Introduction

Hello gamers, welcome to my advanced Jinx Guide, where I aim to teach you everything you could possibly need to know to play Jinx to her full potential. I'm Vapora Dark, a Master tier ADC main, and Jinx is my second favourite ADC after Aphelios, as well as probably my most played champion overall over the past few years.

To begin with, you need to understand who Jinx is. Jinx is a hypercarry, meaning she has a weak early-game but spikes hard in the mid-late game. She achieves this hypercarry potential thanks to her different basic attack forms that she switches between through her Switcheroo!; the rocket launcher, Fishbones, and the minigun, Pow-Pow.

The rocket launcher has extremely high basic attack range and the attacks deal 10% extra damage, while also splashing onto nearby targets to deal just as much damage to the secondary targets as to the primary target. This form enables her to deal very safe damage with devastating AoE damage potential, especially when paired with Runaan's Hurricane.

Her single-target damage with this form isn’t amazing on paper, because she does scale 10% worse with bonus attack speed while using the rocket launcher, but in practice you’ll often still be outdamaging the vast majority of ADCs in single-target damage with this form because of just how easily you can reach anyone you want to deal damage to with how high your range is, and especially when taking into account how safely you can deal that damage compared to shorter range ADCs who will frequently need to be more careful about biding their time to find an opportunity to deal damage.

Attacks in this form also cost 20 mana per basic attack, mostly just to stop her spamming it too much in lane phase where the permanent pushing power would be too strong. In teamfights with Presence of Mind you won’t really notice the mana cost anymore, nor will it impede your waveclear much from mid-game onwards when you start oneshotting minion waves.

The minigun on the other hand, loses the -10% bonus attack speed restriction, and also gains considerable amounts of attack speed per basic attack, stacking up to 3 times. Using Jinx’s base 525 basic attack range, you are on the slightly on the shorter range of ADC basic attack ranges, making it significantly riskier to basic attack with this form compared to the rocket launcher. That said, the payoff can be quite big in terms of single-target damage, since fully stacked the minigun provides 195% bonus attack speed, which is a much greater DPS boon than the rocket launcher’s +10% damage per basic attack.

Still, the rocket launcher’s basic attacks cost 20 mana for a reason. It is generally your stronger form, both because of the safety it provides, and also because even the overall damage potential is so much higher, particularly after Runaan's Hurricane really spikes your AoE damage with it. You should use the minigun only when you are absolutely sure that it is safe to get so close (or once the enemies have closed that gap already for you), and only when you need that extra DPS. Usually if the target isn’t a tank, staying at higher range with the rocket launcher and dealing a little less DPS is going to be the better choice. You can easily win a whole teamfight without ever switching to the minigun. In fact, that’s how Jinx would ideally like a teamfight to play out.

Since the rocket launcher is both her strongest form but also her lowest DPS form, this means Jinx shines against enemy team compositions that are on the squishier side. The more an enemy comp forces Jinx to rely on minigun for DPS to deal sufficient damage, the more that comp is forcing her away from her strengths and into her weaknesses.

While Jinx’s DPS is more than adequate with minigun, her safety while using it is not, and there are ADCs such as Vayne and Kog'Maw who could deal more DPS against tanks while also being safer in the process; Vayne because of her mobility, Kog'Maw because of his range. If an enemy comp forces her to rely on minigun too much, it means that she is not performing to her highest potential, and potentially another ADC pick would have performed better for you.

Unlike others, I wouldn’t personally go as far as to say that tanks counter Jinx, since I think it’s silly to say that an ADC that has the DPS to deal with tanks is countered by tanks when there are other ADCs out there that just straight up don’t have the damage to deal with them no matter what range you play from. Jinx is a lategame scaling ADC, and unlike other hyperscalers such as Smolder, her potential for single-target DPS is quite high if she needs it. Even when facing unideal opponents such as tanky comps that force her to rely on minigun, you should still expect her to outperform the average ADC against those tanks, she just won’t outperform anti-tank specialists. So I wouldn’t say she’s weak against them, since she’s fairly all-purpose as an ADC. It’s just that, as I said, it doesn’t quite play to her strengths.

Another important thing to understand about Jinx, is that she has some of the best self-peel in the ADC role. For an immobile ADC, you would expect her to be a lot more reliant on her team to peel her than she really is. While this obviously helps a lot, the traps from her Flame Chompers! can quite literally be a big obstacle for an enemy diver to get past, and her Zap! scaling all the way up to an 80% slow on a 4 second cooldown I think makes it an extremely underrated form of self-peel. Obviously it won’t help much against certain forms of gap closing like a Zed W-R, but certain champions like Maokai can literally never reach you without Flashing because your Zap! slow will allow you to literally kite them for infinity, or at least run from them for infinity. Peel from her team just upgrades her from hard to catch to almost impossible to catch. And this self-peel, paired with her ridiculous basic attack range with rocket launcher, makes her one of the safest ADCs despite being immobile.

Another thing to note is that while Jinx has a weak early-game, she’s actually a fairly good laner. This sounds contradictory, but hear me out. If you take Jinx vs Draven for example, I expect I beat Draven as Jinx in the 2v2 probably 6 times out of 10 on average. That being said, when I lose to Draven, I lose about twice as hard as I beat him, meaning my average gold lead against a Draven is in the negatives despite usually beating him in lane. Because Jinx is not as strong an early-game champion as Draven, she’s not going to be snowballing an early lead the way Draven can.

Additionally, when both junglers play around bot lane, this favours the Draven on average because he’s a stronger early-game champion and will deal more damage than my Jinx, and will therefore have more impact in early ganks. If we skirmish over drake or scuttle crab in the river, Draven will once again out-impact Jinx through his superior damage.

Jinx being weak in the early-game means she doesn’t snowball super hard in the lane phase, and doesn’t have huge impact in early fights, but it doesn’t preclude her from having a good lane phase. The mix of her superior range with the rocket launcher, as well as her self-peel with Flame Chompers! and W, on top of her early burst with W, means she performs just fine in the 2v2 where she will typically out-range most bot lanes, while dealing moderate damage, while also not being particularly easy to catch.

You just have to understand that despite this good laning, you shouldn’t expect to have big early leads every single game. But if you’re actually losing 2v2 consistently, even before jungle intervention or early skirmishing comes into play, then even though this is the stage of the game where Jinx is weakest you should still realize this is not an expected outcome, and you have a lot to clean up in your Jinx gameplay.

And finally, the last important thing you should know, and personally my biggest reason to play her at the minute, is that Jinx is probably the best ADC to blind pick. She doesn’t shine particularly hard with any support or opposing ADC matchup or support matchup, and her mix of scaling with good laning, with long range AoE damage as well as short range DPS, with even above average self-peel, means that you’ll rarely regret picking her in the mid-late game either. If there’s one ADC that you can pick every single game and still climb, it’s Jinx, as the variance in her performance depending on other factors is very low compared to other ADCs.

