- It will focus on the champion’s ultimate
- Jax will be made into more of an AP user
- These changes are coming in League’s Patch 13.1 early next year
Jax has been coming up in discussions for changes in the past few months, and Riot finally outlined what exactly they will be implementing.
Riot Is Working On Jax
The months in between competitive seasons are the perfect time for developers to make adjustments and balance changes. A ton of tanks are up for change in League’s next big patch on December 7, but recently Riot also outlined the updates coming to a somewhat neglected fighter/skirmisher – Jax.
Riot teased that Jax is up for changes a few weeks ago. League’s lead champion designer August Browning confirmed on Twitter a couple of weeks ago that a mid-scope update for the fighter is being worked upon with Daniel “Maxw3ll” Emmons, who recently helped lead the charge on League’s newest champion, K’Sante.
Jax is being worked on alongside Rell, as both champions have come up in discussions surrounding possible updates in recent months. As the time rolled on, Riot finally revealed all the details surrounding Jax’s mid-scope update.
How Is Jax Going to Change?
Coming to the game with Patch 13.1, Jax will see most of the changes be around his ultimate. Browning stated in a recent Twitter post that Riot wants to make the champion’s ultimate more exciting and rewarding to use and to bring back the option to build him AP. Since the dev team is focusing on Jax’s ultimate, and Browning has said before the changes to the champion will not be very big, Jax’s passive will not be changed.
The balancing team will increase base damage from 55-155 to 55-175, which will now scale with 100 percent of Ability Power. This means the spell will be very make-or-break and will be crucial for AP Jax. Because of this, the dev team is decreasing the damage bonus per attack dodged from 20 percent of total damage to 20 percent of base damage.
The champion will also see a significant change to his Grandmaster’s Might. Firstly, the damage is getting decreased from 100/140/180 (plus 70% AP) to 100-150 (60% AP). Secondly, the spell will have a new active that is described like this: “Jax swings his lantern around him, dealing 150-350 (plus 100 percent AP) magic damage to nearby enemies. If he hits a champion he gains 10-40 (+.1 bonus AD) Armor and Magic Resist, plus 14-22 (+.1 bonus AD) per champion hit for the next eight seconds. During this time the passive damage applies every second attack instead of every third.”
Finally, Browning ended his post with a cheeky tease that says the dev team added a secret passive involving a “fishing minigame”. The smiley face at the end of that sentence gives no clue as to what Browning meant by it.
Jax’s changes will come into effect sometime in early 2023. This will make him a combination of melee AP assassin and AP-oriented bruiser that is hoped to do well in team fights.
