March 3rd:


Hello, this is my first build, and I'd like to provide a great guide that helps people destroy with Jarvan.

I think that it's about perspective. What do YOU see Jarvan as?

Thank you for your time in reading my build, I look forward to what you have to say, I will try to make this guide as easy and comfortable to read as possible. Check towards the bottom of the guide for screenshots. Feel free to ask me in-game if you have any questions. Username: welshdrag.
:D

A (?) denotes a unknown/untested "fact" yet to be confirmed.

April 16th:

Hello everyone, I recently got back from my break and I decided it was time to change my build. I've played A LOT of games with jarvan by now, and I think that my previous build wasn't as good as it could be, so without further ado, my new guide.

NEW SECTIONS WILL BE HIGHLIGHTED IN BLUE AND HAVE NEW: AT THE TOP.

Pros

- INSANELY great initiator mid-late game.
- With the right items, he has massive damage output.
- Skills work for a variety of different things:
- Survivability
- Support
- Utter domination mid lane
- In my opinion, one of the best ults, done correctly will 90% of the time give your team a kill
- Great chaser
- Good escape mechanisms

Cons

- His ultimate can be a double edged sword, sometimes trapping your own team!
- Weak level 1.
- Vulnerable to various crowd control.
- Mana problems early-mid game, blue buff reliant in team fights.

Good Spells

- Exhaust

I love exhaust and take it almost every game. It's so versatile in every way possible. Lowering your opponent's attack by 70% and spells by 35%! The slow will almost always guarantee first blood if used correctly.

- Teleport

I like teleport for its map mobility. If you're forced to B from mid, you can instantly return, and late game, you can make it to the enemy nexus for some free kills.

Keep in mind, teleport can be used on:

Minions
Towers
Teemo shrooms
Wards
Heimerdinger's turrets (?)
Tibbers
Voidling


- Ignite

Teleport can be swapped for ignite, which does tons of damage early game, and can ensure kills. Late game, however it doesn't really help much.

- Flash

I don't use flash very often, but it's a good spell to have due to the sheer popularity of it. Beware the enemy's flash, as it can escape

- Ghost

I don't particularly like ghost, but it's extremely popular and it's true, it does have its uses. Escaping ganks, used in conjunction with exhaust can rape an escaping enemy.

Spells to avoid

- Rally

Do NOT use this spell

- Clairvoyance

Leave it to the support

- Fortify

Rather useless on anybody in my opinion... there are much more viable options.

- Revive

Bringing revive, you plan to die obviously, and planning to die is planning to lose, and you don't plan to lose do you?

Runes

Greater mark of desolation
Not much needs to be said about armor penetration marks, they are really your only great choice as they boost your early game damage significantly.

greater seal of replenishmentor or

Replenishment seals help early game mana problems significantly, while dodge seals are pretty standard on melee dps champions, and fortitude seals are standard for any tank. I love fortitude seals for one reason: 48 health. 9 Fortitude seals will give an extra 48 health, and although it isn't much late game, early game it will get you fed.



Not really debatable, although I know everyone prefers some diversity, flat cooldown glyphs are excellent on Jarvan's ult since it does have a rather long one, and none of the items in this build offer cooldown reduction.

greater quintessence of Desolationor

More armor pen? Yes, please!

Ok, now I know what you're thinking... "OMGWTF WISDOM QUINTS!?" Calm down for a minute. 3 of these give a total of 6% experience gain, with the 5% from masteries, 11% exp gain!!! An 11% experience gain over your enemies means nearly 3 levels higher than bot and top, which means getting fed is just a matter of right clicking on the minimap.

Masteries

I take standard 21/0/9 build with boosted attack, crit, ArP, minion damage, and improved exhaust along with improved teleport, mana and health regen, 5% exp boost, and extended monster buffs.

Offense

-Deadliness: Ability power is pointless, so I take this over Archmage's Savvy.
-Cripple: If you took exhaust (Which you should) the duration and armor "pen?" is great.
-Sorcery: 3% cooldowns.. hmm, this is equal to about 4 glyphs, which are 2400 ip in all...
-Archaic knowledge: Only deals magic damage, so this is sort of a let down, but getting it as close to true damage as possible is great.
-Sunder: More armor pen.
-Offensive mastery: Late game it does nothing, but early game, it can get in some extra last hits.
-Brute Force: Attack damage
-Lethality: Triple the crit *damage* of deadliness? THANKS.
-Havoc: Since you're going to reach pretty crazy amounts of damage late game, percentages of damage are excellent.

