Jayce has been forced into an unhealthy niche and needs some help to be healthy *Long*

Hey guys, been playing jayce for like..... too long... wayy too long.

anyways i've watched him over the years start as something a bit tankier to a 1shot sniper who, for all practical purposes, is expected to get 2 lethality items and a cleaver every single game... giving the mains only 2 items to really play with due to a very prominent 3 item build.

These two items are usually some sort of counter items, maybe a scimitar, a ga, or a mortal reminder. Simply put jayce winds up being squishier than riven, and punching like a truck from a screen away. I find that playstyle to be immensely unhealthy which has lead me to constantly look for alternative builds, arguably hindering me at times.

That being said the reason i did and continue to do this is because of a few solid reasons:

When i started the game had less 1shot type situations, jayce was one of the higher 'skill cap champions' and was widely considered to be overloaded. That being said this was well before we got any of the newer style of fighter champions such as ekko, yasuo, kayne, or the more modernized fighters and assassins like akali and irelia. This means that while these champions all have kits that have more recent design and interactions with items, Jayce has been left behind with his kit not interacting well with his itemization.

When jayce was designed he was fully intended to go and build a muramana and a triforce for his 1 hour long game, he'd get a bruitilizer, a frozen mallet, and an atmas. While these items aren't much different today you wont be able to dent anyone's defenses with this build (Subbing the brutilizer for say a last whisper, or a lethality item). Back then triforce and atmas combined to give some crit, crit was so good on jayce that when crit essence reaver existed it actually worked very well on him, the '40% crit' build was a way to make him be able to be a light skirmisher and give him some value as something sort of between an ad fighter and an adc.. which was his role. He seldom 1shot people, requiring at least a full combo and a half pulled off correctly including with his two cancels and proper usage of his passive.

But as the game shifted jayce was just too general, Now the game is extremes of tanky or bursty, a generalist like jayce as he was when he came out struggled for a while to find any value, because of this he has had to go to the extremes of what amounts to lethality cheese and essentially ditch much of his kit, while his bruiser playstyle has more or less been completely and utterly shafted time and time again

Over the last two years jayce has lost the following options from his item pool

Melee only now, he can buy it but he can't make use of it in any effective way due to the passive restrictions, also with the nerf to it which turned the base AD into bonus AD he no longer can make use of it as a crutch for a sheen item.

This is probably my saddest loss, it offers so many stats for him but with the loss of the crit and the fact that it includes a phage, it amounts to too many wasted stats. On top of that with the steraks nerf we don't have quite enough base AD to justify a sheen build on a champion that casts spells and autos, needs mana and cdr, and has

Yeah games don't go on long enough, and with the loss of triforce it kinda sucks. You're stacking it for most of the game, even rushing it wont net you a full stacked tear by 20 minutes.

Here's another one, it offers lots of good stats but honestly the ad on it isn't high enough for jayce to be functional. I'm not arguing for massive pwn4g3 damage just functionality.

The new changes are great for many champions, but the old essence reaver was great for jayce, and the second one was arguably better, especially when transcendence hit on the new runes. which opened up the hyper bruiser build of offering jayce everything he needed but only if vastly ahead (Unreasonable but was the last actual bruiser jayce build that was viable)

Yep, it was actually decent at one time because of jayce's W having increase on the initial auto attack damage, meaning it scales with crits.

Jayce has also lost his keystones, Essentially being pigeonholed into summon aery, press the attack, or thunderlords Electrocute. Gone are the days of Fervor of battle or Phase rush being viable, on top of this the loss of classic rune pages essentially removing options for CDR, pen, or lifesteal to really help him out. Along with this we've lost our scaling armor or mr runes which allowed him some better late game options.

Ok, but why not just play lethality jayce? Honestly I don't see the point in playing a highly mechanically inclined champion to just do what garen can do more reliably. Which is 1shot someone. It's like going to a steakhouse and then getting mac n cheese, it's against what the champion was meant to be. Jayce was once a champion that required high skill inputs to really shine in his capacities, He would need to time his abilities to get sheen, while weaving in and out of melee, knocking you back, kiting you, or chaining a six ability combo properly to win an all in against a superior foe. Now you just land a single shot with the good ol and then jump on a dude with melee Q to kill him. It's unfair to both players, because it's not only cheese, it's also undermining the learned skills of an actual jayce main. Meanwhile against a tank with bone plating jayce will just helplessly get shit on if he's not ahead, and will get perma cc'd. There has to be a middle ground where jayce is neither a god nor a worm.

