Jayce is taking the fun out of top lane

Kazooey·Oct 26, 2016·17 votes·2,446 views

Hi, so I am an avid league of legends player and I have been playing this game for 4 years. I got very competitive but only after 1,000 ranked games or so did I see myself in Diamond 5. Since Season 4 numerous things have changed. The meta has been constantly shifting. Recently, I have come to realize that Jayce is such a strong pick that if you want to play any of the other bruisers into Jayce, you will lose lane and your team will get outpoked.

I'm not selling myself as a god of top lane. The highest I've ever been is diamond 3 and that atmosphere is why I am writing this post. From what I have seen Jayce is Pick/ban. Ok. Now just because the pros play the champion, it doesn't mean that the champion is BROKEN but it is a little bit more likely. http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=zvxyvz Here is my Na.op.gg judge all you like I know I am on a loss streak.

The things that Riot needs to consider is how their buffs and nerfs affect the entire toplane/midlane/bot lane or jungle meta. At this point, Jax loses to Jayce, Irelia loses to Jayce, Kennen loses to Jayce, Rumble loses to Jayce, Olaf loses to Jayce, Ryze loses to Jayce, Malphite goes even. Now with ganks, all the matchups above can win versus Jayce. That part seems fair. However, if the Jayce gets ganks and you don't it's pretty much GG because of how fast Jayce can push towers especially with ghostblade first item. The Ghostblade combined with a Phage proc, and Jayces Speed Gate are what make him unbalanced. When changing a champion such as Jayce, his damage needs to be toned down so that he has a power lull before he can make rampant use of Ghostblade and Black Cleaver to Apply Aoe black cleaver stacks to your team from 30 yds away with shockblast.

Riven is a comparable champion in some respects, when Riven was too easily chunking out 1 member in lane or several members in teamfights during season4 ? What happened? Her damage scaling was nerfed. That is what needs to happen with Jayce. If you want his mana costs low during lane phase and the rest of the game, then his damage should be similar to rivens.

What happens is when you try to play any Bruiser versus Jayce. He chunks them from Range and then uses his hammer stance to knock them away and then wait for his CD's again.

I play the game for fun but also to win. Going from Diamond 3 to Diamond 2 is a try-hard elo. Other champions are broken, but with the change of 1 single champion, it could make the top meta equal. I don't know any Irelias who have a problem playing against a riven. I don't know any Rivens who don't want to try and outskill an irelia. When one of the Bruisers is so far and ahead of the rest, you can't hope for the top meta to be balanced. Just look at Gnar's performance versus Jayce at worlds. It's something like 0 - 3 .

Thanks for reading, In the end I am a guitarist first but I needed to vent my frustrations and I hope that something reasonable can be done about Jayce. I think from my perspective he is the complete package of everything you want in a champion (besides tankiness) and yes in my eyes that makes him Broken.

20 Comments

HyperiönOct 26, 20162 votes

Jayce is sitting at a 52.1% winrate right now. Is his damage a little high for early game? Sure, but so is Leblanc, Caitlyn, Khazix, Brand, Ahri, I could go on and on. Just because their early game is really good, doesn't mean it scales like that to late game.

Jayce's play is 100% predictable. His hyper shots hit like a truck, but they are also easy to dodge, or just have a tank block them Jayce doesn't touch tanks until he gets his last whisper, and even still, he barely touches them.. Easiest way to deny Jayce? grab a healer support, or land CC on him to burst him down.

Syllo C137Oct 26, 20161 votes

Since I'm not at pc and don't wont to go into long discussion all i can say is i lol'ed

HyperiönOct 26, 20161 votes

And I lol'd at your lol comment. lol.

KazooeyOct 26, 20165 votes

{quoted}

Jayce is sitting at a 52.1% winrate right now. Is his damage a little high for early game? Sure, but so is Leblanc, Caitlyn, Khazix, Brand, Ahri, I could go on and on. Just because their early game is really good, doesn't mean it scales like that to late game.

Jayce's play is 100% predictable. His hyper shots hit like a truck, but they are also easy to dodge, or just have a tank block them Jayce doesn't touch tanks until he gets his last whisper, and even still, he barely touches them.. Easiest way to deny Jayce? grab a healer support, or land CC on him to burst him down.

