Climbing Elo: Jhin

With season six coming to a close tomorrow, I know a lot of people are on that last minute grind to get one division higher. Everyone in division one is making the mad dash to get that LP in order to gain the next tier of rewards. If there is any champion that can help you gain LP, it’s Jhin, and boy is he fun.

Disclaimer

With this series, I will be telling you ways that I enjoy playing these champions. I am not implying that these methods are the best, nor am I saying that these champions are meant to be played the way I play them. Simply put, these are fun builds to use in ranked that are effective and don’t force you to be a meta slave to win.

My History With Jhin

If there is any champion that hit home with me in terms of relativity to me, it’s Jhin. When my friends told me “the new champion is so for you Josh,” I thought they were making fun of me and I was going to see some weird sociopathic killer. Although my hunch was right, it wasn’t a bad thing.

Riot’s most recent released champions have all had insane lore that is really engaging and in-depth, and Jhin was no different. At first glance, he looks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but after analysing his voice lines and abilities, you see him as a sadistic serial killer with a strong theatrical background focused on making every single kill an utter masterpiece, making this character eerily creepy yet jaw droppingly interesting.

Day one of Jhin’s release, I wouldn’t be surprised if I played over 10 or 15 games that day. Jhin was my second mastery seven champion and currently has my highest mastery score at 81k and I can’t get enough of him. I have landed on a semi-conventional build that I have molded to fit my personal preferences.

Abilities

Jhin in an explosive mid-to-late game threat with huge burst and catch potential at the cost of being very immobile.

Passive: Whisper – Jhin’s auto attack works on an ammo system where he has four shots then has to reload. The gimmick is, every fourth auto from Jhin is a guaranteed crit that deals extra damage equal to a percent of the enemy’s missing health (up to 25 percent at level 11). On top of this, Jhin doesn’t scale with attack speed, but instead, attack speed and crit chance scales his total AD, meaning Jhin can reach insane amounts of AD. Jhin’s normal auto attack can still crit, but they won’t have the percent missing health damage outside of the fourth shot. Whenever Jhin crits, he also gains a small burst of movement speed for a short duration that scales off of his attack speed.

Q: Dancing Grenade – Jhin throws a grenade at an enemy of his choice, then it bounces to three more targets. If the grenade kills the target it hits, the grenade will do more damage to its next target. It continues bouncing until it hits four targets or runs out of targets to “dance” on. This ability makes for a great waveclear in the mid-game and could easily be a strong poke option against unaware opponents. Since Jhin has a naturally slow attack speed, you can use this ability in between autos for a smooth transition between attacks that puts out more consistent damage. 

W: Deadly Flourish – Jhin shoots a long range projectile out after channeling for a short duration, dealing physical damage to the first champion it hits. The passive portion of this ability allows Jhin to root a target he hits with his W if they have taken damage from another source in the past four seconds, including being slowed by Jhin’s E. Deadly Flourish is essentially a strong poking ability that has a root attached to it, giving Jhin a good option to catch people out or possibly escape a small skirmish. The ability can be very hard to hit, but once mastered, your team will praise you for catching out so many targets.

E: Captive Audience – Jhin lays a trap that goes invisible after a few seconds. Once an enemy champion or minion steps on it, the trap starts to slow everything in it for two seconds before exploding, dealing magic damage to everything inside. On top of this, the ability applies the passive needed for Deadly Flourish to stun, so you can easily combo the two for some free damage. The overall usefulness of this ability in comparison to his other abilities is pretty lackluster, but it still helps Jhin by providing him with a little bit of kite and catch to make up for his lack of movement.

R: Curtain Call – This ability alone makes Jhin insanely good in the right hands. Jhin becomes immobile for four seconds, but gains the ability to shoot four very long ranged attacks that strike the first target they hit with massive physical damage and slows for 80 percent. Just like his passive, the fourth shot of Curtain Call crits and does percent missing health damage, making it a great execute move or something to secure a kill who just barely got away. Curtain Call also gives you the opportunity to set up your jungler really easily for a gank.

Build/Playstyle

AD Jhin Bottom/Mid

Items

• Boots of Swiftness
• Duskblade of Draktharr
• Rapidfire Cannon
• Infinity Edge
• Essence Reaver
• Phantom Dancer/Mercurial Scimitar/Lord Dominik’s Regards

Skill Order

• Q

• W

• E 

Champs to AVOID playing against

• Team composition with multiple champions who dive the backline.

Summoners and Keystone – Flash/Heal/Barrier & Deathfire’s Touch

Since Jhin is a fairly strong lane bully in the early presence who excels in small trades, he can lane both as an ADC and a mid laner. Although his mid lane game is fairly weak to picks like Zed and Ahri, he is much like Corki in the fact that he can out-trade nearly anyone else just due to sheer auto attack damage. I still wouldn’t recommend picking Jhin in the mid lane unless you’re really proficient on him and can manage grenades and autos well. The biggest difference between ADC and mid Jhin is the laning phase, but after that, you’re free to play like any normal ADC.

At the start of the game, you will always start Doran’s Blade and look to hit your lane opponent with almost every fourth auto you can. Since it does extra damage based off their missing health, you will slowly start to do more and more damage over time, so make sure to trade often and keep their health bars fairly low. If you and your opponent have the same percentage of health, you have a clear advantage if you’re near your fourth shot, so keep that in mind when trading and you might be able to steal a cheesy kill early on. If your opponent decides to get greedy for CS with about 25 percent health, a Flash + Q + fourth auto can take almost any player by surprise.

After acquiring Duskblade, you can play very aggressively against champions that require too many items to be effective. With traps set up to cover possible gank routes from the jungler, you can play super aggro in both bot and mid assuming you have someone nearby to help at all times. If you don’t have anyone nearby, you’ll have to play pretty scared unless you’re extremely fed or 100 percent sure that no enemy is nearby. Rapidfire cannon solves your immobility problem for the most part and gives you enough range to start being able to poke the likes of Xerath and Lux.

As team fights start popping up around the map, be on the lookout for safe angles you can take to provide covering fire with your ult. Even if you just land one shot of your ult, you can change the tides of the entire fight, especially if it is your fourth shot. You still are very immobile compared to most other ADCs, so you will likely have a huge target above your head for the enemy backline and tanks. If you have enough peel and attack speed to scale your movement speed on your passive, you should be able to live almost any engagement. If you find yourself dying to the same CC over and over, like Malzahar ult or Annie stun, a Mercurial will save your life more than once while giving you some tank stats. 

When it comes to the lulls between team fights, Jhin can push lanes fairly well and create decent pick opportunities with his ult and W. If you manage to find a pick, look for objective control as Jhin can crit Baron and Dragon for much more than a smite can. Even when the enemy has control over an objective, Jhin can still make huge plays with his ult from far away and set up kills against unsuspecting enemies. If they spend the time to dodge your skillshots, odds are they aren’t moving optimally enough to dodge the rest of your team. You can’t commit too hard to every ultimate though, as anyone with high mobility can dive you from over a wall or from behind and likely kill you without any warning.

Conclusion

Overall, Jhin is a huge playmaking ADC with the ability to deal massive damage and lockdown key targets. Although he can be simple to play at first glance with no real challenging abilities, he takes a LOT to master and is very rewarding when played well.

Did this guide help you? Is Jhin one of your favorite champions? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments below or tweet us @GAMURScom.

With this series coming to an end along with the season, I’m looking for different champions to do guides on during the preseason. If you have a specific guide you want to see, you can tweet me at @iEnglishBetter or email me at iEnglishBetter@outlook.com.