MOBAFire's final Mini Guide Contest of Season 14 is here! Create or update guides for the 30 featured champions and compete for up to $200 in prizes! 🏆

Jinx Build Guide by

[14.18] Diamond Top Jinx - Zapper Trapper

50 7

243,642 Views

15 Comments

Jinx Build Guide By Updated on

Guide Discussion (15) More Jinx Guides

Stream is Offline

Runes:

Inspiration

Unsealed Spellbook

Magical Footwear

Biscuit Delivery

Cosmic Insight

Sorcery

Manaflow Band

Transcendence

Bonus:

+8 Ability Haste
+10-180 Bonus Health
+10-180 Bonus Health

Spells:

Barrier

Flash

Items

Start

Core

Final Items

Example Finished Build

Ability Order

Jinx Passive Ability

Champion Build Guide

The Author

Aquaired Skillset

Hi! I’m Aqua Dragon. I've been in Diamond for multiple seasons and I play Top Jinx.

I also play:

Want to to discuss or watch this build?
Join our community of off-meta lovers!

https://discord.gg/63wXSKT
https://www.reddit.com/r/AquaDragon/
https://www.youtube.com/@AquaDragon/streams

Pros and Cons

Pros

Zap cooldown is 2 seconds! The 80% slow is 2 seconds long!
Can easily reach 800 damage on each Zap!
Chomper cooldown becomes 5 seconds, and Chompers last for 5 seconds.
Excessive chompers in fights can easily get a game-winning root.
Can eventually shoot an ultimate every 20 seconds.
Great anti-freeze power; can play safely into any lane.
Ult provides some map relevancy during the lane phase.

Cons

Very passive laning phase; Weak early game.
Very dependent on proper wave management to avoid dives.
Ult can be difficult to land from top lane.
Low attack speed makes pushing down towers difficult early.
Can't easily weave in autoattacks between the nonstop Zaps.
Longer than expected queue times.
Low movement speed.

What is Jinx Top?

What's Zappenin?

Top Jinx sounds extremely unintuitive until you realize a few things:

1. Zap can get a 2 second cooldown.
2. Zap slows targets by 80% for 2 seconds.
3. Zap can easily hit for over 800 damage.

This means after one Zap, it becomes feasible to hit someone with multiple more Zaps in a row! The low cooldown on Zap allows you to chain unrelenting Zaps back-to-back.

Furthermore, Chompers eventually can be brought down to a 5 second cooldown, and each Chomper lasts on the ground for 5 seconds. This makes it possible to permanently have out Chompers starting at level 13!

The combination of these things it feel like you're playing Jinx on URF mode.

Why Top Lane?

Reaching that power is the tricky part. Attaining the coveted zap-chains and perma-chompers requires about 100 Ability Haste and a hefty pool of mana.

The big problem is that Top lane is the lane that least punishes the time it takes to scale up to this power.

Unless you are a hypercarry (which Zapper Jinx is not), both Mid and Bot lanes heavily punish passive laners. Dragons and grubs will be taken, plates will be shoved for, roams will destroy everyone. A hypercarry makes the gamble of "That's fine if you do that; I'll kill you later anyway." However, this Jinx build, while extremely powerful mid-game, is no hypercarry, and so can't just farm passively at Mid or Bot. That gamble doesn't pay off.

The linear nature of Mid-lane also makes hitting people with Zaps extremely difficult, if not outright impossible at times. At Bot, the passive playstyle is shoved in especially hard and splitting EXP means it takes even longer to reach the critical power spikes that Zapper Jinx needs to thrive.

Jinx also has the tools to survive at Top compared to other Marksmen.Zap has enough range to unfreeze any waves and to farm from an enormous level of safety. Plus, the chompers are great for surviving against dives, as long as you don't get crashed into by a massive wave.

Runes

Pazappa the Trapper

100 Ability Haste is uniquely and crucially important for Zap Jinx that wants to minimize the slow time between each Zap shot.

Unsealed Spellbook

Provides Teleport without needing to commit to Teleport. Rationale against Arcane Comet noted further down.

Magical Footwear

Magical Footwear is effectively just money, in a way that outperforms what Cash Back can do.

Biscuit Delivery

Biscuits help give mana for more zaps; can't deal damage if you don't have enough mana.

Cosmic Insight

Cosmic Insight helps provide a surprising amount of forgiveness for the laning phase. Approach Velocity barely impacts the end result of fights.

space

Manaflow Band

Mana is so desperately necessary for Zap Jinx.

Transcendence

Transcendence's speeds up the build toward the critically important 100 Ability Haste point, which is more important than more AD.

space

Ability Haste, Health Scaling, and Health Scaling

There's only so many ways to word "100 ability haste", alright? The scaling health is more useful when stalling out the laning phase.

