Hey y'all, Konduit here. Today I've got some Jhin tips and tricks for you; I've been playing Jhin almost exclusively for about 2 weeks, and have some nifty observations to share with regards to both his micro/mechanical gameplay and macro decision making. Rather than writing a more formal blog post as I normally do, I've structured this article as a linear, bullet-pointed list. This format should be better suited to the nature of a tips and tricks post (a linear presentation of separate, sometimes unrelated thoughts), so hopefully that makes things easier and more fluid to read.

Some of these tips you may find pretty obvious, while others may surprise you a bit - Jhin's unassuming kit has a great deal of strategic depth to it, and playing the champion well yields great rewards accordingly. Anyway, without further ado, let's jump right into it:

- The standard skill order for Jhin is: Curtain Call (R) > Dancing Grenade (Q) > Deadly Flourish (W) > Captive Audience (E). You definitely want a point in Captive Audience (your traps) by level four, but I often find myself picking it up at level 2 for the vision and disruption if I feel that setting up a level 2 bot lane skirmish is unlikely or unfavorable (otherwise, I'll take a point in Deadly Flourish at level 2).

- Dancing Grenade is an extremely powerful ability. Its greatest strength, however, is not its damage, but how little mana it costs. At 30 mana at rank 1 (scaling up to 50 at rank 5), the ability is absurdly cost efficient for the value you get from it and is highly spammable (with its cooldown also going down to a mere 5 seconds at level 9). Jhin could probably function quite effectively with just his Q in laning phase - it's a farming and harassment tool all built into one cheap package.

Image credit to surrenderat20

- Dancing Grenade, as you know, ups its damage (by 35%) each time it kills a unit. This makes Jhin's farming pattern pretty smooth - get three minions in a row to low health values (with subsequent bounce targets needing to be less low), and your grenade will last hit them all and bounce to a fourth with an even bigger kick. However, because the grenade bounces are a little slow (especially if the minions are spaced out a bit), you can actually auto-attack a minion to get it low while the grenade is mid-bounce. This increases the efficiency of your farming, but you can also use this trick to catch enemies off guard by bouncing a further empowered grenade onto them if they weren't expecting a minion to die.

- Jhin's passive, Whisper, is both a boon and a burden. Without question, in order to play Jhin effectively, you must master moving in between attacks. Jhin's probably one of the best characters to learn this on, as his fixed attack speed (and comparatively long time in between shots) encourages you to do something else with all that free time! Sure, you're an immobile champion - but you've got to stay mobile after each of your attacks.

- Your fourth shot is an extremely threatening, 0 mana cost zoning tool that comes up approximately every 7 seconds. Really take advantage of Whisper's 4th bullet mechanic - step forward, be aggressive and threaten the bonus damage on your opponent if they walk up to last hit: you'll find that your opponents will give up CS in response. If you're trading auto-for-auto with another marksman, your empowered shot will basically always win the trade (Draven notwithstanding) and the movespeed bonus will ensure a safe disengage. The potency of this play pattern continues to escalate as your opponents lose health - the fourth bullet does execute damage equal to 15% of your target's missing health (scaling up to 25%!! at level 11).

- Jhin is highly favored in engages with both parties at low health because of the aforementioned execute. Don't be afraid to tango in these scenarios - remember that your damage spikes hard in these situations where others' stays the same. Make sure to use your abilities (Dancing Grenade in particular) BEFORE your use your fourth shot, so that you're getting the most value from the execute. This runs a little contrary to your typical play pattern, as you might typically save abilities during your reload period so you're being damage-efficient over time. In a close, low-health all-in scenario, shift your damage paradigm to maximing burst in your 4 shot rotation.

- Jhin's auto-attacks are slow, but they pack the punch of roughly 2 of other 'normal' marksmen's autos (Draven and perhaps Graves being the exceptions) because of his unique scaling. Duels with other marksmen are difficult in the mid/lategame, but not impossible. Critting triggers a movespeed boost, and you can use this to reposition in the 1 second~ or so before the next shot; constantly moving whenever you can also prevents your opponents from taking advantage of their faster attack speed, as they have to move to stay in range of you. In short, if you don't have an auto-attack or ability ready, you should be in motion, staying out of your opponent's range.

- The above is doubly true while you're reloading; when your abilities and autoattacks are on cooldown, it's critical that you create distance between yourself and the opponents. During this time period, you can't contribute damage - your presence is (to put it bluntly) only a vulnerability for your team! You don't want your target to get out of range, but you've also got to be sure you're not taking unnecessary damage while you can't dish any out in return. It's a very fine line to tread, but work to stay in that 'sweet spot': the range in which your target can't harm you, but you can immediately reengage when your autoattacks come off of cooldown.

- Where other marksmen have a difficult time contributing to a teamfight if they're being zoned, Jhin can still dish out quite a bit of damage with just a few autoattacks. Consider the following: if an ADC can only step up to land one or two hits at a time on the enemy team's frontline, they aren't making use of all the attack speed itemization they've invested into. Jhin on the other hand not only has a fixed attack speed (thus his play pattern already aligns with this kind of situation), each of his autos deals significantly more damage than a typical ADC. The "sneaking in one or two hits on the nearest target" paradigm is what Jhin actually overperforms at compared to his peers (credit to reddit user Robosnork for this one).