Best & Worst Times To Pick Jinx

Now, just because Jinx’s variance depending on matchups is low, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t still have matchups she shines most, and matchups where she struggles the most. Jinx will always shine best when paired with supports that provide great peel and protection. My top 2 support picks for Jinx are Lulu and Braum. To a lesser extent, she also works with supports that provide lockdown, since both her Flame Chompers! and her Zap! benefit from the target being CC’d so she can land them for free. Meanwhile the further away a support departs from offering protection or CC, generally the worse they will be for Jinx.

As for her ADC matchups, as her increasingly large basic attack range is her biggest strength in lane, she works best against low range ADCs such as Nilah, Xayah, Kai'Sa, Samira, who can’t trade back against her superior range at all unless they get an engage from their support. Her worst matchups are long range poke bot laners, such as Ezreal and mages like Ziggs and Seraphine, who neutralize her long range basic attacks with even longer range abilities. Additionally, ADCs who have too easy a time forcing engages on her such as Twitch and Tristana are also tough for her to deal with, as well as Miss Fortune who punishes immobile ADCs such as Jinx for lacking an immediate tool to escape her ultimate with.

As for enemy supports, Jinx likes to face melee supports with minimal to no long range engage capabilities to cope with her large basic attack range, such as Rakan, Galio, Poppy, Braum, Alistar, as well as low range, low pressure enchanters such as Sona, Soraka and Lulu. Her worst support matchups, just like in the ADC role, are mages whose abilities drastically outrange and neutralize her basic attack range, such as Xerath, Vel'Koz and Lux.

So while you can always expect to pick Jinx and have a fighting chance in the majority of cases, now you know exactly when you have the best odds and when you should expect to struggle the most. If you’re not blind picking, then this may also factor into your decision as to whether to pick her or not, as other ADCs may be expected to perform better based on the available information. Though if you do just want to be a one-trick then Jinx is one of the better choices to do so, and so I would recommend early-picking every game so your teammates don’t have to blind pick, since their picks probably won’t be as good blind as Jinx is.

Lane Phase

Covering

Before minions spawn, you’re going to want to cover the bot side entrance to your jungle. On red side, you can sit in this brush and it’s very unlikely the enemies will be able to surprise you, you can just sit in the back of the brush and if the enemies invade, you can just start running back while placing a ward in the brush to keep track of their whereabouts. But you definitely don’t have to use a ward unless you can already see them invading.

On blue side, sitting in the brush that leads to your jungle isn’t really an option because the enemies can stick to the wall to surprise you and almost guarantee you’ll have to blow Flash to escape. The safest thing to do would be to place a ward, but this is a big investment to make every single blue side game when the enemies aren’t even likely to invade every single game anyway, so personally what I like to do is just sit around this exact spot.

[Place screenshot of blue side cover]

You’ll want to be far enough away that your vision doesn’t quite reach the brush, meaning that the vision of any enemies in the brush also just won’t quite reach you either, but close enough that as soon as anyone steps out of the brush, you’ll have vision of them, revealing their invade from a safe enough distance that nothing short of a Blitzcrank Flash Rocket Grab could possibly force your own Flash. I’ve never seen anyone but myself do this, but honestly it’s by far the best way to cover invades from blue side since it’s so safe and also doesn’t require wasting a trinket on an unlikely invade.

It does leave you vulnerable to poke coming from the lane brush, or even potential engages coming from the brush, but you can put enough distance between yourself and the brush to give yourself a chance to dodge any incoming poke. Even if it lands, it’s not the end of the world, and generally won’t be as bad as either using a ward or dying to an invade, and any unexpected engages are super unlikely to kill you at level 1 this close to your turret anyway.

Leashing

When it comes to leashing, you definitely don’t want to leash if you can avoid it. Jinx’s pressure in lane comes from her superior pushing power, and you don’t want to waste this advantage on leashing your jungler while the enemy bot lane is free to potentially obtain the push advantage during your absence.

There is not a single jungler that still needs a leash in the current year given how easy and healthy jungling has become in recent years, and with scuttle crab now spawning as late as it does, your jungler having a faster clear is both not worth giving up your lane pressure for, and also not worth giving away your jungler’s starting camp, which will give away what lanes they can early cheese, or what lane they’re pathing towards and away from.

Entering lane

If you had to cover then you should stand back and walk into the lane behind the minion wave, with the minion wave both covering you from any skillshot poke the enemies might try to cheese you with from the lane brushes, and also being around to aid you in a fight should they try to force an engage.

It’s very important you path with and next to the wave, not before it or after it, because any poke that lands could make the difference between winning or losing the early level trading, and any engage that lands could easily cause you to lose lane entirely, by either forcing you into far too early a recall, or ultimately causing you to die, either right then or in the near future.

Alternatively, if you have a stronger level 1, which as Jinx is almost always going to be decided by your support rather than yourself, once you’re sure the enemy team isn’t invading you can try facechecking the lane brushes behind your support to force the enemies out of them if they’re there, or otherwise you can simply waltz in and take control of the brushes, and proceed to be the side either threatening poke or engage onto the enemy bot lane if they don’t proceed to path with the wave into lane. If they walk in before or after the wave, you can potentially either engage on them or poke them with your support.

If poking, you’ll only be able to land a simple rocket basic attack before potentially wanting to retreat back into the brush, but your support may have something stronger to poke with, such as a Vel'Koz Q, Bard Q, Janna W, etc. If the enemies do walk with the wave, if they get too close to the brush you may still be able to cheese a single poke auto onto them before retreating into the brush and getting away with your one free hit, but if they walk far enough away that you don’t want to risk trading with them while they have their wave with them, you can just simply leave the brush without making any aggressive actions, and start laning normally instead.

You won’t always be able to obtain an advantage through controlling the brushes early on, but it’s good to do it anyway just in case the enemies do mess up, which they frequently will in lower Elos.

Level 1

On the first wave, you’ll want to try and poke the enemies as much as possible without getting hit back. Since the rocket launcher only gives you 605 range at this stage it won’t be as easy to space your opponent as it becomes in later levels, but an easy way to cheese some poke onto your opponent while being hard to retaliate against is predicting when they’re going to walk forward next to their minions to either hit your minions or to try and trade with you, and throw a rocket at their minions as they’re walking up to them, causing them to take as much splash damage as they would have taken if you’d attacked them directly, but also avoiding minion aggro in the process, and making it hard for them to retaliate since you effectively attacked them from further away than your basic attack range actually is.

Your main goal however is to outpush the enemies so that on the second wave you’re the first bot lane to level 2, without pushing so fast that the minion wave just ends up crashing into the turret and wasting your chance to pressure with the minion or level advantage. This would be very easy to achieve on Jinx who has by far the best level 1 waveclear of any ADC, so you have to intentionally hold back from pushing too fast.