What About Arcane Comet?

The choice not to go on an artillery playstyle like this may seem initially strange. The Zap slow all-but-guarantees the comet will land, and Gathering Storm helps boost up Zap's damage quite a hefty amount. But the exclusion of it can be summarized in a single sentence:

It's too unforgiving.

Try as I might, the sheer brutality of top lane made it too inconsistent an option. While a perfect player may be able to get away with it, I found my overall match consistency improving dramatically after switching to Unsealed Spellbook.

To some extent, this makes sense. The loss of these two runes costs about 8 - 12% overall damage, but simply being able to hold under tower dives with and , having a useful summoner spell in teamfights instead of , and being able to have more versatility with allows for more gold acquisition over the course of the match that makes up for the damage loss and then some.

If you'd like to choose Arcane Comet despite these notes, you can simply trade out Cosmic Insight with Gathering Storm and Unsealed Spellbook with Arcane Comet. Godspeed.

Build Order

Breaking Down the Building

Create Item Sets

Tear start is tempting, but Jinx can only get around 30-40 stacks pre-1st-back.
This is because W and E aren't used often early, and Q rockets don't stack Tear.
By buying Long Sword, Jinx can start with Refillable, which provides much-needed sustain.

↓

→→→→→

3 complete items almost grants the 100 ability haste dream for perma-zapping.
The extra longsword before Lucidity helps for two-shotting caster minions

↓

Tech offensively or defensively from here as needed.

Axiom Arc's passive isn't very useful, but its a very good AH statstick.

Stage of the Game

Learning to Give a Zap

Early

In the early game, your goals are to

Survive till the mid-game
Zap from far away to farm
Ult enemies when you see a recall.

Farm up!: Zapper Jinx does not have a good early game at all. You might be able to land a few free autos, but your ultimate objective is to survive using your rocket range and zaps.

Rely on Minigun When Possible: While Fishbone's rockets are nice for their reach, you still want to use Pow-Pow to avoid pushing the wave too much and getting partially stuck on a freeze.

Farm From Afar with Zap: Zap has an absolutely absurd range that is nearly impossible to punish. Don't fret about your mana too much; that's what the Biscuits and Teleport are for.

Punish Freezes by Going Back: If it looks like the enemy top laner is trying to freeze, just use it as a chance to go back and refill on mana. Better than them going for plates. You can unfreeze the wave later using Zap, though be mindful of jungler ganks.

Keep an Eye Out to Ult Recalling Enemies: Hitting an ult on a moving target from across the entire map is unfeasible. However, if you aim for recalling enemies, you will find an easy, often-low-hp target. The ult has a low cooldown, so go for it even if the shot isn't certain.

Mid

As the laning phase ends, you can begin to zap aggressively.

Zap into Zap into Zap into Zap!
Start moving around with the team
Help siege down towers

Welcome to URF: You will reach around 100 AH at this time, marking a major power spike. You can now chain down foes with multiple Zaps in a row!

Reach Level 13 for Perma-Chompers: At level 13, you hit your next major powerspike, now able to have permanent chomper uptime. While it's tough to remember, be sure to use Chompers off cooldown in the middle of chaotic teamfights! They have no cast time.

Follow Up Ally CC: Hitting an initial Zap can be pretty difficult at times, but if an ally slows or stuns a target, they should become a prime candidate for a zap chain. Zapper Jinx works best as a follow-up artillery.

Use Ult Often: Just as before, the ult is on an extremely short cooldown. Don't just save it for executes or you may find yourself not using it at all.

Avoid Autoing Much in Fights: While your autos individually hit a bit hard, your low attack speed makes it unfeasible to weave in autos at a safe range while also Zapping and Chomping and Ulting. Just rely on Zaps unless it looks like 1-3 autos will finish off a target.

Late

The role remains largely similar

ZAP INTO ZAP INTO ZAP INTO ZAP
Your pushing speed is pretty good now!
Avoid getting caught

More of the Same: Zap things, throw down permanent chompers, ult often, siege; it's more of the same. If you get caught, that might be game over however.

Set Up Walls of Chompers: The Chompers are large enough to completely seal off one jungle entrance forever. Great to use when enemies are trying to move in to contest a baron or dragon!

Chomp Relentlessly: As long as you have mana to spare, you should be using chompers off cooldown when fights are imminent or ongoing. A well-placed chomper may not just be fight-winning, but game-winning as well.

Help Push Towers: Once you hit 18, your autos are actually fairly quick and can melt towers down. Use that speed to your advantage.

Thanks!

This guide was a lot of fun to write, and I hope you all have learned everything you would have liked.