As a jungler, there are a lot of things you need to worry about apart from clicking buttons. You are responsible for controlling over 80% of the map and this can be extremely daunting and confusing. In this article, we will look at two essential skills which help you and make you a better overall jungler.

Smite's jungle is vast, so picking the most efficient route through it is extremely important.

Let's start with timing. The concept of jungle timings is understanding when various things in the jungle will come off their timers and be ready to be taken. Let's begin by looking at the respawn timers for each type of camp, from shortest to longest.

- The Back Harpy camps, located at the furthest back entrance of your own jungle, have the shortest spawn times, at 80 seconds.

- The Fire Elementals, located in the Fire Giant pit, have a spawn time of 110 seconds. Keep in mind that these disappear permanently when the Fire Giant spawns at 10 minutes.

- The Boar camps are located at both tier 1 towers on the duo lane side of the map and they have a spawn time of 180 seconds.

- The Middle Harpy camps are located on either side of the midlane, and have a spawn time of 180 seconds.

- The Mana camp is located at the tier 1 tower on the solo side, and has a spawn time of 180 seconds.

- The Speed and Damage camps are located between the tier 1 towers of solo/mid and duo/mid, and have a spawn time of 240 seconds

Finally, the Fire Giant and Gold Fury are in the middle of the jungle on both sides and have spawn times of 300 seconds.

Buff wielding camps are not just valuable because of their buff, but because of their experience output as well.

So what can you do with this information? Well, jungling is all about making the most efficient use of your time and balancing farm with pressure. This means that very often you need to have a plan behind everything you're doing, and knowing this vital information about jungle camps helps with this.

First, respawn timers. Why do they matter? In the game of Smite, your allocated time to farm as a jungler lasts until late game, at which point you should be with your team, teamfighting and pushing objectives. If you are still farming by then, you are dragging your team down. What all this means, is that when a camp is up and you aren't doing it, you are actively losing experience. For example, if you leave the damage camp up for 30 seconds before doing it, that's delaying its respawn, and possibly forcing you to lose one rotation of that camp in your quest for XP.

Let's say that late game is at 30 minutes, for the sake of example. This means that the maximum number of Speed buffs you can do, considering each one takes 10 seconds to finish, is 7. But if we just add 20 seconds to each rotation, you can only get through 6. While being late for a camp may seem like a small thing while you're doing it, the effect on your experience gain is drastic.

Game winning pushes in Smite often happen around 30-40 minutes; you cannot afford to still be farming at this time of the game.

So how can we take this information and make it into a jungle rotation plan? Well, we also have to consider location and staggering. First let's look at staggering. With the current meta start in Smite, the ADC, support and mid do the Red buff while the solo laner and jungler do Speed and then Mana. What this means is that the Red buff will be finished first, then Speed and then finally Mana, causing their spawn timers to be staggered. This benefits you as it gives you time to do each one. The Damage buff and Speed buff have priority because of their long respawns, and since damage will spawn first you can finish it, and then make your way over in time for the Speed buff to spawn. Keeping this system through the entire game will benefit you, as it means you won't have to choose which camp to let sit there while you do the other one. The Mana buff spawns in between these, offset by around one minute, which means your general order should be Mana -> Damage -> Speed.

Now we need to think about location. It's no use being near duo lane when the mana buff is about to spawn or floating near solo lane while the Damage buff is up. When you plan your rotations around the map, you have to keep in mind the state of the jungle and how long rotations/ganks will take you in relation to jungle spawn timers. Another thing that has to be considered is location in comparison to how valuable the camp is. The back camps for example, except for the early game, should only be taken when leaving base, as their position is so far back and their bounty so low that it isn't worth your time to change your route to include them.

Consider getting a movement speed item like Winged Blade to improve your jungle clear time.

When you're positioning for a gank or making your presence known in a lane, think about what you have to gain from it. If your gank is unlikely to result in a kill and there are no camps around for you to do, there is very little point on you maintaining your current position. As a jungler, you need to always be keeping an eye on the map to be able to evaluate the game state and make the correct decisions. If your map shows you a lane being pressured by the enemy and your jungle camps about to spawn on the same side, you have a win-win situation in terms of rotation.

Now that we have all this information, let's make it into a general jungle plan.

Priority 1: Ensuring that your own jungle is clear in order of importance. It's no use to clear less valuable camps first, especially since your teammates often rely on the buffs they get from the more valuable camps.

Priority 2: Making sure your pathing and clear is as efficient as possible. Keep an eye on the match time and try to remember your camp order. Try not to be surprised by a camp coming up, instead plan around it. Don't go out of your way to pick up camps that are less valuable if it's going to cause you to lose time on the more valuable ones.

Priority 3: Making an impact. As important as camp clearing is, just farming for 30 minutes means you haven't impacted the game at all. Make sure you're applying pressure to lanes that need it but don't let this conflict with priorities 1 and 2.

As with anything to do with Smite, there is no one answer for everything. This plan won't always work and sometimes you may be forced to act outside it. These situations cannot be taught, but their responses are learnt through experience. Play enough jungle, and you will have the intuition to act outside the general plan.

I hope this short guide has helped you in becoming better at managing your time as a jungler!

Get your own AKRacing Chair here and support our players, all profit goes towards the teams!