This start works fairly decent for every physical attack based jungler:
Items:
- Cloth Armor, 5 HP pots.
- Run through some camps (will mention the route later), and buy yourself a Madred's Razor
- Keep running through camps, feel free to gank or at least shoot off a parrrley or two to help out the lanes, and keep running around until you have boots (They usually depend on the enemy team)
- Run around camps some more until you have you have upgraded boots and a Wriggle
(Item priority order: Razor -> Boots 1 -> Wriggle -> Boots 2)
That pretty much creates a solid start for any jungler. Past that, feel free to build in what ever way you want. (that obviously being an Atmogs, Yoummu and Infinity, and maybe a Phantom)
Route:
This one is if the enemy has a jungler:
- Your Wolves
- Your Blue
- Your Wraiths
- Your Small Golems
- Your Your Red
- Your Wraiths
- Your Wolves
- Teleport Back
This one is if the enemy DOESNT have a jungler (and is something i came up with without any external help):
- Their Blue
- Their Wolves
- Your Wraiths
- Your Small Golems
- Your Red
- Your wolves (when you take this camp out, tell your mid to pick up Your Blue)
- Your Blue (To mid)
- Their Wraiths
- Their Small Golems
- Teleport (Save Their Red for when you got yer entire fit)
I havent used this route for a while tho, so i cant remember when you should pick up a Madred's Razor, but do it as soon as you have gold for it.
Masteries should be 21/9, focusing on physicals in the offense tree, and armor in the defense.
As for runes, Armor Yellows, MagRes/lvl blues. For reds, depending on what you want, either some crit runes, or ArPen for the jungling. For the quints, ArPen, Crit runes or Gold/10 runes (switch out your Defense masteries for utility masteries for full benefit of G/10).
In general, I would say it is an absolutely horrible idea to not have smite.
Smite allows you to clear the early jungle faster, but its more important aspect is control over Dragon and Baron. Most junglers will keep smite up as much as possible in the late game for Baron and Dragon so they have the ability to steal or take the objective more easily.
A stolen Baron or Dragon can easily help sway a game in a team's favor. The global gold (and buff in the case of Baron) is a huge boon to a team. It can allow you to stay in game if you are behind or seal the deal if you are ahead. By not running smite you are putting that at risk.
You might be able to get away with no smite if the enemy also lacked it, but you are making the taking of Dragon and Baron that much more of a gamble. If your team has smite and the enemy does not, then it is infinitely easier to steal both those objectives.
Nunu is one of the few junglers that could run without smite. His consume does comparable true damage to neutral creeps allowing for a lot more objective control compared to junglers without smite. Cho'Gath has a similar ability with his ultimate Feast, since it does such a large amount of true damage to neutral monsters.
However I'd still run Smite, it is just that important.
Update:
With Season 3¹²³, Riot has moved the jungle closer to its season one state wherein the monsters are much stronger. To compensate they have included some jungle only items (Hunter's Machete, Spirit Stone, etc) but overall the difficulty has been ramped up. This makes smite much more important for no/low sustain junglers. Without using smite you have to suffer much more damage from the larger camps, forcing you to fall behind as you retreat to the fountain to heal.
Best Answer
First of all, the simplest part of your post to deal with is his Crystalline Slash. You're correct that you need to hit it twice in order to generate the slow debuff. You do NOT have to hit it twice on the enemy champion. As you run towards your gank target, hit Crystalline Slash once when it range of enemy creeps. This way, when you Crystalline Slash the enemy, you are immediately slowing.
Second, Skarner is all about the ability to quickly get on your target, since all of his abilities require being in so close. Start off by using the increased movement speed quints and putting 4 points in Swiftness. With these, plus boots 1, you will be at 405 move speed. When your Crystalline Exoskeleton is active, you'll jump all the way up to 452 move speed.
Finally, when ganking, pay attention to where you are coming from. Often you want to be moving from behind the enemy in lane. If you come out in front of them, or from the wrong side if you're ganking middle, then they can retreat in a straight line making their escape significantly simpler.
If you want to watch a pro play Skarner and learn from them, look up Diamondprox. He's the jungler on Moscow 5, an elite LOL competitive team.