Jax Top Build Guide:

Jax is a top-lane fighter and one of the best duelists in the game. Due to his skill set, he is a good pick against champions who are heavily auto-attack based like Irelia, Tryndamere, Camila, etc. He has good variability in playstyle, which is why there are several possible build options. You can make him a strong duelist, able to 1v1 almost any character in the late game and focus on split-pushing lanes, or you can make him a pretty survivable frontline tank and focus on protecting your team in battles. Jax is also a good champion for a player of any level since he does not have complex mechanics and it will take a little practice and knowledge of top-lane matchups to unlock his potential.

 

Pros:

-Strong duelist

-Split push

-Mobility (the ability to run away with the help of a ward)

-Good late-game scaling

-Survival

 

Cons:

-Low AOE damage

-No options against control

-Highly dependent on mana

– Weak when playing from behind

-Requires knowledge of matchups

 

Jax is a strong and simple character who reaches his first power spikes after a couple of items and becomes a strong opponent that is dangerous to go head-to-head against. However, it is difficult for him to get back into the game if he loses in the early game and the enemy team dominates the map, preventing him from accessing gold and experiencing farming.

Jax Abilities:

Relentless Assault (Passive) – Grants additional attack speed for 2.5 seconds after each auto attack, stacking up to 8 times. You can attack minions before the battle to gain stacks.

Leap Strike (Q) – jump to the selected enemy with physical damage. You can also hop on wards, fruits on the river, cones in the forest, etc.

Empower (W) – The next basic attack or “jumping strike” within 10 seconds will deal additional magic damage, which also increases the range of this auto attack by 50. This ability resets auto-attack recovery, use it immediately after a normal hit.

Counter-Strike (E) – When first activated, Jax blocks all incoming auto attacks for 2 seconds, and also takes 25% less damage from all area of ​​effect abilities. When expired or reactivated, the ability stuns nearby enemies for 1 second and deals 20% increased Physical damage per Evaded Attack, up to 100%. Attacks from minions also count, so use this ability to aggro yourself on a wave of creeps. Thus, you will deal maximum damage from the ability.

Grandmaster’s Might (R) is a passive ability that allows Jax to deal additional magic damage on every third basic attack in 2.5-second intervals. When activated, Jax gains additional armor and additional magic resistance for 8 seconds.

 

Runes:

Lethal Tempo is the main rune for Jax, as most of his damage comes from auto attacks. Increased attack speed and radius are the most useful bonuses for this character.

Triumph is a good choice for most top lane characters, this rune will help you survive in team fights more than once, but it will also save you in hard fights on the lane when, for example, you want to fight under the tower, or when ganked by enemy champions (it is also possible rune choice – “Presence of mind,” it will help restore your mana).

Legend: Tenacity is a rune worth picking up most of the time, as there’s a lot of control in the game. However, if the enemy team has no control skills, or there are very few of them, then you can choose the rune – “Legend: Alacrity” which will also increase your attack speed and increase your damage accordingly.

The Last Stand is the most popular rune for fighter characters, as most of the time, you will be in the center of the battles, so you will still take damage and deal more damage.

The typical option is the Resolve branch for your secondary rune choice, you can choose any of the two available runes:

Conditioning – will give you a good increase in protection, which will provide you with a good increase in magic and physical protection after the 12th minute.

Second Wind is a good rune against ranged damage characters that you’ll be top lane against. This rune, combined with Doran’s Shield, will give you good health regeneration early on.

Bone plate – will help in battles against characters with burst damage in the lane. The main thing is to watch her recharge and, once again not substitute.

Demolish – For split pushing and breaking down towers quickly.

Overgrowth – For additional health to be tankier for team fights.

 

The second choice for your secondary runes is the “inspiration” branch:

Biscuit Delivery – Helps you with health and mana regeneration in the laning phase.

Cosmic Insight – Gives you some summoner spell speedup, as well as some item speedup. Summoner cooldowns will help you against lane opponents; if you both gave away your summoners in the previous skirmish, then you will have a small window of advantage to initiate.

 

Characteristics:

– attack speed

-adaptive damage

-defense (choose depending on the opponent in the line)

 

Best Summoner Spells For Jax:

Flash – gives you the ability to overcome walls, quickly approach the target, or the ability to leave the danger zone.

Ignite is a very powerful lane tool as it has a relatively low cooldown and can give you a good advantage in a duel.

Teleport – helps in difficult matchups where you need the ability to quickly return to the lane. It will also help to influence the map for split-pushing or helping the team at the facilities.

Ghost is a good choice against mobile lane enemies.

 

Best Jax Build Items:

Starting purchase:

Doran’s Blade is a good choice if you’re up against a hero you can melee with. The blade will help you in quick fights where you can use damage from auto attacks.

Doran’s Shield – it is worth taking when there is a character against you who will interfere with you on the lane and who is difficult to reach.

Corrupting Potion is a versatile choice, will give you sustain in lane and pairs well with teleport as you can quickly regenerate charges after lane trades.

Boots:

Ionian boots of lucidity – will help you a lot to consolidate dominance. You should consider buying these boots if you have had a good start and the opponents do not have too much physical or magical damage. However, you should understand that they will not help you with a strong focus, so you should think carefully before making this choice.

Plated Steel caps – worth taking if you have a character in the lane that relies heavily on auto-attack damage or the opponents have a large part of the team dealing physical damage.

Mercury’s Threads – will help against a lot of control and if the opposing team has a lot of magic damage.

