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Riot gave Jinx her old Q back so she could see pro play...and hardly saw pro play

chipndip1·11/10/2018, 6:58:02 PM·8 votes·22,369 views

Answer's really simple, honestly.

Jinx is a hyper carry with no real steroid when it matters. Twitch has an AD steroid on one button and an AS steroid on the other. Trist has her Q. Vayne has AD on R. Xayah has W. Kai'Sa has E. Kog'Maw has W. If Jinx wants to get into "overdrive", she has to destroy something. This is the crux of the issue.

Why would you want a steroid that only comes on when you're winning? It's like getting a massive, double value Soraka ult only after you ace the enemy. Yeah, you're hyper and you're cleaning up the fight, but most steroids are used to gain the advantage in fights, and then people rely on resets or team synergy to finish them. Jinx's steroid comes on when the most crucial part of the team fight is already finished. Whenever one or two people go down, most of the time the fight's decided at that point, and the rest is seeing if the remaining 3 or so champs can escape without conceding more gold. Sure, Jinx can more reliably chase down these targets, but if you don't win the team fight in the first place, this detail is meaningless.

But she has her Q. That's a steroid, right? Well, yes...but it's irrelevant. It's a steroid to her attack speed, but its 525 range makes it so Sona she's too easily exploitable to actually want to use it Sona the moment someone with a gap closer comes up. If she switches to rockets, other hyper carries can either get in her range and run her over, like Vayne, or they can (roughly) match her range and run her over because she has a massive attack speed disadvantage in comparison to other hyper carries when using rockets, like Kog'Maw or Caitlyn...or they can be Tristana or Twitch and do either of these things at their leisure. Either she gets out-ranged or she gets out-gunned in comparison to other hyper carries, mainly because they don't pay a price for using their own tools.

Well, back in season 5, this wasn't the case. Since then, Riot realized that Jinx's kit is just too much of everything. She had scaling, range, damage, aoe, all that jazz. Turning Runaan's into a crit item was good for her, but great for her competition, and the nerfs they put on her, between locking her stats behind random barriers and nerfing every button she has, made it so she sort of fell out of relevancy.

Well they gave her the Q back. They also removed -5 AD to do it, and we ALL SHOULD KNOW how crippling of a nerf that is for marksmen. They also didn't remove the AS penalty from her rockets, so she's still horrifically outgunned for actually using her rockets during fights in comparison to someone else that'll either force themselves into her space and maul her or just pepper her down with faster, deadlier autos from similar ranges (or both).

So just give her back 5 AD, right? Well...no. Jinx's design is horribly generic. It doesn't have any key weaknesses or strengths. It's just sorta...there, as far as the strategic side of the game goes. If it's strong, she can easily replace most or all hyper carries in the game for being a safer early game pick in comparison to other hyper carries while still scaling relatively as well as them. Riot's tried to sort of "create a defining strength" for the champion out of her existing tools, but these changes have mostly fallen flat (oh shit, now you can't dash over her E!).

...so how to fix? Ultimately, you don't. Jinx is great for the game as far as theme and story goes, but her kit's execution is from a time where Riot didn't think too hard when it came to "breadth vs. depth" in the game. Kind of like how Capcom used to create a bunch of Ryu-styled characters to add to their roster instead of making legitimately different characters, in a way. Jinx doesn't offer any big "thing" to balance her around, so if she's good enough to be a pick beyond solo queue, it's because she's the best marksman in the game...like in season 5. You'd have to rework some of her abilities and her passive to shift her to a clear cut direction as a hyper carry, but her execution on the thematic/story side of the game's so good as is, I don't think Riot's willing to do that.

It sucks, because Jinx is one of my favorite characters in the game. I'd be more interested in the LCS year round if champions I cared about actually showed up more, but they don't, and haven't for years. Well...Poppy does when she isn't horribly nerfed so that's good, but not much else.

27 Comments

ModUlanopo11/11/2018, 4:09:09 PM2 votes

Doesn't leaving the weapon as Fishbones mean that her AS steroid is (almost) always up? I mean, it's kind of like Vayne's Silver Bolts in that Jinx is rewarded when she's able to remain in combat for an extended period. That might not be compelling gameplay, but it can be powerful.

Devil Demoko11/12/2018, 10:33:24 AM2 votes

As a jinx player, it honestly feels super bad in lane... they even buffed vayne's lane but they refuse to buff jinx...meanwhile irelia has good early, mid and late, akali is broken as hell and lucian can solo kill you at level 3 as an adc lmao.

PandaNator4311/15/2018, 7:34:28 PM1 votes

I don't play enough Jinx, or even ADC, to know exactly what I'm talking about, but here it goes anyway :)

Jinx is super unique character wise. Her "crazy , ALL THE GUNS" personality is really cool. Her lore is awesome too.

Change list. Q Rev'd up - also ramps up MS (think smaller passive effect) based the the missing health of target (excludes minions). She gets more excited the close she is too destroying something. Q fishbones - Make this slightly larger AOE: as you mention Runaans overlaps with this effect too much.