Utility

-Spatial Accuracy: A nice buff to the teleport skill, although if you choose ghost, you can take Haste instead.
-Perseverance: A great mastery as this helps with early game mana regeneration.
-Awareness: The main mastery that you want. As stated above, you NEED the experience boost.
-Utility Mastery: I love this mastery, because you're going to be jungling a lot. Longer blue buff = longer lane staying power.

Martial Cadence

Jarvan's passive, which does 8/10/12% of the target's Current health with a melee attack. This can only happen on the same target once every 6 seconds. The only problem is that you will almost never get full damage in with this, unless you are in melee range when they are full health. Using the standard + dragon strike will take you to them.

Dragon Strike

Jarvan's Q is rather interesting, it's a linear skill-shot that reduces the target's armor for 10/14/18/22/26% and deals 70/120/170/220/270 physical damage. This scales 1:1.1 with Bonus Damage. What this means is the damage given by abilities and items. For example, Say I have 150 damage, of which 100 is base, and 50 is from my B.F. Sword. I will be given 55 damage, because Base damage is NOT scaled in here.

This, combined with Jarvan's passive, make for one hell of a tank buster. You can deal with both health tanks (Mundo/Cho'Gath) and armor tanks (Rammus). This is 50% of your main damage dealing combo. (See Below).

NEW:

The difference between armor pen and armor reduction:

I thought I should bring this up real quick, because there is some confusion. Armor penetration gives YOU the "buff" and enemy with 30 armor, you have 20 armor pen, all of your auto attacks and physical spells will deal damage as if they had only 10 armor. Allies will still deal damage as if the enemy has 30 armor.

Armor REDUCTION actually lowers said enemies armor. So and enemy with 100 armor that you use your q on will be dealt damage by your entire team as if it had 74 armor. This is useful for baron, because your whole team now does extra damage on it.

Golden Aegis

Jarvan's W ability is a 5 second shield that shields for 50/100/150/200/250 (+20/25/30/35/40 per nearby enemy champion), and slows nearby enemies for 15/20/25/30/35% for 2 seconds.

Note that the auto activation was lost in a patch.

I get this skill at level 13, and only because I'm forced to. 50 health shield and 15% slow just isn't worth it early and mid game, and it's wiser to spend the points in dragon strike or demacian standard.

Demacian Standard

Jarvan's "E" ability is demacian standard, where he places a flag to a nearby area dealing 60/110/160/210/260 AoE magic damage. Demacian standard passively grants 10/14/18/22/26% attack speed, and 10/14/18/22/26 armor. The flag, when thrown, grants his passive to all nearby allies, and effectively doubling his passive for himself.

This is a pretty cool spell for a couple of reasons. For one, it reveals fog of war where it lands, the attack speed aura is great for pushing backdoors with other teammates, and killing the tower fast. It scales with AP, so it's damage isn't very impressive.

Note: it can be thrown WHILE WALKING, just like Irelia's ult, so think smart and use that to your advantage.

Cataclysm

Jarvan's "R" move, or his ult is a single click-target ability which is pretty damn amazing if you ask me. He leaps toward the target dealing 200/350/500 damage, plus 1.5 bonus attack damage. He creates a circular wall of impassible terrain for 3.5 seconds, he can destroy it at will if he wants.

A few things here. When leaping, you are untargetable until you land on your opponent, use this to your advantage to escape skill-shots. Flash can escape the terrain, as can blink moves such as:

+ hyper-kinetic position reverse

Many people are very closed-minded about who's going mid. Assert your dominance in champion select, if you call it first, they will respect it instead of rambling on about how jarvan is a horrible mid.

Here are the likely champs you will face at mid, their threat levels to Jarvan, and how to counter their moves.

Threat level none-low (squishies)
. . .

Jarvan can only go here if you follow this guide. ;)

Ashe, Sivir, Karma, and Ryze should be your feast and you should spam <33333 in /all chat for giving you so many kills. Karthus is a little tricky, but so squishy, and buy 1 ward, and twitch is feeding you as well.

Threat level low-medium


Watch out for anivia's , cassiopeia's can be annoying, lux's finales funkeln is a pain when retreating, nidalee has heal, and miss fortune is an excellent harasser.

Threat level medium-hazardous (ask for lane change)


The things that will destroy you the most are blinds.

Teemo... You can almost never kill him if he is pro. His and heimerdiner's and CH-1 concussion grenade will lead to your downfall.

Kassadin can with ease get out of your ult.

Laning against vlad, fiddlesticks, annie, or kennen will only last as long as your 5 health pots.

Stay away from these champs. You have been warned!

Crazy Damage Output Tips with Combo

First entering your lane, you want to just chill out, and last-hit minions while taking minimal harassment until level 2, where you have both demacian standard and dragon strike.