I agree that when you enter mid game and late game Jayce is opened up to more counterplay. The thing that makes that hard is if he nets 1-3 kills in lane as is typical of a Jayce player. Such a strong lane phase opens up the likelihood of him getting first blood turret and snowballing the game with a really powerful chase potential and sieging kit that spikes with the mid game items that he gets after lane phase that I mentioned BC and ghost blade. That said I do see the logic in what you are saying and I think you are right. I myself don't have that good of a fix for the problem other than nerf his damage or scaling. I apologize for not presenting a better or more indepth solution to the problem that I detailed.

HyperiönOct 26, 20161 votes

Honestly they should just lower the base damage of his Q a little bit, maybe increase the cool down slightly.

GayFluffyUnicornOct 27, 20161 votes

Exactly the same thing Irelia, Riven, Rengar and several other champs did and still do. What makes Jayce so special that he deserves nerfs but allthe other cancer champs are free to snowball the game on their own? I'm actually glad to have an answer to these champs.

KazooeyOct 28, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Exactly the same thing Irelia, Riven, Rengar and several other champs did and still do. What makes Jayce so special that he deserves nerfs but allthe other cancer champs are free to snowball the game on their own? I'm actually glad to have an answer to these champs.

Well, GayfluffyUnicorn, Jayce is a bit different compared to Riven, Irelia, Rengar and other champs. Here are the reasons : He has Hammer Stance and Cannon stance. Upon changing stance he gains 40 mvspd. Changing stances costs 0 mana and has a 6 sec base cd. The next attack in Hammer stance cleaves for 10/15/20/25 of the targets Armor and MR.

W: Passive : Lightning field: Regain 6/8/10/12/14/16 mana per strike while in hammer stance. This mana sustain is not there for champions such as pantheon, Quinn, irelia, but it is equal to energy champions like Kennen Rumble and Riven.

E: Thundering Blow, Deal 8/10/12/14/16/18/20 % of targets max health+(1.0BonusAD) as MAGIC damage. Mana cost:40.

Ok so we can see here that with the low mana cost on an ability that has a 1.0 bonus AD ratio that can be empowered to cleave up to 25% of Armor and Magic resist, that coupled with a full 30% cleave from Black cleaver, it will deal absurd damage and it scales off of Max health not current health.

Q: TO the Skies Deal 40/80/120/160/200/240(+1.2 Bonus AD ) to Nearby enemies (AOE multiple targets, does not deal less damage for each target Akin to ezreal ultimate) Slowing them by 30/35/40/45/50/55/% for 2 seconds.

Okay now to just spell it out for you crystal clear. When you have a champion who has abilities that have these high of Bonus AD ratios, there needs to be a drawback. There is no drawback. Free Mana. Free Armor and Magic resist Penetration, Max health % damage that goes up to 20% as MAGIC damage, so he is Hybrid and you can't itemize against him with just armor as you can with Riven and Rengar. His q and W active are AOE, he gets 40 mvspd from switching stances, and the phage procs and the ghostblade, and the speed gate.

ItsOrvalOct 26, 20161 votes

This^

I am a Jayce main, and he is right. Jayce does legit no damage to a full build tank, he will run out of mana if he wastes his time hitting the.

Having a champ with sustain beats Jayce, because he loses mana quickly. Or Kennen, Kennen is good.

HyperiönOct 26, 20161 votes

I have been trying to get into him, hard when he is banned like every other game haha.

But one of the hardest matchups that I have had so far is Malphite. Early on you can try to poke him down, but once he gets sunfire, it becomes a really hard matchup for me. Don't know if you have the same issue.

ItsOrvalOct 27, 20161 votes

I used to have the same problem against Malphite until I took a different route with my Items. I build full Armor Penetration now with Jayce, instead of getting tear on first back, I get these items in order.

item 1055 - item 2003 - item 3340 - item 1038 - item 3134 - item 3133 - item 3142 - item 3158 - item 3147 - item 3071 - item 3156 - item 3036

If you find that hes out trading you early game, build a item 3155 first instead of BF.

Also when you face tanks with Jayce, make sure you take Fervor. ThunderLords on Jayce is good against squishies. Upgrade W at level 1, then max Q W E in that order. That way you can poke Malphite out of lane with the fervor + Jayce's W ability.

