Hello, I'm ThisIsPatrik, and this is my Jax Guide. Hello and welcome to my Jax guide. I used to go by the username of PH45, but nowadays I go by the username of ThisIsPatrik, or in short just Patrik. I am a long time League of Legends player (started back in Season 1). I'm a Master tier top lane main, and I picked up Jax as my main champion back in Season 4 and have played him mostly ever since. I've been Master tier from S11 onwards and maintained it for most of S12. Accounts I currently play on. I also got multiple other accounts but right now I'm mainly playing on the account I listed above. I stream my ranked grind almost daily on Twitch! Check out my YouTube channel where I occasionally post League related videos! Now on to Jax. Jax is a bruiser style champion, who can really be very diverse with his builds and playstyles. You can play him as a splitpusher and duel almost anyone late game, or you can build him more tanky and peel for your carries. Jax is a great champion to pickup as he isn't necessarily the most complex champion mechanics wise, but rather requires matchup knowledge. Knowing where to be and what to do at the right time as Jax is the key to utilizing him to his fullest potential.

Flash: Best summoner spell in the game. Flash gives you the capability of getting over walls or quickly getting in range with Leap Strike. Overall just no a no-brainer of a summoner spell.

Ignite: Ignite is a very powerful tool to have in lane phase since it has a relatively low cooldown, and it can give you a good edge in a duel in lane. Especially if the lane is snowbally, or your opponent has healing in their kit, this can make the difference during an all-in.

Teleport: Teleport is nice since it helps you in tough matchups where you have to back a lot early on and it still gives you pressure on the map later on. You just have to keep in mind that before 14 minutes you can only Teleport to towers, after that point you can Teleport to minions, wards and some allied constructs.

Ghost can be coupled with Flash to deal with more mobile enemy laners or even comps. I like to run Ghost vs champions like Gnar, Jayce and Vayne for example. You can also in some matchups do Ghost and Ignite, though I mostly prefer Flash and Ignite.

Pros + Excellent duelist + Can fight almost anyone late game + Really good scaling + Great splitpusher + Has a built-in escape with ward + Leap Strike + Has an auto-attack reset + Gets naturally tanky in fights when using Master-At-Arms, as it gives you a good amount of resistances. Jax is a very strong fighter once he picks up a couple items, and in late game he can be a monster in the right hands.

Cons - Can be shut down by CC - Hard to get back in the game if behind - Requires matchup knowledge - Has some difficult matchups - Can sometimes struggle with teamfighting - Jax is quite a mana-hungry champ - If you miss your R, you miss out on damage and resistances Falling behind as Jax can be very punishing. It is really hard to get back to the game if you fall behind a lot and especially then if the enemy team keeps denying you XP and CS.

Resolve

As the keystone of choice we have Grasp of the Undying. Right now this keystone feels best in most games as it just gives you better trading and some tools to regen in lane while also getting some scaling from the HP you gain from Grasp and Overgrowth. You can also run Precision tree and choose basically any of the keystones, and you should alternate the choice depending on your needs.

Demolish will help you get early plates faster, and also later on while splitpushing this can help you take down towers faster, making your splitpush more annoying and harder for the enemy team to deal with.

Out of these three runes, I feel Second Wind is the most consistent choice for Jax. It will help you basically in any lane anyways. While Bone Plating can be strong into some hard trading lanes, I feel it kind of goes to waste sometimes due to your Counter Strike, so I basically most of the time default to Second Wind.

Lastly I choose Overgrowth, since it's basically the best choice out of these three runes anyways. Jax has no built-in sustain so Revitalize doesn't do much, and Unflinching is just bad. Overgrowth will give you a decent bit of HP later in the game which is nice.

Personally I like to take the attack speed rune cause it makes queing autos smoother in general, other than that it's just standard offensive shard. I like to take the scaling HP shard in general, but for fight lanes that you want to snowball and win early you can take flat HP shard.

Inspiration

Magical Footwear is nice so you don't have to spend gold on boots early, and instead you can just focus on completing your first item spike which is Trinity Force most of the time. You also get more move speed from these boots which is a r eally good stat on Jax. If you need early Mercury's Treads say in a Gragas lane, you can opt to instead go Cosmic Insight or Jack of all Trades instead.

Biscuit Delivery will help you a bit during laning phase with your lacking sustain and it will also give you a bit of extra mana upon consuming the cookie which is good since Jax is a very mana hungry champion.

• Relentless Assault (Passive): Jax gains bonus attack speed for 2.5 seconds every time he lands a basic attack, stacking up to 8 times. This falls off one stack at a time. To utilize this passive in lane auto attack minions as much as you can before engaging the enemy so you have more attack speed to fight with.
  
