Jarvan IV Build Guide by Annunziato

Introduction

Hello everybody, welcome to my first guide ever! I hope you read everything and try it out for yourself before judging! Leave any feedback in the comments :D Also know that I am FAR from the best player in League of Legends and this isn't a guide TELLING you what to build, but more of a guideline. Credits to jhoijhoi for the template, which you can find here.

Pros / Cons

Pros + Great Initiator + Fast at Clearing + Wall Jumps + Level 6 Ganks are Godlike + Unique ultimate that no other jungler has. + Manly Jarvan IV is pretty much known for his godlike initiations when you E/Q Combo then immediately use your ultimate, it allows little reaction time and it will give you some "private time" with the stranded AD Carry. With his E/Q combo, he can also clear the jungle really quickly with mana. This is because of his passive, and the fact that he can go through walls. This also makes it easier to sneak in a dragon, or stealing a buff. His ultimate will either grant you a kill, or a burn of an escape at level 6, as most champions won't be strong enough to sit through the damage at that point. His armor buffs and utility also makes him great at going in on the AD Carry, with a little help from another teammate, you can effectively kill him, or knock him out of the teamfight.

Cons - No Surivbility - Your Mana can Destroy you if you aren't Careful - Ultimate can Turn Against you - People Blame the Jungler for Everything - Not the Best Dueler - Shield isn't Very Effective You pretty much need a life steal item like Wriggle's Lantern or Vampiric Scepter in order to stay in your jungle for a long period of time. He doesn't have much mana to work with, which makes him not able to spam his skills in the jungle as much as somebody would like. His ultimate can effectively kill your team if you cast it improperly. If you do poor, chances are the entire team will blame you for everything that goes wrong. On top of that, he isn't the best of duelers, but can stay away from them in most cases. His Shield doesn't scale with anything besides enemy champions, so its pretty useless in the jungle, and is only really effective when in the middle of the enemy team.

Masteries

Having your abilities off cooldown will make you able to use them more often, and having them ready can really decide who initiates on who, and as a Jarvan IV you want to go in first.

Doing damage is fun, no? Well this won't make you one shot anything, but it will make you do that small boost that can make or break you over a period of time.

People build armor. The top laner builds armor, the other jungler builds armor, heck, even the jungle creeps have some armor to them! So make the job easier on yourself and ignore some of it.

Ypu get a little bit of free gold when using Smite and that's always nice. Although you will only get about (if used instantly when off cooldown) 400 gold in a 40minute game.

You get free health per level, and since health is hard to come by now a days, free health is good health.

You are going to be hit by jungle creeps a lot. So you would be pretty stupid to not get this skill. Just think, every 50 attacks is 100 health you save, and as I said before, health is getting harder to get, so make it count.

You don't need a bunch of extra armor because of your Demacian Standard, but its better having armor than magic resistance since you are going to be slugging it out with jungle monsters most of the time.

Don't you hate it when you punch a wall, and you end up realizing that the wall hurt you more than you hurt it? Well, make Jarvan IV be that wall [WARNING: You can steal buffs from teammates by you tanking it! So make sure whoever you are giving it to can kill it quickly]

While this won't save you from a Feast from Cho'Gath, it will reduce damage from sustained damage dealers like Ashe or Varus. Afterall the point of Jarvan IV is to arrange multiple meetings with them.

Like I've said before, free health is good health!

Make that AD Carry feel a bit more useless with this, it really demoralizes somebody when they can't kill something!

You will end up jumping into the middle of their team at one point or another. Want to know where all of the CC will be directed? This makes you more of a tank and a deadlier of a target.

I probably sound like a broken record by now, but incase you haven't read it by now... Free Health is Good Health!

You are going to be in the middle of their team anyways, so you might as well get something out of it (other than a health drain).

Most AD Carries build an Infinity Edge and as Jarvan IV, you want to get the AD Carries attention, now when you have their attention, they aren't going to be friendly, so make sure you won't get destroyed by a lucky crit.

More damage reduction! This will make their AD Carry cry even more to sleep when they do even less damage to you.

As a side note, I would like to say that going 0/21/9 is also very good on Jarvan IV giving him the movement and mana regen buffs he can sometimes need. The buff extenders are also a really good thing to have on him.

Runes

• Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage: You like damage, the enemy team doesn't like damage, and lets face it, you want to be the biggest thorn to ever exist in their side.
  
