Hello, my name is South Z ! I am a Jax main, but most importantly a theorycraft addict. My main account is currently Creu. I'm "only" in Platinum II and even though this is considered by some as low elo, I admit that my theorycraft is much better than my game sense and mental, which is why I'm writing this guide :)

I hope you guys will find it interesting and/or useful !

Jax Midlane

Now, let me explain why I prefer playing Jax in midlane.

First, this reduces some of Jax's weaknesses : For example, his lack of sustain is way easier to handle in mid, because it's almost impossible to freeze in mid thanks to how small the lane is, and it's also much faster to get back in lane.

Second, I feel like, since his rework, Jax wants to (and can) get early kills and go for 2v2s and botlane ganks super easily.

Third, Jax can avoid ganks with a Leap Strike on a Stealth Ward, as one of the most important qualities of a good midlaner is never dying to ganks.

Last but not least, Jax suffers counterpick a lot in toplane, against Poppy, Gragas, Kennen, Malphite and many others, and because of its high pickrate, it can be risky to last pick him without any second pick.
This can also lead to the enemy toplaner being confused and picking a counterpick early, which your "real" toplaner will be able to counter himself in the draft.
Jax is also an unexpected pick, that unexperienced Mid players could potentially struggle with.

Now, about the other roles :

Jax Support

Jax Support is very similar to Jax Mid, and I will probably include a Support Build in this guide.

His main weakness is, obviously, his lack of resources, as Jax needs stats to snowball and scale into the late game. Now let's get into his advantages :

1) In botlane, his Counter Strike is obviously a natural counter to every ADC, and landing it with Leap Strike almost always results in a double kill if your ADC follows. It is also quite easy to hit if your vision management is decent, and if you know how to properly punish the enemies' positioning.

2) He is the champion that takes the best value out of the Stealth Wards and stats included on the Steel Shoulderguards item, and probably the only champ that can keep his normal wards instead of going for the Oracle Lens in midgame. This basically allows you to infinitely ward-dash.
There is also an extremely strong item on him : Vigilant Wardstone. It's one of the best items in the game stat-wise, and gives even more Stealth Wards. You should always build it as soon as you get level 13.
Vigilant Wardstone gives a lot of different stats, which Jax all values (one of the rare champions to value both AD and AP) and also a free Mythic passive, and is the cheapest item in the game (apart from Mejai's Soulstealer).

3) He has an insane dive potential with Perfect Timing, that I recommend taking every game.
Biscuit Delivery can be removed, as you will not need to use any mana to depush : you're similar to Alistar, with more damage and less tankiness.

4) He still benefits from all the early skirmishes Jax mid enjoys going for, and can not only snowball himself thanks to that, but also make his own allies snowball.

Finally, here's a clip of me popping of as a support anti-AD Jax on a french stream, if you want to see him in action.

Jax Jungle

Jax's many similarities with Vi make him a good pick in the jungle on paper, but he has one main weakness : his clear.

Indeed, he doesnt benefit from the Vi's Blast Shield and loses way too much HP while clearing, which makes him too weak in early skirmishes (the most important part of Jungling at the moment).

That being said, Sylas is currently the living proof that you don't need a good clear to be a good jungler currently, and this is why Jax has a better winrate in Jungle than in Toplane.

So, if you desperately want to try playing Jax in the jungle, I recommend rushing and early Sheen, then going for a Ravenous Hydra for some sustain, and finally completing it as a Trinity Force, although I'm not an expert at Jax jungle. I might consider expanding this guide with a more serious section on it though, so stay tuned !

As you probably saw it, these runes are very uncommon on Jax, which is why I'm going to explain them in detail. There is actually a lot of thought behind them.

A bit of stats

First of all, this Jax build is a completely different playstyle, because of its maxing order.
Currently, maxing Jax's Counter Strike first, then his Leap Strike and finally his Empower last has the highest winrate from Bronze to Master+ as you can see here here. There are only a few thousands games, which is low enough for it to be secret, but high enough to be OP, which is why i'm gonna call this spell order Secret OP.

Why is it good ?

But why would maxing Counter Strike first be such a good idea ?

After hundreds of games going E>Q>W, I think I have the answer to this. It makes Jax a completely different character, way less reliant on his auto-attacks, and much more similar to a mobile caster such as Fizz.

This would objectively be infinitely stronger than the auto-attacking Jax most players are currently playing, with Divine Sunderer and Lethal Tempo if it wasnt for one main flaw : it's mana-hungry.

The Mana Problem

When I say E-max Jax is mana-hungry, I really mean it. Jax's E mana cost goes up by 10 for each point you put it it, going to 90 at level 5.

It's so mana-hungry that you can't just take Biscuit Delivery or Manaflow Band and get away with it. At Level 9 You'd be OOM before your enemies are midlife, if they are tanky.

