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Hi guys, I'm MrBlueZ, I play in EUW, right now I am GOLD II and I'm a TopLaner. I have been playing League of Legends since Mid-Season 6, and I started maining toplane since the beginning of Season 7.

My best champions are Darius, Irelia, Fiora, Camille, Renekton, Tryndamere and of course Jax : the character I am going to talk about in this guide.

Feel free to add me on my LoL profile if you want. Also, i'm sorry if my english is trash but i am italian and even if i have a FCE certificate i still have trouble in writing such long articles in english, i'll try to do my best, if something is unreadable or does not make any sense tell me in the comment section and i'll fix it if i can.

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Jax is a melee fighter which deals hybrid damage (both ap and ad and even true dmg thanks to Conqueror.
Jax is playable in both Top and Jungle. Obviously the playstyle is different according to the roles. Specificly im Toplane you should play is as a splitpusher even if is not terrible in teamfights.

Jax spikes at every core item you purchase. It is quite bad early levels untill you buy Trinity Force, while it became a monster late game.


I've taken Jax abilities description on League of Legends Wiki.
Some of the code is taken from jhoijhoi's BBCode Guide.

HIGH MOBILITY

Thanks to his Leap Strike Jax can jump to both allies and enemies up to every 3,6 seconds with 40% CDR, making jax an high moblity champion.

TONS OF DAMAGE (HYBRID)

Jax deals physical damage with his base attacks (specially when they are hugely amplified by Trinity Force) in addition to his Leap Strike and Counter Strike.
The presence of a really high base magic damage in his Empower and from the Master-At-Arms's passive makes Jax a strong font of damage difficult to itemize against.

+INSANE SPLITPUSHER(HYBRID)

The Trinity Force in addition to Relentless Assault make Jax one of the best (if not the best) splitpushers of the entire game.
Trinity Force's Sheen constantly procced by Jax's low CD abilities, allow him to melt towers extremely fast.

+DECENT WAVECLEAR

Jax has no waveclear in his kit, but since the fact that he needs to build Tiamat, his ability to clear minion waves become pretty good. When Titanic Hydra is completed, it is even more effective.

+CAN SOLO CARRY

Specially at low elo, if you get a lead in lane you can straight win the game by just splitpushing, at a certain point enemy team will need more than 2 people to kill you.

+EXTREMELY GOOD LATEGAME

As you can see by his winrate per game lenght on Champion.gg, he became better the longer the game goes because of his good scaling with items but most importantly by the level scaling which allow Relentless Assault and Master-At-Arms to became really powerful.

+EASY TO LEARN

Learning how to play Jax is not really hard because his kit is pretty basic, the only thing you need to learn is to animation cancel with Leap Strike and Empower

-WEAK EARLY LEVELS

Jax really suffers first levels, in some cases you can win trades early game if you have your Relentless Assault stacked.

-EASY TO LOCK

If Jax gets CCed in a fight for a bit he will pretty much always die, care about it.

-NOT SO TANKY WITHOUT R ACTIVE

Unless you have Master-At-Arms active and your Counter Strike is on cooldown you can get bursted down pretty fast.

-NO SUSTAIN

Jax has pretty much always no way to heal up even because u won't get any lifesteal items if not Hextech Gunblade which right now is not common. This is why he suffers poke matchups.

-NOT SO EASY TO STACK PASSIVE

The problem with Jax's Relentless Assault is that if you try to stack up the passive you will always push the wave and this won't allow you to fight your enemy because you will be overextended and you cannot towerdive alone during laning phase. If you don't stack it you will pretty much always loose any trade because you will be way weaker than your enemy.

EARLY GAME

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First of all your level one is really strong vs a melee matchup, i recommend not to be aggressive but if the enemy tries to fight you, press Counter Strike, pop a Corrupting Potion stack, and you will win the trade most of the times. Versus poke use your Counter Strike in a defensive way, sometimes is just better to start Leap Strike to be safer.
If you win the level 1 trade i recommend to push the wave and take level 2 as soon as possible, in this way with your Leap Strike you can go for another trade and sometimes is it straight a kill, on the other hand if you lost the level 1 trade stay back and wait for the wave to come to you. As i said before your early game is pretty weak and your passive stacks often determine the trades successes.