• Leap Strike (Q): Jax leaps to targeted enemy while dealing physical damage to the target. It can also be used to jump on wards, plants, Thresh lanterns etc. If you use your W before using Q the W's damage will be applied on top of your Q's damage.
  
• Empower (W): Jax's next basic attack or Leap Strike within 10 seconds deals bonus magic damage. It is also an autoattack reset so after your auto attack has landed activate this for and immediate autoattack. It also adds 50 extra range on the empowered auto, which can make it easier to hit for a quick poke or trade.
  
• Counter Strike (E): When activated the first time Jax will block all incoming auto attacks for 2 seconds aswell as will take 25% reduced damage from all area of effect abilities. At the end of the duration or when reactivated Jax stuns nearby enemies for 1 second and deals magic damage to them, increased by 20% for each attack dodged, up to a 100% base damage increase. This is the key to winning melee matchups at level 1. Just auto minions for your passive and then auto the enemy while near his minion wave so your E's damage increases.
  
• Master-At-Arms (R): It's passive enables Jax to deal bonus magic damage on every third basic attack within 2.5 seconds of each other. Upon activation Jax swings his lantern around him, dealing magic damage to nearby enemies. If he hits a champion he gains some armor per champion hit, as well as 60% of that value as Magic Resist for the next 8 seconds. During this time the passive damage applies every 2nd attack instead of every 3rd.
  

Trinity force Trinity Force has always been a core item on Jax. It has nice boost on his attack speed, health, damage, Sheen proc and also mobility when you hit targets. Overall feels like best choice for 1st item unless you maybe have a rough lane where you need to just clear waves, in which case you would rush Titanic Hydra.

Titanic Hydra Huge item for Jax right now. Titanic has really good stats (a lot of AD and HP) and Tiamat received better buildpath, and waveclear on Jax is really nice since you get more gold faster, and it also solves your mana issues since you don't need to spam abilities on waves. On top of that it has an auto reset on it again, so you can auto -> Titanic Hydra -> Empower for quick burst.

Blade of the ruined king This item is really strong, especially vs high hp enemies. It gives AD, attack speed and lifesteal, and 9% target's current health damage as physical damage for melees. I don't build this item very often, but it gives good dueling power if you really desperately need it.

Spear of Shojin A good HP option for Jax that also gives him other benefits. The item gives good amount of AD, decent amount of HP and some Ability Haste, and it gives you flat 15 ability haste on top of the stats on the items. Jax really wants ability haste, and this item is an excellent source for it.

Plated Steelcaps This item is just Ninja Tabi but renamed. They are good in general for autoattack reliant matchups and also vs fed ADC's etc. The problem is Jax doesn't get the value of these boots during your E, so it doesn't feel like an efficient purchase. I only really go these boots if I'm extremely behind vs autoattack reliant champion, since most of the time your Counter Strike already helps vs autoattacks and Ionian Boots of Lucidity gives you less cooldown on your E.

Mercury's treads Pretty self-explanatory, get this if the enemy laner or the whole enemy comp has a lot of CC as it can shut you down pretty well. Very necessary purchase nowadays since you don't have Tenacity from Precision tree anymore.

Ionian boots of Lucidity I often like Plated Steelcaps or Mercury's Treads, but you can run these boots to have more ability haste. These will help you have your abilities up more often and your summoner spells have lower cooldown too. With more ability haste you will have your Counter Strike up more often, so you can block autos more often.

Sterak's Gage Sterak's Gage is a decent item for survival, especially when you need to survive some burst. It gives you 50% of your base AD as bonus AD, and the shield it grants you once you are taken low enough HP is based on 80% of your bonus HP. The shield decays, but it lasts a decent time so it can be a worthwhile pickup if you need some HP and survivability from burst damage. It also now grants 20% Tenacity which is really good for Jax.

Anathema's Chains Anathema's Chains was designed for tanks, but Jax for sure can utilize this item as well. Whether laning in sidelane or in a teamfight scenario, this item will be useful in the sense that it can make you take 30% less damage from a single threat on the enemy team (a fed mage for example), and the target enemy will also have 20% reduced Tenacity near you, which makes them more vulnerable to getting picked out. The item also gives a lot of HP and some ability haste as well (650 HP and 20 AH) which are both greats stats on Jax. You can buy this vs single AP damage threat, and potentially skip out on building MR because of one champion only.

Black Cleaver Decent item in terms of stats, gives good amount of HP, decent amount of ability Haste and AD, and the passive shreds enemies armor. This item seems to be the only good pen item for Jax as of now. It can be a valuable buy combined with Blade of the Ruined King or even just alone vs high armor targets, especially if your team is very heavy AD since your teammates will make use of the armor shred as well.

Randuin's Omen Good choice against AD champions, especially vs those who run crit. Gives some HP and good amount of armor, and the active slow is nice, and it also reduces incoming damage from crits which can be huge in some games vs a lot of crit champs.

