Smite role guide: The jungler

While Smite is very accessible to new players, certain things cannot be trained offline. Tell me if you’ve thought something like this before: “Man, I’d love to jungle in this game, but I have no practice with it and I’d only screw up, so I’d better play something useful instead.” I’m certain you have. Jungling is perhaps the most impressive role if played right, but there’s an extreme learning curve to pick it up. What routes do you take, how do you properly help your team? And most of all, what if you screw up?

Let me tell you, there isn’t as much to it as you may think. In typical Smite design fashion, the up-front tactics are memorised in five minutes, the rest comes down to practice. “What are the front up tactics,” you ask. Why, am I not glad you asked!

Overview

First off, what does a jungler do? Simply put, a jungler is there to annoy the enemy team as much as possible and throw them off their play. While in this role, you’ll earn your gold and experience primarily by clearing the neutral camps between lanes. Since you’re not laning as normal, the enemy team will be under constant pressure. No one can see you, so you might as well be hiding in the bushes right next to them, waiting to tear them apart. Which you often will be, before once again disappearing to steal all their buffs. In addition, your “lane partner” will get more gold and experience since they don’t have to share them with anyone.

That being said, you’ll leave said partner alone for a very long time, so make sure you only play jungler if your team can support it. There’s nothing more embarrassing than having to stay in lane as a jungler because your partner got themselves killed yet again through dumb play. It’s commonly expected that a jungler will place wards for the team since they’ll already be moving through those spots. Ha ha haaa! Sorry. No one wards. In case you do feel like it though, here’s a reference map for about where you should place your wards. Don’t worry, it’ll come naturally to you over time.

Gods, itemisation and route

In essence, every god with enough damage potential can be a successful jungler. However, squishier gods tend to have more difficulty getting off the ground, so it’s usually physical damage dealers who will jungle. Fenrir, Thor, and Ne Zha are commonly played junglers, though they aren’t the only ones. This is not a god guide for those gods, however. You can find more information on them at other sites like SmiteFire. Jungling doesn’t change much about their builds, save for two things. First, lifesteal items are much more prevalent in jungling builds. They tend to improve uptime and ensure you don’t go into ganks with 10% HP. Second, you always buy Bumba’s Mask as a starter item, even if the build you’re going doesn’t normally include a starter item. Seriously, there’s no discussion. That mask is vital.

At the start of the game, you want to…

• Grab a speed (orange) buff. One or two other gods has to come over and help you get it, so ask them if they aren’t already there.
• Next, kill mana (blue) buff if you still have people helping you, or the smaller Fury camp close to your base if not. Move on to the middle gold camps afterwards, as you should be strong enough to defeat them on your own then.
• Cross through midlane (killing the enemy mid on the way is optional, but hilarious) and grab the other side’s mid gold camp if it’s up. If not, clear the small gold camp and/or mana buff until you have enough money to upgrade your boots to tier 2.
• With that done, you should be able to take on the damage (red) buff camp. If something prevents you from getting speed (like a teammate committing the cardinal sin of taking speed from the jungler) you can also go for damage buff first, though you’ll also need help with that.
  • Excess gold can be invested in a Hand of the Gods to make clearing camps easier and faster, as well as helping with map objectives later on.

After that, you’re essentially free to do as you please. Kill whatever is up (the buff icon on the minimap will respawn when the cyclopes do) and punish enemies for pushing out too far. Everything else is practice. Get out there and collect some, you’re still fresh. Remember, people will get worked up no matter what you do (ganking is often considered killstealing by players who don’t understand they couldn’t have killed the enemy on their own) and every match has to have a loser, so don’t sweat it if you lose the coinflip. As long as you’re doing your best to learn from your mistakes, no one has the right to blame you.

Interested in Smite? Check it out through this link and start playing for free! If I happen to be online when you are, send me a message and we might play together! (Username is, obviously, Toraka.) This message is not sponsored, unless you count giving me favor and being an awesome game as sponsoring.