Quick Jungle Guide S5 (patch 5.21)

Welcome to this guide, I'm SmoothHomie and I've been playing smite for about 3 years now, currently my highest rank is masters. In this guide I'll try to explain fundamentals, match ups, general pathing, early game, ganking, rotations, objective control, stages of the game, itemization, and a tier list for ranked junglers. Guide is mainly directed towards newer conquest players, but those that already have experience in it might still pick up something. I also encourage you to discuss any parts of this guide and any recommendation or critique is welcomed.

Hope You enjoy this guide and find at least something useful in it, lets get started now.

We will quickly go through fundamentals, mainly because everything will be discussed in detail later on. They come down to: map awareness, warding, tracking the enemy jungler and jungle camp timers.
Map awareness

As in any other role, having a decent map awareness is a key to your performance. Knowing the location of enemies and their next one or two moves allows you to make plays according to them. It will directly influence your pathing depending on the jungle camp timers, timing your ganks, invading and playing the team fight properly in the late game. My personal advice if you find yourself having difficulties with it, set a timer that will beep every 5-7 seconds in order to remind you to check the map and have a quick look of what is happening.

Tracking the Enemy Jungler
Tracking at a first glance might seem difficult, but with experience and wards it usually becomes a menial task. For starters we know that in 99% of cases enemy jungler will start on their speed buff unless they are doing a cheese strat. Followed by back camps into most cases blue buff is your standard start. Paying close attention on the player icons and seeing when the enemy jungler hits level 2 will allow to determine you his clearing speed, whether you're faster or slower than him. This will in turn allow you to determine your next few moves. Do you want to a) look to clear mid harpies before he comes and establish a control of them or b) do you want to look for an either first blood opportunity or to force someone out of lane thus gaining pressure knowing you will have a man advantage for a brief time. Other useful thing you could use from tracking is invading enemy camps, if you know that the enemy jungler is camping one of your lanes you can either a) counter gank said lane, b) gank on other part of the map or c) look to invade on the other side of the map thus gaining advantage over him in case his gank fails.

Warding

Warding is your bread and butter in every single role. It allows you to be safe in general, make a pick on enemy and make proper decisions depending on what information you have from them. We will divide it in, early to mid game and late game warding.

Early to Mid Game Warding

Early to Mid Game Warding

Depending how the game progressed so far, which lane is winning or struggling and which objectives are up we can look to ward as per following:

Red wards are your extremely aggressive wards, in case if you have huge amount of pressure in mid or if you were able to pull out multiple invades through the early game and can safely continue with them in mid game these wards will allow you to keep the eye on enemy jungler as well as his camp timers.

Green wards are also aggressive but not so much, it involves the most common traffic choke points, it will spot most of rotations on the map and keep everyone safe.

Blue wards are your standard objective ward, mid harpies control wards and also they spot any cheeky play by Blink Rune from enemy jungler on your mid laner. In most of cases you won't be warding those since it will be warded by your support or another team member.

Yellow wards are your defensive wards, I'd recommend having sentries at the entrances to the mid lanes in order to prevent the enemy team from knowing your rotations. But those will be usually warded by either support or mid laner so you don't have to worry about them.

Late Game Warding

Late Game Warding

Gold Fury is no longer an important objective, we have reached a point where everyone is or is close to reaching level 20, everyone has their 5th item completed and are grouping in order to fight around the fire giant pit or sieges are about to happen.

Red Wards and orange wards are your sieging wards, you're denying enemy vision in order to keep them on their toes and guess what your next move is while they're hugging their last remaining structures. Orange wards near the fire giant pit can also help you determine the pathing enemy team is taking while you're taking the fire giant which will help you in potentially taking a pick on one of enemy carries.

Green wards are your standard aggressive wards while fighting over the fire giant, it allows your carries to poke enemy team while also allowing you know exact location of enemy carries in order to plan their dive with your solo laner in most of cases.

Blue wards this time are again Fire giant ward and mid harpies ward, plus the ward over the fire giant wall. It allows you to potentially spot any possible flanks or even an attempt to steal the fire giant over the wall.

Yellow wards are your defensive wards once more, this time they allow you to walk into the fire giant pit without worry of someone being around the corner. Without team it is really risky to contest fire giant so I'd definitely recommend to have them up.

Purple wards just like red wards are the sieging wards. It allows your carries to poke enemy team and also prevents vision from enemy team over the wall making their siege more difficult.

