Hello, I'm ThisIsPatrik, and this is my Jax Guide. Hello and welcome to my Jax guide. I used to go by the username of PH45, but nowadays I go by the username of ThisIsPatrik, or in short just Patrik. I am a long time League of Legends player (started back in Season 1). I'm a Master tier top lane main, and I picked up Jax as my main champion back in Season 4 and have played him mostly ever since. I've been Master tier from S11 onwards consistently. Accounts I currently play on. I also got multiple other accounts but right now I'm mainly playing on the account I listed above. I stream my ranked grind almost daily on Twitch! Check out my YouTube channel where I occasionally post League related videos!

Flash: Best summoner spell in the game. Flash gives you the capability of getting over walls or quickly getting in range with Leap Strike. Overall just no a no-brainer of a summoner spell. Occasionally I might skip this for Ignite in some matchups in combination with Teleport if necessary.

Ignite: Ignite is a very powerful tool to have in lane phase since it has a relatively low cooldown, and it can give you a good edge in a duel in lane. Especially if the lane is snowbally, or your opponent has healing in their kit, this can make the difference during an all-in.

Teleport: Teleport is nice since it helps you in tough matchups where you have to back a lot early on and it still gives you pressure on the map later on. Makes splitpushing later on easier since you can still join teamfights if needed or potentially end games if enemies give you the chance.

Pros + Excellent duelist + Can fight almost anyone late game + Really good scaling + Great splitpusher + Has a built-in escape with ward + Leap Strike + Has an auto-attack reset + Gets naturally tanky in fights when using Grandmaster-At-Arms, as it gives you a good amount of resistances. Jax is a very strong fighter once he picks up a couple items, and in late game he can be a monster in the right hands.

Cons - Can be shut down by CC - Hard to get back in the game if behind - Requires matchup knowledge - Has some difficult matchups - Can sometimes struggle with teamfighting - Jax is quite a mana-hungry champ - If you miss your R, you miss out on damage and resistances Falling behind as Jax can be very punishing. It is really hard to get back to the game if you fall behind a lot and especially then if the enemy team keeps denying you XP and CS.

Precision

As the keystone of choice we have Lethal Tempo. It synergizes really well with Jax. It still gives bonus attack speed for every auto up to 6 stacks, and at max stacks it grants on-hit damage that scales with your bonus attack speed. However, you should run it when its good instead of every game. Some games Grasp of the Undying will be a better option for harder lanes/shorter trade focused lanes.

Since biscuits no longer grant mana, you kind of rely on Presence of Mind to give you the mana sustain you need.

Out of the Legend runes, Jax prefers Legend: Haste since he benefits a lot from haste, and its a bit more scarce now in items.

Lastly I choose Last Stand. Jax is often in the middle of the fights unless you are flanking, so you will drop down in HP a lot of times. Last Stand brings great value since you will just increase your damage to champions up to 11%.

Personally I like to take the attack speed rune cause it makes queing autos smoother in general, other than that it's just standard offensive shard. I like to take the scaling HP shard in general, but for fight lanes that you want to snowball and win early you can take flat HP shard.

Inspiration

Biscuits are really strong at the moment with how much regen they give you. It can really make your opponent get caught off-guard when you suddenly regen a lot during a fight, especially when you are low HP since the regen is based on your missing HP. Also grants you some permanent bonus health. Alternatively you can run Resolve and grab Demolish and Second Wind if necessary.

Jack of all Trades feels really nice on Jax since you get ability haste and damage which are both useful, and haste can be hard to come by early on in some games with the items you are building.

• Relentless Assault (Passive): Jax gains bonus attack speed for 2.5 seconds every time he lands a basic attack, stacking up to 8 times. This falls off one stack at a time. To utilize this passive in lane auto attack minions as much as you can before engaging the enemy so you have more attack speed to fight with.
  
• Leap Strike (Q): Jax leaps to targeted enemy while dealing physical damage to the target. It can also be used to jump on wards, plants, Thresh lanterns etc. If you use your W before using Q the W's damage will be applied on top of your Q's damage.
  
• Empower (W): Jax's next basic attack or Leap Strike within 10 seconds deals bonus magic damage. It is also an autoattack reset so after your auto attack has landed activate this for and immediate autoattack. It also adds 50 extra range on the empowered auto, which can make it easier to hit for a quick poke or trade.
  
• Counter Strike (E): When activated the first time Jax will block all incoming auto attacks for 2 seconds aswell as will take 25% reduced damage from all area of effect abilities. At the end of the duration or when reactivated Jax stuns nearby enemies for 1 second and deals magic damage to them, increased by 20% for each attack dodged, up to a 100% base damage increase. This is the key to winning melee matchups at level 1. Just auto minions for your passive and then auto the enemy while near his minion wave so your E's damage increases.
  
• Master-At-Arms (R): It's passive enables Jax to deal bonus magic damage on every third basic attack within 2.5 seconds of each other. Upon activation Jax swings his lantern around him, dealing magic damage to nearby enemies. If he hits a champion he gains some armor per champion hit, as well as 60% of that value as Magic Resist for the next 8 seconds. During this time the passive damage applies every 2nd attack instead of every 3rd.
  

Trinity force Trinity Force has always been a core item on Jax. It has nice boost on his attack speed, health, damage, Sheen proc and also mobility when you hit targets. Overall feels like best choice for 1st item unless you maybe have a rough lane where you need to just clear waves, in which case you would rush Titanic Hydra.

Blade of the ruined king While this item seems like its a good choice vs Bork is good vs high HP enemies, it really just doesn't feel like it does its job after the nerf. I have currently stopped building this item, but maybe in some rare case vs Dr.Mundo it could be worth it potentially.

