Ganking in SMITE: When, How and Why?

An important aspect of the jungle role is ganking. This has always been the case, and the return of the speed buff goes a long way in enabling the jungler to efficiently rotate and pressure the map without losing too much farm. This will be a look into when to gank, how to go about it, and what the goal of ganking should be.

When should I gank?

Source: techpowerup.com

If you listen to some of your teammates, it is the jungler’s job to constantly be pressuring all 3 lanes at the same time. While this would be great, it is unreasonable and at times distracting to the jungler. If you are not jungling, try and avoid calling for a gank every wave. Even if the jungler starts to rotate, the time they spend rotating is time that they are not farming, which will just put your team further behind. The timing of a gank can be tricky. Knowing when to rotate can be a hard thing to grasp, but it is the key to being an impactful jungler. The best way to be impactful is largely player-dependent, but some general tips can be applied to all situations. Generally, rotating to help your solo laner secure their own blue buff on respawn is a great call, as it allows you to also secure your speed buff. This makes sense, but rotating slightly before the buff spawns can allow you to gank the solo lane. If you can do enough damage, you can potentially cause the opposing solo laner to return to base, allowing you and your solo laner to pressure the enemy’s jungle. This will allow you to secure both of the opposing side jungle buffs with relative safety. When doing this, it is important to note that the blue buff and speed buff have different timers, the blue buff taking 3 minutes to respawn and the speed buff taking 4 minutes to respawn. Because of this, looking to take the opposing back harpies is also a good choice. These camps have a respawn timer of only 80 seconds, meaning that they will almost always be up and available to steal away.

Another good thing to think about when timing a gank is when the early game wards will be running out. It is not uncommon, particularly in higher level games, for the jungle to be warded before the game starts, which means that vision will be falling off around the 3-minute mark. Timing a rotation to duo lane around the 3-minute mark is a good idea, as you may be able to catch the lane completely by surprise.

What would ganking accomplish?

Source: smitegame.com

Just as with any other aspect of the game, you need to plan for a goal. Everything in SMITE, especially builds, positioning and god selection, should be done with a goal in mind. If you rotate to solo lane, stealing the jungle is an option, securing your own jungle is an option, pressuring tower is an option, and even de-warding the enemy jungle is an option. If you just spend the entire game roaming, ganking, then splitting a wave and going back to mid lane, you will eventually fall too far behind to be relevant to the game, and need to give up ganking as a whole in order to focus on farm and avoid feeding.

Rotating to solo lane has numerous benefits because of the huge importance of the jungle on that side of the map, but a rotation to duo lane can also be game changing. In a standard game, the support would not build Purification, opting for something like Shell or Sprint. This makes them an easy target for early game ganks, which makes them an easy pick for junglers with high early game damage, such as Awilix. Getting a pick on the support at the right time can lead to a large early game lead, which can then be built upon and snowball into a large advantage once team fighting starts.

Getting an early game gold fury is a great way to take advantage of a pick, but getting a kill is not the only result of a gank. One big reason to gank is if the opponents have immense lane pressure. This is a huge deal as once pressure in a lane is obtained, you begin to lose jungle pressure, which will eventually snowball. If you see a lane being pressured, simply show your face and split a wave in whichever lane you decide to “gank”. Sometimes just showing up with no intention of actually engaging can be enough to change up who has lane control, potentially tipping the lane into your team's favor. Relieving some of the pressure in a lane can also help wrestle back jungle control if you find yourself behind, or help in securing enemy jungle buffs by keeping the enemy confined under tower. This can also help getting easy damage off because if the enemy is pushing your team into tower, then the opponent will be extended, making it easy to get behind them and execute a surprise attack. Always be looking to accomplish something with your actions, don’t just spend time rotating around and not farming.

Some Closing Thoughts

Source: SMITE Gamepedia

In the end, ganking is reliant on what role you are attempting to fill as a jungler. If you are going for more of a damaging, hyper carry such as Ao Kunag or Kali, the looking for ganks on the mid lane mage will be a good idea as the game advances to mid game, as well as the mid laner generally being a squishier target to burst. When playing a more supportive style of jungler like a Ne Zha or Bellona, then your survivability will allow you to gank the duo and solo lanes more effectively due to being able to withstand the sustained damage that the solo laner and ADC will be able to put out, especially because the mage burst damage can potentially come online before you build your protections, with there being no viable jungler build that prioritizes magical defense items over physical protection items such as Void Shield, Breastplate of Valor, or Dynasty Plate Helm. Your target can and should change throughout the stages of the game, but remember to not spend so much time ganking that you fall behind in farm. Trying to get too much in a gank can result in a death or wasted time that you could have been farming. Remember to farm effectively and take advantage of the mistakes that your enemies make, and you can transition into a great force once the team fighting phase arrives. And whatever happens, no matter what role you play, remember to have fun!

 

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