• Greater Mark of Attack Damage: Same thing as above, you want to aim to be a pain in their sides, and they don't like taking damage.
  
• greater mark of Armor Penetration: Some people like to prevent a thorn by wearing bulkier clothing, so you just have to be a bit sharper, that's all.
  
• Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist: You most likely won't be dealing with magic damage too much early on, but later on it can get to be a fairly large issue, so do yourself a favor and plan ahead.
  
• Greater Seal of Armor: As much as you like being a thorn, you have to remember that other people want to be your thorn, help prevent this. This also serves you well in the jungle.

Other good runes are Movement speed quints, and Attack Speed Reds. It is more standard way of playing a jungler, but it gets the job done.

Spells

Smite: Jarvan IV doesn't do enough damage to get through the jungle by himself so this will help him. This will also provide the best baron/dragon control... just as long as you are nearby.

Flash: Sometimes, you have to run. and sometimes, your E/Q combo might be on cooldown, or you don't have enough mana to cast it. So use this instead :D

Ghost: Ghost is starting to become one of my more favourite spells on junglers. Its a great way to catch up or get away in a lot of cases, although in this case you do lack using Flash to get out of your own ultimate.

Skill Sequence

• Martial Cadence: This is one of the most underrated passives in League of Legends in my own personal opinion. It deals a percentage damage based on how much current health the enemy target has, up to a maximum of 400 damage. Now that doesn't seem like much but lets put in a little math here and see what we come up with (click spoiler)
  
  Spoiler: Click to view

  Let's take the classic health tank, Dr. Mundo and put him against each stage of the passive. For the sake of simplicity I will be ignoring resistances and any other source of damage steroid or reduction. A full health, full build Dr. Mundo according to the top build right here on mobafire (click for link) dictates that he will have 5565 health.
  
  Against Jarvan IV's passive at rank 1 he will deal 6% of that as physical damage, up to 400. So 5565*0.06=333.9 damage not including any armor/mr or items on Jarvan IV's side. Against the rank 2 Martial Cadence, Jarvan IV will deal 8% instead, which turns out to be 5565*0.08=445.2 but since the cap is 400 you won't be able to get the entire use out of it. So we don't really need to test out the last rank of Martial Cadence now do we, as it will be 400 health again.
  
  But let's take this one step further. Lets say that you managed to get this Dr. Mundo down to half health (5565/2=2782.5) and your passive decided to activate again. This time you would do either 166.95, 222.6, or 278.25 damage with just your passive. Now if you added the two values we got from the first rank of Martial Cadence we would get about 501 FREE damage on Dr. Mundo, which in this build, turns out to be 9% of the mans total health with just rank 1! With a rank 2 Martial Cadence you would deal about 623 damage with your passive, which turns out to be around 11% of his health. Remember this is just 2 passive strikes! Not including any other source of damage. The last tier of Martial Cadence will deal roughly 678 damage or about 12% of his health.
  
  Now I'm not sure about you, but taking out 12% of the tanks health over 12 seconds for free is pretty nice. Since you are both tanky, I could expect the fight to go on probably another few seconds before one of you decides to retreat.
  
  
• Dragon Strike (Q): Dragon Strike has a few uses. It has an armor reduction built in and can pair as a gap closer/knock up when aimed at a well placed [Demacian Standard]]. Now this ability scales off of BONUS attack damage, so if you are looking to do lots of damage with this item I would suggest using items that give off high amounts of damage like the The Bloodthirster or Infinity Edge. For the purpose of this guide though, we will not be dealing too much damage with this skill.
  
• Golden Aegis (W): Almost every champion has a flaw, and Jarvan IV is no exception. This shield is very situational, and will only become slightly effective when you really need it to. The amount this ability shields you for is affected by the base stat (duh) and the amount of enemy champions nearby. It can only shield for a maximum of 410 health, which when you are in the middle of the team... kinda sucks. However the good part about this ability is that it can slow people up to 35% in a small AoE around you when you cast it, which makes it very good for making a get away or chasing.
  
• Demacian Standard (E): This is your new best friend. While you can't deal too much damage with it (AP Jarvan IV... lol) You can use it as a long ranged temp ward (for checking dragon/baron through walls) or you can use it with your Dragon Strike (Q) as a gap closer/wall jumper to chase/get away from people. With this combo you are usually in range to use your Cataclysm (R) on a carry, or somebody close to them. Also note that the extra armor and attack speed makes it epic in the jungle for its AoE damage and general clearing.
  
