INTRO
Yeah.. well I'm just one of the ordinary players who found an epic way to play one champion. I had 6 games with Jax, (nearly)all of them had more than 10 kills per game. This guide is focused on you knowing how to play with Jax, learning what item builds you need, and getting taught all the strategies needed to PWN the other team. With this guide, you'll be even more dangerous than a vastly fed Master Yi. Honest. Oh yeah, you'll get the hand of the skills to. This guide doesn't cover runes or masteries, as everyone has their own playing style.... well that and I don't have many runes T.T



SKILLS
Jax has a variety of offensive skills, balanced along with his E ability. Note that the Q,E, and R abilities depend on BONUS attack damage, so it won't be (as) powerful early game.

Relentless Assault (Innate Passive) - Passively increases your attack speed per autoattack, gaining 4%/6%/8%/10%/12%/14% attack speed per consecutive hit. Stacks up to 6 times, and lasts for 2.5 seconds after the last autoattack.

This is a great passive to have, honestly. It helps for really punishing enemies and tanks during fights, as you'll need one less attack speed item with this ability.


Leap Strike - Jax leaps towards a target, dealing physical damage if the target is an enemy.
Cost: 65 Mana
Range: 700
Cooldown: 10 / 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 seconds
Physical Damage: 70/110/150/190/230 (+0.6 per ability power) (+1.0 per bonus attack damage)

This ability has many uses, not just for plainly attacking. It can be used for:
-Harassing early game, initiating a leap strike to push enemy champs back.
-Ganking lanes, by simply jumping over trees our out of brushes.
-Chasing enemies, Teemo got nothing with his shrooms and E with this (hopefully)
-Escaping. Not many know this, but you can jump to nearby wards, minions, or champions if they're in range.
This is a great ability to have early game, maybe level 2, but you may want to save this ability for leveling up in late game. You need to be wary though, the damage only stacks with BONUS attack damage, which you'll get later on in the game.


Empower - Jax charges his weapon with energy, causing his next autoattack or Leap Strike to deal additional magic damage. This ability resets the autoattack timer.
Cost: 30 Mana
Cooldown: 7 / 6 / 5 / 4 / 3 seconds
Magic Damage: 40 / 75 / 110 / 145 / 180 (+0.6 per ability power)

Very important ability for quickly killing enemies. If fully upgraded, it has a low cooldown of 3 seconds, with a really low mana cost. I suggest trying to activate this ability right after an attack, almost instantly striking the enemy twice. This applies on-hit affects too, so be aware. This you should almost upgrade immediately, if you want to solo dragon for your team or just devastate the enemy even more.


Counter Strike - Jax enters a defensive stance for up to 2 seconds, dodging all incoming basic attacks and taking 25% less damage from area of effect abilities. At the end of the duration or if Counter Strike is activated again, Jax deals physical damage and stuns nearby enemies for 1 second. This spell deals 20% additional damage for each attack dodged to a maximum of 100% increased damage.
Cost: 70 / 75 / 80 / 85 / 90 Mana
Cooldown: 18 / 16 / 14 / 12 / 10 seconds
Physical Damage: 50 / 75 / 100 / 125 / 150 (+0.5 per bonus attack damage)
Max Physical Damage: 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 / 300 (+1.0 per bonus attack damage)

This is Jax's main defensive, possibly offensive ability needed in the game. It's great for initiating combat against AD carries, including Master Yi, Ashe, and etc., as it stuns and dodges up to two seconds of their autoattacks. I recommend using this RIGHT in melee range of the character, as you can still autoattack the enemy during the stance. It's also very useful for chasing, using Counter Attack right after Leap Strike, to guarantee a kill. Most of the time. This ability also can dodge attacks from ultimates, like Warwick's Infinite Duress and Flora's Blade Waltz.


