I loved the old Jax and was very concerned about the remake ... especially with the change to Equipment Mastery as his passive. But all in all I think the remake is decent, without the problem of Jax becoming severely OP late game.

He does still deal out a ton of damage, but now you have to balance his build a bit to give him the sustain he needs.

The overall goal of this build is to give Jax survivability early so that he can farm and become a killing machine late game that is very difficult to stop.

I've also got a jungle Jax build that seems to work really well. I'll add some info as to how to think about jungling with Jax soon :)

P.S.: This is my first guide so please feel free to leave any feedback or suggestions you might have.

P.P.S.: The patch notes on Jax suggested that Empower would continue to scale with AD, but in-game this is no longer the case. In any case Empower only scales with AP now which does make hybrid Jax more viable than was originally suggested in the guide. Updates have been made to accommodate this.

Passive - Relentless Assault

This is now called "Relentless Assault" but the mobafire database needs to be updated to reflect this ... until then the info will be correct, but the name will be wrong.

(Innate): Every time Jax attacks an enemy, he gains 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 / 12 / 14 % attack speed for 2.5 seconds (stacks up to 6 times).
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Q - Leap Strike

Range: 700
Cost: 65 Mana
Cooldown: 10 / 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 seconds
Physical Damage: 70 / 110 / 150 / 190 / 230 (+0.6 per ability power) (+1.0 per bonus attack damage)
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W - Empower

Cost: 30 Mana
Cooldown: 7 / 6 / 5 / 4 / 3 seconds
Magic Damage: 40 / 85 / 130 / 175 / 220 (+0.6 per ability power)
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E - Counter Strike

Radius AOE: 400
Cost: 70 / 75 / 80 / 85 / 90 Mana
Cooldown: 22 / 20 / 18 / 16 / 14 seconds
Physical Damage: 40 / 70 / 100 / 120 / 160 (+0.8 per bonus attack damage)
Additional Damage: 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30
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R - Relentless Assault

This is now called "Grandmaster's Might" but the mobafire database needs to be updated to reflect this ... until then the info will be correct, but the name will be wrong.

Passive
Every 3rd consecutive hit
Magic Damage: 100 / 160 / 220 (+0.7 per ability power)

Active
Cost: 75 Mana
Duration: 6 seconds
Cooldown: 100 / 90 / 80 seconds

Attack Damage Bonus: 25 / 45 / 65 (+0.2 per bonus attack damage)
Ability Power Bonus: 25 / 45 / 65 (+0.2 per ability power)
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Other Changes

Stats:

-Base health increased to 551 from 506
-Health per level increased to 88 from 83
-Armor per level increased to 3.5 from 3.2

There are lots of different rune setups that work on Jax.

The armor of Greater Seal of Armor and magic resist of Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist are very helpful, but you can switch them out if you feel you don't need the survivability.

For marks I recommend attack speed with Greater Mark of Attack Speed, but armor penetration of Greater Mark of Desolation is a decent alternative.

Finally for Quintessences I think that armor penetration of Greater Quintessence of Desolation is the way to go.

This Jax build is going to focus on a more AD heavy Jax (although he'll still be doing quite a bit of magic damage).

For masteries I go 21/9/0 with a build designed primarily to improve Jax's damage output and make him a strong pusher (with Jax's great attack speed Demolitionist can quickly wreck turrets)). The single point in Blast can pretty much go anywhere you want to put it. Blast gives a bit more consistent damage as the game goes on ... but really it's not a big deal and you could just as well put a point into Deadliness .

In defense I focus on magic resist Resistance or armor with Hardiness and extra HP with Durability and Veteran's Scars (which again is important now that equipment mastery is gone).

The two spells that seem to work best on Jax are Flash and Surge.

Flash is awesome, great initiator, chaser, or escape.

Surge seems to be designed almost perfectly for Jax ... not only does he get the attack speed boost, but also added AP!!! Combine this with your ultimate and you will destroy almost anything.

I tend to prefer Empower over Leap Strike since it is lower mana-cost (more spammable) and can help you to farm early.

You only really need 1 point in Counter Strike early ... and then max it last. The stun is always 1 second regardless of the level.

An alternative skill sequence would be to go for Counter Strike first then Leap Strike to try and get an early kill (as mentioned by rollowz in the comments). Overall this is a personal preference and should be based on how aggressive you want to be early.

But if you do decide to get Counter Strike early there is a great trick you can use to get a bit more damage in. The key here is to use the added damage that Counter Strike does based on the number of missed attacks. So what you should do is auto-attack an enemy champ when there are lots of enemy creeps nearby ... all the creeps will start attacking you and missing. Every miss will do an additional 10 damage when Counter Strike hits. That extra damage is HUGE early and can make Jax a real unexpected menace, especially if you have a teammate to back you up.

OK ... here is where the big difference lies between the new Jax and the old Jax. Equipment Mastery meant that the old Jax could just stack AP and AD items and turn into an unkillable tank. The new Jax needs to spend a bit of gold on sustainability to go along with his massive DPS.

The goal of this item build is to give Jax the sustain he needs early to farm, and the DPS he needs later to kill.

