Will there ever be a time where Jinx is actually a good solid pick again?
She is not the worst, but she has been sub par and less likely to win a game than the other, more common champions like
and
for ages now. As one of the few remaining champions who actually need a solid 2 or 3 items to actually get going like
and
, and with league still looking at having shorter and shorter games, could she get something to boost her presence earlier. She is THE weakest ADC in the early game, having a lane kill rate less than any of her ADC opponents ( here's a link ), which means that she loses during the early game in about every trade. I get that some champions should be statistically worse off vs other champions at different points in the game, but having her lose to every other ADC is, at least in my opinion, something that should be fixed. She should be better vs others, and those champions should be better vs other too.
Jinx should be able to use her early attack speed advantage over another ADC, but even to Jhin, the slowest attacking ADC, she loses the fight because she has poor damage too, where almost all of her damage comes from AD scaling, not base stats. Rank 1 her W deals 10 base damage. Yes it has 140% AD scaling, but with only 80 or so AD (assuming level 3 when you would level W), that is not a whole lot more damage, like 110 or so. And it is her only realistically usable damaging ability pre 6. Her Q's attack speed reduction is too large to justify using its rocket form other than once or twice. and her E is both dodgable and needs a good set-up in order to use. Even though it scales AP, it still deals 70 damage at rank 1 which is nice. Jinx's rank 1 ult deals less near point blank range. She has ults that can deal 40 something damage sometimes.
But what she lacks early she more than makes up for in late game dominance. From a design stand point, that is a good trade, but then make games no longer go 40+ minutes. They end around 25-35 minutes usually and can end as soon as 15 minutes now. So she loses that late game scaling benefit which justified her having a very large early game weakness. In other words, she could use some early game power to just survive long enough to reach a point where she becomes somewhat of a threat and then go from there. She can't even properly sustain in an early game a fight anymore, which was a good use for her special attack speed buff, with Warlords Bloodlust being changed to energized autos every so often. Sure she gets them slightly faster, but not continuous like she needs it to counteract the damage she is receiving.