Jungling: A look at the Evolving Build and Role of a Jungler

Introduction

After looking at pro play, several distinct build patterns have arisen. While all junglers build Bumba’s Mask as their starter item, most then proceed into Warrior Tabi. This seems to be consistent through all of the junglers in every game, but at this point a certain degree of flexibility has become possible, namely in the second item. While many junglers still elect to build into Jotunn’s Wrath for the penetration, cooldown reduction and mana, some junglers have begun building Void Shield in this spot, originating from the rise of Nemesis in the jungle. This choice of build has opened the doors to great amounts of customization in build paths, which has dramatically changed the purpose of the jungler.

Jotunn’s Wrath

Source: Smite Gamepedia

This was the old second item that was core on all of the assassins in the jungle. It provides penetration, mana, and cooldown reduction. Everything you could want as a jungler. While the jungler was rapidly clearing and rotating, this was the best item that could possibly be built on a jungler, as the mana and cooldown helped to have much faster and reliable clear. This is still the most common item to build on junglers, as even many SPL junglers still elect to build Jotunn’s second for these same reasons because it still accomplishes the same goals as it did then. The reasons for building Jotunn’s Wrath have not changed, but the role of the jungler has evolved greatly since the introduction of a jungler into the meta of Smite, and it is continuing to evolve.

Originally taking cues from other MOBAs, the jungler was focusing on clearing camps and farming that way. The biggest issue with translating this into Smite was that there is not enough farm for the jungler to be able to exist only in the jungler, so the junlgers of Smite have always been faced with the decision to either farm the jungle and fall behind in farm, or to leech experience from the waves across the map. This decision is simple, and is aided by the structure of the map itself, one that has a smaller distance between lanes, as well as fewer jungle camps. As the Season 3 meta has grown, the lane that the jungler sits in is the mid lane. This means that the jungler sits in the mid lane and rotates to clear jungle camps with the mid laner as they come up, is in a central location to contest the mid harpies, and a central location to gank the other lanes. While this is the ideal case, the jungler and mid laner are becoming another form of duo lane, and the jungler is taking on the role of secondary support through the mid game and transitioning into the big team-fighting ultimate in the late game.

The Rise of Void Shield.

This item was first brought into the meta through the rise of Nemesis in the SPL, and is furthering the support-assassin style of mid laner that the Conquest map is fostering. Void Shield is an item that gives physical power and protections, as well as removing 20 physical protections from enemies within a certain radius. This allows you to deal more damage to, and take less damage from, the enemy jungler. This flat protection reduction was most helpful on Nemesis because Nemesis would use Divine Judgement, her ultimate ability, on the other jungler, stealing 50% on their protections, and then the flat 20 protection reduction, meaning that you are going to be hitting much harder and absorb more damage, both things Nemesis seeks to do. While this item was first built on Nemesis, other junglers began picking it up too.

The rise of Void Shield is a testament to the changing role of the Smite jungler, transitioning from a roaming killer to a mid-focused support that occasionally travels about to other lanes. With this realization, building a jungler has evolved more from a single-target damage trope, that the assassin has been responsible for filling, and more into a big team-fighting ultimate carrier that has a lot of set-up for the mid-lane mage’s big burst, as well as a support for the mid-laner. This can be seen in the rise of gods such as Hun Batz, Ne Zha and Awilix. Ne Zha was only played as a niche support pick for a very long time, and is now being picked and banned in the jungle, as he now works for that mid-lane support role that the jungler has become. Hun Batz has always been considered decent, but has only been seeing extensive play recently, as a result of his ult, Fear No Evil, being such a drastic team fight shifting ability, as well as it being great setup for burst damage out of the mage. Awilix support has widely been considered a janky pick in ranked, but the rise of Awilix in the jungle can be attributed to the nature of playing Awilix in more of a support style. Thor support has even been run in the SPL several times, but Thor has always been a top-tier jungler.

This rise of support tuned junglers has also seen the fall of the high single-target damage assassins in the jungle, such as Serquet and Ao Kuang. Ao Kuang does see play, and is also regarded as one of the most “OP” gods in Smite. This would make people believe that he has a 100% pick/ban rate in the SPL, which is not the truth. Hardly any team will ever first pick an Ao Kuang because he has little in the way of setup for the mage, and his damage only comes into consideration once he has some items online. This has made him fall out of the meta slightly, as he does not fill the role that a jungler needs to. Serquet was nerfed and fell out of the meta, but has since been buffed and is still seeing very little play and a very low win percentage in the SPL. While Serquet does still deal high amounts of damage to a single target, she has little to no way of affecting a team fight in the late game, and has fallen out of the meta because of it.

 

Conclusion

While the role of the jungler has, and will continue to, evolve in Smite, it is still important to build for what you want to do. This should be how you think no matter what role you are playing in. You need to be building towards a goal, with an idea in mind. For a jungler to want to play a more support style, building a Void Shield or another item to help be more tanky or in a more support role will help your team find the victory, but without the single-target damage that the assassin class has been known to bring. This is why it is important to build properly for what you want to accomplish with the character than simply what a “best build” would be. Copying your favorite jungler’s builds from the SPL is a good start, but if you build a support Ne Zha and attempt to 100 to 0 targets on the enemy team, it isn’t going to work. The best build for a character will always be tied to what your goal with the character is, whether it is damage or support.

 

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