One of the more complicated roles in Smite is the Jungle role. Here, you’ll be managing the camps in the jungle, and swinging between the various lanes of your entire team, helping them out in any way possible. Because you have to be nearly everywhere on the map, it can be complicated to figure out what you should be doing and how to assist your teammates best. Here’s what you need to know about how to play the Jungle role in Smite.
How to Jungle in Smite
Before we begin, we must note that when referencing any side of the map, we’re talking about The Order side, the brighter, yellow map. If you are playing on the other side, merely flip any map we use upside to accommodate yourself while you play.
Related: The best Gods for the Jungle role in Smite – Best Jungling Gods
Starting items
The starter items you should grab will be one of the Jungle starter items, two potions, a ward, and the first tier of your chosen item. The two potions can vary for some players, but we typically recommend the multi-potion. The first tier item also varies on whatever item you want to start with. For example, if you have an Assassin who wants to build up attack speed or one that wants to build up physical penetration.
Where to start in the jungle
After grabbing your items during the beginning phase, you want to make your way over to the red buff, which will go to your mid-lane god. Then, when the game starts, and the two of you are finished, make your way over to your yellow buff. This will be your primary buff throughout the game, and you want to make sure to grab it whenever possible. Finally, once this one is down, you should make your way throughout the rest of the jungle, grabbing your XP camps while your mid-lane god returns to the middle of the map and battles there.
Eventually, you will want to make your way over to the middle of the lane and assist in pushing up the wave. You might find the enemy jungle and mid-lane god here, and the four of you will have to battle it out. Your primary goal is to try and grab the middle XP camps that spawn, but you won’t always retrieve them as you might find yourself pushed back or needing to return to base to heal.
With the buffs cleared, the XP camps are gone, and the battle in the middle finished, it’s time to start rotating throughout the map., We highly encourage you to watch the various jungle camp timers on your map to figure out where you should go next. Your top priority is to assist your team in retrieving their buffs, but you also want to cause mayhem in the lanes, supporting your teammates to try and push up to the enemy tower or even take out an enemy player. Thus, the next thing to begin to worry about is ganking.
When should you swindle as the jungle?
It can be hard to tell when it’s a good opportunity to jump into a lane and help your allies. Typically, you want to attack when your teammates have enemies on the run, and they’re starting to get away. Then, if there are no enemy wards down, you can dive in and surprise them. However, this is the ideal scenario, and ganking is never perfect.
A good time to gank is when your teammates struggle in a lane, and the enemy team has them pushed up to your team’s tower. The further up a lane the enemy is pushed, the easier it is to gank them because they won’t be able to get away. The best time to gank an enemy is when they’re at or have crossed these lines.
It will be difficult for the enemy to escape, giving you and your allies a chance to retaliate. You want to avoid trying to perform a gank if you are under-leveled. You’ll know when you’re under-leveled because the enemy jungle, and other teammates, are two or three levels ahead of you.
How to gain levels fast as a Jungle role
When you’re under-leveled or struggling as the team’s jungle, many lanes struggle because you can’t make time to gank their lane or even give them a quick break to go back to base. It’s tough, and you want to remain on par with your allies as much as possible.
The best thing for you to do when you’re struggling to level is to stay in the jungle, ignore the lanes, ignore any potential ganks, and focus entirely on farming. You want to remain in the jungle as much as possible, clear it, and then potentially sneak into the enemy’s jungle and steal whatever XP you can. The less you think about making it into a lane or trying to gank, the more you can focus on leveling up your kit. Then, once you’re back on track, feel free to jump into a lane and help out any teammates who are also struggling.
Best gods in the Jungle role
These are some of the best jungle gods from the Assassin Roster in Smite that should be playing if you want to try out the role. These may change as the game’s meta shifts, and small patch notes are added to give buffs and nerfs to certain gods and items.
- Bakasura
- Da Ji
- Fenrir
- Hun Batz
- Mercury
- Ne Zha
- Nemesis
- Set
- Susano
- Tsukuyomi
- Thor
