League-of-legends – Can a Champion jungle effectively without Smite

league-of-legends

Is it worth it for any champion to try to jungle effectively without Smite?

  • In what situation would it be more advantageous to jungle without Smite?
  • Is Smite a must-have summoner spell for all junglers?
  • Are there any champion that would be a good jungler without Smite ? (I
    am not talking about champions that CAN jungle without smite, but rather
    someone that is drastically better dropping smite for another summoner spell)

Best Answer

In general, I would say it is an absolutely horrible idea to not have smite.

Smite allows you to clear the early jungle faster, but its more important aspect is control over Dragon and Baron. Most junglers will keep smite up as much as possible in the late game for Baron and Dragon so they have the ability to steal or take the objective more easily.

A stolen Baron or Dragon can easily help sway a game in a team's favor. The global gold (and buff in the case of Baron) is a huge boon to a team. It can allow you to stay in game if you are behind or seal the deal if you are ahead. By not running smite you are putting that at risk.

You might be able to get away with no smite if the enemy also lacked it, but you are making the taking of Dragon and Baron that much more of a gamble. If your team has smite and the enemy does not, then it is infinitely easier to steal both those objectives.

Nunu is one of the few junglers that could run without smite. His consume does comparable true damage to neutral creeps allowing for a lot more objective control compared to junglers without smite. Cho'Gath has a similar ability with his ultimate Feast, since it does such a large amount of true damage to neutral monsters.

However I'd still run Smite, it is just that important.

Update:

With Season 3¹²³, Riot has moved the jungle closer to its season one state wherein the monsters are much stronger. To compensate they have included some jungle only items (Hunter's Machete, Spirit Stone, etc) but overall the difficulty has been ramped up. This makes smite much more important for no/low sustain junglers. Without using smite you have to suffer much more damage from the larger camps, forcing you to fall behind as you retreat to the fountain to heal.