How To Farm Efficiently with Zyrhoes

We all need farm in Smite and knowing how to get the most of the map for yourself and your team is an easy way to put pressure on the enemy team. It’s not all about team fighting; you can easily gain a lead or keep up with your laning opposition if you know how to efficiently farm.

We spoke to Team Dignitas’ mid laner Joakim "Zyrhoes" Verngren on how to efficiently farm and when to look for farm when you rotate to other lanes.

Farming in the Early Game 

Farm is extremely important in the early game as everyone wants to hit their power spikes as early as possible and put pressure on their laning opposition. The mid lane can contain easy ways to get farm advantage, mostly mid camps and back camps on top of your red buff and wave.

Zyrhoes spoke about how early farm is important to a mid laner, “Early farm is extremely important. There are a lot of different power spikes in every matchup from levels 1-5, so managing to get ahead and use your lead to control neutral farm can have a major impact on the game.”

But what can you do to gain that advantage? It can be as easy as getting mid camps or splitting back camps with your jungler. Zyrhoes mentioned this and said, “Since you spend the majority of the first few levels farming as a duo, you want to split as much as you can during the early game, specifically mid camps, mid wave, and back camps.”

Adding to what Zyrhoes said, if you’re mid or jungle, then keeping together for the earliest part of the game is the best way to get the most off the map. If you and your mid go to a mid camp and there is only the enemy mid laner to contest the camp, you can pressure them off the camp or even get a kill. With the side lanes, the farming mostly happens in lane, but in mid, with the jungler to help at levels 1-5, you can even look to invade the enemy red to help you win the poke war.

Early mid camp control is an easy way to gain a farming lead.

With the recent changes to XP splitting in place to help supports keep up in games, it is important to help keep them in the game. Just because they’re looking for rotations doesn’t mean that they don’t want the XP as well.

Zyhroes backs up this point saying, “The change has made it extremely important to be splitting as much farm as you can with the lowest level player on your team. Usually that is the support, so holding waves or jungle camps for them when they are rotating is a must.”

This means even if you're behind, helping out your support by splitting the farm with them benefits you as well. So don’t forget to hold camps or waves for them to stay relevant in the game - let's face it, no one wants a front line that’s underleveled and squishy.

Just holding camps till your support is near is a great way to help your team farm efficiently.

The Little Things 

Gaining an advantage isn’t just about looking for farm, it’s also knowing when to look for rotations and poking out the enemy laner at key moments - basically it’s the little things that can give you an advantage.

Zyrhoes advises, “There are multiple ways [to gain an advantage while farming]. Tracking timers and being on time is a major one. Besides that though, you can pick for the winning match-up and have the pressure to control any neutral farm and/or their jungle farm, or even push their minion waves into their tower so they lose gold. You can also use well-timed poke to force your opponent out of contesting farm or back to base to out farm them.”

It’s not always that easy though. You will get some games where you won’t be able to get farm because you’re getting outpressured or you might just be getting outplayed and find yourself behind.

In these circumstances, Zyrhoes recommends, “Avoid fighting or rotating as much as you can and just farm. Communicate this to your team so that you aren't missing any farm that can be split. Also try to avoid buying any overly expensive items and buy more practical items for your game situation.”

Rotations are key in Smite. Being able to outrotate your opponent can make a huge difference across the map. Just because you’ve called a role doesn’t mean you're going to stay in that lane for 90% of the game. It isn’t up to jungle and support alone to rotate, everyone can do it - it’s just knowing when to. Mid is one of the main roles that can rotate easily as you’re in the centre of the map and won’t take you long to get back to lane. This doesn’t mean that the carry or solo laner can’t rotate mid and look to help their team out that way, who knows you could probably get Gold Fury or Pyromancer off it. Just because you rotate though, doesn’t mean you have to take farm off the map in other lanes.

Zyrhoes spoke about when you should take the farm when you rotate, “[You should take farm] If the ADC or Solo can't rotate back in time to get the wave before it either dies to tower or an opposition wave, or you want to push a tower to kill it or deny the wave to your opponent. It can also be important from behind if your side laner has a lead to share farm to try to catch up.”

Efficient farming can make the difference in mid game team fights.

Builds, Backing and Wards 

One huge factor about how you farm is your build. If you’ve gone for an expensive build, you’ll be spending a lot of time farming compared to others, but just because it’s an expensive item doesn’t mean it’s the best item for the situation. Your build will also dictate when you head back to base, so knowing that you can back and get the next wave is important, because you want to miss as little XP as possible.

Zyrhoes adds to this saying, “Usually [your build] just affects your back timing and then maybe your coordination with your team. Unless you are stacking, then you need to be making sure you are last hitting when farming, or if you are a support or solo make sure to avoid last hitting in order to stack certain items.”

Your build will dictate when you need to back and finish that all important next item.

