Hello, I'm Seth, here with my first guide on Mobafire. However, I intend to make this guide as detailed as possible so that you can see just how great of a champion Jax is and how he can bring a lot to the table in terms of teamfights and dueling. I started out as a rather bad Jax player, using unorthodox strategies and builds that I believe I have corrected and perfected to share with the community so everybody can be successful with Jax. Therefore, this guide contains the information about Jax's gameplay that I have compiled over a span of about 200 games.

Jax is basically a bulky off-tank who is built to deal significant sustained damage. Therefore, he has the potential to work as an anti-carry and take out the enemy carries as long as he doesn't initiate a teamfight. Two other things to note are that I include several builds in this guide, but I will be focusing on the build I use the most often, which is my AD Jax build, as I have played it since I started and it is very effective for fighting most solo tops that you will encounter.

Pros:
+Great gap-closer/escape mechanism through Leap Strike
+Low cooldowns late game
+Can be tanky with little armor/magic resist
+ Grandmaster's Might is a large boost to your defenses
+Strong Duelist once you get ultimate
+Strong anti-carry

Cons:
-High Cooldowns early game
-Weaker early game before getting Grandmaster's Might
-Only CC is Counter Strike
-Not very tanky without Grandmaster's Might active
-No built in sustain

Just like every character, there are some summoner spells that help Jax and some that are completely and utterly useless on him as well. Then there are those other spells that are atleast reasonable in some way. I will now list

Most Recommended

Teleport is an important spell for solo top. Early game, you can use it to recall, heal up, and come back with full health and an item advantage over your opponent. It can also help if you want to gank mid or bot lane before going back to top quickly with this spell so that the enemy top laner doesn't have as much time to react and come down. However, it's main purpose is to give your team an advantage when fighting over Dragon or other objectives mid to late game. Both of the top laners are rather isolated in top lane but Teleport allows you to quickly join the fight and give your team an advantage. Also, I'd suggest that you do this compared to protecting your turret since getting Dragon gives 40 more gold per person than a turret does, and you could potentially give your team a champion kill or two while doing this which will add to the gold you get. The main purpose of Teleport is generally to give you a presence in teamfights even when you were just farming top lane.

Ghost is also a good spell as it increases your movement speed for an entire 10 seconds, as well as avoid unit collision, allowing you chase, or just finally getting out of range of that Kennen who has been using his Lightning Rush in an attempt to stun you with his Thundering Shuriken. It also helps you chase enemies who have higher health because you will be able to keep up with them for a longer amount of time unlike Flash, and so it is good for when in a situation with Flash, Annie would stun you and skip away, laughing that you couldn't keep up. Instead, you will be able to continue to chase and potentially kill her, or get close to her before she is at her turret and you don't feel safe with her Pyromania stack count on 2 or 3. This will, however, give you more time to attack her turret before she manages to come back.

Exhaust is good mainly when facing a champion like Riven who builds a lot of AD but not much AP under any circumstances, and also against champions who are very mobile. This is mainly because it reduces the AD of a champion by a lot more than the AP. It also decreases the movement speed and attack speed of them so that you are basically certain to deal heavy damage before they have a chance of getting away. However, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't take it against AP, as it will still bring down their AP so that you can win a fight against them, or just to hold them down. It is even more useful when you don't have a jungler with a lot of CC like Shyvana, so that they can keep up with the enemy and ensure that the gank will be successful either by forcing the enemy to burn an escape spell such as Flash or Ghost or resulting in a kill.

There is no exception when you are jungling. You take this or you lose buffs to Nunu. I think you'd rather take Smite, correct? However, never take this when you aren't the jungler. Also, you get 10 bonus gold whenever you smite something because of Summoner's Resolve if you still wanted to take it.

Other viable summoner spells

Flash is a very good multipurpose spell that can be used to get close enough to kill someone on the enemy team because Olaf started running away while a teamfight was happening. A nice way to catch up is to use Flash and then quickly use Leap Strike while you are still within range. Also, it can be used to escape a teamfight that you already know is lost since Annie had found her way back to your fed Graves who was your main source of damage. In this case, Flash away from the main battle and try to run in a different direction than the rest of your team because then you one of two things will happen. The first is that some people keep chasing after the others but one or two come after you. In this case, your team will have a much better chance of having more people still alive and therefore the outcome is better. The second is that nobody comes after you and well, that means that you can come around and help defend the turret in the event that the other team attempts to kill your allies at the turret.

Ignite is mainly used in two circumstances: the first being when you want to finish off an opponent at very low health but can't since they got away, either by being faster or by using Flash or Ghost, and the second when you are facing heavy healers like Swain and Vladimir. Don't underestimate this spell as it still very useful, as it does True Damage however, it is not my personal favorite.

Good choice if in a counter lane, but otherwise not as effective.