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Choose Champion Build:
- Full Tank
- Bruiser
- Assassin
- Supportive
- Hyperscale Carry
Runes: Easy to gank lanes
+10% Attack Speed
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+6 Armor
Spells:
Flash
Smite
Items
Ability Order Q>E>W
Martial Cadence (PASSIVE)
Jarvan IV Passive Ability
Threats & Synergies
Graves
You cannot touch him. Graves is god.
Galio
You lock them down for galio ult to come in.
Galio
You lock them down for galio ult to come in.
Champion Build Guide
The full tank playstyle is the playstyle primarily seen in competitive. This playstyle is a low-economy style that revolves around using Jarvans early power to get off level 2-3 ganks and use that pressure to get your lanes in favorable positions. |
You build cinderhulk into stoneplate and in fights you essentially EQ forwards, ult the enemy to set up for your team, and use your second q to escape to your E out of your ultimate. Sometimes you will also use flash>R as your engage tool.
Your job as full tank J4 is simply to set up your teammates to win fights by locking down immobile champions on the enemy team and putting them in a bad spot for your teammates to clean up.
Tank J4 is the easiest yet most boring playstyle.
Bruiser J4 has a similar job to full tank J4, except you die faster and do more damage. This build is the more common one in soloQ as when ulting the enemy carries, you can often drop their health quite low especially after your ultimate wears off and you have been whacking them for a couple seconds. |
Just like if you went full tank, your job in fights is to EQ or flash forwards, ult your targets, and hit them a bit before disengaging. The difference between tank and bruiser is that you output a lot more damage so with a bit of follow up (or if the enemy is weak) you can get kills yourself.
Bruiser is a bit harder to play because if you make a mistake and engage at a bad time, you die a lot faster than if you have stoneplate and are full tank. It is also a lot more fun as you can actually look to get picks and solokills.
As an assassin, you build a lethality item or two depending on how ahead you get, and you run around killing people. In fights, you look to flash>r the enemy and auto them a couple times to kill them, using your EQ to follow up on them if they try and flash or dash away (or to run away after you one shot them). You can also look for 3-4 man ultimates in later fights, dealing 800+ damage to multiple people before EQing through them for even more damage. If you get fed enough, you can E>Q to gapclose, R>auto>smite the enemy to one shot them, and then walk away while spamming mastery 7. |
The hardest part about the assassin playstyle, is to get used to being extremely squishy. You have to get the drop on the enemy to be able to kill them easily, so early/midgame look to clear wards and try and catch people face checking bushes or overextending.
If you start getting behind after building a Serrated Dirk, upgrade the dirk to an Umbral Glaive so you're still useful despite your build and lack of resources.
The assassin playstyle is my personal favorite, despite it not being very strong and frustrating if you get behind. It is in my opinion one of the harder playstyles to get used to and perform on, but is quite rewarding when you instakill someone.
As a support, your job is to keep your carries alive and help them snowball the game into a win. You build items such as Locket of the Iron Solari, Knight's Vow, Frozen Heart, and Zeke's Convergence; and use these items along with your kit to peel for and keep your carries alive and in a position to carry. |
Your job as a support is to peel and help your team, so be sure to give buffs and camps to your carries and in fights you don't want to use all your tools to engage and be isolated from your team without a way to escape or use your supportive items. You can look to flash>R> then EQ back towards your team, or use your spells in a disruptive way such as ulting the enemy Olaf as he tries to run down your ADC so he can't pursue. Remember to use items such as locket or Mikael's. Try to play with your team and enable them to carry you.
This playstyle can be surprisingly fun if you're duo with a good ADC or Midlaner, and is quite easy to perform on.
The hypercarry playstyle in my opinion is the most fun, regularly letting you win 1v2 or 1v3 fights mid/lategame. The way you play this style is you attempt to funnel as much gold and resources into yourself as you can, by power farming your jungle and looking to gank lanes (and tax cs!) after your clear when it's convenient for you. Once laning phase ends, your goal is to catch as many waves as you can, and eventually looking to clear your camps into pushing a lane to maximize your income. |
This playstyle works really well if you can manage to pull it off. You want to split push towards whatever lane has the next objective coming up, so if dragon is spawning soon you want to be pathing towards and pushing bottom lane, or if baron is coming up you clear camps into and then push toplane. The hypercarry playstyle is all about getting as much resources as possible onto you, and becoming a massive threat through either splitpushing or teamfighting when you roll in 3 levels up on the enemy team and start wacking them with 2.8 attack speed.
This build also is the most flexible, giving you the opportunity to build all kinds of items such as Wit's End and Death's Dance if you need more sustain when fighting extended fights.
This playstyle is surprisingly easy to put into effect once you've practiced it a few times. I would recommend this playstyle if your toplane or mid are playing low econ champs such as pantheon, galio, malphite or maokai where they don't need much resources.
When ganking, make sure to use your scanner to check for wards. On J4, if you can, hold your EQ for a bit. You usually want to walk as close to the enemy as possible and slow them with your W or red buff auto attacks before using eq to chase them once they flash away from you and your teammates. Once you're six, when ganking if they have flash you want to flash ult them then EQ through them where they flashed to while you turn your ult off, otherwise you can just walk at them and do whatever. |
As always, look for lanes which have good gank setup or are in favorable positions. A few things to look for when trying to pick a lane to gank are: Crowd Control, no mobility, constant fighting, no wards, no enemy jungle nearby, enemy low on health or mana, and is it convenient for you?
Forcing too many ganks early can put you in a really bad spot, especially if you don't get any kills off your ganks. Remember to farm camps from time to time and not just put all your time into fighting.
If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me on my stream or in my discord server; im quite active on both. You can also try twitter but I can't promise as timely a response. Thanks for reading my guide!
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