Will there ever be a time where Jinx is actually a good solid pick again?

JavelinJoe··3 votes·759 views

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 Lucian Caitlyn Ezreal and Ashe for ages now. As one of the few remaining champions who actually need a solid 2 or 3 items to actually get going like Tristana and Kalista, 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.

5 Comments

Michael7021 votes

You make a good point. Late game champs don't often get the chance to see the late game nowadays. I'd like to see the numbers for average game length per season or patch.

Teémò1 votes

You forgot that In higher mmr games the time of a game finishing is actually 5 minutes faster than of say bronze silver games on average. It's not much, but something to add in.

Volphi1 votes

[deleted]

JavelinJoe1 votes

Her early isn't weak, it's pretty good.

She has one of the worst early games for an ADC. Only her W scales with significant AD (her Q scales with 10%), her Q costs a lot of mana to use repeatedly, her Q also lowers her attack speed by 25%, she has no passive to use until she gets a kill, assist, or objective, and she is immobile. The only thing going for her is that she can shoot faster than most once she gets her Q stacks up.

So this isn't only problem with Jinx.

Nope, but she has been under preforming for quite a while now, much longer than a lot of the other ADCs. Similar champions would likely be Kalista and Tristana.

Take LS quints and 2 Doran's Blade if you need sustain so much.

Items should not be a requirement to cover a champion's innate weaknesses. Items are meant to boost a champions combat effectiveness, not to bring them up to par with everyone else's starting point. If she is required to waste money buying 2 Doran's Blade just to survive the laning phase each game, that is a problem. That means she has to play with 450 gold less than every other champion (basically a kill and an assist worth less).

Because it's not intended to be used point blank.

Jinx is AA based champion, not a caster.

I am aware, but having an ult deal less than an auto when it is designed to deal damage is kinda terrible to use. It means that she loses yet another ability to use in combat (first being her passive).

Because Jhin has fixed attack speed but his high AD compensates for it, so it's a bad example.

My point was that she should be able to compete with him because she has far more attack speed than he does. Yes he has massive amounts of damage, but he has only 4 shots, a Q, and a W to deal it with. She should be able to trade somewhat close to even still, yet she can't. My point is that she does not receive any significant compensation for her lack of damage output. She shoots fast, but each shot is so low in damage that it does not matter too much. IF she swaps to high damage, she actually sometimes shoots slower than Jhin at early levels.

More from Gameplay

More by JavelinJoe