When is jungling without smite a good thing?

redLizardrock·12/11/2019, 6:10:12 AM·7 votes·4,556 views

I would like to know why anyone would not take smite when jungling. Because 90 percent of the time when my jungler doesn't take smite and farms the jungle, we lose because they are still level 2 at 10 minutes into the game. Very rarely do I ever see jungling without smite work, and even then it is bad because smite will out damage anyone else when it comes to dragon and baron. So not only do you have less sustain and wave clear because you didn't take smite, but you also cannot contest epic monsters as effectively because you lack smite. So please tell me when does not taking smite on a jungler ever work and how often or common is it to go jungle without smite?

If it's bad then I'd like to suggest that we make it a rule that a jungle must always take smite. I'm tired of playing games where someone says "i can do it" when trying to jungle without smite. Like yeah, you can back to base constantly and eventually clear some jungle camps, but at the price of being 3-5 levels behind, it's basically throwing the game in my opinion. Not only are you behind by several levels and gold, you also cannot provide ganks, cannot contest epic monsters, probably dying in the jungle by monsters and the enemy jungler invading. At that point, you would do better if you just dual top or dual mid because even if you share exp with a solo laner, at least you won't be level 2 at 10 minutes and be completely useless.

10 Comments

AIQ12/11/2019, 6:20:09 AM10 votes

Never. You need a jungle item to clear the jungle.

I would however ask all laners to do this once in the practice tool. To see how ineffective the EXP is on them VS their jungler so they'd maybe consider not taking a junglers farm for 50-100g at the cost of a level on their jungler.

Skia Asteri12/11/2019, 6:46:07 AM6 votes

You cannot buy either item 1039 or item 1041 if you do not have summoner 11. Here is what happens if you do not have either talisman or machete.

Which is why in champ select if sets one of your summoner spells to summoner 11 in Draft mode if you are assigned jungle.

Ambitious Minnow12/11/2019, 4:22:24 PM1 votes

I was a huge fan on doing jg without smite years back, WW main...

It is totally impossible now, even with WW, the number one contender for this plan. You can survive, but the gimped xp from not having a jg item makes it impossible to do. So you MUST take smite (1/2 summoner skills auto picked) and you MUST take jg item( 1/6 item slots auto picked).

This is Riot "Enforcing the Meta" (which they should never do, it's like they don't have access to a dictionary).

notkai12/12/2019, 1:05:05 AM1 votes

I've personally never encountered a jungler who purposefully forewent smite, nor have I (as a jg) ever even THOUGHT of going without smite. It's the first thing I check when I'm assigned jungle- before runes, second spell, or anything else. Got smite? Good, proceed with other shit.

If I were you, I would report every single no-smite jungler for inting/feeding. That's straight-up trolling. Smite is a NECESSARY mechanic to be an effective jungler; to go without it is to forgo being useful and effective.

Magnesium1412/12/2019, 2:02:43 AM1 votes

Fiddle sticks can just barely play JG properly w/o it, with the only issue you must kill enemy jg when doing epic monsters No-one else can do it though, Nunu is probably 2nd and they don't even come close to jg'ing correctly Xin and rammus might do it if they literally just gank till around level 6-7, i'm just guessing tho

RISE Shlack12312/12/2019, 7:10:11 PM1 votes

Never. The answer is never. If you see your jungler not taking smite within the last 5 seconds before the game starts, dodge. And dodge hard.