Syllo C137Oct 26, 20162 votes

I agree he is on the strong side as hardly anything counters him just as you said, his mobility should be toned down or rather maybe his E knockback range should be lowered vs targets who you have already attacked within like last 3 seconds, that would open some counterplay vs his engage inatead of letting him do his combo and get away safely without barely any counterplay

ThundermightOct 27, 20162 votes

As as Jayce main, you have to realize Jayce becomes useless late game. His win rate drops by like 10% after 40 minutes. Is his early game slightly oppressive? Yea sure. Ok play a little safe. All his damage is in his Q, if u stand behind minions he has very little kill potential in lane. Don't feed him kills early, cause if you do, his mid game power spike will allow him to faceroll your entire team for a 35 minute win, where he himself doesn't have to deal with his useless late game.

Also note armor pen is changing to lethality soon, which will nerf his powerful early/mid game very hard :(

Tychusfindlay919Oct 27, 20161 votes

{quoted}

As as Jayce main, you have to realize Jayce becomes useless late game. His win rate drops by like 10% after 40 minutes. Is his early game slightly oppressive? Yea sure. Ok play a little safe. All his damage is in his Q, if u stand behind minions he has very little kill potential in lane. Don't feed him kills early, cause if you do, his mid game power spike will allow him to faceroll your entire team for a 35 minute win, where he himself doesn't have to deal with his useless late game.

Also note armor pen is changing to lethality soon, which will nerf his powerful early/mid game very hard :(

"Also note"

the change stinks a little bit for ghostblade rush, but it's probably still going to be pretty solid, especially since right after he can just go cleaver (which isnt getting changed at all) and still get rolling.

The reality is that ghostblade rush, outside of the item truly getting GUTTED, is always going to be better than tear into muramana rush (which is what jayce used to have to do pretty much every game no matter what). Also, there are a bunch of masteries that are going to keep Jayce oppressive like fresh blood, while the lethality change allows him better scaling than he has now.

No matter how one looks at it, Jayce's head is on the chopping block if riot has any sense.

SeenanOct 26, 20161 votes

I rem reading a post a long time ago that said something like 'buffing Jayce will break top lane again'.

An issue is that he doesn't have to rush a tear/manamune anymore, in lieu of a ghostblade. And he also has AD scaling on his hammer transform now, so he hurts even more now by building AD.

LovelleOct 26, 20161 votes

They should have never buffed Jayce period honestly. It's like they've learned nothing from the past. He's one of those champions that has to be kept in check or he pushes a bunch of other champions out of the same role.

Naturally, they're going to overnerf him in response. They'll most likely be nerfing his cooldowns, his mana costs, and his scaling (all at the same time). It's what always happens when they give balanced (but underplayed) champions needless buffs.

I watched the same thing happen to Trundle. He was fine before they had to buff his utility for no damn reason. Now he can no longer Q towers, pillar has a stupidly long cooldown, and Subjugate shares the same friggin cooldown as Fiora's Grand Challenge.

AirKingNeoOct 26, 20161 votes

Kennen too, Syndra for mid lane, Jhin for bot lane.

RavenMagusOct 27, 20161 votes

It doesn't help that he's now building the pure Armor Pen build - the same as practically every other AD damage dealer these days - and squishy champions (mages and ADCs) just can't build any good armor items to counter it, so his poke will always do incredible amounts of damage past midgame.

ThundermightOct 27, 20162 votes

Jayce's entire role is to press E-Q. His entire build is to empower E-Q. He has no ult or really meaningful skills besides E-Q. If I was a squishy mage/adc, I would stand behind a tank, instead of face-tanking a decently dodgeable E-Q.

BlakiepugOct 27, 20161 votes

I completely agree, Jayce's last buffs set him over the edge. This might just be me, but I feel like from all the games I have played this patch so far, champion diversity is at an all time low for the year. It is really not fun to see the same champions in every single game... I swear these champs have been in all my games for which they haven't been banned in and it is getting old: Jayce LeeSin Lucian Zyra Viktor Jhin Vayne Veigar .

KazooeyOct 27, 20161 votes

Just to clarify a point, The big advantage Jayce has is not his dodgeable shock-blast. Not in lane, its his empowered 3 ranged AA's that a jayce will micro on you very quickly. Hashinshin calls Jayce the ranged version of Riven because of his such low cd's on all really nice scaling abilities. Which is to also say, that Jayce is more oppressive because he has so many ranged attacks as well as melee, like an AD nidalee. (Which altec won with in challenger elo)