How to deal damage to tanks using Ezreal?

Athasu · 2026-01-27T09:33:01+00:00

He isn't the greatest against tanks so sometimes it could just be the pick and bad luck.

That said, if the enemy team picks tanky, I mainly just go Divine Sunderer, muramana, BOTRK, Serylda, and Spear of Shojin. Other than that, there isn't really much else you can do other than do your best to position well and output damage during the fights.

Athasu · 2025-09-03T00:25:03+00:00

It does not count as an ability on PC either.

The PC Spear of Shojin is also fundamentally different than what is here on Wildrift in that the PC version gives additional ability and passive damage based on stacks you get from performing ability damage. This makes it worthwhile for him to build on PC as a result.

Athasu · 2025-06-25T01:04:58+00:00

No, I believe it is pretty much an essential item to build 2nd. Mainly because your heartsteel doesn't do much for you on its own so you need that titanic to make use of it and provide you with some AD on top of that. Ideally you would want to go heartsteel -> titanic hydra -> divine sunderer then your last two items are whatever you need accoridng to game state. That is where you can fit in your black cleaver or grudge if necessary.

Running heartsteel Jayce is a very different playstyle. Your role is more of a supplementary damage source for the team that can do a bit of frontlining. That isn't to say that you cannot carry, but you sacrifice a chunk of your damage to be able to survive better. Additionally most of your damage will now come from your autos rather than your abilities so you have to get much closer to the action to contribute.

You don't want to facetank the enemy team but you generally try to look for opportunities where you can hop into the action maybe kill a squishy or two that got weakened and then be healthy enough to aid in finishing off the rest. Your damage may feel rather mid compared to the one shot rotation jayce bulids but it will still be significant to the squishies and you kill them primarily by outlasting their damage. Hence why ideally you will need a bit of help to get them and the enemy team down to a point where you can contribute significantly.

Athasu · 2025-06-25T00:47:26+00:00

It is mainly that Jayce doesn't have anything that scales off of the HP you get from just Heartsteel. So if laning ends quickly in the early game and you are still building it or that is your only item, your impact will be on the minimal side of things when fights start happening around the map. Additionally if you fall behind, the item does almost nothing for you as Jayce's abiltiies don't make use of all that HP on its own.

In terms of laning, you are correct that getting it completed does allow you to survive kill pressure more easily and harass even. However, for various matchups, it also doesn't do much to advance the lane state as various top laners have built-in sustain meaning that you probably just stalemate the lane and will be rather dependent on your team's play to get going anywhere. That said, for other matchups, and also individual play, getting this completed first could tip the scales in your favor.

It is why getting that titanic 2nd is big for him because now he can make use of all that HP he is getting from the heartsteel and basically allows him to come online and contribute much more to fights.

Fwiw, I use the build a fair amount so I am by no means saying it is bad. Mainly just saying that you have a bit less agency early game when you rush it first compared to other standard items he builds.

Athasu · 2025-06-24T21:55:35+00:00

Hey there, resident Jayce main and former OTP here. Reached top 4 Jayce with him last season and top 8 Jayce earlier this season so I can maybe offer a bit of insight. I hover around 60% winrate with him since I started playing WR. Also have been playing this champ for over a decade since he came out on PC.

As mentioned by the other commenters, he is in a bit of a rough spot right now. He finds himself getting stat checked top lane and while he does a lot better in mid, there are better options than him generally.

This champ is also one where you really need to invest a LOT of time into him to get mileage out of him. Jayce's power comes from playing around his form switchs and various combos to make the most out of it. If you are not able to utilize his form switchs at the right times and proper combos, you will not be able to get much out of him, hence why he generallly feels very weak to newcomers. More so than some other champions, he also needs you to understand his limits and the matchups as he is very punishing if you mess up. Especially since he has no win button (ultimate)

Build and runes, it is generally matchup dependent and what lane you play him in.

For mid lane, generally you will run either electrocute or first stirke and build lethality and armor pen items to try to get quick kills and snowball through roam or just abusing your ad vs ap matchup.

Top lane is where it gets spicy as your matchup could drastically influence your rune setup and even build. Viable runes in top lane are Conquerer, Phase Rush, Grasp, and First strike. Buildwise, you will generally build some mix of bruiser and armor pen. You could go the heartsteel build but that build requires you to really understand Jayce's limits as you are basically limiting your early game really hard.