Level 6 is the moment you can try to play way more aggressive, hit minions twice, then spam right click while you are jumping to your enemy, this way your Leap Strike animation will be canceled and you will land the next autoattack way faster, then immediately press Empower to reset the autoattack timer and deal the highest dps possible. When Titanic Hydra is completed, you can add anoter aa reset to your combo.

MID/LATE GAME

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Mid to Late Game i recommend to stay as much as possible in sidelanes to push waves/turrets and to farm up, as jax your champion in-game level is the most important scaling you can get. Of course sometimes you need to group up, you can fight but you have to be careful.

Here's a video with a TF Blade Jax Gameplay.

Jax gains 3.5 - 11 (based on level)% bonus attack speed for 2.5 seconds every time he lands a basic attack, stacking up to 8 times for a maximum of 28 - 88 (based on level)% bonus attack speed. Stacks fall off one at a time every 0.25 seconds after not attacking for 2.5 seconds.

Jax dashes to the target unit or ward. If his target is an enemy, he deals physical damage to them.

Jax's next basic attack or Leap Strike within 10 seconds deals bonus magic damage. If Empower is used on a basic attack, it will have 50 bonus range. Resets aa timer.

Jax enters Evasion, a defensive stance for up to 2 seconds, causing all basic attacks against him to miss. Jax also takes 25% reduced damage from all area of effect abilities. After 1 second, Jax can reactivate to end it immediately. At the end of the duration, Jax Stun all nearby enemies for 1 second and deals physical damage to them, increased by 20% for each attack dodged, up to a 100% increase.

PASSIVE: Jax deals bonus magic damage on every third basic attack within 2.5 seconds of each other. ACTIVE - THE CHAMP: Jax gains bonus armor and bonus magic resistance for 8 seconds.

On Jax there are bunch of choiches for the skill sequence:

STANDARD SEQUENCES

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This is the most common, i reccomend this skill sequence in pretty much every situation.

This one is better in ranged matchups because you have your Leap Strike on a lower cooldown earlier and you won't loose much dps with this.

PARTICULAR SEQUENCES

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I see people also going Counter Strike max first in specific matchups when you need to have Counter Strike on a lower cooldown than for example Riposte and they go like Counter Strike> Leap Strike> Empower or Counter Strike> Empower> Leap Strike. I think this is a way to go for an expert high elo Jax player, i don't recommend it for a beginner at all.

There is really no reason not to take Flash, everyone uses it and it is so useful especially defensivly, ALWAYS take this.

Before patch 8.14 Teleport was the only good thing to take togheter with Flash, but in 8.14 his cooldown has been increased by 60 seconds, i still use it but Ignite is becoming another option on Jax.

As i said before this is the new secondary option for Jax, you can take it if you know you can win your lane and is usefull to snowball with more ease, of course lategame it loses most of his strenght but the grievous wounds provides a bit utility in every phase of the game.

Talking about runes, the pages will pretty much always be based on Conqueror. As secondary tree i think Resolve is the way to go.

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Conqueror is by far the best keystone for Jax because of the bonus AD which is pretty good and of course for the 20% true damage conversion of all the damage you deal. Press the Attack is a second possibility but i don't see any reasons to prefer it instead of Conqueror.

Triumph in my opinion is the strongest greater rune and it is the only one that works well with Jax of Precision.

For the Legend choiche Alacrity is the best for jax because Jax want as much AtkSpd as possible and this runes fits pefectly for this reason.

Coup de Grace is the most standard choiche for this selection, sometimes Last Stand is not bad also.

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Resolve helps jax to survive the first levels, Bone Plating is the perfect choiche to be tankier, someone takes Demolish but i think is wasted because jax doesn't need help to melt towers.

the other rune of Resolve can be both Chrysalis and Second Wind i usually take the first one but versus poke the second one can help to sustain.

In patch 8.16 Aggressive runes have been nerfed, but pro players find out this really good combo of Time Warp Tonic + Corrupting Potion, basically this gives you as much sustain as possible with a potion and taking Inspiration secondary gives you a full attack speed increase.

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If you take Inspiration there isn't really a good option for Jax but having free boots isn't bad too so go for it.

This is the rune you want for the combo with Corrupting Potion

Sorcery can be a good option too as secondary, Celerity + Gathering Storm is a decent alternative, defensive stats just help to survive laning phase.

