This guide is a spinoff of the offtanks guide. It is built around a specific playstyle, a style that is about sustaining lane, disrupting, disabling and ensuring your team wins.

This guide is not built to rack up tons of kills and do amazing damage early. It's about making sure your TEAM gets tons of kills. If you're looking for a way to go 20/3/3, then this guide isn't it.

However, if you are looking for a way to go 6/0/22, being in every team fight and being the main factor of your team winning, this IS the way to go.

All runes, masteries, and abilities synergize together. It's important not to deviate. Read on and I'll explain why.

Runes are non-negotiable. I don't have to say much about the marks and seals, they are self-explanatory.

The shielding glyphs are absolutely necessary. I experimented with cooldown and health regen glyphs, but the magic resist ones wound up being the best by far. They provide a bit of magic resist in the early stages of the game, something that is needed becase you most likely won't get high MR until late game.

The swiftness quints are the ones that will confuse most people. There is a specific reason for them, though. It's not simply to make you faster chasing down people and getting kills, which is absolutely does, but it's the HIDDEN benefit of these quints (with masteries) that is the most useful. What is it? You can get boots of speed and be just as fast as if you had higher level boots without them. I've been faster than opponents who HAD berserker greaves and I have only level 1 boots. If your lane opponent has merc treads or berserker greaves, you are just about as fast as he is, and you didn't have to upgrade your boots yet. This hidden benefit is huge, because now you are on your way to getting your first 2 big items, and he's behind because he spent his first 1k - 1.3k gold on boots, and you only spent 350 gold. It's a gargantuan difference in the early stages, something that took me a while to realize.

You can handle 2v1 solo top. You can handle mid. These are both preferable to getting 2v2 in a lane, but sometimes it can't be avoided. Farming well with a melee is really an art, and something that took me a while to learn how to do correctly (it's much easier with a ranged character, obviously). You don't want to push your lane because it'll place you out of position. Example : if you're 1v1 in top lane and you attack minions while getting last hits, you're pushing your lane and putting yourself at risk to get ganked from their jungler behind. You must learn how to stay mobile, moving side to side to avoid your opponents skill shots (against champs like Ezreal or Mundo) and running and and last hitting a minion for the gold. Once you start building this skill, you will constantly be running in and out of creeps and only landing the last shot, and your lane will not be pushed, it'll stay in the middle of the lane, keeping your back relatively safe. If you find yourself out of position, Jarvan has good escapes with his standard and dragon strike, pulling you away from opponents. When all else fails, flash out. I only really put myself in danger and out of position when I have flash ready. Flash is a life-saver, and absolutely essential.


Your initial gold is spent on and a . This should get you through the very initial laning phase. Your goal here is to farm approx 700 gold. This is so you can upgrade to Philosopher's Stone and asap. You should reach this point around level 5. Recall, buy these 2 items and maybe another Health Potion and get back to lane and STAY there. With philo stone taking care of both your mana and health regen, along with your masteries and runes, you are amazingly self sufficient in lane. If you are 2v1 and get pushed back, it's simple as move back to your tower, drop your standard and dragon strike through creeps to knock them up and get your minion kills. Move back to tower and repeat over and over again. Your opponents can't hurt you and aren't going to lose your tower. I can't tell you how many games I've just sat there and did this. You're gaining gold and experience, you're safe, and you're tower is too. Unless 2-3 of the enemy team comes in to gank you (and even then you will probably get a kill with your knockup and exhaust with your tower hitting them), you're really unmovable.

Farming plenty of money with the directions above, you want to rush . Why Warmogs? Because it'll give you a HUGE advantage early. You'll have health, you have natural armor from abilities and masteries and runes, and you have health regen. Warmog's is the difference between dieing from a gank and being ungankable early game. You can literally be unkillable unless you play stupid in the early game. Warmog's saves your *** from burst damage, opponents like Akali can't run in and just drop you, they have to use their skills multiple times to kill you when you're full or close to full health. It's THE advantage. You want "Giant's Belt" first, then it's your choice between the 2nd regrowth pendent or ruby crystal component, if you're buying them in stages. Warmog's and Philo stone to start the game is the perfect start. You aren't built to do high damage yet, you want to ensure you are unkillable.