Main Items:

Divine Sunderer – This item gives a decent amount of HP, so you can come to the fore early in the game. You also get 40 attack power and 20 skill haste, which are useful stats. Arcane Blade’s proc deals physical damage based on the enemy’s maximum health and heals you. The mythic passive gives penetration, which is also a very useful stat. This item fits perfectly into the current meta where tanks and other durable characters are popular.

Trinity Force – if you need more attack speed and movement in battle, and there are no fat characters in the enemy team, you should consider buying this item.

Blade of the Ruined King has long been one of the best items on many characters for dealing damage. Good for dealing with high-health characters. It can be bought even before the mythical item, but not always. If the opponents have strong characters with explosive damage, you should consider items that will give you HP.

Shojin’s Spear is a good HP item option that will provide many more benefits. Increases the cooldown speed of normal skills based on your bonus AD. This means that this item should be taken as a 3/4 slot when the increase is noticeable. It is also worth noting that this is an expensive item and its price is 3400.

Black Cleaver is a great item against high-defense characters. Gives you HP and the ability to catch up with targets you’ve already started attacking.

Death’s Dance is currently a powerful item. It retains a portion of the damage you’ve taken (both physical and magical), and deals bleed damage to you instead. If a champion you’ve damaged in the last 3 seconds dies, the item heals you for 175% of your bonus AD, which can help you survive in team fights.

Wit’s End – High attack speed and increased movement speed in combat. A good choice when you need more protection from magic damage.

Titanic Hydra – Gives good survivability and sustains in battles and helps clear waves.

Sterak’s Gage – will help you survive the explosive damage. Worth buying at a later stage, as it grants additional attack damage based on base attack power, which increases with your level.

Hullbreaker – when buying this item, you are forced to leave your 4v5 team in order to sell it. Always a risky choice, but it can play a key role in winning, the main thing is to know when to buy it and be able to realize your pushing potential.

Thornmail – if you need to reduce the healing done by the opposing team, picking up a thornmail can help increase your durability and slow down the enemy’s healing ability.

Randuin’s Omen – against characters with critical damage.

Frozen Heart is a very underrated item on Jax. It helps well against setups with high AD damage, slows the attack speed of nearby enemies, reduces damage from auto attacks, and gives faster reloading of skills, and also solves the problem with high mana dependence.

Abyssal Mask – The new mask is a pretty good item on Jax. Increases survivability, gives good protection against magic, also solves the problem of mana dependence, and restores health by 20% of the spent mana every 15 seconds. It will also help your magicians by reducing the resistance of enemies.

Jax Full Build Example

Here is an example of a full build for Jax against a physical damage team:

 

Here is an example of a full build for Jax against a team with a lot of ability power :

 

Best Jax Matchups

Jax is good against auto-attack-based characters such as Yasuo, Yone, Camille, and Irelia. His E allows you to trade with such characters with impunity, completely ignoring their main source of damage.

Jax also copes well with fragile characters without escapes, these are Teemo, Akshan, and Kayle. A Leap Strike followed by a stun makes it easy to reach and focus on these champions.

Jax Counter picks:

Gragas is a very unpleasant matchup. He will constantly harass you with his Q, and any initiation from you will negate his E. The best choice against him is to focus on farming and wait for help from the jungler. As well as against any counter-pick, it is worth playing from the opponent’s mistake. For example, if Gragas plays carelessly and gives up his E, you will have a window to attack.

Sejuani is also very durable and has options against your initiation. We farm, hold the lane and wait for mistakes from the opponent.

Vladimir is also a good counter-initiator after your E. Just as long as he doesn’t make a mistake, it’s quite challenging to do anything to him. And if you don’t win the lane, he will become a big problem due to his scaling. In the lane against him, stick to the minions to avoid taking damage from E and stay away when his Q is charged.

Tips:

Split pushing is a good way to put pressure on the enemy team. Jax’s passive ability gives him great attack speed and he can take down towers fairly quickly. Also, procuring items collected from the “radiance” will increase the total damage to the towers.

Additionally, the ward jump mechanic allows you to avoid ganks by jumping over walls.

When to split push?

When split-pushing, you are essentially leaving your team 4v5, so your team needs to know what you are doing. The idea of ​​split pushing is to draw attention to you, so the opponents send 1-2 or more champions to deal with you, giving your team the freedom to take objects at an advantage. In another case, the enemy will leave you unnoticed and try to destroy your team, and here your team must realize the risk and retreat before it’s too late. When this happens, you push the lane as hard as you can.

When split-pushing, vision is critical. Try to have an overview of the area you are pushing so you know when to retreat if the enemy tries to gank you out of the fog of war. Also, keep an eye on the mini-map to see how many of your opponents are visible and where they are. Think about who you can kill solo, who you can’t, whether you can fight 1v2, etc.

Also, “teleport” will be a good choice if you often prefer to split.

Ward jumps:

Thanks to this feature, you should not change the “hidden totem” for other auxiliary items. It is also necessary to know that in addition to wards and items on the map, you can jump on things like Thresh’s lantern or Jarvan VI’s flag.

Jax is very good at capitalizing on his early-game advantage. The only thing he may have problems with is a large amount of control.

Should You Play Jax Top?

So should you play Jax top? Jax is an incredibly strong champion and if used correctly can be an absolute nightmare for opposing players. If you’re new to top lane and want to try out Jax on a fresh new account check out GooseSmurfs for affordable ranked and unranked accounts.