It's time to talk about items! Before talking about Trinity Force i'd rather begin with the starting items.

STARTING ITEMS

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Corrupting Potion is the most common starting item on jax, basically if you take this you can't be wrong most of the times. It gives you both mana and health sustain and a bit of damage in early trades. All things you need in the early game.

Doran's Blade is another good option on Jax it makes you a bit more tanky but the sustain is of course less, i sometimes take it as starting items but most of the times i take it as first recall with Boots when i don't have enough moneys for the first huge component.

You want to start Doran's Shield only versus poke matchups because in addition with Second Wind it will help you a lot to sustain trought the lane, you can also take it as i said with Doran's Blade on the first back, so Corrupting Potion + Doran's Shield gives you a huge amount of sustain.

FIRST PURCHASE

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As i said first, you can take a Doran's item + Boots as first back but if you have enough gold is better to purchase a Trinity Force component or Tiamat.

You want to rush Tiamat if you have trouble in bouncing the minion wave of if you are versus someome you know you cannot kill and so you are trying to do as much damage as possible to turrets. Anyways i think rushing Tiamat is pretty safe and is never such a terrible decision.

You want to rush Sheen first if you are snowballing the lane and you know you can keep killing your enemy, is pretty aggressive but it works most of the times because it synegizes well with your Empower.

If you don't need to rush Tiamat and you are even or slightly ahead i think that Phage first is the way to go, it gives you some ad and a bunch of health that is quite good early on. The passive is good too.

Stinger gives you the most valuable stat for Jax because it allow him to proc Master-At-Arms passive as much as possible. I pretty much always take it as second component if i didn't bought Tiamat. The only reason i can see taking Stinger first is versus a tank you know you can kill.

CORE ITEMS

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You ALWAYS want to get this 2 items. I don't think there is another choice right now.

Trinity Force basically gives you everything you need on Jax: Attack Speed, AD, Health, Mana, Cooldown Reduction and the 200% base AD Sheen proc. You want to always get this item first, there was a period where people where taking Titanic Hydra first but noone does it anymore. I can say that Trinity Force is pretty much Jax himself.

90% of the times you should take Titanic Hydra as second item, it helps you a lot with clearing wave and you can add another huge aa reset of your combo with the item's active. Before Sterak's Gage change sometimes i used to take it as second item when i was really snowballed, after the change you won't get that much value out of it so i don't suggest to take it immediately after Trinity Force.

BOOTS

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You should take Boots while or before you are building into Trinity Force. You can ugrade boots before completing Trinity Force but if you fell you don't need to then take them after it.

You need to take tabis versus an ad heavy team or versus some autoattackers, sometimes in certain matchups you can rush them as first item when you need to surive bad trades; for example versus Pantheon or Aatrox.

Mercury's Treads are the way to go versus CC based team or versus for example a tank matchup. You can rush them versus ap poke champions like Teemo but usually this type of boots shouldn't be rushed as early as possible.

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After core items it really depends on the situation, if you are ahead you can go for Guardian Angel next. If you are behind i recommend taking a tank item, the type of tank items depends on who you will duel in a sidelane, if you need to face for example Yasuo take Randuin's Omen, while versus Ekko or Swain take Adaptive Helm. Spirit Visage isn't horrible but most of the tiems you get much more value out of Adaptive Helm because Jax doesn't have healing. I usually always take at some point Guardian Angel because is really effective. Before Sterak's Gage was changed i used to buy it pretty much always. Now if you want to be safer you can replace it with a tank item. I see lot of people taking Essence Reaver but i think is too cheesy like all the other aggressive items i put on the list. High elo jax players are taking Guinsoo's Rageblade as last item and this make Jax a bigger threat lategame, i tried it bunch of times and i find it really powerfull, obviously you won't get to 6 items every game but when you can and you are not completely useless this item will push you to victory.

PATCH 8.13

The guide has been created.

PATCH 8.14

Teleport now has 1 minute more cooldown. Conqueror bouns ad gain has been decreased.
This hurts Jax a bit but since the Teleport nerf affects pretty much every toplaner won't change much to you and the Conqueror nerf is really small.

PATCH 8.15

Nothing affected jax.

PATCH 8.16

Added a section at the end of items talking about Guinsoo's Rageblade and Inspiration tree.

PATCH 8.17

Nothing affected jax.