure tank items, there is no room for middle tanky items such as rylay or whatever, you already have an awesome CC in your Q and something like a Warmog's Armor or sunfire cape will help tanking much more.

3. If I have the chance to complete my build in the game I will show how it would look like this:
Spirit of the Elder Lizard - Boots (left to choice) - Warmog's Armor - Sunfire Cape - Spirit Visage -

As a final item I often build what my team needs more; more tankyness on me, more CC/damage (Iceborn Gauntlet). Is important to know each game is different and therefore your build and point of view should be different towards it.

4. The only time I would agree to get Spirit of the Ancient Golem in the first place would be in cases in which for any reason you havent been able to participate in kills early game. You have been counter-jungle hard. You start like 0/3/0. You are the jungler, your income is very limited. Therefore in these game is better to secure rather than hoping gold will come out of nowhere.

This is just my advice, I can be wrong over all of this. My summoner name is shadow26 and I am in promo to Gold IV.

 

[Chaosy]

edit: I read wrong on your post.

I dont think its viable because it gives AP and CDR.

AP does indeed stack on 3 of your abilities but AD is better than AP. And you will get the 40% CDR from other items mid/late game anyway.

frozen heart and sprit visage is the common items to get the CDR

 

[Marsal]

4 ap ablities*
i mean its viable because ap and spellvamp, thanks to these you can last longer in battle just like with tankier items

 

[Chaosy]

oh yeah the Q stacks on both ad and ap, not only ad was it?

tanky item gives 450 hp or something.
your E will heal like 5 more per unit which is nothing.

the spell vamp could be ok but then I would rather buy a vamp scepter after the tanky jungle item.

+ tenacity is key in most matchups, so you can buy ninja tabi to counter their adc + top/jungle/mid depending on their pick.

to skip this kinda pointless topic just look here:

http://www.probuilds.net/champions/Skarner

^^ not a single one uses your item = not viable

 

[Marsal]

AD only stacks for the first hit, after skarner gets the energy buff it stacks only with AP
maybe they just dont want to try another build. None of the so called "pro players" try different things.
http://breakthemeta.com

 

[Vunjo]

not a single one uses your item = not viable

On the contrary, most of League of Legends players are young and not educated well, which means they are inexperienced in calculating in gaming, thus meaning their builds are plain dull and normal. Normal (meta) builds are no good. Denying this means you're an average LoL player (By intelligence, I don't give a rat's ass about divisions).

Example, one of the least bought items. Runaan's hurricane.
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Runaan's_Hurricane
Check the link, and see how it stacks with certain champion's abilities.
Ashe's Frost Shot can now permanently slow 3 party members. So you become an ADC with a huge amount of CC, and that's a beast.
Caitlyn's auto attacks generate passive. With runaan's hurricane, it's more than 3 times as fast. If attacking from bush, every single auto attack should proc headshot (Not tested though, just a theory). If any meta guy would say that 50% bonus damage on each auto attack is useless, please, step aside, it's op.
Every 2. twisted fate's auto attack will proc his passive E with this item. Get 2.0 attack speed, and volia! You're doing 155 + 40%AP per second to single target (Tested it, worked perfectly). Again, can't call this useless.
Graves' cooldown on Quickdraw is reduced by 3 seconds per auto. With maxed attack speed and cdr, you should be able to use the spell approximately every 1 < x < 2 seconds. Combine it with Frozen mallet for perma slow 3 targets, Triforce to proc the spellblade so often, and with that (Silly) build, you can kite anyone forever, while still doing damage, + being tanky. Bruiser Graves op.

But wait, there's more.
Since runaan's hurricane procs on hit effects, other items benefit from it as well (Statikk Shiv procs insanely fast, 30 per hit, Frozen Mallet applies slow to all 3, etc.).

This is just a random example how a single item, one that's really rarely bought, can actually make your champion a whole lot stronger, to conclude:
Nobody buys your item means there's a small chance that you're a genious and other are idiots.