• Cataclysm (R): This ability, while awesome, can kill you and your team... or be the best thing your team has ever seen. This is where a Jarvan IV player will stand out from others. Who you ult and when can either make or break you. For example, the best case senario would be to encase the entire enemy team in your ultimate while your friendly Nunu will be casting Absolute Zero at any given moment. However that is very improbable and you will die. Fast. Either way a good way to use Cataclysm is to isolate a champion with NO escapes (except for flash) inside of it. That means no using it on Ezreal, Vayne, Katarina, Talon or other members that can simply get out of it and leave you with 100 seconds until you can try again. This ability will still put the terrain up if you use it on somebody with Banshee's Veil so don't worry about being a derp there.

Items

Ever since season 3 came around, it became pretty hard to jungle without this as your first item. This is a must buy unless you have the balls to go the Boots of Speed route.

These boots are usually going to be your pick, unless you aren't buying either Spirit of the Ancient Golem or Zephyr for the tenacity. This item by itself theoretically shuts down 10% of the enemy ad carry's damage to you. It doesn't seem like much, but it means a lot late game.

This is a great item to have on Jarvan IV, or any tanky jungler really. It gives you a bunch of stats that are really great on Jarvan IV and it is one of the four items that gives Tenacity in the entire game. This allows you to get a different set of boots that can benefit you more later on.

This is going to end up being your main damage throughout the entire game as Jarvan IV it gives you stats that help in both tanking and dealing damage. The passive on it is great for those that try to build against you and your ad carry. I find that even if they are getting a lot of armor, that Last Whisper isn't a better choice on Jarvan IV because although you would be doing more damage overall, you would lose some tank stats and it wouldn't effect your team's overall damage at all apart from your own.

This is most likely going to be your main source of magic resistance in most games.The passive you get from Spectre's Cowl is great, along with its own added benefit of the free spell shield can really help out against both burst casters and sustained casters, making you very difficult to kill.

This item does multiple things for you if you are following this build exactly as it has been written so far. It gives you your main source of armor thus far, because let's face it, Ninja Tabi can only get you so far. It also gives you a bunch of mana so you don't have to worry so much about using it all up before the teamfight. This item will also give you your cooldown reduction limit of 40%, making you that much more of a threat to the enemy team. Finally, the unique passive it gives is amazing against an ad carry, especially those that prefer attack speed for damage like Vayne or Kog'Maw.

Okay, by the time you get to this point in the game, everybody is pretty well farmed, or at least they should be. Even as a tank, you aren't going to last too long against that Ezreal with a bunch of items under his belt. This item is a get out of jail free card, especially with somebody like Jarvan IV who can get out of most situations with a well placed EQ combo.

You shouldn't be building the same thing every game. No one item set is good against all teams, no matter how good it is. You have to tweak your items based on what your team needs and what your opponents don't want you to have. For example, building a Frozen Heart sounds like a great idea in most cases, but if they have an Ezreal, it isn't going to be as effective because he doesn't rely so much on his auto attacks to deal damage. Here are some items that I find are good choices on Jarvan IV. (click on the spoiler man)

Creeping / Jungling

So this is where Jarvan IV really stands out in my opinion. Of course you can play him top lane or even sometimes as an aggressive support, but when you are building tank, I feel like the jungle is the best way to go.

Now I'm going to assume that most of you know what the jungle is and how it works, however there may be some of you Teemo level players that just think its spacing between the lanes. The most basic form of jungling, is just gaining your gold and experience by going to the neutral monster camps across Summoner's Rift and killing them whenever they respawn. Now there are multiple ways you can expand this simple idea to help out your team greatly and I'm going to go over the different kinds of jungling all right here.









When you start out in the jungle, you should always have a route in mind, currently, its a set routine of things to kill in the jungle that allow you hit a certain level the fastest. Well right now the meta wants a jungler to get to level 3 as soon as possible so they can grab all of their abilities and gank. The two most used (and most recommended) are as follows...




So aside from the images been way oversized, this is the route you are usually going to want to take. This is because it helps you hit that level 3 very quickly and allows you to set up for ganks sometimes before the enemy even thinks about warding. While using this route, make sure you get a hard leash from your fellow laners on blue, so you don't have to use Smite on it. This way you can save it for red and it makes things a little bit quicker than you. The next route is literally the same route but in reverse.