To start off get a Boots and 3 Health Potions. Jax really needs the move speed early on and the health pots help keep him in lane.

On your first trip back get a Phage. Not only does the extra HP keep Jax alive early ... and the slow will make enemies think twice about going after you if you have backup.

Next you want to finish off your boots and usually Mercury's Treads are the way to go, but if the enemy doesn't have a lot of AP or CC you can go for Berserker's Greaves instead. Or you could work on your lifesteal to keep you hp up so go for Bloodthirster. You can get either the Vampiric Scepter or the B. F. Sword first depending on how much money you have and how much you feel like you need the lifesteal.

Next I usually take Guinsoo's Rageblade for the increase in attack speed, damage, and AP. Jax should be a beast at this point and your consistent attacks will destroy heros, turrets, the dragon, and Baron Nashor

Keep on building towards your Trinity Force by getting a Sheen next. Jax can basically spam Empower and this makes it that much more powerful, as well as giving him some extra mana to spam it that much more.

Complete your Trinity Force. This item is great on Jax! Every time you use your Empower it does that much extra damage. The slow keeps enemies from escaping, and the attack speed boost, health, and AP all benefit every aspect of Jax. So there is nothing on this item that is "wasted".

For extra durability I get a Warmog's Armor. It helps keep Jax in fights longer and prevents him from getting burst down quickly by mages.

If it gets to really late game his final item should be a Madred's Bloodrazor. The attack speed boost and magic damage synergize well with an AD focused Jax to make him a huge threat to the enemy team even if they stacked armor.

But one big question is ... why no Hextech Gunblade?

- Hextech Gunblade was a staple of the old Jax build ... and it still can do well on him since he has decent AP scaling ratios. However lets think about why we get Hextech Gunblade. Sustain & DPS.

-On the Sustain front Hextech Gunblade has lifesteal is equal to Bloodthirster that has no stacks. But a fully stacked Bloodthirster not only gets you more lifesteal, but it will outshine the extra life gained from the Hextech Gunblade 20% spellvamp (since you will only be hitting your ult at most 33% of the time). So basically the two items are about equal on Sustain.

-Where Bloodthirster really shines though is on the DPS front. With a 0.7 AP ratio you might think that Jax's ult will outperform regular AD if you get lots of AP items. But remember that it hits only once every third attack at most ... so that's more like a 0.22 AP scaling ratio. You do get some AP scaling on his other abilities as well, but the AD scaling is either equal to or better than the AP scaling for every single ability (except Empower which now only scales with AP at a 0.6 ratio).

However even with the AP scaling of Empower you will still get more DPS with Bloodthirster. The reason for this is that Jax is all about attack speed. And he can easily hit the cap of 2.5 attacks/second. But even if he's at a measly 1 attack/second, Bloodthirster will still get you more DPS. The reason is that that you can use Empower AT MOST once every 3 seconds and with the AP from Hextech Gunblade this will give you an additional 42 damage per Empower which can also be said as 14 extra DPS. However even in the worst case scenario where you have a 0-stack Bloodthirster and only 1 attack/second it will still be giving you more 6 more DPS than Hextech Gunblade AND it doesn't cost you any mana. As your attack speed goes up ... the advantage moves more and more in favor of Bloodthirster.

This means that the Bloodthirster will do far more consistent damage and scale better with all his abilities ... skip Hextech Gunblade and go Bloodthirster every time!

Madred's Bloodrazor or Atma's Impaler

AbeuTheRealz made a good point in the comments that Atma's Impaler can work exceptionally well on Jax.

I did originally consider adding Atma's Impaler since the added crit works well with Trinity Force, and I think it's a great item on Jax, especially with Warmog's Armor. The only reason that I put in Madred's Bloodrazor over Atma's Impaler is that late game this would allow Jax to take on tanks as well and it would also punish people who went too heavy on armor while neglecting Magic Resistance. Additionally the huge speed boost allows Jax's passive Relentless Assault and Guinsoo's Rageblade to build up their stacks more quickly.

However if the other team is heavy Magic Resist, Atma's is great since it will add a huge chunk of extra AD as well as crit and armor boosts.

Another item that can work well is Black Cleaver because of the added speed/damage and since the armor penetration debuffs allow the whole team to do more damage to your target.

While the above build works well against most standard teams ... sometimes you need to adjust to stay alive a little better ... and usually in those circumstances you don't need quite the DPS you do otherwise.

For more Magic Resist and huge survivability Banshee's Veil is the way to go. The passive saves you from being easily focused and the MR keeps you alive

2nd Bloodthirster instead of Warmog's Armor can be very useful when you're up against teams that aren't doing tons of burst damage but have huge sustained DPS. The 2nd Bloodthirster will keep you alive and make them fall that much more quickly.

OK ... so I know that this item isn't as good as it used to be, but it is still great on Jax and the active slow makes it much easier to catch up with and kill champs if you have an opposing team that seems to just keep getting away. If you do go for Hextech Gunblade it should probably replace either Bloodthirster or Madred's Bloodrazor.

Well that about covers the basic of the new Jax. I hope that my guide was helpful and I'll try to keep updating it and making it more user friendly as time permits.

Cheers :)