Breaking the Meta - Jarvan IV Top

Remember the first time you saw Annie support? At the Season 3 World Championships, Tabe brought the much maligned mage to center stage, and Tibbers ignited the imagination of support players everywhere. Sometimes, a team or player throws a curveball that makes everybody sit back and say “woah”. Sometimes, these picks change the game forever. These innovations take time to catch on. We’d like to speed up the process. In Breaking the Meta, we will introduce you to a champion long forgotten or in the shadows, and show you why it works (or fails) in a new role, and how to play it. Editor’s Note: The author of this piece, Gentleman Gustaf, is a mid-Diamond 1 jungler who has played on multiple mid-Diamond 5s teams. All games in this article feature him, his team Funk Overload, or games by other Diamond players.

Jarvan IV

Jarvan IV is a strong initiator traditionally played in the jungle for his high base damage and spammable CC. From level 2 on, his CC gives him strong ganks; while in team fights, it can be used to peel or initiate as necessary. This utility-heavy kit makes him a perfect tank-heavy jungler, and he dominated the better part of the 2013 LCS Season. However, recent changes to Martial Cadence, causing it to hit harder but less often, have made him a much stronger laner by giving him more burst. The change also lined his cooldowns up better. With a new, streamlined kit, will he make a dangerous top laner? Find out below!

The Making of Jarvan IV Top

When I first started playing Jarvan top, I was reminded of the same thrill and anticipation I had for the game when I first started playing. It’s all too easy to fall into a stagnant rhythm playing nothing but standard champions. When you play Shyvana or Renekton top, even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you know you’re going to want some Doran’s items, followed by a Blade of the Ruined King or a Ravenous Hydra and some tank items. I had no clue which matchups called for Dragon Lance first and which called for Demacian Standard first. I had no idea when to start Doran’s Blade or Doran’s Shield or Cloth Armor. How did I learn those things? Mostly by losing. I started by rushing Ravenous Hydra every game, picking up 2 Doran’s Blades, a Pickaxe, and two Long Swords before investing in anything but AD. When I won, I tended to win hard, but when I lost, there was nothing I could go to get back into the game. Turns out Jarvan has a lot of mana issues, so if I couldn’t kill somebody before I ran out of mana, I was a sitting duck. Sheen actually helped a lot with that, giving me a few more combos while still giving me huge burst. But of course, rushing Trinity Force left me without any sustain. For a long time, the choice between Trinity Force and Ravenous Hydra was based on the enemy champion. If I couldn’t burst them down, I decided to get Trinity Force and roam. The first major breakthrough came from my jungler. We decided I’d get both damage items before I went tanky, since I was winning most of my lanes anyway. To equalize that, he played Hecarim, building pure tank. The combination ended up situational, given Hecarim’s position outside of the meta, but it exposed what it was that I liked about Jarvan’s playstyle. I soon found a way to get the best of both worlds. My build became extremely situational on how much gold I went back with. If I couldn’t afford anything else, I bought Doran’s Blades (up to 3). From there, I rushed whatever offensive item I wanted. If I decided I wanted Trinity Force, I had enough sustain from the Doran’s Blades to make it work. As soon as I finished my first offensive item (and sometimes before then), I bought Boots of Mobility, and from that point on, I pushed my lane and roamed mid obsessively. I asked our mid to play nothing but Twisted Fate and Syndra. Syndra was able to bring huge burst, turning any gank mid into an instant kill. Twisted Fate, on the other hand, could take my ganks and run with them: I snowballed him mid, and he turned his eye bot. I was sacrificing top tower, but we were getting dragons. Even better, the early top tower did almost nothing for their team. The heavy CC of Jarvan prevented their top laner from coming top at all, with the waves on my side on the map. The Hecarim pick added a certain synergy to it all: he could farm top whenever I wasn’t there, allowing him to get to his late-game that much sooner.