Grandmaster's Might - (Passive): Jax deals additional magic damage on every third basic attack. The counter will reset if he does not attack for 2.5 seconds.
Magic Damage: 100 / 160 / 220 (+0.7 per ability power)
(Active): Jax gains armor and magic resist.
Cost: 100 Mana
Duration: 8 seconds
Cooldown: 80 seconds
Armor Bonus: 25 / 35 / 45 (+0.3 per bonus attack damage)
Magic Resist Bonus: 25 / 35 / 45 (+0.2 per ability power)

This is like having a free empower buff every third hit. The ability's active isn't really "awesome", but you'll need to save it for team fights, where there's a lot of damage exchanging.

Skill Order
I suggest trying to max out empower, and getting Leap Strike a bit early and leaving it to level up later in the game.

R>W>E>Q

I suggest this order:
E->Q->W->W->E->R And trying to max up your W quickly.



ITEM BUILD
This item build is purely in my opinion, but it works the best for me. The last item is totally situational, so feel free to experiment with it. It focuses on a hybrid build, focusing more on the AD side a bit.

Early Game
I would ALWAYS start with a Boots Of Speed + Health Pot. X 3. It helps you stay in the lane longer, without recalling. Although, if you want to spam abilities, then you might want to replace one of the potions with a mana potion. You could also use a Doran's blade, but no potions 4 u then (unless you got a certain mastery). You might want to wait until you have around 570-1520 gold if you want to recall and buy some items.

Early-Mid Game
The items you'll need to buy are Berserker's Greaves + Pickaxe. Go back to your lane, and try to occasionally gank other lanes. Once you rack up enough kills, or enough gold, get a Guinsoo's Rageblade. It stacks along with your passive, giving you a ton of attack speed in several hits. It's AP+AD combo is NEEDED for your attacks and abilities. Your R and W slowly gain strength over time, increasing it's own damage. You should be a level 7-12 by now. If you have any leftover gold, then get a Dagger to build into a Phantom Dancer later on.

Mid Game
You'll need a bit more than 2000 gold before you recall. Or you can just get a zeal and continually buy items needed for it, either way. Buy a Phantom Dancer, as it gives you attack speed, and more importantly, critical strike chance. The movement speed bonus is also very useful for the runners. Now go back and farm enough gold.

It should be about 20-30 minutes in the game by now. Once you have enough gold, try to build a Bloodthirster. It's passive is what makes it really powerful, giving 100 AD and about 23% life steal? Yeah. If you really want the passive bonus quick, then go jungle a bit for some blue and red buffs. You should also solo dragon by now.

Mid-Late Game
You got 4 items by now. We'll need an Infinity Edge. It is needed if you want to deal 1500 base damage per second. It gives 80 AD and 25% critical strike chance. It costs near 4 grand, so make sure you really use some great strategies to farm kills.

The Last(ish) Item
This is a hard choice to make. If you need to take care of tanks, get a Madred's Bloodrazor. It gives armor, AD, attack speed, and it's passive is needed for getting rid of Mundo's and health tanks. Think if it like a permanent Empower against enemies.

There's also the choice of getting a Guardian Angel. You have nearly no defensive items, so this is needed against those AP nukes and other kinds of champs. It's passive can also turn the tides of battles. How? Well... I went AFK for a moment. A Veigar "killed" me, and then I noticed it. I then used my Q, and just obliterated him. Surprise, surprise.

Of course, there's another choice. It focuses on the hybrid build, and is literally needed by many Jax players. The Hextech Gunblade. It gives a nice amount of AD and AP, but what's really needed is it's life steal and spell vamp. It's active is also very useful. You'll get a free heal on every third attack or empower, along with the life steal.

When I mentioned Last-ish, I meant ish. The Berserker's Greaves have got to go soon. Replace it with a second Phantom Dancer, making you "near" the previous movement speed. You'll get more than double the previous attack speed, even more critical strike chance, and another movement speed bonus.

ITEM BONUS FACTS
With the build finished, you'll deal 300-900 damage per auto attack.
You'll also have around 2+ attack speed.
You'll get healed 100-300 health per hit.
That doesn't even count abilities.
Your critical strike chance is about 85%.
You can easily get a double kill now, and have about 70-90% of your health left if you play things right.



