Question for Jhin Mains

Shirvallah·Dec 28, 2017·1 votes·1,207 views

Ello, frans.

I was just randomly thinking about builds and whatnot for certain champions, and the thought occurred to me, “Why does Jhin not build Tear when Varus does?” Talking lethality build here – not crit. So, why is that? Jhin uses his abilities just about as frequently, right? If not, more so (since Varus has an ability that’s just a passive)?

I get that the new Manaflow Band mastery sorta helps with the mana issue, but still...

Curious to hear what you guys think.

8 Comments

Deathhawk888Dec 29, 20171 votes

Not a Jhin main, but Jhin benefits most from raw damage. He isn't too spell reliant unlike someone like Ezreal, so a better option is to build Essence Reaver. Gives you crit, damage, and fixes the Mana issue because of its Mana restoration.

ShirvallahDec 29, 20172 votes

{quoted}

Not a Jhin main, but Jhin benefits most from raw damage. He isn't too spell reliant unlike someone like Ezreal, so a better option is to build Essence Reaver. Gives you crit, damage, and fixes the Mana issue because of its Mana restoration.

See, here’s the issue. I understand the purpose of ER, but Comet’s just too good on Jhin, so there’s no point in going crit build anymore, unless you’re just REALLY getting smashed early game for whatever reason.

If you look at the OP, though, you’ll notice I was specifically talking about the lethality build — NOT crit.

junglerboy16Dec 29, 20172 votes

The reason you still go crit build no matter what is that crit gives you more raw AD because of his passive (comet hits harder, abilities hit harder), it's the cheapest build (zeal items are the least expensive finished build items other than support items), and ER provides a lot of CDR for more ability use.

Overall, tear and its upgrades are archaic and outdated items that see virtually no play, even on the champs they should be strongest on.

Even on a lethality build, you benefit more from ER and a zeal item than from the massive weakness you take from sitting on a stacking tear and eventually lackluster damage bonus from the Muramana when it's finally done. Basically, it's more worthwhile to either dip a little into crit for the ER, or just rely on mana management and mana flow band instead.

I rarely even see Varus use tear now to be honest...

ShirvallahDec 29, 20171 votes

{quoted}

The reason you still go crit build no matter what is that crit gives you more raw AD because of his passive (comet hits harder, abilities hit harder), it's the cheapest build (zeal items are the least expensive finished build items other than support items), and ER provides a lot of CDR for more ability use.

Overall, tear and its upgrades are archaic and outdated items that see virtually no play, even on the champs they should be strongest on.

Even on a lethality build, you benefit more from ER and a zeal item than from the massive weakness you take from sitting on a stacking tear and eventually lackluster damage bonus from the Muramana when it's finally done. Basically, it's more worthwhile to either dip a little into crit for the ER, or just rely on mana management and mana flow band instead.

I rarely even see Varus use tear now to be honest...

I literally just said in the post above and in the OP that I’m talking about the lethality build. Period. I’m not asking about the crit build.

Besides, I see plenty of people go Tear on Varus. While it might not be the most popular build path, I still see it frequently being built, even by higher elo players.

Thank you for your insight.

junglerboy16Dec 30, 20171 votes

I just explained how even on a lethality build dipping into crit for an ER is more worth your investment.

Read a post before dismissing it.

ShirvallahDec 31, 20171 votes

{quoted}

I just explained how even on a lethality build dipping into crit for an ER is more worth your investment.

Read a post before dismissing it.

I wasn’t asking about crit. At all. That’s the thing. I simply was asking about Tear and lethality. Period.

Besides, I have never seen anyone go ER on lethality Jhin, ever. I’m not sure why you’d even include that in the build if you’re going straight lethality first two items. It makes 0 sense to stray from the build path at that point. By third item, you just as well go IE, which is really the only crit item, aside from maybe RFC (even then, it’s situational), that is really necessary to build on lethality Jhin.

I acknowledged your post by saying thank you. I’m assuming you didn’t read all of mine. Maybe you should take your own advice. :)

junglerboy16Jan 2, 20181 votes

I'll try and clarify what I'm saying because there's clearly a miscommunication going on somewhere here.