- Deadly Flourish (W) is best used as follow up CC. Hitting the ability on an uninhibited opponent, while possible, is unlikely if they're actively watching out for it. However, I will say that in my experience you can land Flourishes on un-CC'ed opponents if they're NOT looking for it - fired from the fog of war or from a great distance away, Flourish doesn't leave too much time for the opponent to process that the ability is coming and then move away. If you see an ally fighting an enemy at a great distance, don't be TOO patient with the ability, fire it off if you think there's a reasonable chance of it connecting. The ideal play, however, is to use it as a follow-up: combo it with your ally's slows or stuns so that you can reasonably guarantee you get the root.

- To emphasize this point further, Deadly Flourish is a potent source of crowd control, which in and of itself is a rarity on marksmen. I would even go so far as to say the pick potential Flourish provides in the midgame is core to Jhin's contribution to his team: it's simply that powerful. Always remember that your effective range is MUCH longer than other champions'; keep up your map awareness and look for situations in which you can make a short walk over and contribute to a fight with your 2500 range snare, as well as your ultimate.

- If you're quick enough, and provided you have enough points in Deadly Flourish (for the increased root duration), you can get your first shot of Curtain Call to land on an opponent you just rooted. With the slow from the first shot, the remaining three should be a little easier to land. In order to really execute this sequence fluidly, you've got to have reasonable confidence that your root will hit, so you can immediately transition to using/queueing up your ultimate after Deadly Flourish's cast time ends. As you become more fluid with this sequence, you can very reliably catch your opponents off guard with the speed with which you all-in them with your ultimate.

- As a corollary, don't be afraid to use Curtain Call liberally. The ability's cooldown is very short (especially if you're building Essence Reaver, which you should!), and you can always end the ability early if you've made a mistake in being too aggressive with it - unspent shots reduce Curtain Call's cooldown by 10% each.

- Sometimes, I use Curtain Call simply to harass the enemy team under a turret in a siege situation. The shots do increasing damage based on the target's missing health, so the ability synergizes well with the rest of your team's poke. Even if your team lacks long range damage or the enemy team is healthy, your four ultimate shots should chunk someone and give your team a bit of an edge in the ensuing siege.

- Aiming and hitting Curtain Call shots isn't easy, but I wouldn't say that it's too difficult either. The shots are straightforward to land if your opponent is running away from you - just place your cursor directly on top of your target. When they're juking side-to-side, things get a little bit more interesting; even in this scenario, I would try to aim where they are as normal: not only do your bullets travel deceptively quickly, but also people will tend to over-juke Curtain Call and make no actual net movement in either direction, just moving side-to-side in place. Experienced opponents will give you a run for your money though, and in this case you'll have to guess a bit and lead your target just a tad to land your shots.

- Jhin's ultimate is one of the most flexible in the game. Naturally, you can use it at the end of a skirmish/teamfight to pick off fleeing foes, but against certain enemy team compositions it's often a fantastic idea to lead with the ability. To be more specific, against compositions which have great, reliable CC and champions that can quickly jump on you, you only want to enter the fight after major cooldowns are expended and getting close enough to auto-attack becomes relatively safe. Where other marksmen find it difficult to contribute anything during this period, Jhin can use his ultimate to provide damage and crowd control from a great distance - there's no other ADC that can provide the same level of fight presence that Jhin has in these situations (when you factor in Deadly Flourish, this is accentuated even further).

- Captive Audience traps are best used as wards in the laning phase, providing vision and a heads-up for potential gank attempts. In the mid and lategame, traps should be placed in locations which disrupt the enemy team should they try to engage on you. Placing your traps is extremely contextual (though with cooldown reduction they are fairly spammable, so feel free to use them liberally), but the best piece of advice I can give you is the place them in areas that minions don't travel over, but still in the lane (preempting a teamfight). Throw them to the side of the minion line on your half of the lane, and opponents are very likely to step on one when they try to jump on you.

- In the chaos of a teamfight, your traps often spike in effectiveness. While you're reloading or moving between autos, quickly lay down traps in the team fight area - they're certain to be triggered and cause some disruption. If your opponents aren't paying attention and take the blast (which, by the lategame chunk for quite a bit because of your AD scaling), all the better.

- Jhin, possibly more than any other marksman, thrives and excels in cooperation with his team. You want to be with your teammates as often as possible - splitpushing and forcing 1v1s are very difficult to execute successfully on Jhin. When he's under heavy focus, he's quite vulnerable; but, if Jhin is working with allies, he can be extremely effective from great distances while still preseving his safety. Look to make proactive plays with your team, set up picks with Deadly Flourish, and success will come.

That's all for today, I hope you enjoyed the article. If you'd like to discuss anything League, have comments/feedback, or just want to say hi, feel free to tweet me @k0nduit (with a zero instead of an 'o') and I'll get back to you.