LoL: Jarvan IV Champion Build Guide

In this Jarvan IV champion build guide, we're going to cover arguably the strongest Jungler in Patch 11.19, Jarvan IV. This guide will cover his matchups, standard build, and a few tips for dominating with Demacia’s King.

Jarvan IV has been quietly receiving buffs throughout the last several months. Whether it was from changes to Goredrinker, his bad matchups being nerfed, or simply receiving damage buffs on his abilities. These changes have allowed him to regain relevance as a mainstay throughout the last few patches, his kit is simplistic but versatile. He currently holds a 52% winrate, direct evidence of this champion's raw strength in a solo queue environment.

Jarvan IV Build: Runes and Items

Jarvan IV Build: Runes

As with many bruisers right now, Jarvan takes Conqueror. He excels at dueling throughout the entirety of the game, so he almost always takes Triumph along with to survive these fights. Legend: Alacrity is fantastic for him, but Legend:Tenacity is excellent too. Both provide things Jarvan loves, attack speed and survivability respectfully. Coup de Grace can also work wonders for finishing off low-hp targets in fights, but Last Stand can be taken commonly as well to help your damage output whilst your Goredrinker and Steraks keep you swinging.

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In the second tree, we’ll take domination runes. This is the standard of many Junglers in Patch 11.19. You take Sudden Impact most commonly, which gives you fantastic burst after using your E-Q to combo to engage. Relentless Hunter is great to take as well, given that it increases your overall move speed and helps you to roam the map. Ravenous Hunter is fantastic too, for additional sustain.

Jarvan IV Build: Items

Currently, almost every single AD Jungler takes Goredrinker. This item has been buffed into oblivion and even AD assassins are relying on it. The heal is ridiculously strong, coupled with it improving clear time from the active on Ironspike Whip. This item gives Jarvan IV everything he wants, but there are cases in which you can go for Eclipse instead. (If the enemy team is all squishy targets, where you can utilize lethality).

Sterak's Gage is a staple of this build, as it is with many other champions nowadays. It’s most likely going to be your second item, given how much power is in the stats and shield. It aids Jarvan IV in sustaining through teamfights and avoiding getting bursted. After Sterak’s, a Black Cleaver is in order for additional survivability and armor shred. This synergizes with Jarvan’s built into armor reduction. Later in the game, you can consider a Guardian Angel buy. This is a fantastic late game item and picking up a value stopwatch is great for close late game fights.

As for situational itemization, Spirit Visage is often picked up against AP heavy comps. It also amplifies all of your healing, which is huge for J4. You can also opt in for Death’s Dance for additional survivability against AD heavy teams.

Jarvan IV Guide: Early Game

Jarvan is in a unique position as an early-game dominant jungler. It’s important to look for opportunities on the map as soon as you’re level two with points in E and Q. You always start your flag (E), for the increased attack speed buff for you and any allies leashing you. If no lanes are in a fantastic position to gank, you can opt for a 3 or 4 camp clear if you want to still be aggressive.

However, a 5 camp clear has been the standard for many junglers in this patch and Jarvan can certainly power farm if he wants to. Avoid forcing fights under tower, unless the opportunities look really good. It’s important to remember that you are very strong in the early game, so don’t feel afraid to skirmish at crab or try a tower dive once in a while!

One tip for maximizing jungle clear efficiency is to make sure you’re alternating auto attacks on different jungle monsters. This helps you to use your passive armor reduction for camps like Krugs and Raptors.

Jarvan IV Guide: Mid Game

As the mid game rolls around, you hit your power spike. You want to ensure that your team is setting the tempo of the game if you’re ahead. If not, don’t worry. Jarvan is fantastic at setting up pick offs for your team, go look for enemy champions alone in their jungle or in the sidelane. Additionally, J4 is fantastic at contesting dragons and potentially stealing them too! Just make sure you don’t stop trying to make plays happen, because you do fall off eventually.

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In an ideal world, Jarvan’s job is to hop onto the ADC or Mid lane and keep them in place with his ult. Make sure you account for things like dashes or flashes when you’re committing to using his R, and coordinating with teammates too. A Jarvan IV + Orianna ult can be devastating in the correct scenario, so keep that in mind.

Jarvan IV Guide: Late Game

As you transition into the late game, unless you’re super far ahead you will fall off. Jarvan’s role in the late game usually shifts to trying to survive and still CC people, rather than going for the kill. That is unless you ignore our guide and built a full lethality one shot Jarvan, in which you’re likely better off trying to kill squishy targets. Forcing summoner spells and ults out of the enemy team can be extremely valuable, just make sure that you aren’t over committing to fights if your team is too slow to follow up.

Jarvan IV Guide Tip: When fighting over an objective, use your flag as a ward, since it gives you vision. You'll be able to check brushes, the drake, or baron from a safe distance.

Jarvan IV Guide: Good and Bad Matchups

Jarvan excels at punishing immobile scaling champions. Any ADC you can think of (other than Ezreal), will hate playing against Jarvan. For jungle specific matchups though, it’s the exact same thing. Scaling jungle champions that are worse at skirmishes, such as Karthus, really hate Jarvan. In his current state, he excels at beating out many other bruisers in the jungle, such as Udyr and Volibear.

Champions with more mobility and hard CC tend to be harder for J4 to deal with. Picks like Xin Zhao, Poppy, or Amumu can easily punish Jarvan for his standard pattern of play. It’s worthy to note that Olaf also wields an exceptional win rate against Jarvan IV currently as well, likely due to his unmatchable tempo and early-game objective control. This nullifies Jarvan’s early-game domination and leaves him in the dust.

That’s all we have for you guys today. Hopefully this guide was helpful, now it’s time for some practice in whichever game mode you prefer with our Jarvan IV Build Guide!

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