Luckily for us Jax Mains, Riot has blessed us with our lord and savior Essence Reaver. This item is all what Jax needs : infinite mana, a Sheen (absolutely vital on Jax), some AD and Ability Haste. It's a great early item and this is why we are going to build it first.

To top it off, it has recently been buffed on patch 13.2 because of Riot's burning passion for buffing ADC's, adding it a whopping 250 gold value : almost a whole kill, which makes it even more worth building.

The Boots

The boots choice is at the same time very important and very easy for this build. As you probably understood, Ability Haste is going to be one of our most valuable stats for this builds, as this is what will allow us going in, backing off with a ward + Leap Strike, and spamming multiple Counter Strikes in a fight.

Also, they go well with Cosmic Insight, and can surprise enemy champions, for example by having your Flash way before theirs.

They are also objectively broken on a lot of other champions, just because their gold efficiency is off the roof.

We could also add, on a side note, that this increases the value of playing with Nimbus Cloak on the secondary tree, which Jax benefits a lot from with Flash and Ignite in combat.

That being said, you can still build Plated Steelcaps or Mercury's Treads against ultra-heavy AD/AA or AP/CC teams, obviously :)

An insane teamfight item

It's not really much of a secret to anyone anymore : Zhonya's Hourglass is strong on Jax. It has been seen a lot in pro play, and there is a good reason for it : its active allows Jax to get back his cooldowns, and get away from any bad fight.

This build also lacks Tenacity, so if you ever get Rooted, for example by Lux's Light Binding or Morgana's Dark Binding, you can just use your Zhonya's Hourglass and ward + Leap Strike out of the way.

Moreover, this item is even more valuable in midlane, as you will fight, engage, and get caught a lot more than in toplane.

I could write for hours about how broken this item is, but it has always been incredibly strong, which is why i strongly advise you building it early in the game.

Finally, some tankiness !

Despite its huge nerfs in patch 13.3, Radiant Virtue is still the best option for Jax in my opinion.

At this point in the game, you are an insane teamfighter, with a lot of CDR, a decent amount of resistances in fight with your Grandmaster-At-Arms and infinite mana. All you need is a lot of health and a mythic item !

The four options are Heartsteel, Jak'Sho, The Protean, Evenshroud and Radiant Virtue. Let's quickly go through all of them !

First, Heartsteel could sound like a good idea, but it's an item you have to stack in order for it to be useful, and building late in the game would be a waste.
Second, Jak'Sho, The Protean is currently built by some Jax players, and it's not bad at all, but its lack of raw health and the time it takes to activate in fights does not allow Jax to use it at its full potential. RIP Jax'Sho :'(
Third, Evenshroud is an item designed to be used by supports, but I could really see it work on Jax ! To be honest I haven't tested it yet but as I'm writing this, it really sounds promising and exciting to try.
Finally, Radiant Virtue is everything jax needs : Teamfight potential, Health on the Mythic Passive, Ability Haste, early Healing with R (which doesnt scale with missing HP anymore). All of this make Jax use this item to its full potential.

Last but not least, the build order of Zhonya's Hourglass and Radiant Virtue can (and in some cases, must) be swapped ! Generally, when you're not ahead, building Radiant Virtue is always an interesting choice, and allows you getting some value in teamfights just by pressing R.

Sterak's is so underrated

Sterak's Gage is so underrated. Really, I mean it. First, this item is pretty strange and synergizes with the champions' base AD, which is why the higher your level and base stats are, the stronger it is. According to the lol wiki :
"Sterak's Gage is 100% gold efficient at 116.2 base attack damage due to The Claws That Catch.", which means it will be gold efficient for Jax at level 13 (which you will have obviously reached at this stage of the game).

TL;DR : Jax has the 7th best base AD in the game, and the 10th best AD Growth in the game, which is why he benefits a LOT from its first passive.

Also, since what you will want to do is engage for your team and dive in the enemy carry if possible, the shield it will grant you will be more than useful and save you a countless amount of times (I speak from experience).

Now, the runes ! The runes are actually my favorite part of League, they can just change your gameplay and make a champion so much stronger and more fun !

I used to play Grasp of the Undying a lot in Toplane, and although i do think it's good in midlane, I think Hail of Blades is much better on Jax.

Hail of Blades

With this build, Jax Dashes on the enemy carry, CC's them, and then auto-attacks them until they die, with an auto attack reset, and additional damage every third auto-attack.

This reminds me of someone...

Indeed, Vi benefits from Hail of Blades for the same reasons Chemical Jax does ! After dashing in, with your auto-attack reset, you can dish out massive amounts of damage in a short amount of time, and that makes it so valuable on Jax.