This route is just an alternative route. Usually you would think about one of these two routes based on what lane is either going to be the easiest to gank for, or which of your laners is going to have the hardest time in lane. For the route itself, its basically the same as the route above. You get your laning buddies to help you out with red buff so you don't have to use Smite and then you walk over to blue and clear it with Smite along with your other stuff. You should be level 3 by then and continue to gank a lane :)


Now sometimes it isn't always as easy as this. There could always be a chance when you can get invaded or counterjungled at the very early levels, and if you aren't prepared for it then it can make your game very sour. Thankfully the jungle has another not so known route to help you reach level 3, although I strongly recommend that you only do this if you are missing one of your buffs.




Okay, this is the route you would go if your red got stolen right from the start. It will allow you to still hit level 3, although of course you won't be able to obtain the red buff like you usually would. If you know 100% that your red is gone before you've taken blue (you watched your friendly Ezreal explode while trying to protect your red) then feel free to use Smite on the blue buff. If you find out that it was stolen when you walk around the corner and it isn't there, then try to use Smite on the first large monster you possibly can. I'm pretty sure you can guess what you should do if your blue has been stolen, so I'm not going to list it here.

Matchups

Jarvan IV isn't the only champion in the game. So you can expect yourself to be better against some champions, and you can expect yourself to be worse than others. Not because the player is better than you, just because that some people can simply counter Jarvan IV. I'll tell you what I personally think of each champion, as well as how well Jarvan IV as a champion should fair against them. For your convience and to shorten the length of the guide, there will be spoilers with each letter of the alphabet, so you can quickly search through and find a particular champion.

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Team Work

Your job as Jarvan IV is to tank. Now being a tank means sacrificing yourself for your fellow teammates (Yes, even the complaining Ezreal) for the greater good. Now that doesn't mean you can just Leeroy Jenkins in the enemy team because an enemy Twisted Fate hit his Q on a champion. When you have the upperhand, you want to be getting into safe teamfights as much as possible to further the lead. If you are completely new to Jarvan IV you want to use your Demacian Standard/ Dragon Strike Combo to get close to the team, then use Cataclysm to start destroying the AD Carry. Just make sure your team knows what you are doing and when you are going to do it. Or it will end up as suicide and you just made it a 4v5 against your own team (oops) If you are losing the game, catch any stragglers you see in your jungle or are out of position. In most cases, you want to be farming in a safe location so you can get back in the game. If the enemy team decides to initiate, try to peel off champions trying to go after your carries, and basically try to disengage the fight. If your AD Carry gets gibbed immediately, try and get your team to fall back so you don't get aced.

Now some standard rules that you should know:

• Don't go into a fight unless it is an even fight, or an unfair advantage to you in some way ( Master Yi pushing lane or you caught their Draven out of position and he is still dead)
  
• Don't try to be the hero. You don't do a lot of damage and quite franky, your CC isn't enough to distract the enitre team from the half health carry when he was caught out of position. If you go in, odds are you are going to die, or escape with very low health and your Graves will be dead anyways, and that will put your team at a 3v5 situation.
  
• Don't waste money. Sometimes it might feel like you have a lot of gold, so you might pick up some extra Mana Potions or even an elixer before you are done your build, Remember that since you are a jungler, your gold income isn't that great and you rely on the gold you get very much.
  
• You see that enemy Teemo? Kill him at ALL costs. Disregard every other rule you have ever known if you have the chance to kill that demon Riot calls a champion. He will try to retaliate of course, but you have the rage of a God inside of you whenever you see the little furball running around. Most of all, kill his mushrooms with extreme prejudice. You are a man, a manly man, and vegetables will not be allowed on the fields of justice!

Summary

I hope you enjoyed this guide as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please leave any feedback/suggestions you might have in the discussion! I will make a note of it to check back often and reply to all of them :D Also I'm the highest rated (Jungle) Jarvan IV Guide on mobafire! We hit 1 million views! I would like to say thank you for all of you that have voted and I will keep on trying to improve this guide as I continue! If anybody wants me to make another guide (probably Cho'Gath, Jax or Jayce) just let me know! Thank you very much to all the people who have voted up my guide, because of you guys, I have the highest rated Jarvan IV build on mobafire! Credits to jhoijhoi for the template, which you can find here. One last thing. If you have any photos of your post-game lobbies or your recent games that you want to send me, feel free to. I will post all of them down in this spoiler for you all to see! Spoiler: Click to view CafScotland's match history! Okay, now the guide is really done :) Have fun playing Jarvan IV!