Timers

Back Harpies: There are four of these, the four jungle camps closest to both bases. They are composed of two Harpies and one Elder Harpy. They spawn at 30 seconds into the game and have a respawn time of 60 seconds.

Middle Harpies: There are two of these, both at opposite sides across the middle lane, composed of two Elder Harpies. They spawn 30 seconds into the game and have a respawn time of 90 seconds.

Oracles: At the center of the jungle closest to the long lane, across from the Gold Fury camp. It is composed of two Oracle Furies. They spawn 30 seconds into the game and have a respawn time of 3 minutes (180 seconds).

Gold Fury: At the center of the jungle closest to the long lane. It spawns 10 minutes into the game and has a respawn time of 5 minutes (300 seconds).

Pyromancer: At the center of the jungle closest to the short lane, across from Fire Giant Camp. It spawns 10 minutes into the game and has a respawn time of 5 minutes (300 seconds).

Fire Giant: At the center of the jungle closest to the short lane. It spawns 10 minutes into the game and has a respawn time of 5 minutes (300 seconds). Fire Giant is replaced by Enhanced Fire Giant when it respawns after the 25 minute mark.

Pathing

The general priority order of jungle camps is: Objectives such as FG, GF and Pyro> Buffs> Neutral objectives such as mid harpies and oracles> back harpies.

So knowing that, your path should look to secure your buffs, then obtaining pressure in mid and securing neutral objectives. From then on, depending on the position of enemies and other information you have, you can look to either invade, gank or force an objective.

Match Ups

We can divide match ups determining on the clear speed, stronger 1v1 and faster rotations as winning, even and losing match ups.

Winning
Winning or beneficial match ups are the ones where you know you will out clear enemy jungler and will have more impact through the map in early to mid game. In these match ups you will be mainly looking to play aggressive as possible and look to deny any farm from the enemy jungler through the invades. Be wary of any possible enemies rotating to jungle camps while you're invading! You don't want to find yourself in a 1v2 situation unless you're confident you can take a kill or relic and get out alive, otherwise you're giving up unnecessary gold and experience to enemies and all the early pressure you could had. Ward aggressive and lock to pick off enemy jungler or gank lanes according to his pathing.

Even
Even match ups are the ones in which you have same amount of pressure and can hardly kill each other in 1v1s unless one of you make a mistake. Playing in such match ups is all about outsmarting the enemy jungler, predicting his pathing and course of action will allow you to plan accordingly and gain leads based of his mistakes. Putting the enemy jungler behind in such a way will also allow you to play more and more aggressive as the time goes.

Losing
Losing match ups are those where we know that even if enemy jungler makes a small mistake there is still a decent amount of chance that you will lose the engagement. Thing we are looking to do here is to minimize our losses, by counter invading and counter ganking. This way you are making sure not to fall behind in most of cases and in some situations you might even end up being ahead.

Phases of Game

Early Game

Early Game
As a jungler you have a few possible starts which you can consider doing. Obviously in almost all of them you're starting on your own speed buff. Standard start will mean that you're doing back camps into your blue buff(in case if the enemy jungler has a higher clear speed than you and your solo is losing the pressure, you can skip the back harpies and go straight for the blue buff in order to secure it, then simply go back to back harpies into mid lane), into mid lane.

Alternative is starting the speed buff into red buff, that will demand that you solo your speed buff and red buff as well, this way you will hit level 2 and can make a play on enemy duo lane for the first blood. Junglers such as Erlang Shen can utilize this start due to their high clear speed and good level 2 gank potential, Blink Rune into pin into turtle knock up or hastened ming form. If their duo lane goes for their purple buff you can either gank them there, or simply go for their red buff.

Third start that I can imagine is doing the standard start, but instead of going for blue buff after back harpies you go for the mid harpies and secure the control of both of them. Be wary tho, you shouldn't go to blue buff then before securing your red buff. Otherwise enemy team has an opportunity to invade it with a man advantage while you're doing your blue buff.

These are the most common starts if you don't count cheesing and potentially invading on level 1.

Mid Game

Mid Game
In this period of game you will mostly be looking to obtain a pick in order to allow potential invades or objectives. Securing your own buffs and keeping up with the pressure. There is nothing else much to say about it.

Late Game

Late Game
Late game becomes more interesting for junglers, your main goal is to dive enemy carries and split push during the siege in most of cases. During the objective fights you want to stay out of vision from the enemy team and look to flank the carries from the side or use walls to your advantage in order to Blink Rune over them into enemy team. During the sieges you should force the enemy to split from the phoenix you're sieging. This way you have a brief moment to force a fight in a 5v4 situation or in case if no one answers you can freely take the phoenix instead.