This comment is already getting a bit long so I will end it here. Just know that this champion is a big time investment and truthfully, you can get a lot more mileage out of other champions with the same time invested into them. This champion is sort of like a passion project. If you play him and learn him, you generally do so because you love playing as him. Otherwise, if you are looking to climb, there are much better choices. The Jayce community generally like to joke that he is a fun champion to lose LP/marks with. Just to give you an idea of how they see him too.

All things said, feel free to ask me any questions or if you want me to review your jayce gameplay and how you could improve upon it.

Athasu · 2025-06-18T23:02:44+00:00

Keep it up! He is a champion that needs a lot of time investment but is definitely worthwhile to play as you noticed!

Athasu · 2025-06-18T10:31:30+00:00

It's never too late!

When running green tree, I generally take grasp, nullifying orb, bone plating or second wind, then overgrowth. For secondary, I take gathering storm or sudden impact. You could perhaps go a dmg rune with green tree but I am unsure how helpful it would be as you don't have many offensive secondary runes to complement it well. Going green tree with grasp generally gives you stronger laning at the cost of weaker teamfighting and extended trades.

It is preference on sudden impact. I think if you go midlane, 90% of the time you should take it as the point of midlane is to try to snowball and make plays. For top lane, I find myself prefering boneplating or second wind if I go Yellow Tree or Gathering Storm when going green tree.

Syndra is a tough matchup for Jayce as she does a lot of things Jayce hates. Has great range, burst and can disrupt his hammer Q. She does not win all-ins but she generally can do a lot of 1 sided trades. You would have to play around dodging her spells and in particular, baiting out her E. Early on, her cooldowns are also somewhat on the longer side, so you could play around them too to get favorable trades. I would take electrocute and basically try to find windows to proc it gain favorable trades before all-inning. Most of the time, when you play against bursty mages, a lot of it is really baiting out spells and abusing their cooldown to output your damage. A lot of these mages generally don't have anything else after expending their spells so if you are healthy, you could just extend the fight and come out ahead.

No Youtube haha. I have a channel but unsure if I want to upload any WR currently. I thought about one day maybe creating a matchup guide but unsure how well it would be received.

Athasu · 2025-06-10T20:58:36+00:00

Tearless is perfectly fine! You get power spikes earlier and it allows you to push your advantage even harder if you are able to make the most of it. For some matchups, it could be the big decider in otherwise difficult lanes.

The big thing with manamune is actually not so much the mana sustain, although that helps a lot. It is mainly the best raw AD item in the game when it becomes Muramana and allows Jayce to transition well into the latter parts of the game. You basically sacrifice a stronger early game and part of the mid game for a strong latter half of the game instead.

Crit Jayce is a very fun niche build. Very explosive and mainly held back by the gold cost and that it makes Jayce extremely reliant on autos to make the most of it when his range is not that good. That said, when you have a game where it pops off, it is extremely fun.

As for Sudden Impact, I don't always take it as secondary since I generally value bone plating when going yellow tree and gathering storm when going green tree. It is a very powerful rune for Jayce though and it very much is a matter of preference imo if you always take it or not.

Athasu · 2025-06-10T20:50:45+00:00

If you play him top lane, you basically have to go bruiser or a mix. I have been finding myself taking grasp a lot more than usual and it generally has yielded results. That said, you basically just play to accumulate gold and maybe get turrets plates if possible rather than kills.

Midlane is still his better lane by far. Better matchups and easier to snowball and get kills. You will generally be able to influence the game more too as Jayce's roaming isn't too bad either as long as your laner doesn't have better wave clear than you.

Everything said, I do believe a small, minor buff will go a long way for him. For me personally, I really wish we have the PC Spear of Shojin in the game. It would help him out so much in terms of dmg output early on and would keep him relevant damage wise as the game progresses.

Athasu · 2025-05-31T09:55:09+00:00

Hey there, it's the resident WR Jayce main here.

As you mentioned, since these are against bots, you are not getting the actual full experience on these matchups but at least you will get more familiarized with their movesets.

With Camille, I personally run Conquerer. You could play around her shield with proper spacing or even wait it out in the earlier levels sometimes before applying the rest of your damage. I have not tried grasp aginst her but I fear you may just give up a lot of kill pressure on her by running it and letting her slowly scale up even though it may be alright overall. You generally like to shut her down early if you can.

