Jayce has always been a champion among the League of Legends roster that requires exquisite mechanics to fully unleash his potential. The Defender of Tomorrow is usually played at the highest level of play, but Riot Games has been pushing him back into the meta with subsequent buffs.
If you’re trying to pick him up in your solo queue games, you might struggle to find the best combinations of runes and items. This is because Jayce can be played in multiple ways and each build has its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses. To help you out, we will be going through the most popular builds on the champion. Here are the best builds for Jayce in League.
Runes
For Jayce, we have two main rune setups plus a third one that’s more situational and it will depend on how you like to play the champion. While they have certain common runes, there are also major differences that we need to break down.
First strike Jayce
Inspiration
First strike: This rune is effective with Jayce but it requires you to have a strong understanding of spacing during the laning phase since you need to make sure to deal damage before your enemies. Against most melee top laners, you will have no problem proccing the rune so make sure to check whether your enemy laner can damage you earlier.
If played correctly, this rune should allow you to build a substantial gold lead without necessarily getting any kills. The extra gold you’re getting will prove useful in the mid-late game, where you will find yourself with better items and thus deal more damage.
Magical Footwear: While you won’t be able to get your boots in the first few minutes, this rune will save you a lot of gold in exchange for stronger damage output. Closing the core item for Jayce is more important so this is the go-to rune in the second Inspiration tree.
Biscuit Delivery: Despite being nerfed repeatedly, many players still opt to go for the biscuits. The mana regeneration that it grants you can be quite helpful during the laning phase where Jayce gets mana-hungry quite early but it might also be helpful to survive the enemies’ aggressive trades. If you know that you won’t be fighting as much, going for Future’s market is the alternative choice.
Cosmic Insight: It will allow you to have your Flash and Teleport on cooldown for shorter periods of time. While the Item Haste is not as significant, it’s a small bonus that Jayce can easily take advantage of with his build (which we will see later). Some players prefer to go Time Warp Tonic, but the nerfs have made it somewhat obsolete for the meta.
Sorcery
Manaflow Band: Jayce’s early damage is not high so he usually has to use multiple spells to quickly clear waves, causing him to run out of mana. Having 250 extra mana during the game is something you always want on the champion. It’s easy to stack thanks to the long-range Q that you can spam and it will prevent you from running out of mana in the first three minutes of the lane.
Transcendence: Not only does Jayce want more mana but he also loves having lower cooldowns on his spells. Having faster rotations of abilities means he can take advantage of both forms more effectively and greatly increase his damage output. The champion cooldown reduction upon takedown is just the icing on the cake.
Bonuses: +10 percent attack speed, +9 adaptive force, +6 armor
Phase Rush Jayce
Sorcery
Phase Rush: Compared to First Strike, Phase Rush is the rune you want to go for when you know that the enemy has kill threat in the lane. Activating the rune will allow you to quickly put distance between you and your opponent, escaping from their trade attempt. What’s special about this rune, though, is that it can also be used offensively to dodge incoming spells or quickly reposition for the next rotation of spells. It’s an effective rune that has a lot of value in any phase of the game, but it’s best used in teamfights and during the laning phase.
Manaflow Band: See above.
Transcendence: See above.
Gathering Storm: Since you no longer have First Strike with this setup to get better stats with the extra gold, Gathering Storm compensates that in the later stages of the game. Gathering Storm is better in most cases, but if you prefer to have more aggressive trades, you can also choose to go for Scorch.
Bonuses: +10 percent attack speed, +9 adaptive force, +6 armor. (You can also consider swapping attack speed for another +9 adaptive force)
Inspiration
Magical Footwear: See above.
Biscuit Delivery: See above.
Conqueror Jayce
Conqueror: With so many damage spells that Jayce’s kit offers, fully stacking Conqueror is quite an easy task. The rune grants him higher overall damage and a bit of extra sustain which is always nice to have. That being said, this rune doesn’t give as much room for error as the previous two rune setups so choose this rune when you’re mechanically proficient at the champion.
Presence of Mind: The increase in mana regeneration works similarly to how Manaflow helps Jayce during the laning phase. The best thing for this rune, however, is the mana refund that you get on takedowns, which is optimal for teamfights or extended skirmishes.
Legend: Tenacity: It’s the best rune possible you can get in among the Legend runes. Tenacity is always useful against teams with a lot of crowd control and it can make a difference between living and dying.
Coup de Grace: On Jayce, you’re likely to go for the squishier targets first so Coup de Grace adds more damage to your poke and burst. Last Stand can be a good second choice if you know that you won’t likely kill an enemy with a full combo.
Sorcery
Manaflow Band: See above.
Transcendence: See above.
Bonuses: +10 percent attack speed, +9 adaptive force, +6 armor. (Always go for attack speed since it allows you to stack Conqueror faster)
Items
At the start of the game, you can usually start in two different ways: you can either go with the Tear of the Goddess or Doran’s Blade. The first one grants you more mana to safely get through the lane and you will be able to stack its passive more quickly. By the time you get to buy Manamune, the item will be fully stacked and it will immediately transform into Muramana, giving you a greater spike.
With Doran’s Blade, instead, you will have better trading power and sustain to get through the first minutes of the game when Jayce is more susceptible to ganks and skirmishes.
This third option is risky because it grants the worst starting stats. In return, however, it grants you a great early spike since you will be able to buy Serrated Dirk on your first recall (you just need 750 gold).
Out of these three options, Doran’s Blade is the more balanced choice and the go-to start item in most scenarios.
Builds
Regarding the builds, there are two options that you want to go for, depending on the enemy team comp in relation to yours. In the majority of cases, Eclipse, Manamune, and Serylda’s Grudge are the three core items that give you everything you need: attack damage, armor penetration, sustain, mana, and ability haste.
Once you fully stack your Manamune, you will notice a great increase in damage output and the slow from Serylda’s Grudge will help you land your abilities more often.
This is a secondary build that players might opt for against multiple squishy targets. Lethality is more effective in this case than percentage armor penetration: Prowler’s Claw, Youmuu’s Ghostblade, and Umbral Glaive paired with the Mythic’s passive lethality will allow Jayce to deal almost true damage with his physical damage spells.
That being said, he will run out of mana at a much faster rate so you have to maximize the damage output by hitting most Qs.
If you’re well ahead of your enemies, you can continue building lethality rather than building defensive items. Otherwise, you should consider buying at least one of the three you see above.
Maw of Malmortius is your go-to item against heavy magic damage team compositions, allowing you to survive most of the burst. Guardian Angel works best against physical damage and the revive can be a game-changer for teamfights since enemies will look to take you down as soon as possible.
When facing mixed damage compositions, having an Edge of Night is also a great choice since it gives you attack damage, lethality, and the ability to block the first ability that hits you, and the passive refreshes a lot faster than the other two.