Timing Your Gank
In order to time your ganks, you need to keep an eye on a)minions, especially in the duo lane. Knowing that will help you determine whether the enemy will have to overextend in order to get the farm. b) location of enemy jungler and possible rotations, you don't want to get surprised and what was once a winning fight to turn into a losing one. c) Possibilities of lanes being warded and trying to avoid wards in order to increase the likelihood of your gank. And lastly make sure that your buffs on other side of the map aren't up. You don't want to leave an opportunity for a free invade.

Ganking

Ganking itself isn't complicated if you know the position of enemies and potential wards, but in order to make your gank have the highest probability of success you need to take into consideration of the god you're playing, gods that are enemy team playing and what relics are up on each side. The simplest way to explain this is if we imagine following scenario:

You're playing Mercury, your ultimate is down, your relic of choice this time is Blink Rune enemy duo lane Sylvanus and Ullr are overextended and your duo lane Rama and Ymir have a sentry on their entrance to the lane next to the purple buff. This way you're sure that enemy duo lane won't spot you until you're in a safe distance to start the gank. You spot the enemy jungler going into the right jungle duo to a ward in mid lane, you know that only possible rotation now is their mid laner but even then he is most likely to come late. You decide to go with the gank. In order to maximize your chances of success you decide to blink over the wall on Ullr, Ullr will definitely react to your gank by trying to leap away. This way you have your dash to follow through and as long as you're able to avoid the axe stun you should be obtaining a kill. Or another possibility here is that you decide to focus Sylvanus after knowing that Ullr is out, this way you're guaranteeing a kill for sure.

So in short, your goal is to save your moving abilities in order to be able to follow the enemy in case if they decide to make a run for it, or in case you don't have one try to tell your duo lane to force it. Be wary of enemy relics and make sure that any possible rotations are either not coming or would come to late when you're sure to be able to disengage safely.

Before we start with this chapter, we won't talk about any specific builds but rather we will discuss possible item pick ups and in which situation they should be picked up.

We will divide junglers in two separate groups, physical and magical ones.

Physical
Physical junglers usually have more early pressure over their magical counter parts, they have more possibilities to build aggressive in early and usually tend to have more crowd control. Let's take a look what items you're able to build on them.

Physical Power

Warrior Tabi - Your standard to go shoes, offer a huge amount of power and early clear speed and kill pressure.

Ninja Tabi - Most of the junglers don't want these, only potential junglers that might have an use of these are Bakasura who has almost none physical scaling and other AA characters such as perhaps Erlang Sheen but even then he is better off with Warrior Tabi due to amount of burst it offers.

Reinforced Greaves - As a jungler you won't want these in 99% of cases, the only possible situation I can imagine is if the enemy team has 4 or more hard CC gods, but even then you should probably be better off with other shoes.

Talaria Boots - Gives extra movement speed compared to other options, it allows you to rotate faster and spam your abilities due to the 20 MP5, I'd recommend these on junglers that have a lot of set up and clear such as Ne Zha, it allows you to stay longer before backing and helps keep up with the clear if not being ahead.

Jotunn's Wrath - A decent pick up, it gives you decent stats and almost everything what a jungler needs. Power, penetrations, cool down reduction and a bit of mana for longer time before backing.

Brawler's Beat Stick - Antiheal item, a must have into healing compositions, especially if you're on someone who can easily apply it. For example a Bastet or Ratatoskr

The Crusher - Hybrid item that offers power, penetration, attack speed and passive is also decent. Someone like Erlang Shen could have a great use of it. Good into countering gods with stealth such as Ao Kuang as well.

Titan's Bane - In case you're focusing tanks more often than carries then this is the item to go, gives you ability to chunk tanks.

Transcendence - An interesting pick up, if your god has a lot of power scaling and you know you will be able to stack it safely, you can pick it up. It gives a decent amount of power and 10% cool down reduction, it's a bit expensive compared to other possibilities but it is a decent pick up on its own.

Heartseeker - Item that gives you ton of burst, good on characters on which you want to burst enemy gods as quickly as possible.

Hydra's Lament - Gives you a ton of extra damage on your AA cancels, good on gods that can abuse it such as Da Ji, Susano and Ratatoskr.

Stone Cutting Sword - Offers you a lot of penetration, good on AA characters such as Erlang Shen and Bakasura.