Since pushing for level 2 is easy for you, what you’ll want to do is make sure you’re either beating or at least tied with the enemy bot lane in the push, and then focus on just trading with them. Since you have the better waveclear, the enemy bot lane has to focus very hard on pushing if they want to have a chance at outpushing you, while your push comes very effortlessly so you can instead focus on poking.

Ideally you’d space them well enough to avoid retaliation, but even if they do manage to hit you back, so long as you have the bigger wave you’ll generally be expected to win trades, especially with your +10% damage on rockets. If the enemies do out-range or out-trade you though, you can instead focus on avoiding interaction by sitting back and clearing the minions, while trying to get the damage to splash onto the enemy if they’re trying too hard to walk forwards and trade with you.

It’s important to note that level 1 Jinx is an even more extreme example of being a good laner but a weak champion overall. Her range advantage even at this stage makes her good at securing HP leads and superior wave state from level 1, but you’ll generally want to avoid getting into straight up fights because you don’t have Zap! for damage yet, and the minigun has also yet to scale enough to deal much DPS, so most ADCs will out-impact Jinx in a level 1 fight. If your support is strong level 1 and can force a fight then it might work out, but generally you’ll want to stick to trade patterns focused on spacing your opponents, and avoid getting into upfront fights.

For level 2 you’ll generally want to level Zap! for increased DPS and the potential for trading, but you can also level Flame Chompers! for better following up a support’s lockdown CC. Flame Chompers! doesn’t give as much damage so it won’t help you win a fight as much as Zap! can, but if you already know you’d win the fight anyway, Flame Chompers! is going to be better at helping you secure kills, so if you have something like a Nautilus or a Blitzcrank potentially about to land a hook, especially if the enemy bot lane is still only level 1, you can try levelling Flame Chompers! instead to try and increase your chances of killing the target.

Since your pushing power is so good, you’ll very frequently be able to obtain an early level 2 which can enable your support to potentially earn you a free kill if you play your cards right. Generally though this won’t happen in the majority of games unless you happen to duo with a support player who has this sort of champion pool, so you’ll usually just want to stick to levelling W.

Level 3

Level 3, if somehow you have high mana still, which means you haven’t been using rockets for trading or pushing much, then you can level whichever ability you don’t already have between Zap! and E, which will usually be E. However, the more common thing is that by this stage you’ll find yourself at 50% mana or less, and adding a 3rd ability to your mana costs doesn’t make much sense if so, especially given how high the mana cost on Flame Chompers! is.

So if you’re running low-ish on mana I would instead recommend putting a second point in Switcheroo! at level 3, which will increase the range of rockets from 605 to 635, and almost double the amount of attack speed you gain from each minigun basic attack, from 15% to 27.5%, which will be a considerable powerspike. It won’t be as big a spike in power generally as actually levelling your 3rd ability, but the fact that it comes at no increase in mana costs is almost always going to be ideal if you already find yourself at 50% mana or less.

Lane Scaling

Your relative laning power as Jinx is only going to increase as lane phase goes on. Since most of her strength in lane comes from her high attack range and this range increases with each point in Q, you can view each Switcheroo! level as a distinct powerspike which gradually alters the entire matchup dynamics in favour of Jinx.

This won’t matter as much into ADCs with great gap closing capabilities such as Twitch or Tristana who will neutralize the range advantage with ease anyway, but against ADCs who generally rely more on the range of their basic attacks and main abilities such as Draven and Kai'Sa, they can struggle more and more to match Jinx even as they’re supposed to be stronger early-game champions. You should take this into account when considering how aggressive or passive you want to play each matchup.

When playing Jinx against Draven for example, your level 1 rocket attacks only have a 55 range advantage over him, meaning he can very often hit you back if you hit him. Considering his axes will massively out-damage your rocket attacks and lead to very bad 1 for 1 trades, it means you’ll want to play more on the conservative side and only go for attacks at very favourable times when the Draven player knows what he’s doing, especially at level 2 where his Blood Rush movement speed more than makes up for his range disadvantage.

However, the later the lane goes, the harder it becomes for Draven to trade back against you, and your Zap! will help a lot with keeping him at bay, so you can actually start to become more aggressive against Draven at later levels even though his damage will have increased much more than yours will by this stage. But now it becomes easier to land 3+ autos on Draven for every auto he lands on you.

Meanwhile when playing Jinx against Kai'Sa, your level 1 rocket attacks have an 80 range advantage over her, making it significantly harder for her to hit you back compared to an ADC like Draven, and even when she does manage to hit you back, each single hit will not hit as hard as each single rocket attack does, making you able to play very aggressive from level 1 as she won’t be able to do much in return unless her support engages for her. And this dynamic only gets worse and worse for Kai'Sa as you gain more range with levels, while her engage capabilities don’t get that much stronger.

Level 6

At level 6 you will unlock your ultimate, Super Mega Death Rocket. This is obviously invaluable for securing kills from a distance and also potentially sniping kills across the map, but one underrated use for it is harassing with it in lane for pressure, sort of like how you’d use Caitlyn ult. As an execute it won’t deal much damage to full HP opponents, but any time they’re below 50% HP it will deal substantial damage that makes it very hard for the opponents to continue laning, so you can either bait them into overstaying and potentially get a kill later on, or force them to base and obtain a CS lead that way.

The way I like to execute this which always catches the enemies off guard is by shoving a wave under turret and hanging back out of vision, then ulting them while they’re last hitting under the turret. Because they’re last-hitting you can expect them not to be moving around too much, and by being out of vision they won’t be able to react to the cast animation, only to the projectile coming on their screen which is very hard to dodge without warning.

Another big consideration about using your ultimate for harass is that it’s AoE, which makes it extra valuable to harass with if you expect it’ll likely hit multiple targets. Even if the enemy bot lane are as high as 70% HP and won’t take much execute damage, the fact that it’ll be nearly double the damage from landing an AoE hit can make it worthwhile if you’re confident you can land it on both the enemy bot laners. And obviously the lower HP they are, the more valuable an AoE ultimate will be, but generally you can expect AoE ults to almost always be worth the cooldown, just so long as they’re already missing some HP at least. The further ahead you are though, the less of this sort of ‘help’ you need in winning your lane, and the more you’ll want to hold onto your ultimate for actually securing kills.

Wave Management

When it comes to wave management, after level 2 you’ll want to let the enemies push if you’re facing an engage lane and don’t have the advantage in all-ins, since you’ll want to play near your turret to be safer from engages. Freezing near your turret is also ideal if you can execute it safely, but don’t overforce it and get engaged on while tanking a minion wave.

In other matchups, generally you’ll want to have push advantage so that your minions outnumber their minions, and give you an advantage in fights. If you have such an advantage in lane already that the enemies can’t afford to push back against you lest they take free damage, then you can switch to a slow pushing strategy where you zone the enemies from the wave to deny them last-hits, and build up a big enough wave that when it crashes you have plenty of time to harass the enemies and the turret.