With the loss of the HP increase itemization pool in it's entirety, jayce players don't have great alternatives for defensive itemization. The healthy place i see him is about as tanky as irelia with less damage but slightly more utility.

How to do this:

We have to look at his abilities and really stop and think about what is and isn't healthy. then we have to look at the rune pages and ask "is there sufficient need in this game for other similar champions that would really justify adding a new rune to the game"

Let's start with his kit

To discuss jayce's kit we have to start with his ultimate and passive which are essentially a single ability, that he gets at level 1, it amounts to swapping his abilities between melee and ranged, it passively increases in rank and doesn't cost skill points to increase, while in melee form jayce gains increased resistances, his first auto attack to hit after entering melee will deal increased damage. His first auto after entering ranged will shred resistances. When swapping forms jayce gains some move speed and ghosts for a few seconds.

Next we'll look at jayce's ranged form, starting with hyper charge because Shock Blast and Acceleration gate are more or less two halves of a single ability when discussing his kit in its entirety.

Jayce's ranged W simply caps his attack speed for three auto attacks, starting with him having lower damage output and ending with his autos dealing 10% increased damage during this. It's pretty standard, nothing to scoff at but not exactly the best thing ever,

Jayce's Q in ranged form is probably one of the two things you really recognize on him if you don't actually play as or against him. It's the shock blast. it deals damage if he hits with a skill shot, Shooting this through the next ability gives it boku damage,size,and range increase (40%),

Jayce's E in ranged is acceleration gate, it's the thing your jayce never drops on the ground for you because he's saving it to QE someone, basically it gives a move speed bonus to any ally or himself running through it, meanwhile it increases the damage/size/range of his Q by 40%, it's a cool ability but honestly i'd put it on the table for things to change/cut because there are likely better things that could be used and more intricate mechanics.

Jayce's Melee abilities are as follows

His Q 'To the skies' is targetted, his dives to the area of the creature he targets, dealing decent damage, applying a minor slow, and buffering an auto so that lands at the same time. To the skies is pretty iconic. The target can avoid the ability by moving out of the way quick enough because jayce lands in the location where the target was when the ability was first cast.

His W is both underwhelming and awesome. Basically an AOE field around him that scales off of AP deals pretty minor damage, his auto attacks in melee form replenish is mana by a fairly small amount.

his melee E is his last iconic ability, being a knockback. It's targeted and does %hp magic damage. Very strong, I think the basic utility of this should be preserved but maybe the damage and targeting should be messed with a bit.

Ok so let's start with some ideas

First off as per lore, jayce's hextech capacitor is an item which provides unlimited energy, This has always made the concept of mana be a little odd to me, Though as a balancing perspective I think it would be fair and necessary to have a governing resource. One option for this would be to have two resource bars, which inversely affect each other, one for each form, each would function similarly to both rage and energy in which they would passively regenerate but spending one refills the other. As jayce uses his ranged abilities he gets closer to a choke point which would make it so he has to use his melee abilities. Thus preventing a jayce from spending the entirety of a laning phase in ranged just deep dicking a darius or garen for 15 minutes. When he goes into melee, he expends his melee resources, but gains his ranged resources back. when not in combat both regenerate at a fairly average rate, allowing jayce options for the next fight. ** The passive and ultimate** so right here we have two of jayce's abilities, his passive and ultimate, really amounting to one block of text. This is one area of improvement which I think can be dissected into a few things. First the damage and shred could be moved, second the stat gain on his melee swap shouldn't be flat, but should actually be transformative. If jayce for example had something which transformed some of his defensive stats to offensive stats and vise versa depending on him being in melee or ranged but the number was kept to a lower conversion rate he would have that generalist vibe.

Second this puts him in a weird place where some very attractive items for ranged champions are actually unattractive to jayce because they're completely auto dependent, this includes the entire critical strike item pool, which is now defunct for jayce. While a few melee items are just so close yet so far for jayce as well, with ravenous hydra being a great example. I would suggest allowing jayce to build and utilize these items in both forms, being that his signature is being the AD switch hitter. While it might sound rediculous at first to imagine a ruunans+Ravenous build on a champion being viable and even procing both, imagine what he's giving up to use these, and also frankly having the reduced outputs on things like mallet and phage while in ranged form is totally fair, so i could see the ravenous hydra procs on ruunans autos being reduced.

