Hello everyone and welcome to my Jax Toplane guide for season 10! I'm Eclipse and I started playing League in season 9. After I got into Jax, I've been one tricking him and I have over 400k Mastery Points on him across a few accounts. I think he's one of the best Top Laners to pick up right now to 1v9 your games and climb! I'm still always looking to improve and get better, so I'm here to share what I know and help out Top laners who are looking to get into Jax and climb with him.

Why Jax? Jax is an excellent splitpusher, teamfighter, diver and duelist. He has the power to 1v1 almost any champion in the game as well as survive long in teamfights and destroy backline carries while taking plenty of damage. Jax snowballs incredibly hard and scales pretty well into the late game. He doesn't get banned often and can be picked into most team comps, and he's a very versitle champion with plenty of ways to play him. His kit is simple to understand, but has plenty of potential to mechanically outplay opponents. With this guide I'm going to teach you my style of playing Jax to not only dominate lane, but hard carry your games as well.

I want to address this first, because if you look at most Jax guides and builds right now, you would know that the meta is to rush Bork. It's an incredibly powerful item that cranks your damage to 11 and makes you unstoppable in a 1v1. While I do build it sometimes, My playstyle is better off without it, and I personally find more success not using Bork. You and many others might be different, and if building Bork wins you more games, then by all means go for it. I play a more teamfight based Jax.

Playing Ignite Jax means one thing: You want to dominate and stomp your lane as hard as humanly possible. Getting out of laning phase as fed as you possibly can is the key to hard carrying your games. If you want to win your games from Top, going even is rarely an option. There's a few matchups where hard snowballing just isn't possible, but if you play better than your opponent, you can win almost all of them and carry.

Jax's lvl 1 is among the best in the game in terms of dueling. If you're in danger of being traded, you can safely mitigate damage with your Counterstrike, Or if you are in a matchup where you win level 1, feel free to all in with your counterstrike, chugging a Corrupting Pot stack while you're fighting. In matchups where you can start pushing early, keeping your passive stacked and fighting with as many as possible makes your dps insane and gives you more attack speed than any opponent in lane.

With Ignite + Nimbus Cloak, your kill pressure is cranked up so far. Pay attention to crucial enemy cooldowns and spam all ins when you have openings after level 1.

In matchups where it's better to let the enemy push into you early, last hitting and avoiding damage is fine too. If you can setup a freeze and wait for level up powerspikes you can punish the enemy for walking up too far.

Level 2 you can kill pretty much anyone or at least burn a flash. Take Q and jump in. If you're inside your laner's minion wave, you can use your E to soak all the damage and deal massive damage with your Counterstrike's stun.

In terms of First back itemization, refer to the notes in the build above or in the matchups section.

Jax doesn't have very complicated combos, here's a few standard ones that you should know.

E + Q + E

This is good to chase down enemies, after your Q recast your E as soon as you can to stun them midair. I wouldn't recommend it as an opener because you'll waste your E very early on which is crucial in deciding a fight. Use this on targets you know you can kill quickly or that aren't much threats to you.

AA + AA + W

Remember your W is an empowered auto attack. Activate it on the 3rd auto to proc your passive, giving you huge burst damage.

E + Q + AA + W + Tiamat + E

Very strong 1 shot combo, Hold your E for the maximum duration so they can't fight back, and once again use your W to get off your bonus damage from your 3rd auto.

Q + AA + W

This is a fine opener if you don't need to stun then right away. Since you're on them, hold your E for when you need to counter their auto attacks or other abilities. Try to always make sure you're doing AA + W for maximum damage.

W + Q

Excellent finisher for super low health targets, your W bonus damage applies to your Q so you can kill them quicker upon landing your Q.

E + Ward + Q To Ward + E

This can catch enemies off guard if you're out of Q range or if you're attacking from over a wall, if you have no minions to boost you closer you can use your ward to close the distance and land your stun.

After Laning Phase, you have a few options. As Jax you either want to Splitpush, or Teamfight.

If you take your top tower, you can either keep pushing top and shoving the wave or rotate to push bot lane and help them take their tower. If your bot lane is doing well, you can just keep pushing out top then looking to group with your team to fight or contest objectives.

In fights, you want to always try to flank. Don't reveal yourself right away and aim to jump on the backline carries like the enemy ADC or squishy assasin for example. If you can take out the carries or be as annoying as possible while your team peels for you, you'll win most fights with your tanky items, your R and your E to mitigate burst damage.

If you're splitpushing, make sure to have wards on you to escape if too many enemies come to deal with you and you're pushed up far. Always pay attention to the map and check who's rotating to come stop you. Drawing pressure is excellent, but dying usually isn't. Once you have Trinity + Thydra + Steraks, your potential to 1v3/1v4 is insane. If you get caught and chased in a sidelane while strong and fed, there's a lot of cases where you can flat out take the fight and win. As you're learning, test your limits and try to challenge anyone who comes to stop you. You'll be surprised as to how long Jax can survive if you manage your abilities properly.

A simple flowchart to follow would be:

Push Out Sideline ---> Rotate to your team

If no one is stopping you from splitting, then by all means, keep pushing the lane and smacking towers, unless your team is fighting and really needs you. Every game is different and with experience you'll be able to make better judgments on when to split and when to stop splitting. Make sure you're with your team for crucial fights if they can't handle them on their own.

This wasn't a super in-depth guide I'd say but I hope you learned something new about Jax and I hope you enjoy him in Solo Q. He's relatively easy to pick up but mastering him will get you super far. I'd always recommend to watch high elo replays to learn more, looking at as many other guides as you can, and filling yourself with as much knowledge as possible about Jax to master the champion. I stream on twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/totallyeclipse , and I hope you enjoyed the guide! I might add more to this in the future.