Wards are key to getting as much farm as possible, whether it’s just generally warding camps to get timers or warding choke points so you don’t get ganked. I speak about wards a lot and their importance and I know that sometimes you can mistime your back and be a bit short for one or two.

We asked Zyrhoes if wards affected how you farm and he said, “Yes. Deciding whether to delay an item in order for vision or delaying your back in order to have enough gold to buy an item and wards can have an impact on your effectiveness around the map if mismanaged.”

Eventually farm becomes less important and you turn your attention to the team fighting stage of the game and look for key objectives. When does farming become less important and team fighting become your main focus?

Zyrhoes advises, “Either once you feel like your team fight is stronger or after you gain a lead and want to snowball it by forcing objectives or towers. Also vice versa if the other team is trying to do the same thing. That is unless you are willing to give them up and trade around the map of course.”

Best Farmers 

Each role has gods that farm the best and make it easier for you to get the most off the map in many different ways. We’ll look down at the best gods for each role and why they excel about getting the most off the map.

Starting with mid, we asked Zyrhoes who he thought the best mid laner was for farming. He said, “It can depend on the stage of the game, but overall I would probably say Janus, just due to his mobility and ability to portal around the jungle and invade safely.”

Janus brings the mobility with his portals that allows him to get around the map with ease. You can be safe with them and still lose minimal farm. Janus provides this on top of a lot of control so if you need to, you can stop the enemies' DPS on camps to help let your team secure the farm and gain control over as much of the map as possible. This allows your team to get ahead easily and look to rotate easier around the map; his ult is great for this as well.

Based on Zyrhoes' points these are the picks we recommend in the other roles. In the jungle, movement reigns supreme and if Janus’ mobility makes him one of the best at farming in his role, Mercury is top of the junglers. With his movement boost from his passive, he can travel through the jungle quicker and get to camps much quicker than his enemy jungler. Combine Golden Blade with him and camps go down with ease, allowing him to get camps off the map in short time meaning he can easily invade and gain advantages off of that.

ADCs are known to be the late game carries, so getting yourself to that late game is important. A lot of ADCs have different ways of farming but personally, we think Jing Wei is one of the best for it. Her passive allows her to get out of the base consistently quicker than any other ADC. This means she can easily rotate back to base, get the next part of her build, and fly back. She can even take a detour into the jungle to take a camp and head back to lane before waves meet.

For all you solo laners, you’re left to your own devices a lot of the game then are expected to rotate in and help, so good wave-clearing solo laners work best. If you can get the enemy’s harpies as well, you’ll find it easy to get farm off the map. As far as god picks go, we still think the likes of Cu Chulainn are great for this - his kit allows you to pressure the enemy while still being able to clear wave with ease. If you don’t put any points in his two, you’ll be transforming constantly meaning you can easily take the wave down quickly.

Finally, the support role, you’re the one that ends up picking up the scraps with farming, but like mid and jungle, having high mobility makes it easy for you to get plenty of farm on the map. Athena is great for this as her kit allows you to rotate and help your team. Now, we're not saying ult on your mid laner to get the XP off mid camps but if your team is contesting camps, you ulting in will help your team secure it and allow them to look for a follow up kill.

  
These gods each provide movement around the map that allows you to farm as much as possible off it

Late Game God, Low Pressure Early Game 

Sometimes you’ll find yourself on a god that’s late game and requires a bit of patience. It also means you’ve got to be careful of many different things so you can reach your power spike and then look to out-damage them late game. Just because you're losing pressure early, that doesn’t always mean you’re going to lose a lot of farm and get yourself behind.

Zyrhoes advises, “Lower pressure gods are typically more valuable in the late game, which means that you want to be farming for longer and fighting a lot less during the early and mid game. So delaying your build in order to keep up strong vision and avoid bad fights or invades, then waiting for your item power spike is key.”

This can be transferred into each role. Each role has gods that work best in every stage of the match, just because you had a rough early game doesn’t mean you're out of it - you’ve picked a late game god because you’re looking to be more impactful late game in the team fights.

Use Zyrhoes' advice here; make sure you have vision and avoid bad fights. When you’re looking for late game you need to make sure you’re prioritising your farm until you hit your power spike, so if you’re keeping up level-wise and still on track for a good mid game the match will be a lot easier for you. You’ve done the hard work of getting a late game god online and into the game.

Looking for fights when you’re at your power spike is an easy way to snowball the opposition

Wrap-Up 

Overall farm is there on the map and you need to work on getting as much farm as possible for your team. Splitting is still a good way early on to help your team get the farm, but remember that three-way splitting still isn’t viable this season. This is more impactful early before everyone is Level 5, but it still doesn’t mean from that point on everyone should farm on their own, mostly because that isn’t fair on the support. Just hold camps and waves for them so they can still get XP off the map and with the benefits you get splitting with the lowest level player it’d be stupid to not do so.

Hopefully this helps you farm more efficiently and get the most out of the map as possible.