How do you even play Jax?

Violet Fields·9/5/2018, 10:30:17 AM·4 votes·8,605 views

Seriously, though.

I play mainly champions who have somewhat mechanically skill required to play them like Azir and Xerath but most of the champions I play well with and succeed in ranked with are top laners but I have very few I even play (Kennen, Kled, Malphite). I see Jax is Tier 1 in top laners right now and I've seen some pretty good Jax's recently but whenever I try to play him I just get stomped in lane, denied cs, and can't be relevent at all in the game by rushing Triforce unless I go practically full tank:

I really want to learn Jax but me playing him is an absolute joke, I'm awful with him. Basically, the title.

11 Comments

HateDaddy9/5/2018, 9:06:57 PM3 votes

Contrary to popular opinion, he’s actually not that easy to play. His AA animation is still trash. He’s gated by long cooldowns early on his E/Q and has to make meaningful decisions on when and how to use them. He’s not ranged and he has no innate sustain with pretty steep mana costs. His base HP stats are garbage and he DOES FALL OFF late game against tanky teams, which is why he’s probably so popular right now.

BachelorWho9/5/2018, 2:00:55 PM2 votes

Keep practicing.

Contrary to a very common opinion, Starting a fight with counter strike followed by leaping into an enemy and then ending counter strike for a stun is a very suboptimal strategy. It doesn’t do very much damage by itself, the stun isn’t overly long by itself and most enemies with So much as a spinal chord will, you know, move away from you to deny your leap. And then you have your only damage mitigation and stun on a 16 second cooldown. Have fun with that.

The only time I use that combo is when I’m jungler and approaching a serious fight already in the works where I know champions involved have already blown most of their skills and are already committed to a chase, cornered, or immobilized.

A better plan: walk up to an enemy, start hitting them, wait for the retaliation, start counterstrike, save yourself 2 seconds of damage, and when they dash away, that’s when you Q. You are now a solid 3 seconds ahead in damage. Use W to reset your autos and titanic hydra to reset your auto again. You’ll get to the big leagues eventually.

WoΘxer9/5/2018, 10:43:42 AM2 votes

Jax is all about cs'ing, and how fast u get the items, he needs a rework, either he is useless or just overfed and cannot be contested.

RankOneWakanda9/5/2018, 9:04:28 PM1 votes

I've played jax on my main account more than any other champion. I stopped playing him. I had a negative wr with him in season 6 and season 7. i have no idea why

he just very hard to pick top lane. unless you know what your picking into.

weak lane phase outside some matchups. no sustain

hes an ok jungler. but very good dependant. am not doing much before am getting 2 items

hes very good in higher ranks because top lane the jungler understand he has to give you a lead.

delete shaco9/6/2018, 5:18:06 AM1 votes

Nice to see people realize Jax isn’t as much of a brain dead champ as he appears. For years and through different metas and accounts I’ve mained Jax to the point where I’m actually trying to learn support gameplay to keep things fresh. Lately, all people see are the fed jax’s but his laning phase is ungodly hell. He’s like other duelists/juggernauts but with no innate mobility, sustain, poke, or heavy cc. When you get a feel for him, you’ll realize the THREAT of his dodge is sometimes much more lethal than him actually using it, but that’s for you to eventually feel comfortable with and figure out.

How you play Jax depends much more on how and what his enemy plays than most other champions. Jax is the only champion in the game that buy literally any item and make actual use of it, so keep that in mind when building against certain comps. Playing aggressively early on gets you killed against almost every matchup unless you get a really good counterstrike cheese at lvl 1. The better you play defensively and read yout opponents patterns the better. Every matchup has a specific timing to use counterstrike and leap strike properly, unlike most matchups where it’s just poke and spam abilities then all-in when you think you can go for the kill. For example, in some ranged matchups, e>q combo is completely fine, but let’s say you’re against Teemo , you’re not going to use that e until he blinds you or you have to walk back. Or, if you’re against Darius , you shouldn’t pop e on him until he almost has max hemorrhage stacks and he’s low, and you should only jump on him during his q to deny his heal and not get stacked on. On the contrary, popping e as soon as you get close to Tryndamere to fire off a quick combo and q back to safety is a good trade. Or maybe your E usage depends entirely on when an enemy champions key abilities are used, like Fiora parry or right before Nocturne horrify goes off, or you’re playing mind games with Rengar or Renekton and have to know how the player reacts to you in order to dodge appropriately.

tl;dr Having no sustain and poke makes farming with him feel like tip-toeing around glass. Focus on always having high health and pay attention to your opponents patterns to then predict when trading is optimal.

ÆR099/6/2018, 6:31:52 PM1 votes

Just gotta learn his patterns and how to abuse his cds. Triforce > steraks/titanic > steraks/titanic is core and after that you can go gunblade, rageblade, or tank depending on what you need more. Jax takes practice because unlike other simple stat check champs hes not tanky enough to just turn off your brain (garen) and press buttons

LynXerf9/10/2018, 1:28:05 PM1 votes

The most important thing - get plenty of CS and don't feed. If you can do this, nearly in all instances you will make the mid-game and outscale your opponent and then be able to do Jax things.

The skill of playing a champion like Jax is that, effectively, you have a champion with very real and clear weaknesses. You are weak early game - with no sustain, long cooldowns and a lack of outright damage. Poke champions with disengage can destroy your laning phase entirely. As the game goes on his cooldowns reduce drastically to the point where a huge chunk of his damage comes from there and not as much from his AA's as you'd think.

A good tip as Jax - abuse your level 1. His level 1 is one of, if not the strongest in the game (vs melee) when you take E. Hit your opponent, draw minion aggro and continue to aa and activate your e. If timed right your E will mitigate all of the minion damage and amplify the E damage, while getting free AA's on your opponent. This is enough to chunk half health at least in most cases. From there you can have kill pressure and you don't even need to persue the kill, just control the lane and this is enough to mitigate your weak early game sometimes.

if you're against a ranged champion you can't really do this unless they are stupid. But again, being Jax there is clear counterplay here - a skilled melee opponent won't even accept a trade with you at level 1 and just wait it out until level 2.

That's why it irks me when people call Jax OP. He's strong at the moment but his weaknesses are still there, just the meta suits him right now.

Aphelios is OP9/5/2018, 10:49:08 AM1 votes

His only combo: E, wait a moment before it ends, then Q on the enemy. AA then W for reset. They will be stunned the whole time. It will proc electrocute or Hail of Blades.

That's pretty much his entire kit. All you gotta do is CS and use that combo every once in a while. Pretty similar to Garen.

The thigh guy9/5/2018, 3:59:47 PM1 votes

Useful trick for you. You can get 2 sheen procs off of your e. Just reactive right before it ends to do this. Is seems small but this increases your trade potential stupid amounts.