The armor shred on his first auto is really quite meh, it's good for a bit of a R>AA>QE combo and maybe a few other niche combos but these seldom come up. I'd almost say that it would be better to have this be cut all together.

Finally maybe his R stance swap could empower his next ability or auto attack used as opposed to him casting some flashy shit. i'll spell these out later

Shockblast and The Ranged QE Combo

The combo is flashy, iconic, and fun to land, but honestly it doesn't have counterplay because of it's speed and size.. This leads it to be solely based on the skill and conditions of the jayce whether or not is succeeds, thus allowing a skilled jayce to take out 40-80% of an opponents HP by simply having a clear field of vision. My suggested change is to have this be a channeled ability with a lower cooldown, it would start out with the instant cast portion being lower damage than his normal shockblast, but scaling with a few seconds of charge time and capacity of his opponent to predict, to take full effect and be that iconic WTF JAYCE moment. I would cut the damage a bit but have it apply on hit effects. This would be more specific to Sheen and Botrk, allowing itemization for jayce, while also slowing his snowball a bit.

In addition if this was cast immediately after a stance swap, it would have an increased base damage and cap, essentially counting as 20-30% of a channel, if channeled it would deal that 20-30% in excess.

I didn't forget accelleration gate This ability should actually be removed, Jayce's power source is from his hammer, and the item actually makes it harder to make skins for him in addition. Though the idea of a mobility spell is cool, I'd almost want to pop in something a little odder. A few ideas for a new ranged E would be something which reflects a skillshot, where jayce would essentially properly time what is essentially a parry. if he times this correctly the parried spell will deflect in another direction. An example would be a Lux Q properly parried being deflected off to the side and instead hitting the enemy ADC or a pack of minions.

Melee form I'm going to hold off on jayce's W because i think it should be a consitent ability between the two forms

To the skies I'd make this a skillshot and remove the slow, then i'd make it have some armor shred. the mobility would be a boon.

Thundering Blow This ability, which is essentially the thing that kills every jax and tryndamere, should be A.) Physical damage, B.) not %Max hp, and C.) Should apply on hits like sheen or phage and D.) Should be a skill shot of sorts essentially being a small cone with strength of knockback increase depending on the location, Knockbacks into walls could stun, but that might be too strong, i'd rather just see the ability to hit multiple targets but those targets have the ability to evade it.

The W OK, I want to split this in two, first I think jayce should just get a passive increase to attack speed, not to cap, but maybe 10-60% depending on rank (At rank 6 it'd be 60%), In melee form he would have increased resistances.

Then i'd make this an ability which holds multiple charges, up to three, these would be animation cancels which deal increased base damage. These charges would carry over to his melee form, in which he would have two charges in melee and two in ranged. this ability would on a baseline be weaker but would actually proc sheen with each cast, and would auto cancel, allowing jayce to use them in quick succession. these would also function similarly in the melee stance, each stance would have its own pool of charges which would regenerate interdependently. Casting in melee would recharge in ranged and vise versa, Though actual cooldown time would also refresh these in case of an extended engagement which requires whichever form. This is acceptable because jayce will already be forced to swap eventually based on the energy system proposed above.

_Other ideas: _

Here's the crazy stuff, I'd allow dual scaling on jayce, maybe some AP items instead of AD items. This would allow for more independence and would work well considering that he's as much of a caster as he is an auto attacker.

Runes? Ok so with my passive revision this would open up conqueror, which is dangerous. I'd just pop a quick subtext in conqueror giving it diminishing returns on ranged attacks.

Currently the best two runes on jayce are Summon aery and Electrocute, the third is press the attack, and after that we have fleet footwork (But why?) and a bunch of cheesy stuff like predator QE build or dark harvest.

One thing runes are missing is a rune for hybrid caster/auto attackers. I would put in a new rune which essentially acts as a sheen, when casting a spell your next auto deals increased damage, that spell would give you a small movespeed bonus as well. This would be great for various champions in every role

Welp, that's about it. If anyone read this novel of a balance idea then thank you, i'd love to get feedback, even if you hate my ideas i'd love to know why because i spend a lot of my spare time making custom board game classes and whatnot and there are direct translatable principals in the two.