Another idea: Q fishbones - range is same as live, but once a target has been attacked, it has bonus range against that target. kinda like a locked on effect. Could scale with ability level, Champion level, AD/AS etc. May need new art of this. Could pair well with her extra MS from Rev'd up.

Hibeki11/16/2018, 1:32:20 AM1 votes

Thats the tradeoff. Jinx's steroids are permanent and more potent.

Twitch has damage fallof on his AOE but his strength comes from his stealth. His attack speed is a quarter of jinx.

The idea of an adc having 130% attack speed boost and a range boost with 100% damage aoe on the same ability is kind of nuts, all her power is on one ability.

Extreme snowballing, but low power when behind. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too.

Gilgayu11/20/2018, 9:35:43 PM1 votes

Tbh I feel like jinx just isn't unique enough.

Her passive is almost the same as varus, but varus can poke from far away and ult as engage tool Her q is actually good when used well, but the fishbone is just too weak and outshine by other adcs Her e is game changing when used in small areas like the jungle, but in lanes its just weak Her ult is a better version of ez's ult.

Gilgayu11/20/2018, 9:36:09 PM1 votes

She probably need a Xin Zhao level rework.

Chief Mayonnaise11/23/2018, 10:04:14 AM1 votes

IK this is a two week old post, but i'm a passionate Jinx player.

All they really need to do is to give her alternate ways to activate her passive, or at least portions of it. Something like if she attacks a champion under 30% health, she gains the movespeed. Or maybe if she hits multiple champions with a fishbones rocket.

I also really liked that Jinx w crit idea they had on the PBE awhile back because it did give her something that other hypercarries didn't have: a mean skillshot. It was way overtuned of course, but maybe now that crits don't scale as hard, they give it another go or in a weaker form.

JoeAnarchy11/23/2018, 10:34:19 AM1 votes

as a Jinx main myself, these are my 2 cents. it feels like, when they made Jinx, they couldn't decide if they wanted her to be a sniper, or a team fighter, or what. her biggest folly compared to other champs, is that she doesn't have a reasonable escape.

her Q does give her a decent AS steroid, but at the moment, team fights don't last long enough for it to matter, it takes turrets incredibly fast if the enemy team leaves you along on them long enough, but that's about it. right now team fights are over in a few seconds, you hardly get enough time to really rev up. and once you're a few items in, you're gonna be sticking to rocket form more often than not, to get the range increase anyway

her W is a weaker form of Jhin and Kai'sa's W.. Jhin being the best because it will go through minions and hit the champions. and it's range is shorter than either of theirs.

her E is ok at best, very few people are gonna actually ever run on them, the most you get are people running around them, which buys you a few seconds at most, or if you throw it into a messy teamfight, where the enemies are bunched up.. its ok.. would be better if it gave her a little backward leap, like Caitlyn traps, or if you could point and click with them, guaranteeing a stun.

her R is her snipe, and they basically have to be in fog of war for it to get it's distance steroid, so more often than not it's a blindfire, or a cleanup in a big messy team fight.

her attacks vary from mid range to long range, she's sort of a sniper, but not as good of a sniper as Jhin or cait, and sort of a team fighter, but not as good as trist.. Jinx's kit can come in clutch for cleaning up a team fight, but it takes you managing to keep them off you for that to work, and a Jinx is usually a first target in any and all team fights, specifically to keep that from happening..

her passive is NOT an escape, people claim it is, but it isn't. she needs a proper escape tool.. considering in her lore, she's the ultimate escape artist, it feels odd that it isn't reflected in her kit.

Not HeIping You11/24/2018, 12:39:28 PM1 votes

I used to main her in season 5/6/7, as far as i would say when it comes to lcs teams wanting to pick her, they just weigh the pros and cons. Currently jinx usually needs to be funneled at least a semi decent amount of gold to be useful mid to late game, on top of that she has no mobility whatsoever and is extremely easy to pick off for mages or assasins. So an LCS team probably would think that, the risk of giving the enemy team multiple +300's just so that jinx MIGHT scale to late game to have some big damage, is far too great of a risk for them to allow, when they can just pick something like Lucian Braum and know for sure that, behind or ahead they will still be able to contribute in some way to the game, if theres an LCS game where a team picks jinx and they get 4 manned early on and lose first turret, jinx will do nothing to contribute to the team at all for the next 20-30 minutes because she has to farm as much as possible and can't really group with a bf sword and runaans anymore like she used to be able to because crit champs are useless now.

Aside from anything, i just stopped playing adc as a whole because in so many situations I was just too dependent on other people to help me so that I could snowball or glasscannon carry.

Now I just to jungle and top and occasionally support because I feel like I can make much more of a difference. It's definitely not an understatement to say that season 8, and honestly season 9 unless they change adc's a lot again, has been, and will continue to be a rough time for any ADC main.

The Bad Touch11/28/2018, 1:07:32 PM1 votes

I fucking love Jinx just the way she is. Don't you dare touch her kit.