You’ll want to also always crash the cannon waves as soon as possible because cannon minions take -50% damage from turret shots, making them squishier to minions than to turrets, so ideally you want to take out the minions immediately and send the cannons under turret ASAP to maximize their efficiency.

And once your waveclear becomes good enough that you can crash almost instantly and for very little mana, you can consider adopting a strategy of crashing every wave instead. If you keep sending every one of your minions under turret with 100% HP then you’re maximizing the overall amount of time you spend at the enemy turret, which will maximize the damage you deal to that turret and potentially also the poke you can land. This is particularly effective the more poke is coming from your support as well, but once you have high range from your rockets and high damage from your W, you will also be good at pressuring the enemies under turret as well as dealing turret damage on every crash.

Other factors to consider are that the safer the enemy bot laner can farm even while being zoned, such as with Ezreal Q or Ziggs Q, the less valuable slow pushing is and the more you’d want to crash every wave since you won’t be denying much farm anyway. And on the contrary, the better waveclear the enemy bot lane has to wipe out waves as soon as they get under turret, the more you want to consider slow pushing instead of crashing every wave, as their waveclear won’t leave you much time to achieve anything under their turret.

Mid-Late Game

The next thing we’re going to cover is how you should play out the mid and lategame with Jinx.

One thing you need to take advantage of with Jinx is that she is the best ADC at self-funneling, particularly once you have Runaan's Hurricane. She absorbs minions and jungle camps at an unrivaled pace, which means you’re able to funnel a lot of the map’s resources onto yourself in the mid-game, and will be able to secure a lot of farm even when your solo laners and jungler are trying to contest it from you; which is good because not only is it ideal to funnel gold onto one player, but it’s especially good to funnel it onto a hypercarry, and as Jinx you have the capability of doing that even without your team’s cooperation, because they just won’t be able to secure minions from you when you’re one or two-shotting entire waves.

Try to only group up with your team when every mid wave has been pushed out already, rotate to side lanes to pick up minion waves unclaimed by your side laners, and during downtime where your team aren’t grouped and it seems unlikely that any action is about to break out, try and rotate to the nearest jungle camp to farm in between mid lane waves as well, even if it’s only scuttle crab. Gromp and Krugs will usually be too far away to consider unless you already happen to be on a side lane, but Raptors and Wolves are near enough to mid lane that you should strongly consider farming them in between waves.

As much as your jungler also wants jungle camps, there’s usually too much uptime in the mid-late game for him to just be full clearing his jungle on repeat, meaning that if your jungler is the only one taking camps, there will frequently be camps left alive for long periods of time which isn’t optimal for team-wide gold income. As satisfying as it is for junglers to always have camps available in case they have time to farm them all, it’s much more important for the team as a whole for jungle income to be maximi Zed at all times. So if you have a moment to take a camp in between minion waves, without sacrificing grouping with your team because your team are not currently grouped anyway, then you should do that.

Some rules to apply to have at least some common decency to your jungler are obviously not to take camps that he’s currently farming, or even just pathing to. Also try to respect that while he can’t farm everything, he is likely to be able to farm the camps he’s already quite near to. So if your jungler is currently farming Krugs and can proceed to path to raptors, prioritize taking wolves if possible, don’t go out of your way to take exactly the camp that he would clearly want to farm next.

That said, there are times where you should be greedy. If you have all 3 lanes pushed in and there is no lane farm available and won’t be for the foreseeable future, and you also don’t need to be grouped, you can absolutely farm an entire jungle quadrant to yourself. You farm so fast as Jinx that doing something like, Wolves into Blue Buff into Gromp can be +12 CS to you in the space of 20 seconds.

While this might seem excessive, and it absolutely would be if you actually had lane farm available, if you have nothing else you can farm then you absolutely do strongly want to consider just farming a large number of camps grouped together while you wait for farm to become available. This might devastate your jungler’s income for the next minute and a half, or he might not even notice because he doesn’t get a chance to path there for the next minute and a half. There is no guarantee in terms of how that would affect your jungler, the only guarantee is that you personally get moderate gold and XP in your pocket if you choose to farm it, which is absolutely a good thing for your team as a whole to secure for their ADC.

So unless your jungler is already pathing towards that quadrant, or you have better things to do like grouping with your team on an objective, there will absolutely be times where you can and should farm an entire jungle quadrant to yourself, particularly on the blue buff side because those camps are very grouped together in comparison to the red buff side, meaning you can speedrun the whole quadrant very fast before any minion waves become available to farm.

Ideally in the mid-game you want to be grouped around mid lane, and this will be where you want to get the majority of your farm. However, depending on your Elo, your mid laner might not be too happy about abandoning their lane to you, particularly if they’re a mage who isn’t much better at side laning than an ADC is. As Jinx you might still be able to secure a lot of farm and possibly even maintain 10 CS a minute on mid lane even while your mid laner is trying to contest farm from you, but every CS you secure is a CS your mid laner is failing to secure, and is falling behind as a result of.

This is usually just their fault because they have bad macro if they refuse to ever go onto side lanes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t at least partially try and compensate for their bad macro to have better team-wide income. Just like we justify taking jungle camps from our jungler with the reasoning that it improves team-wide income, we also want to keep team-wide income into consideration even when it doesn’t benefit us personally.

When I play in low Elo I don’t even bother trying to communicate to my mid laner to go onto a side lane because in my experience it’s too rare for them to listen to be worth the effort. Instead I recommend adopting a strategy in the mid-game of rotating to the side lane yourself, pushing it out, then grouping mid for as long as you can before the side lane wave ends up being farmable again, then rotating back bot to farm it and shove it out again, then grouping back mid again.

This strategy is admittedly inefficient because it leaves you grouped with the team for much less time, and especially the stronger you are, the more you want to be grouped with the team to be available for any fights that might pop up. Jinx spikes as early as 2 items, so by mid-game she’s ready to start teamfighting and being a valuable asset to her team, so being grouped less with the team is definitely not ideal.

Additionally, this strategy has you wasting a lot of time simply rotating between lanes, which is time that would have been better spent pressuring the enemies or farming camps. But it’s also not ideal for either you to be getting no farm because your mid laner’s taking all of it, or for your mid laner to be getting no farm because you’re taking all of it, or for both you and your mid laner to only get 5 CS per minute because you’re each taking half of the other’s farm. The macro of low Elo mid laners means you’re going to have to commit the sin of either being grouped less or farming less, and between the two, not getting farm is definitely the least ideal. Hence you’ll want to take the lesser of two evils and focus on maintaining your farm.

During the periods where you are grouped mid, you should feel free to secure all the farm for yourself and not worry about your mid laner’s income. Rotating to side lanes is your reasonable attempt at letting them have some farm, but when both of you are on the same lane, the minions are fair game, and it’s their problem if they’re not getting much CS. The gold will almost always be more efficient on you as Jinx anyway, and there’s only so much you can do to compensate for their bad macro, it’s not on you to try and let them maintain 10 CS per minute with said macro. Letting them have uncontested farm whenever you rotate to side lanes is already a reasonable compromise.

