So Jayce is on free week, and I've gotta wonder why I don't see him in games more often. Any thoughts on why he's not played often? Is his mana hungry early game really that bad? Did the item changes mess him up? Any insight would be helpful.
Historically he has been played top lane, and what it turned into was Jayce simply losing out in a war of attrition, in addition to the fact that his mana hungry early game, in a meta focused around early plays, hurts his ability.
Jayce for awhile has been a champion completely based around how effective Black Cleaver and Manamune are. Right now, in general, poke is a wanting concept unless you have a nidalee or a good poking mid laner, neither of which are common, and on top of that, Jayce is commonly a glass cannon, and with black cleaver being a purely bruiser item meant for melees(In the past, when brutalizer was part of the build path, and BC gave more AD he was much better), and that his tear has to stack up, he is found wanting.
Something I would like to add also is that when assassins are popular, jayce is hard as hell to play reliably because he is very prone to getting one shot, because of his most common build paths.
He is not that easy to play and it's hard to adapt his spell kit by just one game. If you think you can beat Urgot as Jayce only with ranged stance then you are wrong, and when it comes to mix stances, then (as a newbie Jayce) you are very vulnerable to many, many mistakes you can make and regret.
Second thing is that your enemy is not always that bad to eat every skillshot you cast.
Third thing is that he is not best melee and ranged bruiser (there are better picks in both roles).
I'd guess most players are too impatient to try learning him; compared to ekko & yasou who are just as overloaded but without the stance change.
BC got more expensive and Manumune is way too slow now compared to the average game length. That combined with aggressive top laners makes him a very risky pick since they most likely are also taking ignite to punish your weak early game (anything after level 3 and before like 8). He works OKAY with ER for mana, but he isn't that great with crit since his AA range isn't the greatest to work with when he has 0 escapes so walking up to Ranged W AA crit someone to death is most likely going to end with you going 1 for 1 or 0 for 1 since you will definitely not live that.
Honestly I'd rather see them just buff Hammer W to alleviate his mana problems since it is a neat idea of going into the "riskier" form to get your mana back, but the passive on hammer stance is so mediocre that it is not really worth it. If anything they could just give him the Kass W treatment where he gets %missing mana back on stuff or give him a new W passive and throw that on hammer forms passive (the on-hit burst one after you switch to hammer).
Thanks for the insight folks! He just seems like such a cool champion, but as most of you have stated, the current state of the game just doesn't allow him to perform that well. Not sure if he's on Riot's radar, but I'd like to see him come back into viability again. However, I also know there are about a half dozen champs in much worse spots than Jayce right now.
I saw Jayces and caster Varus typically building last whisper early, now that its gutted I think it has hurt them both
I think its due to him being a higher skill cap champion. Along with all the item changes effecting him. But that's just my guess since I haven't played him except for once during One-for-All.
It mostly happens due to the fact that his kit seems intimidating. Admittedly he's on the harder end of champs to play so it's understandable. I don't agree that he's mana hungry early though. You should just make sure to keep W one point higher than Q at all times and whenever you get the chance hammer the minions for your mana back. I never have mana issues. It doesn't have as much outright bang as far as dropping enemy char health early but W with the ranged form does help to secure a lot of cs you would have missed due to miscalculation.
Also, he just doesn't quite fit into Solo Q, you need your team to be on board with letting you poke.