STRATEGIES
What good is a fed champion without strategies?

Early Game
Items are explained in the previous section.
I suggest taking top lane, and strongly suggest getting a lane partner to dominate the lane. You'll need to get to the brushes as fast as possible, on the enemy's side. You can peek to see what you're up against, and it gives a better chance of getting first blood. I recommend getting Counter Strike first. The enemy champ only HAS one ability so far, so don't sweat it. You can autoattack the enemy when they get in the brush, activate your E, and then just stun them while they have near 60% health left. Chance is that they'll run before you can kill them, but you'll have harassed them heavily, showing your dominance over the lane. Be careful if they have a lane partner though, then just go back into your brush. Follow the same strategies. Don't forget to occasionally use your potions!

When the minions come, then just try to last hit minions. Initiate Counter Strike or Leap Strike + Empower occasionally. It grants heavy harassment, but watch out for MIA's in mid lane and bot lane. You could also tower hug and finish off those one-bar-left enemies.

If they're pushing, and you have a lane partner, they're bound to be missing some health. This is your chance! Use Empower and Leap Strike, following up with Counter Strike, once they try to run. Easy kill, even if one of them manages to get away. I recommend hiding in the swamp brush.

If they try to harass you, harass them back! W, Q, and E them! They might be running, hopefully with an Ignite "buff". You'll get a kill that way with some health left.


Mid Game
This is where you'll gank effectively.
You'll need to focus on enemy pushers. There's some risk in letting turrets be destroyed, but they'll be a bit low on health too. Hide in the brushes, and initiate your Q and W immediately. Use your E, and stun them. That's an almost guaranteed kill, even against ghosters. You may want to save your leap strike though, by just running up to them and W'ing and autoattacking. If they manage to run out of your attack range, then Q and E them. Hopefully they aren't at a turret yet..

You'll also need to jungle some buffs, mainly for ganking repeatedly. The golem buff for spamming your abilities on ganks, and the lizard buff for slowing and dealing true damage. By this time, you'll also have to solo dragon. Team fights are bound to happen by this point. If you get into a team fight, activate your R and try to Q on the "weakest" target, following up with E and W on it. You'll avoid every autoattack from the enemies, and the bonus defense helps immensely. You'll get a kill, and hopefully your team doesn't bail on you. You can follow up with another kill on their mage or tank, killing both in a matter of seconds.

Although, a bit later in the game, you might see small groups of enemies chasing your low health teammates. Use this opportunity wisely! This mainly applies to jungling, as you'll be "behind" the chasers. The enemies will be close together when chasing, as expected, so follow them and initiate a Q, W, and E on them. You'll stun them both, leading to an EASY double kill!

Some people think it's safer to go into combat by using Jax's E and marching into the fray. Don't. It's much quicker using your W and Q, and autoattacking with your E ability activated in the heat of battle.

Late Game
Jax is very potent at backdooring. He can exterminate turrets in several seconds with a few minions. It can lead to a very unexpected win. Your massive attack speed and damage are enough to r*** turrets quickly. If there's a champion guarding a turret, then just focus on the turret first. You'll destroy it before the enemy has a chance to take out half of your health, but your massive life steal on the enemy champ will almost instantly fully heal you. That's about it, you won the game. But what about Summoner Spells?


SUMMONER SPELLS
I strongly recommend Flash and Teleport. Both can be used to your advantage.
You can also use the following:
-Ignite: Very useful offensive ability.
-Heal: Could be useful in early game, but you won't need it thanks to your item build later on.
-Exhaust: It is useful, but your Hextech Gunblade and your E can handle it well.
-Ghost: It helps chase those durn fast dudes when your Q can't keep up.


Your masteries should be 21/0/9 or something, and your runes should focus on attack speed, attack damage, and AP or something. I'm not a big fan of runes.


Anyways, how do you like this guide? The "best" score I got with this guide was 31/18/10. I was a bit reckless, and I didn't really fully finish the item build yet during this game anyways. I went afk for a "moment", and we lost... I had more than half of my team's kills.