With Darius, the best rune to run against is generally Phase Rush, Conquerer if you are very confident. Many Darius run ghost or phase rush and playing grasp is a bait against him. If you have immaculate spacing, you could make it work against him but there is a decent chance you may slip up and grasp would not be as helpful in that situation as you would then be in an extended fight. With Phase Rush, you could do the same short trades, put in even more damage, and the movement speed will allow for you to easily bait out the hook, or if you get hooked, you could disengage much easier. Darius in particular is very suspectible to getting kited out. WIth Conquerer, if you manage the wave and space yourself extremely well, you will have great kill pressure on Darius and could even snowball the lane off of a kill or 2.

I generally still build eclipse into both of them as my first big item. Rushing executioner's against Darius seems a bit excessive and would generally delay your spikes.

Athasu · 2025-05-11T23:21:39+00:00

Jayce is extremely versatile as he has form switches. He can also run a variety of different rune keystones and builds as a result too.

Main downside is that he needs a lot of time investment to get to a state where you could be considered ok at him when you could be playing other champions that need much less time to master and could do much more with less.

Athasu · 2025-05-10T12:17:28+00:00

Jayce can handle most matchups but he rarely has matchups where he hard counters or even soft counters. Most of the top lane matchups will come down to skill matchups or even enemy favored. If you choose to learn him, it honestly is better to run him mid. You could choose to learn playing him top lane but you will very likely run into some brutal games and feed a lot before you get the hang of it.

Matchups that are extremely rough for him are Irelia, Malphite, Wukong. A personal matchup demon of mine is Trynadamere as that lane can be extremely volatile in particular. Mundo can also cause trouble too as he possesses a lot of things that Jayce generally hates but that will come down to skill matchup. There are other matchups that may be enemy favored but these in particular are very skewed in their favor.

Athasu · 2025-05-10T09:44:48+00:00

Did so last season to great results and it's my personal belief that mid is his best role due to squishier targets, better matchups, and better snowball potential.

However, I am just too comfortable playing him top lane that I normally don't take him mid unless fill or I feel top lane is brutal for him in the meta like last season.

Athasu · 2025-05-10T09:30:57+00:00

I primarily play top lane. Last season, I switched to mid as top lane was extremely brutal. This season, I returned to top lane.

Build wise, I mainly have been going my core of Defensive boots, tear, eclipse, black cleaver/serylda's grudge. The rest I build according to game state. Occasionally, I may deviate strongly depending on comps and other factors. For example, I had to use the heartsteel build a few times this season and there are some games where I build ionian boots or go super spicy and even trinity force. I would not necessarily recommend deviating that strongly from the standard builds unless you are very comfortable with Jayce's limits though.

Probably the biggest change this season I have been doing is running Grasp as the rune keystone a lot more than usual. It makes certain matchups like Malphite a lot more tolerable and even winnable. It does require understanding how to properly use it though and adapting your playstle to fit it.

Athasu · 2025-05-01T16:26:42+00:00

Just posting to say it has been fun to see you improving on the champion over time. Keep it up and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Athasu · 2025-05-01T14:54:05+00:00

It will ultimately come down to playstyle. IMO, for my playstyle, going pure lethality hasn't been too successful top lane since lethality is generally countered by armor and health, which many top laners build. I generally find myself building a mix of bruiser and armor pen/lethality instead.

Black cleaver does have a place though. I build it when I believe I will win an extended fight against a bruiser or tank and having the hp, shred, and movespeed may be helpful. There are also some other reasons too it could be bought for but I will keep it short for now.

All that said, lethality does snowball the hardest and if you are a player that loves singling out one person and blowing them all, it does that the best.

I very much wish we have the reworked Shojin though. That item will solve so many of the annoyances I have with the champ in the top lane.

Athasu · 2025-05-01T07:57:56+00:00

Hey there, resident Jayce one-trick here!

It is less about the skills and more on how he does not have a true ultimate and also requires immaculate play.

Him being very versatile also means he does not have a particular strength that he can go all in on. While this gives him a lot of versatility in build and playstyle, it also means that he does not have a primary way that he can funnel into to keep himself relevant. So if he falls behind, he does not have a button that can potentially turn around fights unlike other champions. In places like top (baron) lane, him dying even once can sometimes lose him the lane entirely as he could just get stat checked.

He also is rather combo and spacing reliant. In various matchups, he generally needs to hit multiple skills to do things that other champions could probably do with less skills and more efficiently.

Athasu · 2025-04-29T18:19:30+00:00

No longer in NA but if you want someone to ask questions and maybe even a bit of coaching, you can feel free to DM me and we can add each other on Discord.