I would only make exceptions when your mid laner is fed, is carrying, and also scales quite well. Especially if you’re behind, then that’s when you would actively want to prioritize getting gold on them rather than yourself, so you’re not getting in the way of them carrying. When this happens in high Elo, I’ll even let them stay grouped mid while I defend side lanes in their place, so they can carry teamfights while I’m the one mostly stuck on a side lane not impacting the game.

Sometimes when you’re pushing out a side lane, either because your mid laner won’t leave mid so you’re having to resort to that strategy of constantly rotating to side lanes to pick up farm, or just because that’s how things ended up playing out at that time, your team will end up getting into a fight on mid lane or on the opposite side of the map, while the enemies are grouped as 5 and your team is only grouped as 4. This does not have to mean that you should join them, in fact usually the correct call is to ignore it and keep pushing. You’ll get a bunch of free-farm at a minimum, and with any luck you’ll also get a turret or two out of it, particularly as Jinx is one of the best turret pushing ADCs.

If you manage to get the inner turret on a side lane, you’ll even be rewarded with 700 gold as well as more map control, which will match a lot of the benefits the enemy team obtained from killing your own team. Rotating to try and help your team instead sacrifices this near-guaranteed gold just to get to a fight that might end up being disengaged, or might end up being lost before you arrive, and there’s even a non-zero chance that your team even wins the 4v5. If your team wins a 4v5 teamfight and you get a ton of farm and turrets by yourself, that is much better for your team than if they only win a 4v5 teamfight while you wasted your time rotating to the fight with no guarantee of being able to influence it.

This logic can also apply even if you’re pushing out a mid lane wave before drake/baron and your team happens to get into a fight in the river or in the enemy jungle. Depending on how close it is rotating might be an option, but if it’s far away or if both teams are positioned in such a way where the enemies are standing between you and your team so that you can’t actually join the fight, you’ll just want to keep pushing and get a free turret while the enemies fight 5v4. Even if your team loses you still get something back for it to hopefully maintain a chance of winning the game despite the lost teamfight, and again there’s that non-zero chance that your team simply wins 4v5 and you also get free turrets out of it.

Especially when using builds where you get Runaan's Hurricane second item on Jinx, correctly applying all the tips explained here should allow you to average at least 8 CS per minute, or even 9-10 CS per minute if you’re better than the average player in your Elo. And with 8+ CS per minute, it won’t be hard to have a positive impact over your games provided your gameplay doesn’t significantly suffer in other aspects.

Lategame plays very similar to the midgame, except you’ll want to put a smaller emphasis on rotating for farm, and a greater emphasis on staying grouped as much as you can, within reason. At this stage, a single fight could determine the outcome of the game, so your priorities just need to change a little bit, although finding farm should still be somewhere on the list. When exactly this stage starts is hard to say, but, the later the game goes the more you’ll want to stay grouped, and the stronger you are the more you’ll want to stay grouped as well. At the very least I certainly wouldn’t describe lategame as starting any earlier than when baron spawns, which at the time of this video is the 25 minute mark.

Team-Fighting

Your goal in a teamfight as an ADC is to deal as much damage as you can without dying. You shouldn’t have a hard time of this as Jinx, as your rockets range and self-peel give you so many avenues for dealing damage safely compared to other ADCs.

Positioning

The most important skill you need to practice for staying alive in fights is positioning. Positioning refers to the act of actively positioning yourself in whatever location is going to give you the most safety, or allow you to deal the most damage, or ideally, both at the same time. Sometimes safety takes precedence over dealing damage, sometimes the reverse is true. But mostly you’ll want to position for safety. In either case, positioning is a very active and reactive skill, and needs constant adjustment based on the movements of both your allies and enemies. You’ll rarely want to stand in one spot for extended periods during a teamfight.

In order to effectively position safely in fights, you’ll need to identify what are the enemy threats to you, and how far away you need to be to avoid them. For example, when facing Gragas you don’t want to be in range of his Flame Chompers! because this could lead to him chunking you, oneshotting you, or ulting you into his team. Which means Minigun is a no-no even if you’d like to maximize your DPS because it puts you in range of his E, but rockets will be fine because they put you out of his Flame Chompers! range.

Likewise when facing a Nunu for example, you’ll want to stay outside of his ult range because you don’t want to get slowed by it or chunked by it, even if he is not currently casting ult. You wouldn’t even want to be in range of his E, or that might root you and give him a chance to ult you. And against Jax, you want to stay outside of his Q range especially when he has Flame Chompers! up, or he may gap close onto you and kill you.

And this is an example of why Jinx is such a great versatile teamfighter, because while shorter range ADCs may be zoned out of the fight, Jinx has the option of simply switching to rockets to keep DPSing from a safe distance, which is a big reason why she deals so much damage in fights even though rockets don’t actually do that much DPS.

Against certain threats such as assassins, even max rocket range may not be enough. If we take Zed for example, his W into R combo can easily outrange your rockets, so if Zed getting onto you with R would guarantee your death, you need to respect him by standing out of that range either until at least one of those cooldowns is used up on something else, or until your teammates have effectively begun to lock him down, and you’re confident he’ll die before getting a chance to get on you, or that once on you he’ll die or be peeled too fast to deal significant damage to you.

Depending on how the fight goes however, these threats may zone you from fights for quite a long time. Some fights you may not get to deal damage because an unpeeled enemy zoned you from the fight for its entire duration. This is unsatisfying, but it’s important that you stay alive because at least then you’re still around to defend turrets and farm minion waves. Getting frustrated and dying just to deal a little bit of damage will generally lead to a worse outcome than staying alive while doing nothing.

Getting Caught

Sometimes however you will end up getting caught, usually because of an oversight you make in your positioning or in tracking an enemy. Sometimes you’ll still be able to find a way to escape if your Flash is up, but a lot of the time you’ll just want to make as much impact before you die as possible. For example, in this clip where I didn’t notice Lee Sin flanking me and got ulted into his team, I realize I’m almost certainly dead and switch my focus into dealing as much damage to Kog'Maw as I can before I die. In this instance I’m lucky enough to be able to kill him without dying and then try to escape Lee Sin with my passive. Until I realize that I’m too slowed from Lulu’s ultimate to do that, and once again switch focus to dealing damage to Lee Sin before I die, which again, I’m lucky was enough to actually kill him before I finally die to Kog'Maw passive.

This was a particularly fortuitous instance of getting caught and managing to get a lot out of it before getting killed, but in general, the more damage you deal as you’re dying, the better you’re setting up your team to hopefully succeed without you. So obviously try not to get caught, but if you do get caught, think about how you can extend your life for as long as possible, how you can deal as much damage as possible before you die, and who the most valuable target is to deal damage to in order to set your team up for success.