Anyways yer welcome for this guide :P
I'm only a level 12 or something anyways.

Your item build is way off. Jax's core is Tri force and gunblade for more burst and sustained DPS in fights. His passive makes a PD worthless, BT is an alright item on Jax, IE is too costly with no defensive stats, and madred's is easily countered.

The problem with your build is that it is for carries. Since Jax is melee, he needs to be a bit beefier since he is a bruiser. My build is Wriggles, Merc treads, tri force, gunblade, GA, and something tanky (Warmog's, Randuin's, etc.).

Your early game is not the way to play Jax as well. Jax needs farm, since his core items are quite costly. Having a laning partner is bad for top lane, as you need all the farm.

Jax should also not be taking the buffs in the jungle; leave blue buff to your mid laner and red buff to your AD carry/jungler.


And one thing about league of legends in general...

Don't go afk! Even if it is just for a moment, make sure you have ~1 hour of uninterrupted time before you start a game of LoL.

I hope I didn't come off as too harsh, just wanted to point some things out.

Level 12

Writes guide

Does not compute.

Bad item build, bad advice, you build like that and I'll hit you with one cc when you jump in, and you'll die before it's over.

If you're playing primarily vs AI, your build is fine. Max attack speed, damage, and lifesteal, and don't worry about defense at all. However, against human opponents, your build is going to cause you some problems. It's inefficient and fragile.

For PvP, your 3 core offensive items are:

1. Guinsoo's Rageblade
2. Hextech Gunblade
3. Trinity Force

All three of these give both AD and AP (key for a hybrid like Jax). Two give attack speed, and the third gives both Lifesteal and Spellvamp. TF's unique passive suits Jax's kit perfectly, and Hextech's active makes closing with fleeing opponents even easier. Now you need some defense. You have more flexibility here, but one good build might be:

4. Mercury Treads
5. Guardian Angel's Armor
6. Maw of Malmortius

You're a little light on health with this build, but you'll have solid defenses, high tenacity to reduce cc duration, a bonus shield from Maw, and a second life from GA. You'll be scary as hell if you can finish this build. And if you ever feel you need a little more boost while you're building, don't forget that you can always pick up an Elixir for 250 gold for a nice 10 minute boost.

Also, remember that you can complete this build in whatever order suits your game. An early Hexdrinker is an excellent dual-purpose item against an AP lane opponent. Pick up a vampiric sceptre (for Gunblade) and Phage (for TF) early, but wait on completing those items until you have your full Rageblade. Experiment with the build order until you find what works against the different laning opponents you see most often.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

lots of poor info here. you guys are building jax way too pure DPS. Look everyone knows Jax is an extremely lethal threat late game. He WILL get focused, hard, and you wont get the chance to leap in and carve up a carry without more survivability.

Basically you need to choose first of all what your core "item" is, not items. is it TriForce? Well Jax can use all the stats so its never a bad item. But its costly and quite frankly not as good as Gunblade on him. Gunblade is great and he uses all the stats too but its got no survivability aside from lifesteal. Frozen mallet? FM is great on jax, gives a slow early on with Phage with a guaranteed one later and alot of health which scales very well with his Ultimate defensive steroid. But what about early game? well Wriggles is very strong on him for obvious reasons.

Jax really suffers the most from AP carries who can deliver huge burst. For that reason Hexdrinker is another item I attempt to get in mid game. I oscillate on whether I get Phage first, HOG first, or Hex and often its game dependent. Is there an enemy AP carry getting slightly fed or giving you trouble top? Hex (and obviously build it into Maw later). Is the AP carry not really a big deal yet? Phage for the health and slow. Am I struggling in lane (or jungling my preferred method to play him?) HOG. Especially when jungling, if Jax doesn't get ganks in he has trouble keeping up his farm and HOG becomes moreso useful.

Guinsoo's especially is an item that simply doesnt work against good opponents. it is a pure dps item but offers nothing extra like FM, TF, or even Gunblade. Its just a hybrid item. But that's not a good enough reason to get it.