Spear of Shojin A good HP option for Jax that also gives him other benefits. The item gives good amount of AD, decent amount of HP and some base ability haste. Jax really wants ability haste, and this item is an excellent source for it.

Plated Steelcaps I only really go these boots if I'm extremely behind vs autoattack reliant champions, since most of the time your Counter Strike already helps vs autoattacks and Ionian Boots of Lucidity gives you less cooldown on your E.

Mercury's treads These boots are pretty bad nowadays, but quite necessary still with all the CC in the game. Go these vs a lot of cc, or opt for Wit's End later if you don't need the Tenacity early.

Ionian boots of Lucidity My favorite boots for Jax. They are decently cheap, and help you have your abilities up more often and your summoner spells have lower cooldown too.

Boots of Swiftness These boots are really strong in many cases, especially with the Feats of Strength upgrade. These will help you with slows, and overall to dodge abilities since you get so much movespeed with these.

Sterak's Gage Sterak's Gage is a decent item for survival, especially when you need to survive some burst. I however most often opt for Zhonya's Hourglass nowadays since it feels more versatile and overall better than Sterak's Gage.

Randuin's Omen Good choice against AD champions, especially vs those who run crit. Gives some HP and good amount of armor, and the active slow is nice, and it also reduces incoming damage from crits which can be huge in some games vs a lot of crit champs.

Wit's End This item brings attack speed, but also movespeed on-hit and extra damage for your auto attacks. Also you get a good amount of magic resistance which is nice. You get some Tenacity on top of everything, which is really useful on Jax especially now that you dont get Tenacity from Precision tree.

Zhyonya's Hourglass Really fun and strong item on Jax, and I build it in most of my games. Gives you damage, armor, and also a really strong active since you can just initiate a fight, and activate this to wait for your E cooldown to be up again.

Splitpushing is a good way of pressuring the enemy team. Jax excells at it for multiple reasons:

His passive gives him more attack speed and he can take turrets down pretty fast after he get's Sheen. You just auto-attack and right as the attack has landed you use Empower for the auto attack reset and at the same time you get a Sheen proc. You can get 2 Sheen procs by utilizing your Counter Strike. First cast obviously gives you the Sheen proc, but you have to manually reactivate it when your Sheen cooldown is refreshed to actually proc it again. The automatic recast of Counter Strike does not grant a Sheen proc. Also having Titanic Hydra or Ravenous Hydra helps splitpushing as your waveclear is improved by those items, but Jax rarely opts for either item currently.

Jax is also a strong splitpusher since he can duel pretty much anyone in the later points of the game and if you are ahead splitpushing is a great way of giving the enemy team pressure around the map.

Also thanks to his mobility with Leap Strike, Jax can escape sticky situations with his ward hop mechanic which makes him somewhat slippery as he can jump over walls.

When to splitpush?

When splitpushing you are essentially leaving your team 4v5, so your team needs to be aware of what you are doing. The idea of splitpushing is to either attract attention to you, so the opponents send 1-2 or more champions to deal with you which leaves your team free to take objectives with the overpower they have. The other case is that the enemy leave you unnoticed and try to take down your team, in which case your team needs to be aware of the risk and back off before it's too late. When this happens you push the lane you are splitting as hard as you can as you can get surprisingly fast multiple towers down from a lane.


When splitpushing vision is a really important thing. Try to have vision around the area you are pushing so you know when to back off if the opponents try to gank you from the fog of war. Also keep an eye on the minimap to see how many of your opponents are visible, and where they are. Think of who you can solokill and who you can't, who you can possibly 1v2 etc.


If you have Teleport while splitpushing you can also consider Teleporting into teamfights. If your team can hold on the fight while your TP is channeling you can win the teamfight with the element of surprise if the opponents first thought it will be a 5v4 fight for them. Before you tp consider which option gives your team the most advantage. If the fight is already lost pretty hard, push as much as you can and back, remember to keep vision on objectives like Baron Nashor and Dragon depending on the lane you are pushing since if the opponents kill your team they are likely to do one of these objectives if possible.

At level 1 you can "cheese" your opponents (easier vs melee champs) with having Counter Strike up, going to auto them in their minion wave, after you have attacked and minions turn aggro on you activate your Counter Strike and keep autoattacking your opponent if you can stay in range. If done correctly you should chunk your opponent for a good hefty amount of damage and force them to pop a potion or in general just back off.

When you reach 6 a common thing to do is auto minions twice, then Leap Strike on to your opponent, auto them and immediatly follow with Empower. This combo will do good amount of damage as your Grandmaster-At-Arms 3rd proc + Empower do quite a lot of damage in a short burst.

Ward hopping and trinket choice

Sometimes after top laners and others switch to either Farsight Alteration or Oracle Lens but not on Jax. On Jax you keep Stealth Ward so you can ward hop and potentially escape from tough spots. It's extremely useful when splitpushing and there are multiple enemies coming at you you just wardhop over a wall.

You should also note you can use your Leap Strike on things like Jarvan IV flag, Thresh lantern and so on.

Jax is extremely good champion at taking advantage of an lead and carrying your team to victory! He can be difficult to play against comps with lots of heavy CC and disengage but don't let that stop you from having fun with Jax. Any feedback on this guide is highly appreciated, I will be updating this constantly whenever there is something to update or new ways of playing Jax are discovered Have a great time splitpushing and smashing enemies as Jax! And of course if you enjoyed the guide make sure to subscribe on YouTube for League of Legends content! Subscribe - ThisIsPatrik