Which Gun To Use

We’ve mentioned before that you’d ideally spend most fights in rockets, but you’ll definitely be lacking effectiveness on Jinx if you fail to identify scenarios where you should switch to minigun. If you’re only focusing one target and it is safe to enter minigun range, you should use minigun. If you’re getting dived on by someone, meaning they have already closed the gap onto you, then the range advantage of rockets is meaningless and you’ll want to switch to minigun.

And in general, you’ll want to be quick to identify when it’s time to switch to your other weapon. If you were focusing someone with minigun and they escape your range, you want to immediately switch back to rockets until they’re in minigun range again. If you were spacing someone and they enter your minigun range, you want to immediately switch to minigun for the increased DPS. The quicker you identify when a weapon swap is ideal, the more you will maximize your DPS in any given situation. Some fights you may end up holding the same weapon for the entire fight, but others you may end up repeatedly swapping between weapons as needed over the course of a fight.

Focusing Enemy Backline

While the golden rule of teamfighting as an ADC is to focus the enemy frontline, there are times where the enemy backline are the only targets available, either from the start of the fight or after a certain point. Jinx is one of the best ADCs for being in this position because she outranges the basic attack range of every other ADC, and when attacking mages who outrange her, her high basic attack range also buys her more time to dodge their skillshots compared to other ADCs. When facing the enemy backliners, you’ll need to assess how much damage they can deal to you, whether they can reach you to deal it, and whether you can avoid it.

For example, Kog'Maw out-DPSes Jinx rockets quite easily so you want to avoid upfront fights with him, particularly if he has an enchanter like Lulu buffing him up and you don’t. However, Jinx rockets outrange Kog'Maw’s W by 15, which as tiny a range advantage as that may be, is definitely something you can abuse. In this fight you can see me weaving in and out of his range constantly, constantly hitting him with potshots and making it impossible for him to fully DPS me in return.

For spacing enemies with your superior range advantage, there are multiple factors that make it more effective. The first is that the more attack speed you have, the less time you spend locked down by your own basic attack animation, so the enemy has less time to close the gap on you. The slower the enemy is, the less distance they will gain on you while moving towards you. And the faster you are, the more distance you will put between you while you are moving away from them. These last two factors can be combined into one factor which we can call movement speed differential, and it also allows you to get in range of the enemy to deal damage to them, as well as get out of range to avoid their damage. Jinx will very frequently have a positive movement speed differential because her passive will frequently make her movement speed very high, and her Zap! makes the enemy’s movement speed very slow, with Flame Chompers! also having the potential to make their movement speed 0. This means you can space the enemies extremely effectively when either of these factors are in play, and less effectively when they’re not in play.

While the golden rule of teamfighting for an ADC is to focus whatever’s closest to you, all rules are made to be broken and it is important to note that you can sometimes ignore this rule. In this teamfight for example, Rammus is the only enemy frontline threat to me, and what makes him threatening is very much just his E. So when he wastes his E on my Milio, I just run past him onto his overextending backliners who have left themselves vulnerable to me. Rammus turns on me realizing his mistake, but it’s too late, he has nothing to threaten me with without his E, so I’m free to ignore him and focus the higher priority targets in his backline, who have also wasted their cooldowns and have nothing left to immediately threaten me with.

You generally want to focus the frontline because focusing the backline leaves you vulnerable to the frontline, so you need to focus on kiting the frontline. But if the frontline happens to be no threat to you at all, that leaves you with the option of focusing the backline instead. It may not necessarily always be the right call, if the enemy backline is a threat to you then you may want to stay away from them and focus the frontline anyway, but there are scenarios such as the one you just saw where the frontline is low priority targets that can be safely ignored, and the backline either can’t deal with you, or have wasted the cooldowns they would’ve needed to use to kill you.

Tips & Tricks

Next I’m going to teach you all the subtle tips and tricks you need to maximize your knowledge of Jinx and your mastery of her gameplay.

Tip #1

The first tip is the simple way to know the range at which Jinx’s ult damage is maximi Zed. Jinx ult deals less damage from close range, but ramps up to deal max damage at a certain range, which is a surprisingly short range for a global ability. And it’s easy to know exactly what range this is, because it’s the same range as your max Zap! range. So you can either look at your Zap! indicator, or simply get used to your Zap! range, and you’ll know that from this range you can also deal max ultimate damage.

Tip #2

Tip #2 is that your ult becomes significantly harder for the enemies to dodge it if they don’t see it being cast. The projectile itself is very fast and hard to react to, enemies mostly rely on seeing you cast it in order to dodge it without Flashing. This means if you cast it from fog of war, it’ll be much more likely to land. You can either run outside of the enemy’s vision range before casting it to catch them off guard, or alternatively if you happen to be near a brush, you can quickly dip into it before casting ult, and an unsuspecting enemy won’t realize your intentions until a speeding rocket races out of the brush to kill them.

Tip #3

Tip #3 is that enemies hit by a strong enough slow will struggle to dodge your ult even if they see it coming, due to their low movement speed. This means that if you hit your Zap! on an opponent, you can follow it up with R upon confirming that it landed for a very easy hit. The more points you have in W, the stronger the slow is, and the more effective this trick will be.

Tip #4

Tip #4 is that you should consider how likely your ultimate is to land on an enemy champion, based on where you’d be throwing it from vs where you want it to land. For example, throwing it to mid lane from base is very likely to land because there’s only a narrow corridor within mid lane where the enemy is likely to move, but trying to throw it mid from bot lane is less likely to land because the lane is far longer than it is wide, meaning there’s more room for them to move around, and you’ll have a harder time predicting where to hit them unless they happen to stand still.

Tip #5

Tip #5 is that when you’re walking back into lane and enemies are pushing your turret, you can use ult to snipe some last-hits for yourself as well as deny the enemy some turret damage. Caster minions will get oneshot by your ult, and with the right timing you can even snipe a cannon minion when it’s low enough, provided the enemy stands near enough.

Tip #6

Tip #6 is that your ultimate can steal jungle monsters if it hits an enemy next to them. This will deal up to 1200 execute damage, as well as 80% of the rest of its base damage and AD ratio damage, making it competitive with Smite if timed just right. This makes it good for potentially stealing jungle buffs, or even potentially Void Grubs, Drake, Herald and Baron.

Tip #7

Tip #7 your Zap! and R are both valuable abilities to use in fights because they deal so much damage, but you want to minimize their disruption of your basic attack DPS as much as possible. This means you’ll only want to cast them during basic attack down time, or between basic attacks if that’s easier to understand. You’ll never want to cast either one of them when you could have basic attacked instead. Even if in theory either one would deal more damage than a basic attack, basic attacks do more DPS even if less damage per hit, so maximizing your basic attack DPS is ultra important, while getting your Zap! and R on cooldown a little faster barely affects their DPS at all, the DPS of even your Zap! is not really a factor you want to heavily focus on. So you’ll do the most DPS by only casting those abilities between your basic attacks.

