JARVAN IV
The Exemplar of Demacia
Jarvan is one of the game's oldest champions and has remained largely unchanged since release. This has left him feeling quite clunky, confused and unsatisfying. He's an ability focused AD engage tank with multiple AP scalings and an attack speed steroid, its strange. This rework aims to streamline his design so that he can be the mobile, AD, engage bruiser we all wish he was, with a satisfying and impactful ability combo to disrupt the enemy and deal some hefty damage.
Abilities
Golden Aegis
Passive
Jarvan increases his armour and magic resist by a percentage for each nearby enemy or monster. Minions grant 1%, small monsters grant 2%, large monsters grant 3%, enemy champions and epic monster grant 4%.
Notes: Golden Aegis was previously an active ability on his W which gave a shield for each nearby enemy and slowed them. The shield was always so weak though that it was pretty much worthless. As such you would just use it on cooldown while in combat to maximise uptime on the shield and slow, making it effectively a passive. Rather than try to fight this I thought it best to just move the ability over to the passive slot, thereby retaining the idea that Jarvan gets tougher the more enemies are around him, encouraging him to dive aggressively into fights. I swapped it over to a resist buff rather than a shield as a constantly generating shield effectively just amounts to bonus health and regen, something already covered by the likes of Garen and Sett.
Dragon Strike
Q
Jarvan IV extends his lance in the target direction, dealing physical damage to enemies hit and inflicting them with armor reduction for 3 seconds. If the lance connects with a deployed Demacian Standard, Jarvan IV dashes to its location, knocking up nearby enemies around him and along his path for 0.75 seconds.
Notes: The "Flag and Drag" is Jarvan's most iconic move, one of the most iconic in the game in fact. So I thought it best to leave the Drag portion of that combo untouched.
Martial Cadence
W
Jarvan strikes out with great force, hitting all enemies in a small area in the target direction. Enemies hit take physical damage scaling with Jarvan's AD and their own maximum health and are knocked back a short distance. If an enemy collides with terrain during the knock back they take bonus damage scaling with Jarvan's AD and their own maximum health and are stunned for 1 second.
Notes: Martial Cadence was previously Jarvan's passive and provided bonus physical damage on hit scaling with the target's max health. This by itself would have encouraged J4 to be more of an auto-attacker but the passive had an cooldown per target so instead it just provided a bit of extra burst damage at the start of a fight and then every now and again after that. The annoying thing was that this encouraged you to rotate between targets, hitting them each once to maximise damage, which was quite tedious. With this active version we kept the burst damage and max health scaling but made it AoE so you can hit a whole wave, camp or group of champions at once. The addition of the knock back and stun plays into J4's disruptive engager identity and synergises with his ulti for an ever bigger combo than before.
Demacian Standard
E
Jarvan IV throws a Demacian flag in a straight line to the target location up to a moderate range away, dealing physical damage to enemies hit. The flag then remains for 8 seconds, granting sight of its surroundings and providing an aura that grants bonus adaptive force to Jarvan IV and all nearby allied champions.
Notes: As previously mentioned, I didn't want to interfere with the "Flag and Drag" combo so this ability has not been changed too drastically. I have made some changes to reinforce Jarvan's identity as a powerful physical ability bruiser though. Rather than daintily throwing his flag in the air and having it instantly plonk down at a target location for a bit of magic damage, J4 now hurls a javelin to the target location, which is much more fitting and feels much more impactful. The standard also now grants adaptive force rather than attack speed as having this big bruiser hit harder rather than faster makes much more sense thematically. We also want J4 to be focusing on abilities rather than auto attacks, which this helps him do, along with the fact that he now has two new damage abilities. Adaptive force also means the buff can be helpful for his whole team rather than just auto-attackers.​
Cataclysm
R
Jarvan IV leaps with displacement immunity to the target location, dealing physical damage to all nearby enemies upon arrival. The time taken for the leap scales with distance travelled so targeting the Jarvan's current location will make this ability instant. Upon impact, he creates a circle of impassable terrain that initially pulls units inside it, though not rendering them airborne. The terrain lasts for 3.5 seconds and grants sight of the area. Cataclysm can be recast after 1 second while the terrain is active. RECAST: Jarvan IV destroys the terrain created by Cataclysm.
Notes: J4's ult is another really iconic ability of his and is up there with Oriana, Malphite and Miss Fortune's when it comes to big teamfight impact. As such, the changes are minor and just intended to improve gameplay feel. It is now ground targeted rather than point and click as this grants J4 more flexibility in its usage and makes it feel less unfair to enemies by granting them more chance to dodge. Having the travel time increase with distance also improves the experience of everyone involved as it means there is no delay for J4 if he casts from close range after and "Flag and Drag", as he often does, and enemies have more chance to get out of the way if her cast from long range rather than just feeling like they had no counterplay.