Next is . Chain vest first, then finish the item. At this point you'll have Boots of Speed, Philo Stone, Warmog's, Atmas, and should be around level 11-13, and your dragon strike should be fairly strong. The Atma/Warmog combo gives you 3 things : health, armor, and damage. At this point you can start really going after opponents, or running through the jungle/creeping very quickly.

After this start, it's situational. Upgrade boots to Mercury Treads when you can, and work on or depending on the situation. You want to ensure when you start building either of these items you get the correct component first. Phage is the first component of Trinity Force you should work on, due to the slow and the health. The health synergizes with your Atmas, and the is the first component of you should buy if needed (for the magic resist). With such high health from Warmog's and your resistances, you are very hard to kill very early. Remember : after warmogs/atmas, everything is situational depending on THEIR team, not what YOU want to do. You must be able to soak up damage and give your team a better chance to win. Keep an eye on what the other team has for their damage items, and adjust accordingly.

These items are expensive. You must farm well to finance them. I've had games where I've wound up with Merc Treads, Atma's, Warmogs, Trinity, Infinity Edge and finally Randuin's Omen, but this doesn't really happen that often. Games don't usually last that long and farming 18k gold or so isn't easy, but it does happen. If it does get to that point, you'll be an absolute beast, but really after Warmog's and Atmas you are a beast anyway.

Jarvan is a character that is a natural initiator and disruptor. He's there to knock up, trap, and frustrate the opposing team. Not only does he do all that, he can also save his teammates by knocking up enemies that are chasing them down. I can't tell you how many times I've saved a teammate running away low on health by dropping my flag right behind them and dragon striking behind them and knocking up chasers to keep him from being killed.

The most effective way to use Jarvan is to run right into the middle of your enemies. There are two approaches : you can run right into the middle of them, use your ult to trap as many of them as you can, then flag/dragon strike out of your ult, keeping your enemies inside.

The other approach is obviously flag/strike and knockup the other team, then ulting and trapping. The important here is for your teamates to be ready and in position to finish them. Be careful here though, if you trap 3 opponents in your ult and can't get out, you could be in trouble. I've flashed out of my own ult at times.

You want to keep moving. You can take plenty of damage and can dish out good damage, but your main job is to disrupt and knock up enemies. Knock up, move away, run back in and knock up again. Works like a charm, and has the enemy team wanting to pull their hair out in frustration.

Don't forget you can use your skills to pull yourself over walls, it's helped me escape some very close situations. You can run right into the Baron or Dragon pit and go right over the wall. Remember to use your flash ability along with your skills. I've chased down people running away by flashing closer to them, using my ultimate to leap and trap them, and then using skills to knock them up and finishing them. I've also used flash to get over one wall to escape, and then use skills to pull myself over another wall, ensuring I get out alive. You can also come up behind your opponents by hiding behind a wall and throwing your standard and pulling yourself over it and then ulting thier casters/support. When Jarvan gets behind an enemy team, they usually break and run because he has their healers/casters trapped and hurt, looking to escape. If your team engages after you surprise them from behind, it's an easy team fight to win.

Jarvan's abilities are extremely usefull offensively and defensively. Use them to their fullest potential.

Jarvan is my favorite champion to play, by far, but what makes him my favorite is because he matches mystyle of play. If I wanted a high-damage champ who racks up a lot of kills, I'd play Akali or Trynd. Those are the champs that can do "WTF" damage and get high scores, but I find them boring and one-dimensional.

Jarvan is far from one dimensional, he plays many different roles on a team. When played correctly he IS the difference between winning and losing.

Remember, everything in this guide synergizes with everything else, so I would follow it exactly as spelled out. It's how I play with Jarvan, it's successful and it's fun.

Good luck.