Tip #8

Tip #8 is understanding the specifics of the synergy between Jinx and Runaan's Hurricane. The exact way it works is that if Runaan's Hurricane bolts deal 55% of your basic attack damage, then the splash damage from the rockets will deal 55% of the overall basic attack damage, which includes the +10% damage increase from the rockets. This means that if you hit 2 targets that are next to each other, with runaan’s hurricane bolts flying onto both of them and splashing onto each other, both of them will take 155% damage rather than 100%. This damage increase is so high that at this point your single-target DPS onto either one of them will be higher than your minigun DPS onto a single target, meaning that in a dream teamfight, even the single-target DPS from rockets can potentially be higher than minigun, let alone the overall AoE damage. And if you hit 3 targets that are next to each other and close enough for all 3 explosions to overlap, then whoever it’s overlapping onto, potentially at least the middle target, is going to be taking 210% damage per basic attack. This is fairly unlikely, but has been known to happen even onto multiple targets at once.

Onto champions, overlapping rockets is never a guarantee in teamfights, whether the enemies are full melee or full ranged, but minions are guaranteed to clump up so it’s always a crazy bump in waveclear as well as ability to farm jungle camps that have multiple monsters. Additionally, even aside from overlapping rocket damage Jinx still has nice synergy with Runaan's Hurricane because the range of the Hurricane bolts scales with attack range, and Jinx with rockets has one of the highest attack ranges in the game, so you’re more likely to get AoE out of it in the first place than other ADCs are.

Tip #9

Tip #9, when trying to use traps defensively against a champion trying to get on top of you, make sure to throw them a little in front of the enemy rather than on them, since they take .75 seconds to arm and champions can move a fair bit of distance during that time.

Tip #10

Tip #10 is that your traps don’t just have to be defensive, you can also use them to catch out an overextended enemy. Just like the previous tip you don’t want to throw them right on top of the enemy if you can help it, but rather just behind them, to give the traps time to arm.

Tip #11

Tip #11 is that your traps don’t necessarily have to land on an enemy to be useful. If you can place them onto a CC locked enemy then you probably should, but if you can’t guarantee that they’ll actually hit an enemy, placing them behind the enemy can be more valuable. Even if it doesn’t end up hitting them, simply forcing them to alter their pathing to walk around the traps can still allow you to deal a lot of damage to them. If on the contrary, you’re trying to keep them off of you, then you can reverse this advice and throw the traps in front of the enemy, and them having to walk around the traps will also help keep you safe via forcing them to path inefficiently. Additionally, if the enemy is slowed hard enough, such as by your max rank W, they would actually be saving themselves time stepping on the traps rather than trying to step around them while slowed, which takes a long time.

Tip #12

Tip #12 is that it’s very important to consider the target’s movement speed when you’re throwing your traps. If your target has high movement speed, such as an ulting Master Yi, you need to throw them considerably further away from him, or he’s going to speed across the traps before they’re finished arming. Likewise, the slower the target is, the closer to them you can actually place them. This is particularly effective because the enemy’s instinct is to assume they can walk over traps that are placed so close to them, but in reality even traps that are placed directly on top of them can still trap them if they’re slowed enough. The exact proximity of the traps depends on their exact movement speed, but it’s important to be mindful of this as you play so that you can get used to the optimal placement in different scenarios.

Tip #13

Tip #13, once again regarding traps, is that you can potentially kite around them as if they’re a temporary piece of terrain that the enemy cannot pass through. Since they last 5 seconds, this is especially effective when the enemy can’t win the fight or catch you if they get rooted, but also cannot afford to be kited by you for 5 seconds without dying. Since you can pass through them and the enemy cannot, combined with your Zap! slow the enemy just will not be able to catch you while you kite around the traps.

Tip #14

Tip #14 is that using traps to block off opponents’ pathing is far more effective when used in tight corridors, where you can potentially block off an entire passage rather than just part of an opponent’s path. This might seem intuitive, and it probably is, but I just want to emphasize therefore that you should be extra willing to use traps in these locations, and also careful not to waste them frivolously on other uses when they might soon potentially be good to use in this manner. This can be used either to block people’s escapes, to keep them from chasing you, or zoning them from contesting an objective.

Tip #15

Tip #15 is that you can use traps to force an enemy into an extended trade that they don’t win. For example, many times you’ll face champions that beat you in short trades but lose to you in long trades, because they have a bursty ability to trade with but in the long run lose to your minigun DPS. When they step up for the short trade, you block off their immediate escape with traps to force them into a longer fight than they actually wanted to take. Escape is an option if they’re not fully blocked off, but the change to their pathing still forces their escape to take much longer to disengage than anticipated, especially if you also proceed to slow them with W, and can potentially punish them with death in exchange for their winning of the short trade.

Tip #16

Tip #16 is to use your passive movement speed from destroying a turret to try and catch out nearby enemies who aren’t respecting your incoming burst of movement speed. Depending on how close they are you can either snipe them with Zap! and then use the slow to catch up to them enough to trap behind them and force them into a fight with you, or just directly trap behind them if they’re already too close. Tip #16.5 is that this also applies to enemy Rift Herald casts, and is extra likely to catch them off guard because it may not occur to them that this can proc your passive.

Tip #17

Tip #17 is that the angle of your traps is determined by which way you are facing when you cast them. Be mindful of this when looking to block off corridors and such.

Tip #18

Tip #18 is that when placed inside walls, traps will land on terrain on the nearest side of the wall. So if you cast traps just over the halfway point of a wall, you can massively extend the range, which can be useful for extending vision.

Tip #19

Tip #19, related to the previous tip, is that traps can split off into separate areas when cast exactly in the middle of walls. You can use this trick to get vision of multiple areas at once.

Tip #20

Tip #20 is don’t be afraid to use your ult to cancel the opponents’ bases if they base in vision. This is especially effective if you time it so it cancels the end of their base to waste as much of their time as possible, which will completely destroy their tempo.

Tip #21

Tip #21 is that Jinx ult is on a very low CD for an ultimate, so you shouldn’t be afraid to take risks with it. Whether it’s trying to snipe kills that are out of vision, or trying to cancel bases with low information on where they might base, the punishment for missing is not very high, so don’t be afraid to take risks.

Tip #22

Tip #22 is buffering Zap! and R during CC. Crowd Control doesn’t interrupt the cast time of these abilities, meaning you can cast these abilities while CC’d so long as you start casting them right before getting CC’d. This is incredibly efficient because ability cast times are like a form of self-CC anyway, so rather than getting CC’d, then also self-CC’ing yourself, you get the two to overlap to result in less time CC’d overall.

