There are some gods that don’t work well together in Smite. These are the gods where even a slight amount of miscommunication can lead to escaped enemies, sub-par damage, and even death. In any given game, players want to use as much as possible to their advantage and this can be very easily witnessed in the mid lane with a jungler and mid.

Junglers and mids tend to be very good friends early on in a game and having a pair that work well together can lead to early kills, early rotations, early gold furies, and an early lead that can help secure a win. There are some classic examples of god synergy in the SPL: Scylla and Ne Zha, where a Ne Zha ultimate can lead directly into a Scylla ultimate.

So what makes for good mid-jungle synergy?

Instead of going through every combo and listing the pros and cons, let’s look at what makes synergy. There are the aforementioned wombo-combos where two characters can easily fit together to get kills, but kills do not make a game. There also needs to be synergy while farming and during rotations.

Wombo Combo

Two examples of amazing wombo-combos.

Despite the silliness of the name, a wombo combo creates almost unavoidable situations to cause kills. Odin and Isis have ultimates that pack a mean one-two punch. Odin can ult a target and Isis can ult on top of him to easily and quickly charge up her ultimate for burst damage and healing.

But, taking Isis again, it may be easy to believe that she could also pair up well with Ne Zha whose banish will set up the damage from her ult. However, this isn’t true. Isis’ ultimate has a charge to it and to do the most damage you want to charge it and pop it, but the time it takes to charge the ultimate can give a target ample opportunity to escape.

Mentally, we can sort mid-lane mages into those whose damage has a duration or a charge to get the most out of an ability to it and those whose damage is instant but has a slight windup time.

Generally, you want to pair a mid who needs several seconds of “lock-down” to get off their full damage with a jungler who has a lot of control. Serqet, Ratatoskr, and Odin are among those who can CC-lock someone into damage.

The second sort of mid is a lot more flexible with junglers they can pair up with because they just need a second to land their insanely damaging abilities. Ra, Scylla, and Nox are fairly good examples because it is easy to miss their ultimates, but landing them will do a massive amount of damage instantly. These gods will want to be paired up with a jungler that can hold an enemy hostage. Good examples are Fenrir, Ne Zha, and Arachne whose CC is telegraphed which will give their mid plenty of time to land their damage.

Farming Friends

This is an example of a mid-jungle with bad clear (left) versus a mid-jungle with good clear (right). Controlling for all other variables, the latter will end up ahead by virtue of having better clear.

Wombo combos aren’t the end all be all of a typical game of Smite. Both jungler and mid need to be able to clear well together when they rotate over to all of their camps. This is mostly a separation between early-game gods and late-game gods.

Early game mids can help alleviate the struggles that some late-game junglers have when clearing camps. Isis and Nemesis, for example, can be a good team in part because Isis has early clear and Nemesis struggles in the early game to clear effectively.

The opposite can also work. An early game Thanatos can help carry a Scylla to her legendary late-game by helping her farm.

This isn’t to say that the mid and jungle need to be on opposite ends of the farming spectrum. Even two late-game gods can work well together if the players understand that they need to be conscious of their weaknesses and utilize their strengths. A Scylla and Nemesis can excel if they don’t try to overextend in the early game and farm up for the late.

Meaningful Rotations

Examples of mid-jungle pairs whose rotation speed is similar resulting in stronger ganks.

Also part of a mid’s job is to rotate around with their jungler to gank the side lanes. Mids have a glaring weakness in that they are generally slow to rotate while junglers tend to have a lot of mobility. That means, when the mid-jungle is rotating around for ganks, the jungler will almost always arrive in a lane first with their mid trailing behind.

Though this is expected, it is important to note that you don’t want a mid who rotates over when a fight is completely over and all parties have disengaged. If the jungler is someone like Ratatoskr who can rotate in a few seconds and the mid is someone like Ah Puch who has low base movement speed and no movement skills, it may be a waste of time for Ah Puch to even attempt to rotate as he will miss out on farm and kills.

If the jungler happens to have insane mobility, it would be best if the mid laner also had some sort of mobility to keep up in rotations. A Ne Zha, for example, can work well with a He Bo or an Anubis as they can generally gank at the same time. Thor and Janus are also amazing together as their mobility allows them to gank and set up kills.

So - Who Gives?

Synergy depends on both parties to be working together and it can sometimes feel as though synergy is dependent on someone caving to the wishes of another which can be utterly unfun. Keep in mind that mid and jungle don’t have to be the two that synergize, it could easily be jungle and solo or mid and support or jungle and ADC.

So try out some new things and keep the concept of synergy in the forefront of your mind. Even though it’s a buzzword, it’s still a means to reach for success.

Good luck, and happy Smiting!

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