Why do junglers use smite

This has been bugging me for a while. I've seen streams of high ELO junglers, and it seems like they always use smite as the killing blow on the jungle creeps. Why do they do that?

I mean, damage is damage, and using it early could save you a few second on cooldown. Why don't they start fighting the jungle minion by smiting them?

SaintVicious, jungler for the CLG. NA team, once said it on stream. If you are certain that you are not going to be counterjungled, then sure, smite right away. However, circumstances can quickly change while you are attacking the creep assuming smite is used on objectives like buffs. Situation 1: You are jungling but leave base a little late. Like usual you head to Red and you feel confident so tell your team you don't need their help leashing it.

So you smite right away and begin autoattacking it. In the animation of your last auto-attack, the enemy jungler smites it away from you over the wall, then turns and kills you with the help of the small lizards and the red buff they now have cuz your smite was down. Situation 2: You have been jungling and cleared the jungle already.

As typical, you get ready to feed your AP Carry the blue buff. While, waiting for the AP Carry to deal the finishing blow, the whole enemy team comes charging from river to the Blue led by their jungler. Fortunately this time, you saved your smite, so before the enemy jungler can smite steal it, you secure blue for your team. While not optimal, certainly better than the enemy team having both blue buffs.

Finally, it is good practice as it helps you use smite to secure important objectives like dragon and baron.

After all practice makes perfect, and if you say that you always use smite first except for dragon and baron, you won't be as practiced. A few seconds lost on the smite cooldown is hardly noticeable most of the time, but gaining a little more practice on using your smite to secure kills never hurts anyone. If you wait until a smite will kill it, you have much less chance of the enemy AP mid coming over and sniping it with a skill shot or the enemy jungler showing up to steal it with their smite.

I also smite for the kill. I do this because other people may be roaming to steal the buff. This would ruin the jungle route and would result in a slower jungle clear time causing less ganks causing possible lane loss and so forth. It would also be beneficial for against a stealthed jungler such as Shaco, Eve, and Twitch since they could be there and smite for the kill. Smiting early may also result in the loss of major objectives like baron and dragon.

If one is smited early others can come and smite to steal that bonus gold or baron buff. Although smiting early would in fact reduce the cooldown its better to be safe than sorry. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

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Asked 9 years, 7 months ago. Gold Fury will be soloable by many characters and the Fire Giant is doable in a group. At this point though, the buffs become less useful, as your items will already be giving you massive amounts of bonus stats that going out of your way to grab the buff may be a waste of time. If you are passing by one that is up however, there is no reason to not grab it. Upon reaching level 20 every god in the game can easily jungle and secure any buff they want aside from Fire Giant.

Fire Giant will still require a small group, or someone with high enough attack speed and life leech to counter the large amounts of damage they output. Hunter and assassin gods tend to be best at this. Many others can pull it off as well. An easy test to see if you are ready, is to engage him and check to see if your leeching more health than he is taking away.

If you are, then you can solo him just fine. If not, simply run away. So what do you really do in the jungle? It can't be as simple as just killing creeps and grabbing buffs. While there is a technique to it and it is fairly simple, it might not seem the most obvious at first. For the most part, junglers should start near the shorter lane on the map, thus able to help out the solo lane grab a quick blue buff before the match — or start at one of the furies near the middle of the map to help your mid-lane partner grab some extra exp and gold.

Afterwards, the route of the jungler will vary based upon the god you have chosen. Gods such as Bakasura may wish to grab the attack speed buff, while a god such as Hun Batz may wish for the red power buff. It is always best to read up on your gods' skills and learn which buff is best for you. Keep in mind an extremely important role of the jungle is to not only kill creeps to drop buffs, but to let your team know that such buffs are ready to be picked up for your teammates. Letting a character continually jungle through an entire match can be extremely detrimental for your team.

This is worsened if the player has also secured some early kills. So what can your team do to help control the jungle? The biggest thing is awareness. Knowing what is happening in your jungle can not only prevent jungling, but prevent ganks and other bad things your enemies might cook up.

Wards are the item of choice to allow for this kind of knowledge. When placed, they offer vision on the minimap for a duration of time. They are cheap and can be placed repeatedly throughout a match. Having vision of what is going on in the jungle allows you to counter that movement.

With this information you can enter the jungle and attempt to kill the character, scare them out or form some other tactic to deal with them. Sometimes a little intimidation is all that is needed to keep a player away from your buffs. Gods that have been jungling will be weak. With vision of where they are moving, it becomes quite easy to kill them or scare them off. Alternatively, sometimes the best counter is jungling better then your enemy. If you and your allies make sure to constantly take the buffs nearest to you, that will leave the enemy with fewer encampments to farm from.

Whatever method that you choose to be rid of the jungling person, make sure to start with Ward. They are useful beyond just the scope of counter jungling.

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