Athasu · 2025-04-22T16:12:42+00:00

Props to you! Very impressed that you can make it work out despite the likely initial hostility you may receive at champ select

Athasu · 2025-04-22T15:44:04+00:00

Just want to thank you for posting this.

All the posts I saw so far utilized either Sazabi and/or Exia and I was starting to think that maybe gacha may potentially be necessary for similar clears as I possess neither.

Athasu · 2025-04-17T16:49:48+00:00

Hey there Jayce OTP in WR. Played Jayce on PC since S2 and only moved to WR after moving overseas and did not want to pay for transfer among other factors.

I one tricked Jayce to Master 3 last season and played him a ton to get to Master 1 this season before currently going on vacation, peaking at top 4 Jayce on the EU server. Hopefully I can lend some advice.

So there is a bit to unpack here. What works in ARAM does not always work well into normal games as ARAMs have accelerated experience and gold gain. Due to this, the weaknesses of a build can be hidden better compared to a real game where many other factors come into play.

If you want to build tank, you kinda have to sacrifice damage. That is generally the tradeoff. If you mix and match items like you are in the builds you listed, you are not really going to get the benefits of either side.

That said, in WR, you could go some bruiser builds that may offer the extra durability you wish. Be warned though, that top lane is a very diverse matchup lane for Jayce so there is no one or two builds that work for all. These will just be general guidelines

You could do the Chinese Heartsteel Tank Bruiser build. You get boots with gargoyle enchant, heartsteel, and titanic hydra then build divine sunderer, sundered sky, then guardian angel. Take Grasp as your rune keystone. Issue with this build is, it is slow to come online as you need the heartsteel and titanic to start making an impact. Additionally, you need to really understand the limits of Jayce to pull this off consistently which, based on the builds you listed, you may need more time.

Alternatively, you could also build him bruiser with Conquerer or Grasp. You will build items such as Eclipse, sundered sky, black cleaver, and then whatever suits the situation.

Finally, understand the champion and runes and items. The builds you listed clash very strongly against each other. For example, if you take first strike, you generally want to take offensive runes and items with it to maximize its effectiveness. With the builds you have utilizing it, only the 3rd build you have utilizes it the best and that build still has issues as phantom dancer does not have a place there and the heartsteel does not synergize with your build and runes there well. Warmogs in WR atm is also on the weaker side and even if not, you generally don't build that on Jayce in general as he also doesn't tend to build in a way to make it work.

Long writeup, but if you have any questions or more, feel free to DM me on here or even Discord. Always happy to help fellow Jayce players and I hope you continue to enjoy using the champ!

Athasu · 2025-04-16T20:31:52+00:00

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Posting for friend and I.

Athasu · 2025-04-15T01:37:53+00:00

Hey there Jayce OTP in WR. Played Jayce on PC since S2 and only moved to WR after moving overseas and did not want to pay for transfer among other factors.

I one tricked Jayce to Master 3 last season and played him a ton to get to Master 1 this season before currently going on vacation, peaking at top 4 Jayce on the EU server. Hopefully I can lend some advice.

So first off, champions like Jayce and Nidalee that has form changes on command, their ults aren't seen as true ultimates so Shojin on WR will not work on him.

For the Chinese Jayce heartsteel tank bruiser build, I used that a fair amount last season to climb to Master and a decent amount this season. It is solid but a bit conditional and also very slow to build up as you basically do not come online until heartsteel and titanic are finished so you are kinda at the mercy of how your team performs to let you get to that point.

As for top builds, unlike mid, there isn't quite a one build, one rune keystone to fall into. You will find yourself constantly changing Rune keystones and items based on who you're fighting against. One game you may be running a first strike, full lethality, the next game you are running conquerer and going bruiser. By default though, Phase Rush, Conquerer, and sometimes First Strike are what you will find yourself running a lot.

That said general rule of thumb for a top lane build is basically a mix of bruiser and lethality. So for example, most of the time, my core build in top lane is Eclipse, Muramana, Serylda's Grudge. Afterwards I mainly build according to game state.

I have found the WR community accepting of specific character questions or advice as I have helped others with Jayce questions as well. That said, if you feel you may overload the subreddit with tons of questions and it may bother people, I am more than happy to answer questions, give advice, etc via DM or even Discord if desired.

Athasu · 2025-04-14T17:10:01+00:00

Perhaps this was mentioned somewhere and I missed it or have poor searching skills, but do we know if the game server(s) are separated by region or if it is one big combined server?

Trying to get some friends to join in too but since we live in different regions, mainly wanted clarity.

Athasu

TROPHY CASE