Masamune - A hybrid item that offers a decent amount of power and protections, good for those junglers that like to get into heat of things, an Odin is a perfect example.

Golden Blade - Good for the junglers that want that extra clear, works wonders on Mercury

Hastened Katana - For those junglers that want to stick on you such as Bakasura and others.

Void Shield - In case you want to build hybrid, this item offers a decent amount of pen for you and your team so keep an eye on it if you're ahead.

Shifter's Shield - Item is good on characters that want to go in, burst the target and get out. In case you get low you get an extra defense to ensure your safety getting out.

Soul Eater - An item you can experiment with, extremely potent on Pele and other ability based junglers, give it a go. In addition to its good passive you also get 10% cool down reduction and some mana.

Bloodforge - Item which you can buy if ahead or even, gives you an opportunity to snowball after one kill in team fight due to extra shield and movement speed. Item on its own gives ton of physical power but it comes at a hefty price of 2800g.

Runic Shield and Ancile - Same as Void Shield these items are meant for hybrid build where Runic Shield is more often purchased into heavy magical comps and Ancile in case if you want to dive a magical character, its silence is quite underrated in my eyes.

Magical Power

Shoes of the Magi - Unless you're a guardian this is your shoes to go, they allow you to burst your opponents with early penetration and decent amount of power.

shoes of the focus - Your shoes to go if you're playing an utility jungler such as Athena.

Bancroft's Talon - Good item overall, gives you a lot of power especially on lower hp paired with some life steal.

Divine Ruin - Magical healing reduction item, must have in healing comps. Gives decent power and penetration.

Spear of the Magus - An item to consider if you have a lot of DoT such as Ao Kuang's 2nd ability, it will allow you to deal true damage to carries through the game.

Spear of Desolation - Quite expensive item, it's good from ahead but otherwise wouldn't recommend it.

Obsidian Shard - Tank shredder for magical gods. Gives % penetration.

Soul Reaver - Good item for junglers that can constantly poke enemies from distance such as He Bo.

Polynomicon - If you're able to do aa cancels this is something you can consider.

Book of the Dead - If you find yourself being dived you can consider picking it up.

Demonic Grip - AA protection % shred for magical characters, can be built by Ao Kuang

Shaman's Ring - If you have a lot of DoT abilities or abilities that you can spam off the cd it is something you can consider.

Ethereal Staff - Just like Soul Reaver it gives you a chance to heavily poke enemies, but this item also steals HP and mana from your enemies.

Celestial Legion Helm - If you find yourself into a losing match up against a physical enemy jungler, you can consider picking up this item. Gives you a ton of surviability.

Stone of Binding - A hybrid item, good on guardians as it gives free pen for you and your team.

Void Stone - Counter part of Void Shield reduces magical protection of enemies around you, good on guardians.

Chronos' Pendant - Allows you to spam abilities and gives about 30% cool down if you include the passive with good MP5.

Rod of Tahuti - Good for bursting and finishing off enemy gods.

Defense

Winged Blade - Into a team comp with a lot of slows, gives you an extra dive potential as well if the god you want to kill has a slow for self peel.

Spirit Robe - An overall good item, item alone makes you quite tanky due its passive, gives you crowd control reduction and some cool down.

Mantle of Discord - More expensive version of Spirit Robe, if the enemy doesn't have that much CC in order to proc it, you are probably better off with this item. It gives you quite good defensive stats and has a small aoe stun paired with cc immunity which can come in clutch sometimes when you're low on health.

Magi's Cloak - Good on most of junglers, it allows you to dive enemy back line with more freedom and making you more difficult to peel off.

Hide of the Urchin - A defensive item that is good if you're snowballing or expecting a huge team fight to occur soon, gives you a ton of defensive stats paired with some HP and mana.

Oni Hunter's Garb - A special mention, its passive gives you straight 9% damage mitigation in team fights and the stats on the item itself are quite good, I'd consider picking it up.

Midgardian Mail - Something that you'd like into heavy AA based comps, even tho you're jungler make the life miserable for those carries.

Breastplate of Valor - mainly good on guardians in the jungle, it allows you to spam your abilities of the cool down.

Please keep in mind that this tier list is mainly personal opinion of me and some friends, SS in this case means something that you're almost guaranteed to win and the chances are lower as the list goes down.

Thank you for reading this guide, hope You have enjoyed it and found at least something useful. Once again, I'd like to encourage you to discuss anything inside of this guide, look for a better possibility and not take it for granted.

P.S. Shot outs to Eledee for helping me out.

Smooth Homie