  1. Jinx isn't a sniper OR a dps monster. She is both.
  2. She isn't immobile or hyper mobile.... She is both.
  3. Jinx isn't one dimensional... she's bipolar as fuck... and plays like it.

Let's take a look at her kit.

  • Jinx's Q gives her wave clear, poke, and when needed the ability to melt a frontliner or tower.
  • Her W can be used to poke, stall, kite, or chase.
  • Her E synergies very well with other forms of CC as well as letting her melt a diver with Q AS steriod.
  • Her R is everything from cross map snipes, to free assist gold, to dragon steals, to teamfight aoe.
  • Her passive is a snowballing teams dream and you can easily turn a tower take with rift into a double/triple kill. Tweak her numbers if you must but don't rework her. Almost every other ADC goes into every single fight with the same damn plan. Jinx doesn't. The only thing I honestly thinks she needs is a slightly lower mana cost for Fishbones shots, and shorter E windup.

Anyway who honestly cares about pro play. 70% of their picks come from whatever 20 out of 30 champs are the most op at the moment that aren't banned. Are you saying the other 111 champs need reworked?

Over half the games at worlds this year looked like this:

  • Sion/Aatrox/Urgot/Orrn Top
  • Olaf/Xin/Gragas/Nocturne Jungle
  • Lisandra/Irelia/Leblanc/Syndra Mid
  • Kai'sa/Xayah/Sivir/Lucian Bot
  • Alister/Thresh/Rakan/Braum Support.

Do you realize that at worlds this year a non tanky support was only picked in 2 out of 154 games? 1 Name game (Lost) and 1 Bard game (Lost).

Jinx wasn't exactly the only Marksman to not be played.

Caitlyn Corki KogMaw MissFortune Quinn Teemo Twitch Vayne Also saw no play.

Ashe was only played once and lost.

Kalista Draven were played twice and both won one lost one.

There were only 4 ADC's Near/At/Above 50% win rate. Who were played most than twice. (a total of 53.6% win rate) Kaisa Xayah Sivir Lucian

If using "Jinx wasn't used at worlds" as an argument... you might as well say every adc except those 4 needs a rework. They accounted for 110 of 154 bot laners this season.

With honorable mentions to Varus Tristana Ezreal Jhin who made up 34 of the remaining 44 bot lane picks... and only managed between them a 41% win rate.

OmegaNITRO11/28/2018, 4:29:12 PM1 votes

Fellow Jinx main here.

I think she would have been more viable in pro play if the meta was in favor of hyperscaling adcs. But that simply hasn't been the case in a long time.

It's true that she's a generalist in terms of the late game ADC, but I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing. She was one of the best users of Stormrazor, and probably would have been the best if late game ADCs had a place in the meta, and Kaisa wasn't so strong and versatile in all stages of the game.

She's in a weird spot where she's always just a buff or two away from being the best late game ADC, if not outright the best ADC in the game. The change they were testing with Zap being able to crit comes to mind.

Ultimately making Jinx in her current state more viable is just a matter of protect the ADC comps being meta again. Jinx needs a pick to get started, but if that happens she team wipes front to back harder than Kog or Trist with less counterplay than Twitch, because he can't run you down after he shoots his wad as well as her.

There are plenty of things Riot could tweak on her to give her more of a niche. Zap crit, or allowing her a mini boost of Get Excited by just landing ult in addition to the kill activation, or adding a permanent stacking effect to the passive.

But the risk of anything they do to her making her broken is high, and she's just solid enough to not really need any of those to be relevant.

So really we just need a meta shift and maybe a small buff or two and she'd be back in pro play all the time.

ModKnightsKemplar11/11/2018, 4:05:14 PM1 votes

Approved!

TLF brubie12/5/2018, 2:15:52 PM1 votes

Tbh, I think the attack speed reduction from using fishbones is a major thing holding her back, and it feels so bad to use as well. Her identity for the most part is THE aoe teamfight adc (along with maybe twitch with r?) and the tower pusher/teamfight resseter alongside tristana. There's also the fact that at this moment immobile carries are just in a really bad spot (although the upcoming crit itemization in 9.1 and possible mr buffs in 8.24b might help?)

AbiwonKenabi11/11/2018, 4:22:19 PM1 votes

Jinx has really clear strengths and weaknesses, I don't know where you get this idea she doesn't. She has a weak laning phase and is super slow and immobile. She excels in a big team fight environment where her team peels for her and allows her to pop off. She has a ton of AOE and has one of the longest auto attack ranges in the game aside from select cases like Twitch ult.

The reason you didn't see her much in LCS or pro play is because most of the year was all about the early game, and towards the end of the year, the mid game. Jinx is not the type of Champion that performs in that kind of environment. If you notice, Twitch and Vayne weren't played a lot either and Trist was probably the most played hyper carry since she has tools to be aggressive early.

Also, the nerfs were probably too much, especially since at one point this season traditional marksman like Jinx were so bad they were actively avoided in favor of picks like Swain.