But there's more ! We have not talked a lot about Jax's Passive Relentless Assault (which name will clearly not help with the fishy jokes about Jax these days...). There's a reason for that : as we will go for quick skirmishes, we won't make as much use of it as if we were playing with Lethal Tempo and Divine Sunderer.

That being said, the four auto-attacks you will quickly get with Hail of Blades will already get your passive half-stacked, and you will still attack faster for the rest of the fight ! This is another great synergy :)

Sudden Impact

We've talked a lot about Hail of Blades, but it's our keystone after all. Now this will be much shorter :

Sudden Impact Gives Lethality and Magic Penetration on dashes. Jax dashes, deals physical and magical damage. It's good.

Ghost Poro

Ghost Poro is such an underrated rune, and it synergizes extremely well with Jax, as well as the next rune we're going to see. You will have to use your Stealth Ward no matter what happens in the game, as ward-dashing is too good of a mechanic to pass on.
Thus, you will not only get a lot of vision around the map with your wards and ward-dashes, but also stack it extremely fast.

Here's a video of Nemesis explaining what I just wrote !

Ingenious Hunter

Ingenious Hunter's value on Jax is tremendous. To be honest, this is the reason why I got interested in the Domination tree for Jax, and my build almost revolves around it.

This will probably be a long paragraph so let's first remind its effects :

Passive: Gain 20 (+ 6 per Bounty Hunter stack) item haste, up to 50 at 5 stacks.

The item haste this rune gives is hilariously huge once stacked (consider a third of every item's cooldown), and it has a huge advantage : it still gives a LOT without stacks.
Let's list all of the things it synergizes with in this build

- Let's start with the most important one : It reduces the cooldown of the Sheen proc of Essence Reaver from 1.5 second to 1 second. This is insane.

- The second best one : Since Radiant Virtue got nerfed on patch 13.3, its cooldown has gone up, from 60 to 90 seconds, which destroyed its synergy with Grandmaster-At-Arms, as their cooldowns weren't synchronized anymore. Ingenious Hunter completely fixes that problem

- Zhonya's Hourglass has the best active in the game. Well, now you get to spam it.

- Jax is, with Lee Sin, arguably the best user of the Stealth Ward. You now have more of them, which means not only more vision and more mobility, but also more...

- ... Ghost Poro procs. Which is, again even more vision, and a faster scaling to get to the 10 poros powerspike. Plus, Poros are cute.

- Let's not forget Sterak's Gage, who often grants me its shield twice in extended teamfights.

To sum up, Ingenious Hunter is a pretty good rune.

Biscuit Delivery

As I explained to you before, Jax has a lot of problems with mana, like my dad with alcohol.... Thus, Biscuit Delivery serves two purposes here :

- Making Jax's lane less of a hassle against ranged bullies
- Getting some mana back once your E is maxed out and you haven't bought your Essence Reaver yet.

You could also consider taking Future's Market in order to get your Sheen and Essence Reaver faster, but I'm not a big fan of the "debt" system and all the capitalist ideas it conveys. (On a more serious note, i don't think it's worth just for two small powerspikes, but you do you)

Cosmic Insight

More Summoner Spell Haste, more Item Haste, I already explained why those stats are that good on this Chemical Jax earlier. Obviously, there is a very interesting synergy with the Ionian Boots of Lucidity and the now infamous Ingenious Hunter.

Perfect Timing

That being said, as you probably know it, the value of Ability Haste decreases the more you have it, and Cosmic Insight, although being extremely strong, is slightly less optimal here.

If you feel like you're going to fight a lot in early-mid game, go for 2v2 and/or dives, and if you want to build a Zhonya's Hourglass second (building it 3rd can lead to a lack of slots), Perfect Timing is the way to go ! As I get better at playing Chemical Jax mid, I play this rune a lot more, because I start making very good use of that Commencing Stopwatch and it helps me snowball a lot.

To end this theorycraft guide, I would like to strongly recommend you playing with Jax's base skin. This is a little bit sad, but Riot decided to change his animations, and there are a lot of problems with his auto-attacks on a lot of skins.

Even though PAX Jax and Angler Jax are reportedly still great to play, not everyone can get those (only a few thousands people own the former), so the first one is always a great choice, if you can't decide :)

Obviously, if you have a favorite skin that you're used to, and that you like to use, there's nothing wrong with that !

Finally, I'd like to thank you for reading my guide ! It may not be written perfectly, as English isn't my first language, and since it's my first guide there must be a lot of things to change and upgrade. Obviously, if you have any questions/critics, feel free to message me in my MOBAfire inbox !

I don't really know if even one person will read it actually, but it's been a lot of fun to write, and now I can have a place where all my ideas are written and summed up, so if it can help or entertain some people, it's always a plus !