Tear is bad for many reasons: It stacks slowly and offers no combat stats, hurting your early game. Its upgrade is lackluster in still providing weak stats, impeding on your lethality build when you should be at your strongest. By the time you've gotten it to transform, you have amassed an excessively huge mana pool, but the nature of the item itself means that it starts to burn your mana even faster (which is the worst aspect of the item), therefore negating the massive mana pool you wasted so much time building all for the sake of a mediocre damage steroid that doesn't compare to the damage you'd get from either a faster lethality rush or dipping into crit or AS.

Our point is simple: Tear is a terrible item and its upgrade is equally bad. It weakens your early game dramatically and is essentially pointless since jhin doesn't have mana issues most of the time, especially with mana flow band in the game now. The only reason we mentioned ER in the first place is to say if you are actually needing mana for jhin, it's a more worthwhile item, the point being that as weird as ER on lethality jhin seems, tear and its upgrade is worse. Skip both for all I care, just save yourself the trouble and skip tear no matter what.

Varus gets away with tear (and even he builds it much less frequently now) largely because he doesn't utilize the Muramana damage much (and with that avoids burning through the mana he has) and just needs a huge pile of mana to spam arrows (although ER still is better for sustaining his mana). Other than that, the only champ I can think of who actually uses tear is Ezreal, and that's cuz he procs it on his Q for fast stacking and efficient damage, unlike 99% of the champs in this game.

Sorry if I seemed terse in my last response, I was having a rough day and had gotten several knuckleheads not reading when they responded, so I spoke out of frustration. My apologies.

AlexicesJan 29, 20181 votes

I like that he asks four Jhin mains' opinions then tries to nit pick and lecture on why his stance is better. If youre going to handle answers to your question like this, why not just state what you think and argue it rather than this rhetorical silliness? lol

Tl;dr JunglerBoy already said it perfectly but four the sake of reiteration and to accent more contrast to varus as well as what to account four as lethality Jhin pls read on; (want it short? Just read the 1st sentance of each point)

lethalitys strength is debated frequently in the subreddit (not really pertainate, but something you should know)
the point of a lethality build on Jhin is to snowball fast and close out in the mid game when youre at your strongest relative to hypercarries. Tear doesnt help with an early power spike by its nature, it in fact works completely counter to this, so it lacks tactical synergy with a lethality build on Jhin in addition to defeating the purpose of a lethality build. (Someone like varus who has a building powerspike as he gains items can benefit from tear. This is because ability spam offsets his rather weak early trading power because ability use is required to complete a trade favorably as well as to make up for a defict that results in passive poke play being the only viable lane play. This is NOT an issue four Jhin at all, one of his strongest aspects is his early and unrelenting lane bully power and ability four sharply punishing mistakes.)
its simply an item slot that has better options for Jhin. He doesnt need that much mana and he gets more dmg out of even a zeal item (or BotRK if youre going to complain about building crit on a champ who literally gains free stats from crit) then he does from manamune. High ad items like BT also offer more -allowance four lethality to hurt- because it comes with raw stats AND a passive that improves his dps and over all team fight presence.
ER is another example of this, great buy after 2 lethality items because with lethality youre gunning for your abilities to hurt as much as possible (tear augments aa's with a pretty high cost) so being able to bust out a q/w/ulti with 30%cdr from ER into RFC is really, really good and helps bridge the lethality build into mid game when tanks start soaking up dmg and you need to pop off aa's at a safe distance when you can. (I.e. at the point of the game when lethality on ADCs starts to become less useful)

This is why tear is only built on Jhin for S&G in games you can afk to win -going full AS actually will offer you more dps/ad.

Also as an added note, 95% of the time, lethality jhin is GB/DB 1st/2nd into crit (IE/RFC being 3rd/4th is the most common build path capped with whatever situational item is needed)

Love theory crafting btw, i hope this is the type of answer/discussion you were looking four. <4