Now, the fun begins. When dragon strike comes into contact with a flag, you will get pulled to the flag, knocking up any enemies in between the flag and you. This goes for champs and minions. This is your "bread and butter" combo, the most damage in skills you will be dealing, how you catch up to enemies, how you run away from enemies, and clear entire minion waves at once.

*Note* Don't bother trying to hit them with the flag, instead focus on getting it behind them, the damage on the flag is too little to compensate for them getting away.

Two problems, however, since it is a combo, it takes roughly 150 mana to pull off, so you can see how starved you can get. Use it wisely until level 6, or madred's razors, where you can get blue buff.

I've made some screens to show this combo.

1. Throw the flag!

2. Knock 'em up!

3. ???

4. Profit!

Calculating the enemy's walking patterns, placing the flag, and pulling off the combo takes time to master, and you must practice! placing the flag near a tower is a bad idea. I've countless times done so, tryed to use dragon strike to clear a minion wave next to the turret, accidentally connect to the flag, and pulled directly under the turret's fire.

When and how to use your ult

Properly.

Feel free to use your incredibly useful ult whenever it's up, but do it correctly or you will die, or have your team hate you.

When TO use your ult

-When you're low health and getting tower dived. If you're going to die anyways, they should too. Keep them in place so they get forced to take heavy damage from the turret.

-When your team is chasing an enemy, with very little health, and he is getting away.

-Keep an enemy from chasing down an ally with low health.

-Hold enemies in place for either YOU to get a kill, or have a teammate time to catch up.

When NOT to use your ult

-When a fleeing enemy or a stationary enemy is going to die anyways without your ult.

-Killstealing.

-Tower diving

-Trapping your entire team inside a small arena in a 5v5 team fight, you'll get people killed. ESPECIALLY RANGED CHARACTERS

CORE BUILD:

Going mid, I like to start off with and five . 5 might seem a bit much, but they go pretty quickly.

I try and go for first, but if I can't spare the money, go ahead and buy . Then try building ASAP. Finish it off into

*NOTE* This is NOT a jungling build. I repeat NOT. Keep reading!

Reason for having wriggle's lantern without jungling:

Wriggle's lantern has an amazing armor and damage boost for early game, synchronizing with extremely well. The lifesteal helps you lane for very long periods of time.
The passive bonus will land you 95% last hits on almost every minion when you're laning. when backdooring, they won't have time to catch you since you clear a minion wave in 5 seconds with melee.
Back in the laning phase, it allows you to go catch blue buff with ease, and pick up some jungle kills as you're running to go gank. The ACTIVE: Free ward every 3 minutes?! For a first item, wriggle's just matches up with Jarvan so well.

Boots

My recommendation is to turn your into Just calm down here. It's early game attack speed compliments the next item, giving you the rest of the atk speed you need for the rest of the game. It's cost effective and fast.

If you don't like those, you can substitute them for either , or , NOTHING ELSE.

Attack speed, survivability, and the final power

is next, it gives great attack speed, crit chance, and movement speed, a great addition to any DPS build. This, (if you got ) should be all the attack speed you need to deal effective damage to fleeing enemies.
Start with .

Now it should be mid game and you should have an average 7 kills - give or take a few if you got ksed a bunch. By now, the enemy team is realizing how deadly you are, and you're going to start getting focused.

NEW:

Build either or first, and turn it into . In the past, I have expressed how much I dislike frozen mallet, but the new and improved build calls for it. it's an amazing item overall, and you use every aspect of it.

Next, start up your infinity edge, and try to start with B.F. Sword, if you can't, buy or . This starts your multitude of different stats. Now you will have lots of attack damage, attack speed, critical chance, health, and a bunch of useful passives.

Final/Situational Items

If you're doing amazing, and want to put some extra icing on the cake, buy . If you don't prefer snowball items, buy .

I've changed my mind about banshee's, as the mana and magic resist is great against a caster team.

Good item if you need the extra survivability.

Good if games are just coming to a close.

Items to avoid

Waste of an inventory spot IMHO, blue buff is fine.

Ever since the nerf, it's not really worth it for anyone sadly.

For some reason in the past, I thought this was a good idea. But it's a waste of time unless you're going full tank.

And thus concludes my guide to Jarvan, please test him out and vote and comment!

- Go mid.
- Abuse your + combo.
- Use your ult wisely.
- Have common sence.
- PRACTICE.
- Follow the guide to the point! (with the exception of boots).

- Welshdrag ;D

Use This guide, and post your scores in comments! Here's some of my recent scores.

OUTDATED SCORES ADDING MORE SOON