This is a high cost build so you do not want to roam every lane in the start. You can also start cloth armor if your enemy team is ad heavy and u want to pick up Ninja Tabi instead, also if u want the extra mobility i sometimes pick myself a pair of "Boots of Swiftness". When playing Skarner like this only use best gank opportunity´s and farm as much as possible early-game. You cannot afford being 2 levels behind because of failganks. Leading into mid-game you are trying to gank constantly with some breaks for going back to base and pick up/give away buffs as seen necessary.

This is the most efficient build with my aggressive playstyle. This gives you "Tons of damage" while you are being beefy with some health, armor and MR as well as you have a portion of Life steal and Spell vamp. K

Hope this changed your point of view on how you can be able to play Skarner.

(keep in mind i like keeping my guides open minded, this gives the reader to not having a specific recipe to follow but make his/her own little twitches)