Strengths

Playmaking Ability What ultimately drew me to playing Jarvan IV top was his playmaking ability. I was tired of Renekton, Shyvana and Trundle, not because I was bored of them as champions, but because I felt relatively powerless to make plays. Every jungler will understand this: there’s nothing like the feeling of making a play. Not being at the front of a play, not standing there so a play can happen around you, making a play. When I was playing Jarvan I could affect my will onto the very terrain of the game. While many top laners - I’m looking at you, Shyvana - rely on their junglers for initiating ganks, playing Jarvan let me enable junglers without early game initiations of their own. I could simply start a gank on his own and hold the enemy laner in place while my jungler got into position. On the other hand, I could also follow up on any gank with ease, without giving away the gank by walking up to the enemy laner. These are the same tools I’d loved about Jarvan in the jungle, both in ganking and in teamfighting. In top lane, they simply had more power behind them. Versatility Ultimately, it was Jarvan’s versatility that attracted me. While I enjoy the pure tankiness of the power three from last season (Shyvana/Renekton/Dr. Mundo), or the late-game sustained damage of newcomers Irelia, Jax, and Ryze, I found Jarvan more compelling to play because of the depth of decision-making he required. Jarvan can be built for burst, tankiness, or CC spam, and each build offers a different playstyle. Strong Level 2 Jarvan’s passive allows him to push for level 2 extremely quickly, because it basically doubles the effectiveness of his first auto-attack on every target. It’s important to note that his passive, while physical damage, does not apply lifesteal. This means that you will get less sustain in lane than you might think (about 30 HP per wave). I prefer to push for a slightly early level 2, before setting up for a jungler gank or going in on the opposing laner. I prefer to play aggressively, leveling Dragon Lance first, using it to last-hit and harass my lane opponent at the same time. At times, I started E for passive laning strength, but it always seemed to hurt the tone of my laning, pushing me into a more passive style. The aggressive level 2 is advantageous because of his level 2 all-in, which brings high damage, on-demand CC, and a gap-closer. I typically wasn’t aiming for first blood, I found that the heavy damage from my passive and Q poke was often enough damage to force back my lane opponent back and take early momentum in the lane. Mobility and Anti-Mobility Mobility is fun: there’s no complexity to it. Mobility is king in LoL, paying dividends in laning, roaming, rotating, jungle fights… really any aspect of the game. Jarvan has two mobility skills - Cataclysm and his Dragon Strike/Demacian combo - and two skills that inhibit enemy mobility - Cataclysm and Golden Aegis. I quickly learned to abuse these abilities to wreak havoc on the ability of the enemy team to traverse the battlefield and make plays. I moved quickly into a push and roam strategy, as even if I was caught pushing, I could use cataclysm and Jarvan’s knockup combo to escape most ganks. Keep in mind Jarvan’s high burst; I like to keep the option open to turn and fight, especially if my jungler can respond. In teamfights, I prefer to use these abilities offensively, diving onto carries. However, when I fell behind and lacked the burst to take carries down, I found that inhibiting the enemy bruisers and assassins was my best choice.

Weaknesses

Weak Level 1 Gentleman Gustaf, didn’t you just stress the early push for level 1? So here’s the deal: Jarvan is fantastic at getting to level 2. I learned early on, however, that his level 1 fighting isn’t all that strong. With Dragon Strike, you have good burst and poke, but are relatively squishy. With Demacian Standard, you are tankier and have more extended damage, but little ranged poke. Manaless champions with spammable abilities or ranged champions with mobility can really take advantage of that to repeatedly harass him down. I started taking Dragon Strike first in almost every matchup as a result, hoping I could put enough poke down to deter the level 1 all-in by champions like Gangplank and Yasuo. Yasuo is able to harass Jarvan down while getting a very fast level 2 as well. The situation is made even worse if he takes Sweeping Blade first, and I have found the best solution to a Sweeping Blade Yasuo is to let him push you in, knowing that you will out-burst him 1v1 at level 6. Counterplay I found Yasuo to be my least favorite early-game matchup, time and time again. He had the mobility to dodge my combo and escape cataclysm, a shield to mitigate my poke, and no resource I could try to run out. However, Yasuo’s only viable build is glass cannon. I like to play the matchup safe - only poking with Dragon Lance - before immediately going all-in for the kill at level 6. In the later laning phase, I had no answer for tanky dps characters - Shyvana and Jax most of all. Both of them are too tanky to burst down after level 6, and their extended damage proves too much for Jarvan to handle. In those matchups, I focused on my strengths, roaming heavily mid and relying on my utility in teamfights.

Builds

Items I avoid builds on Jarvan, instead buying offensive or defensive items as needed. If my team had a lot of resets, or a strong tank jungler and support, I preferred to build like an assassin: + + . Against top lane bruisers I had no hope of bursting, I build for tankiness and sustained damage, so that I can either dive or peel as my team needs: + + . With a strong hypercarry like Twitch on my team, I preferred to build like a tank, picking up CDR and shields so that I could use more CC to keep him alive: + + . Occasionally, I simply wanted to be able to 1v1 top lane against a tanky target, typically after an early kill or two. In that case, I simply replaced an item in my build with Blade of the Ruined King, but otherwise built according to the above guidelines. With any damage (especially Trinity Force and Ravenous Hydra), I preferred to avoid teamfights, instead isolating and bursting targets, then repeating when my cooldowns had returned. The biggest barrier to entry is the top lane roster: as mentioned previously, Jarvan struggles against Shyvana and Jax, who are common picks. Ultimately, it’s likely that Jarvan top will return to the pro scene, especially if they ever leave it. He has already been seeing considerably high-Elo play, and many pro players are known to draw inspiration from solo queue. Mimer, Westrice and Flame have all played Jarvan top in the past month, and according to data from probuilds.net, about 20% of Jarvan play happens in the top lane. Mattias "Gentleman Gustaf" Lehman is a League of Legends math-crafter turned esports journalist who spends his spare time staring at mountains of League of Legends data. Follow him @GentlemanGustaf on Twitter.

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