Can a Champion jungle effectively without Smite?

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)

Solution 1:

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.

Solution 2:

This can be broken down in two parts. Can a jungler clear the jungle without smite, including objectives? Answer is yes, the jungle camps are pretty easy to clear. Warwick, Nunu, Tryndamere, Chogath, Trundle, Lee Sin, Nocturne, and other junglers who can top lane all have strong sustain to clear the jungle, albeit slower than if they had this summoner spell that did 400+ true damage to minions and neutral monsters.

The bigger question is should a jungler ever jungle without smite? This is a resounding no.

Without smite, the enemy jungler can counterjungle you so easily. They could just buy wards, and ward the brush by your red and blue buff. As soon as they see you start they can stand on the other side of the wall and smite with you being able to do nothing to stop them. Smite's damage at low level is higher than any other spell to neutral minions except ChoGath's Feast and Nunu's Consume. However these two abilities have animation associated to them that an experienced player can take advantage of and even use their abilities in conjunction with smite to outburst these two abilities.

This inability to secure buffs would continue to Dragons and Barons being freely taken by the team with smite.

The question now becomes, can the jungler have that much stronger gank presence with the summoner spell they took in place of smite to make up for all the free dragons, barons, buffs in the game. Considering, 1 dragon is equivalent to 3 kills and respawns every 6 minutes. The jungler would have to get 1 kill every 2 minutes as a direct result of having that different summoner than smite.

But this was a rhetorical question. At least one player on each side should have smite, this tends to be the jungler. So a jungler without smite is simply trolling their team to be at a disadvantage.

There are two last tidbits of information: Having a spec in the mastery for Smite grants the jungler 10 gold each time they use it. This is a little bit of gold that can help the jungler a little as they can cast smite about once per minute. Finally, Smite can be cast even if you are stunned. In other words, if you are the jungler and in range to smite, the only way you can stop them from smite stealing the objective is to kill the jungler. On the other hand, if a Nunu or Chogath is silenced, suppressed, snared slightly out of range, knock backed, knocked up, feared, any kind of CC except a slow, they cannot use their consume or feast abilities.