Wit's End This item brings attack speed, but also movespeed on-hit and extra damage for your auto attacks. Also you get a good amount of magic resistance which is nice. You get some Tenacity on top of everything, which is really useful on Jax especially now that you dont get Tenacity from Precision tree.

Frozen Heart Frozen Heart is a really undervalued item. It's really cheap and it gives good stats like mana that Jax has issues with if you have to stay on the map for extended periods or long fights, armor which is always nice to have vs physical damage, and also Ability Haste. On top of that it gives you damage reduction vs basic attacks and slows nearby enemies attack speed by 20% which can be really huge. Great item to pickup vs a lot of physical damage, especially if you find yourself needing more mana.

Splitpushing is a good way of pressuring the enemy team. Jax excells at it for multiple reasons:

His passive gives him more attack speed and he can take turrets down pretty fast after he get's Sheen. You just auto-attack and right as the attack has landed you use Empower for the auto attack reset and at the same time you get a Sheen proc. You can get 2 Sheen procs by utilizing your Counter Strike. First cast obviously gives you the Sheen proc, but you have to manually reactivate it when your Sheen cooldown is refreshed to actually proc it again. The automatic recast of Counter Strike does not grant a Sheen proc. Also having Titanic Hydra or Ravenous Hydra helps splitpushing as your waveclear is improved by those items, but Jax rarely opts for either item currently.

Jax is also a strong splitpusher since he can duel pretty much anyone in the later points of the game and if you are ahead splitpushing is a great way of giving the enemy team pressure around the map.

Also thanks to his mobility with Leap Strike, Jax can escape sticky situations with his ward hop mechanic which makes him somewhat slippery as he can jump over walls.

When to splitpush?

When splitpushing you are essentially leaving your team 4v5, so your team needs to be aware of what you are doing. The idea of splitpushing is to either attract attention to you, so the opponents send 1-2 or more champions to deal with you which leaves your team free to take objectives with the overpower they have. The other case is that the enemy leave you unnoticed and try to take down your team, in which case your team needs to be aware of the risk and back off before it's too late. When this happens you push the lane you are splitting as hard as you can as you can get surprisingly fast multiple towers down from a lane.


When splitpushing vision is a really important thing. Try to have vision around the area you are pushing so you know when to back off if the opponents try to gank you from the fog of war. Also keep an eye on the minimap to see how many of your opponents are visible, and where they are. Think of who you can solokill and who you can't, who you can possibly 1v2 etc.


If you have Teleport while splitpushing you can also consider Teleporting into teamfights. If your team can hold on the fight while your TP is channeling you can win the teamfight with the element of surprise if the opponents first thought it will be a 5v4 fight for them. Before you tp consider which option gives your team the most advantage. If the fight is already lost pretty hard, push as much as you can and back, remember to keep vision on objectives like Baron Nashor and Dragon depending on the lane you are pushing since if the opponents kill your team they are likely to do one of these objectives if possible.

At level 1 you can cheese your opponent (easier vs melee champs) with having Counter Strike up, going to auto them in their minion wave, after you have attacked and minions turn aggro on you activate your Counter Strike and keep autoattacking your opponent if you can stay in range. If done correctly you should chunk your opponent for a good hefty amount of damage and force them to pop a potion or in general just back off.

When you reach 6 a common thing to do is auto minions twice, then Leap Strike on to your opponent, auto them and immediatly follow with Empower. This combo will do good amount of damage as your Master-At-Arms 3rd proc + Empower do quite a lot of damage in a short burst.

You can also cancel your autoattack animation with your Counter Strike. When you have activated Counter Strike and you have autoattacked, right as the damage from your autoattack lands re-activate Counter Strike and this will cancel the rest of your autoattack. This is very useful if you want to do a fast combo with your W and Titanic Hydra for example.

Ward hopping and trinket choice

Sometimes after top laners and others switch to either Farsight Alteration or Oracle Lens but not on Jax. On Jax you keep Stealth Ward so you can ward hop and potentially escape from tough spots. It's extremely useful when splitpushing and there are multiple enemies coming at you you just wardhop over a wall.

You should also note you can use your Leap Strike on things like Jarvan IV flag, Thresh lantern and so on.

Jax is extremely good champion at taking advantage of an lead and carrying your team to victory! He can be difficult to play against comps with lots of heavy CC but even that can't stop the Grandmaster at arms in some cases. Any feedback on this guide is highly appreciated, I will be updating this constantly whenever there is something to update or new ways of playing Jax are discovered Have a great time splitpushing and smashing enemies as Jax! And of course if you enjoyed the guide make sure to subscribe on YouTube for League of Legends content! Subscribe - ThisIsPatrik