How to build an Assassin for the Jungle

(*This is pre-Odin/Arachne Patch, I'll update once we start seeing ranked play with these re-worked gods.*)

Alright, so my first two guides were the low hanging fruit. The builds for both ADC and even Support don’t change a whole lot from god to god, they only change in respect to what your team composition is and the opponent team’s composition and behavior. Now that we are looking at Assassins for the Jungle role, all of that uniformity goes right out the window. On one hand, it is great that you have so much choice in what items are going to best suit your playstyle. On the other hand, it is very daunting to try to figure out what your play style is while not inadvertently nerfing yourself by bad item selection. So let’s start with a list of League viable assassins that get played in the jungle, in order of most to least played: Mercury, Hun Batz, Thor, Serqet, Loki, Nemesis and Bakasura. Ne Zha, Thanatos, Bastet, Fenrir, Kali, and Arachne (pre re-kit) are also assassins that fill the role but are all currently relegated to 2nd tier in the current meta. You would not want to play a 2nd tier god in league unless you are exceptionally good with them.

Alright, so we have a short list of 7 gods. We can put these gods into two categories, ones with escapes that you can go full glass cannon (Loki, Nemesis, Bakasura), ones that need a little defense (Thor, Serqet) and ones that need to rush Critical Damage (Mercury, Hun Batz). Our glass build will look like:

• Bumba’s, CDR Boots, Heartseeker, Rage, Deathbringer, Bloodforge, Titan’s Bane

Our slightly defensive build:

• Bumba’s, CDR Boots, Jotunn’s Wrath, Shifter’s Shield, Rage, Deathbringer, Titan’s Bane

Our crit damage rush build:

• Bumba’s, Pen Boots, Heartseeker, Deathbringer, Rage, Titan’s Bane, Bloodforge

Strong arguments can be made for Hydra's Lament instead of Rage or Heartseeker and getting Malice instead of Rage.  Lesser arguments can be made for Qin’s Sais, Devo Gloves, Transcendence, Golden Bow, Executioner, Magi's Blessing and Hastened Fatalis, but these are mostly situational and really should only be used once you are comfortable in the jungle in ranked. It is also important to note that each of these situational items will vastly change things like: when you can safely gank, when you can invade their jungle, when you can split push, and at what point in a fight you need to disengage.

Actives are fairly easy. Fist of the Gods and Beads/Aegis.  I prefer fist over HoG 3 as it has saved me/gotten the kill too many times, and if your solo is ranged they should be backing up the support with HoG 3.  On Loki and Hun Batz, Girdle of Inner Power will allow you to burst down (often called “one shot” even though its 3 or 4 hits in the span of about 2 seconds) in late game anyone but a tank. Consumables are health pots early, wards for mid harpies and possibly sentries for gold fury/fire giant and finally damage pots. The wards should be used sparingly and only if your team just doesn’t seem to ward well. Warding generally shouldn’t need to be done by jungle or adc as your team should want your hyper-carries devoting their gold entirely to their damage/build.

This post is a little shorter than the others so I’ll go a little bit into Jungle strategy. I also want to go into it because it seems to be the least understood, at least in the lower level leagues like Bronze and Silver. Your job is to farm and drop buffs for your team. Speed is your buff, Red is for Mid and Blue is for ADC and Solo. You need to be aware and ready for Mid harpies as soon as they come up. The timer on Mid Harpies is 3 minutes and you have ~48 seconds to get there when the circle timer is at the 9 o’clock position. For reference it takes about 30 seconds to get from the Well to mid harpies with with no leap/boots, and it can get down to 15 seconds with 18% + leaps. Support or Mid should be there to help, but if not, it is their XP loss. Those are your primary responsibilities. If you can secure all of your camps and both mid harpies each time they are up, you will get to end game well fed. So that sounds pretty easy right? And it is, if your teammates are winning each of their respective lanes, or at least not feeding their lanes. Once you’ve gotten all of your farm, meaning you’ve done mid harpies, all the buffs and maybe even back harpies, you have a choice. You can gank or you can invade your opponents buffs, putting their jungle behind. You really only want to gank if your teammates have been pushed back to their tower. If they are all fighting at mid map or at the enemy’s towers, it is probably best to simply steal buffs from the opponents territory, just be sure to have an escape ready and it is best that you have hog available to make it quick.

Jungle is very much about map awareness and timing. Too often you see junglers fall behind in farm because they get caught up ganking or just end up staying in a failing lane at which point they are sucking up xp that that laner needs to get ahead. As the jungler you need to realize when there is a ganking opportunity and when you are leaching unnecessarily.


That’s all for now, happy jungling!!