Jax

Jax is the benchmark for the extended duel. Counter Strike dodges every auto attack for its duration, then stuns everything around him: against a champion who lives on attacks, that's a complete cancellation followed by a punish. Few mechanics are that sharp.

Grandmaster's Might ramps his attack speed through a fight and adds damage on every third hit. In other words, the longer the duel runs, the more he wins. His passive converts items into health, which makes him surprisingly durable without buying defence. He's the champion who rewards patience in lane and punishes any team that lets a game go long.

His scaling is among the best on the roster, and it comes with real mobility: Leap Strike crosses a wall, catches a target or works as an escape, and its cooldown drops very low as you rank it. Combined with Counter Strike, he can dive under a tower and walk back out, which few duellists can afford.

His early game, though, is mediocre. Before items his damage is low and his mana doesn't hold up if he uses spells to farm. He brings nothing to his team beyond himself: no reliable engage, no way to protect an ally. And Counter Strike does nothing against targeted abilities, which leaves him exposed to mages who never auto attack.

Your goal is to survive your own early weakness. Don't look for trades before an item: leaping in at level three to chip health puts you in range of their wave and their jungler for nothing.

The sequence that matters is simple: Empower then Leap Strike, in that order, so the leap lands with the bonus damage. Counter Strike isn't a defensive button to throw out at random, it's a read: activate it as your opponent commits, not before, otherwise it expires on nothing and you lose the stun. Hold your leap as an exit until you're sure you win the trade.

The real swing is your first large item. Jax is weak without items and fearsome with them: the difference between a one-item Jax and a three-item Jax isn't gradual, it's abrupt. That's why losing his lane doesn't remove him from the game, as long as he keeps farming.

After that, attack speed mixed with health returns more than raw damage, because his ultimate rewards hit count and his passive converts stats into durability. Once you can last twice as long in a duel as your opponent, you win even from behind on items.

Like Tryndamere, your best contribution is often the split push: you force the enemy to send several players, or they lose towers to you alone. That pressure is worth more than your presence in a five versus five where you bring no control.

When you do join, come in from a flank and go for the back line. Counter Strike has to cover the moment the most auto attacks are pointed at you: timed right in the middle of a scrum, it deletes a whole team's damage output for its duration and stuns several targets. Timed wrong, it does nothing at all.