Tip #23

Tip #23 is that in situations where you want to use both Flame Chompers! and W, you’ll want to lead with E, then W. This is because Zap! cast locks you out of using E, but Flame Chompers! cast doesn’t lock you out of using W, so it’s much more efficient to lead with Flame Chompers! then follow with W, as you’ll get both abilities to land much faster this way.

Tip #24

Tip #24 is that Zap! and ult are both a lot easier to land when opponents are near a wall, as they’re blocked off from dodging in one direction. If you therefore aim slightly in the only direction they can dodge, but close enough to them that they can’t hug the wall to avoid it, then it’s very unlikely they’ll be able to dodge. Particularly when they angle themselves between the wall and their turret, they won’t really be able to dodge in any direction, so they’re particularly vulnerable.

Tip #25

Tip #25 is that you can Flash mid-cast for both Zap! and R. Unlike certain other abilities, this doesn’t redirect them, they keep casting in the same direction you originally aimed them. This can be used to dodge skillshots while in the middle of casting your own, or to Flash away from someone chasing you while using Zap! to slow them.

Tip #26

Tip #26 is that skillshot indicators and their visuals are way off when aiming from the river into high ground, or vice versa. You can abuse this with W, and potentially also R, to hit enemies with abilities they assume are going to miss, as the ability is going to land exactly where your cursor was pointed, it’s just that the enemy is going to be misled as to where you actually aimed.

Tip #27

Tip #27 is cancelling your ult animation. The animation of your ult gets completely hidden if you cast it while in your basic attack animation. When your basic attack animation is over, your R animation resumes, so low attack speed cancels your ult animation entirely, but high attack speed barely cancels it at all, meaning the cancel is easier with rockets than with minigun. If you cancel your attack animation with a movement command then ult, the ult animation doesn’t get cancelled in the slightest, so it has to be a basic attack directly into ult with no commands in between. And it’s important to note that even if you cancel the animation the enemies can still hear the sound, but without visuals it may be enough to confuse them and delay their reaction. Tip #27.5 is that Flame Chompers! also has an animation which can override your ult animation, but only if you’re not moving when you cast it. If you cast Flame Chompers! into ult while standing still the R animation will be hidden, but if you cast Flame Chompers! into ult while moving the R animation will play.

Tip #28

Tip #28 is that cross map ults that don’t need to travel much distance are much easier to land when the target is CC’d, since your ult travels so fast that they won’t have much time to move after the CC is over before the ult reaches them. So you should more strongly consider a cross-map ult onto a target that’s either CC’d or about to be CC’d.

Tip #29

Tip #29 is that in fights, it can be worth ulting your enemy while they’re CC’d even if it’s not yet enough to execute them, or to deal as much execute damage as you’d like. This is because if you wait until they’re not CC’d to use it they could potentially Flash it, whereas the damage is guaranteed if they’re CC’d and that damage may still be the difference between winning or losing the fight.

Tip #30

Tip #30 is that when you’re chasing an enemy and you’re still in basic attack range, you shouldn’t throw Zap! unless the enemy Flashes or until they exit your basic attack range, because it allows them to Flash out of your range while also dodging your Zap! at the same time. Instead if they’re feeling pressured to Flash away to escape, you can hold your Zap! until they do so, and then hopefully hit it for a slow to enable you to get back into their range again. If you know the opponent needs to Flash, it’s crucial that you hold your Zap! until they’ve done so.

Tip #31

Tip #31 is that because the Zap! cast time scales with attack speed, it can be helpful to be holding minigun over rockets while casting W. If you genuinely need to use rockets and you’re already holding them, then I personally wouldn’t bother swapping to minigun to use Zap! then swapping back to rockets because the lockout between casts would make that a little clunky, but if you’re already holding minigun I would just use Zap! first before switching to rockets.

Tip #32

Tip #32 is that when you’re switching from minigun to rockets, your first rocket attack is enhanced by the attack speed of your minigun stacks. It’ll still be slower than a minigun basic attack because of the 10% reduced attack speed scaling, but the attack will come out much faster and be less of a DPS loss than if this mechanic didn’t exist.

Tip #33

Tip #33 is more of a myth buster than a tip, but switching from rockets to minigun is NOT an attack reset. This is a tip I saw quite a lot when doing research for this guide, but after testing it’s very clearly not the case. It’s just that when you have very high attack speed the switch from rocket launcher attack to minigun attack causes such a drastic change in attack speed that your minigun attack comes out fast enough to appear as an attack-reset. But the key difference is that an attack reset would imply there is some form of damage advantage to obtain from performing it, whereas rocket attack into minigun attack just deals less DPS than minigun attack into minigun attack. Even though the second attack comes out equally fast in both cases, you would simply be doing more DPS by not delaying your first attack with a slow rocket attack. Except in extremely rare scenarios where your target is going to die in exactly 2 basic attacks, but only if one of those basic attacks is a +10% damage rocket attack, there is no advantage to be gained from doing a rocket attack into a minigun attack if you’re already in range for 2 minigun attacks in the first place. You will do more DPS the sooner you begin attacking with minigun, even if, or especially if, it’s already fully stacked.

Tip #34

Tip #34 is that when you could do with lifestealing from minion waves to get back to full or at least adequate HP, you’ll want to stick to using minigun rather than rockets, since you don’t lifesteal off of the rocket AoE damage, while minigun’s high DPS results in high amounts of lifesteal, and so the more lifesteal you have, the more of a difference this can make.

Tip #35

Tip #35 is just a notice that your passive gives you +25% of your total attack speed, not just 25% bonus attack speed. The difference is that bonus attack speed only gives you attack speed based on your champion’s attack speed ratio, while total attack speed gives you extra attack speed based on all the attack speed your champion has, including from items, runes, and from level scaling. So the more attack speed you have, the more of a relative DPS increase proccing your passive becomes, to the point that lategame it can make quite a big difference, especially with minigun.

Tip #36

Tip #36 is a really weird mechanic I discovered that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere else. If you throw out a basic attack with rockets, swap to minigun while it’s in the air and then use Zap! while inputting a minigun basic attack command, W’s animation comes out ridiculously fast. The thing is though, this is purely visual, you can see the damage doesn’t apply until when it’s supposed to anyway. But it would probably confuse the hell out of an enemy. However, since it basically requires you to attack with rockets when you’re already in minigun range, which we’ve established is less DPS than just attacking with minigun right away, this is probably not really practical, the only real scenario you could argue this could be ideal is if they start out in rockets range then walk into minigun range mid-combo, which is super niche. So overall, I don’t really recommend investing much time into this, I just thought I’d mention it because, the more you know. And who knows, even though I can’t, maybe someone else can find a use for this.

Conclusion

And that concludes my guide to Jinx. I tried to make it in-depth enough that you would literally never have to consult any other source to learn about Jinx, and I hope I succeeded at that. If you liked this then consider subscribing to my YouTube channel where I make educational ADC content.