5 Tips to Make You a More Successful Jungler in Season 4

Jungling in Smite can be a daunting task, especially if you're newer to the game or the ranked format. To help you with a role that seems to require you to be everywhere at once, here are 5 tips for effective jungling that will help get you started as a beginner or give you something to think about as a more experienced jungler.

1) Balance ganks and farm

Everyone knows that the jungler's job is to get farm from the jungle and gank lanes. However, the balance between these two abilities is often hard to achieve and changes every game. The reason it is so difficult is that it is something that is difficult to concretely describe. However, this way of thinking is flawed in general. The gank/farm balance is something you need to be maintaining at all portions of the game.

 
If you're particularly struggling with the gank/farm balance, taking a god who is good at both like Thor can help you on your learning curve.

An easy way to think about it is a set of scales, with ganks on one side and farm on the other. If you notice you're a very high level but your team is getting out pressured, you've been focusing on farm too much and you need to gank more and relieve some pressure in your team’s lanes. If you've been ganking consistently to the point where your team has the advantage but you're behind, consider dedicating more of your time to farming efficiently. 

It's act of maintaining this balance that will most influence your early and mid-game as a jungler and help you be an effective team member in all respects.

2) Understand where to focus and when to shift focus

While the whole jungle is important, it isn't all equally important at the same times. Too often, you see junglers trying to put equal focus on all parts of the map at once, and it leads to them being stretched thin and having very low impact overall. While the movement of jungle importance is very fluid like most things within Smite, it can be put to words to help you understand it better.

At the beginning of the game, the solo lane side of the jungle is vastly more valuable for you than the duo lane side and there are a few reasons for this. First, and most obviously, there are 2 camps on this side of the map compared to the one camp that you go for on the duo lane side. Therefore, there is more for you to secure and more to fight over in general. Also, from the start of the game to the ten-minute mark, a set of three elementals spawn that are also incredibly valuable because of how much gold they give. However, there is only one set for both teams, and it's these mobs that make the solo lane side so worthy of your attention. Contesting them is important for securing your mid-game and your early items and power spikes.

This progression of focus continues into Season 4 as well, as the Fire Imps continue to take the early game focus and the Gold Fury continues to be the main focus during the mid-game.

After the Fire Elementals stop spawning and you've made it through the early game, your focus should shift over to the duo lane side of the map. The reason for this being that the Gold Fury becomes an option for both teams and that the ADC becomes more relevant. Not putting enough pressure on this side at this time can lead to the enemy team sneaking the Gold Fury behind your back and getting an easy lead. Pressure on this side should also be focused on ganking the duo lane itself, because getting your ADC ahead can lead to you having an easier time securing the Gold Fury for yourselves.

What you may notice is that in between these two sides is the mid lane. Now while it's importance is being toned down in Season 4, the midlane will always be vitally important for the jungler. Not only is it a staging point for you for the entire game with its central position, but sharing farm with your midlaner and rotating with them is key to making an impact across the entire map.

3) Ganking with impact

Ganking isn't as simple as just showing up to a lane and throw some abilities out. Ganking with a meaningful impact is a combination of timing, intuition, and knowing how aggressive to be. It is useless to gank late or gank early, as both lead to minimal impact and wasting of your time and your team's time. However, this doesn't mean rotating when your laners are in danger or in an opportune position. Rotating at these times means that by the time you get there, it's already too late.

Intuition plays a big role once you actually start ganking. It's something that's difficult to teach in general, but the more you think about the game the better your intuition becomes. Intuition is predicting where enemies will go, what abilities they will use, and, most importantly, being able to read when enemies are baiting you and trying to swing the situation in their favor.

Aggressiveness is something that requires you to think about outside factors before considering. The more aggressive you are, the riskier it is and the bigger the consequences are. There's no point to risk yourself for no gain, so ganks where the objective is to gain a window for a map objective are definitely ones that condone aggressiveness. However, in other situations, it might be more beneficial to gank more conservatively, just to relieve map pressure. 

Season 4's new Oracle Harpies give a new reason to aggressively gank the duo lane, as securing a free ward on gold fury can be extremely useful

4) Being ready to be a secondary support/frontliner

While usually the role of the support/frontliner is given to the support or the solo lane, it is sometimes necessary for you to step in and fill in these roles. If your solo laner has fallen behind and can't reliably frontline or your support is having to stay in duo lane for a longer amount of time, then you might be required to take up their roles in the mid-game to help push your team to success. While this isn't a possibility for every god in the game, most junglers in Smite can take on a more control orientated role if need be.

Supports like Khepri are more suited to peeling than frontlining, so you may have to take on the role if your team drafts a Khepri

The way to mold your mid-game playstyle to fit this role is mostly down to how you use your abilities and your build path. Most junglers have a good amount of crowd control, but often focus on the damaging portion of their abilities. When you need to be a more supportive character for your team, your crowd control is more valuable than your damage, as it allows you to control fights, peel for your teammates and set them up to do damage.

Your build path is very important when performing this role. It's useless trying to be a support/frontliner with a build designed to dive backlines and kill enemy squishies. However, this doesn't mean you need to build items that are exclusively designed for defense. There are items made for these intermediate roles and their general name is "bridge items", because they are a bridge between defense and attack. Items like Void Shield, which provides protections but also power and a strong debuff aura, are great for this role, because it allows you to be the hybrid that the role requires you to be.

Void Shield gives power, protections and reduces enemy protections in a large radius, making it a very efficient bridge item

5) Communicate

This is a good tip for any role in Smite, but for the jungler it is the most vital because the jungler usually has the most to say. Due to the nature of their role and the fact they traverse the entire map on a regular basis, the jungler sees the most and therefore can gain the most information about the enemy team. However, it's useless to keep this information to yourself. Relay everything you can to your team, enemy pathways, their timings, when they're doing buffs, how aggressive each laner is being etc. All this information is useful for your team as it helps them formulate a better picture of your enemies and allows for a plan to be formed faster and easier. 

As a final note, have fun! While jungling is daunting, as with all roles, it gets more fun the more you learn. I hope you gained something from this guide and it helps you jungle in the future!

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