Welcome to my guide to Jarvan IV in toplane!

With the new season came huge changes to the items! These changes have shuffled everything up and new builds are discovered daily (and subsequently nerfed/removed by riot :P)

Here, I will give you my special Jarvan toplane build and guide. It is very strong build throughout the whole game, especially into some currently popular champions like Kayle and Akali top!

Hope you enjoy it and feel free to comment with questions or suggestions to improve the guide!

Thanks!

Flash & Teleport:

The standard setup. As J4 you have pretty good damage early game, so you are not required to take Ignite. TP gives the advantage of flanking enemy teams before an objective or in lane. Also gives good splitpush options later in the game, which you sacrifice if taking annything else.

Flash & Ignite:

Aggressive setup. You can easily cheese a lvl 2 or 3 kill with Ignite, and your laning pressure is even greater. It is a must that you snowball from it though, since you will lose a lot of map pressure without TP in all stages of the game.

PRIMARY RUNES

Conqueror is a must as keystone, as it gives good AD everytime you attack and let's you heal a little bit extra at max stacks! It also lets us in the precision tree, where many of the other runes are good for J4.

Triumph This lets you continue your fight after you either kill or get an assists, and it has no cooldown. This can be a gamechanger in clutch fights, which can turn a 1 for 1 to a 2 for 1 or more! In the later stages of the game, where we got a lot of HP, 12% missing HP can potentially be A LOT of HP back!

Legend: Alacrity or Legend: Tenacity The bonus Attack Speed is nice, since we don't build any attack speed on J4, however in some heavy CC comps, you might want to take Tenacity ESPECIALLY if they also have a lot of Auto-Attack damage dealers.

Coup de Grace or Last Stand Depending on enemy teamcomp, you can choose either to increase your damage against low target or your damage when you are low. If you expect to be below 60% HP a lot, you might wanna consider taking Last Stand, but usually CDG is the preferred option!

SECONDARY RUNES

Sudden Impact For the extra lethality and thus damage after the E+Q Combo. It will increase all of your damage after using the combo, thus making it superior to cheap shot.

Ravenous Hunter Gives us that sweet omnivamp, up to 11%. Together with Ravenous Hydra, we'll reach 26% omnivamp which is really nice for those fights that last a bit longer than 2 seconds.

TERTIERY RUNES

10% Attack Speed Same as Alacrity; we don't build any attack speed on items, but J4 synergies well with a little bit of attack speed, since his E increases it a little and his auto's deals decent amount of damage aswell, especially in the early game!

9 Adaptive: A little extra AD to help us last hit and more damage for our early game fights!

Armor or Magic Resist: Depending on which enemy we are laning against!

STARTING ITEMS

Usually start Doran's Blade, since you want the AD for the early trades/kill potential. Also gives a bit of Omnivamp to sustain a little and Health Points (HP). Goes with a single Health Potion.

Some occasions, you want to start Doran's Shield against heavy poke (ranged top), to survive the first few levels without getting completely smashed. Goes with a single Health Potion.

First Back

You want an early Tear of the Goddess, due to J4's very low mana pool and high mana costs. It gives extra dmg to minions so it'll help with the clear. If you have extra gold, look for Long Sword which we need for Ravenous Hydra later. Alternately, consider early Boots so you can walk enemies down easier with auto-attacks.

Core Items

Ravenous Hydra is the first item we look to go for, because of the wave clear, sustain and AD.
Of the smaller components, Vampiric Scepter is good for small trades, since it allows you to lifesteal during and after the trades.

Tiamat is preferred if you want to quickly push and roam into enemy jungle with your jungler, or gank midlane. It can also be good against an enemy laner who wishes to push you under tower, so you have faster clearing to negate dives or unnecessary poke under your tower.

After finishing Ravenous Hydra, you want to build into Goredrinker. Goredrinker helps especially in teamfights, where people will look to you for engages with your ultimate. Look for atleast a 2 man ult, but the more the merrier and wait to use the Active on Goredrinker until you are low for maximum healing. BUT BEWARE not to get too low; otherwise you'll risk dying if you get bursted.

By the time you have finished Goredrinker, you should be fairly close to having maximum (450) stacks on your Tear of the Goddess. So then we build Muramana for that extra 70 AD, on-hit dmg and huge mana pool, so you won't have to back for mana anymore.

Final Items

After the core items, we will look to get the stats we need depending on the game state and enemy team:

Spirit Visage is perfect if they have a lot of magic damage threat (can be 2 or more AP Dmg Dealers OR 1 AP dealer being their main damage dealer/threat) Not only do you gain 450 HP and some MR, but the increased healing by 25% also synergies well with our 26% Omnivamp

Sterak's Gage is good not only because of the 50 AD and 400 HP, but also because it gives a potential huge shield when you get bursted fast, especially if you hit multiple people with R. It's an overall great item on J4, as it has almost all except mana and Ability Haste.

Guardian Angel is good if you are very far ahead while also being your teams main threat. Say you have a big shutdown on you, or your team lacks the DPS to finish the fight without you, GA can be the item that makes the difference. As a rule of thumb though, always look to buy GA fairly early, the latest being 4th item, since you won't get much out of the passive late, unless you have enough gold to buy another item while you wait on the passive. If you bought the item say at 20 minutes, and the game goes to 35 minutes, you could potentially have benefitted from the passive 3 times! More value!

Gargoyle Stoneplate is usually only good if you have fallen behind and need only to be the initial engager and then soak DPS for your team. Since it now gives a shield based on your Bonus Health, it can be quite useful if you have 2 or 3 HP items (i.e. Goredrinker + Spirit Visage or Goredrinker + Sterak's Gage or all 3 of them).
You will get a lot of Armor and Magic Resist from the item alone, and potentially even more if you get damaged by everyone from the enemy team.

Our main goal in the game with this build is to be THE teamfight carry aswell as being a threat in the sidelanes, winning by putting pressure on the map and getting sweet flanks with a multihit ultimate.

This means aggressive early game play, that will lead to snowballing your lane. During your laning phase, we will look for opportunities to not only kill your lane opponent, but also invading the enemy jungler, roam and ganking the midlane, or TP botlane for a potential teamfight happening either in the lane or around the Drakes.

Later, especially if you have gotten the top turret, we want to look to take the Rift Herald, bringing even more pressure on the map, and the enemy jungler's topside camps. With our massive sustain, we will look to constantly pressure the sidelane (either top or bot) to make it hard for your enemies to help their other lanes. Always look out for potential flanks after you have pushed your lane, be that with Teleport or without, especially leading up to an objective coming, i.e. Baron Nashor or Dragons.

In teamfights, we look for opportunities to hit a multi-ultimate, preferably hitting all 5 members, but atleast 2 will do as long as they are high value targets (enemy carries or jungler). With our high base damage and decent AD, we deal a ton of damage with an E+Q+R combo. With our high HP we can outlive most of the initial damage being done to us, and when we get fairly low, we look to use the active on Goredrinker to give us massive amount of HP back. Later in the game, items such as Sterak's Gage will also help against the burst, and Spirit Visage will increase our sustain! Overall, this is a really well balanced build and is super fun to play.

If you are ahead, you will quickly find, that you deal a massive amount of damage, while still being really hard to kill. But even going even or being behind, you will still be incredibly useful for your team as a strong teamfighter!