When I first started with Jarvan I was convinced he was awful. I was having trouble landing Demacian Standard, his Dragon Strike combo felt clumsy, and his ultimate screwed my teammates as often as it helped them. I’m not willing to say I’ve sorted out all of those issues, but things have definitely gotten better.

For starters, I’d encourage anyone to ignore Phreak’s build. If you’re going to lane, it’s important that you be able to harass, and harassment is much easier with a reliable skill. Most players are fairly active in lane, so his Demacian standard can be tough to land. For that reason, I take one rank of Standard and his shield and focus on leveling Dragon Strike. The damage is pretty solid, but more importantly, it’s easy to land. With a good lanemate or careful play in a solo lane I was typically able to snag a few kills.

That said, the Standard/Dragon Strike combo still feels very clumsy. It is possible in some cases to cast Standard and then Dragon Strike before Standard lands. Also, Standard has a fairly long cooldown. If it doesn’t land in the right spot, you might be stuck wishing it was off cooldown.

My opinion on his ult is basically the same as it has always been. I think it’s a bad idea. It’s situational at best, the damage is negligible, it is easily countered with Flash or any of the dash skills, and it is fairly buggy around terrain. I actually watched my character walk over the Cataclysm from the outside and get stuck inside the ring earlier today because pathing wouldn’t let me walk elsewhere.

On the whole, I think there were some interesting ideas for Jarvan, but most of them don’t work in practical application. He’s not bad but he’s also not great and the clumsiness of his main combo and his ult mean I’ll probably leave him on the shelf.

The Jarvan spotlight went live last night, giving us the first look at Jarvan’s skills in action. He does indeed look a lot like Xin Zhao – Riot even used Xin’s in-game badges as stand-ins for Jarvan’s own. I’m not thrilled to see yet another tanky DPS added to the game – the playstyle for those individual champions is usually fun, but I don’t really like what it does to the metagame.

There are a few interesting moments in the spotlight that I think are worth pointing out, just so you can get a sense of what to expect from Jarvan today. Take a look at the 2:12 mark, where Phreak goes after Morgana solo. Morgana ults with plenty of mana to land a Binding/Soil combo when her stun goes off but…her stun doesn’t go off. Phreak casts Cataclysm just as Soul Shackle should stun him and he negates the stun, picking up a kill. I can’t say whether or not this is intended, but it seems Cataclysm takes you out of targetable space for a moment, and that’s not a good thing.

Phreak showcases another frustrating Jarvan encounter roughly 30 seconds later as Warwick, Singed, and Morgana attempt to gank him. He uses the Demacian Standard/Dragon Strike combo to break Warwick’s ultimate. Granted, I think it was mostly luck here. There’s no way he could have known the moment Warwick would ult to properly time Dragon Strike, especially considering how close Warwick got before ulting, but it is interesting that the knockup can be used in that way.

Also, let’s consider for a second the types of skills Jarvan has at his disposal. He’s got a dash (non-targeted, which means it can be used for initiation and escape), a knockup, a passive armor/attack speed buff, an active armor/attack speed buff, a shield, an AOE slow, and a second dash combined with an AOE cage. None of those skills has a particularly long cooldown, either. Honestly, I think he has way too many mechanics at his disposal.

Servers are up – get to playing and let me know what you think.

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Jarvan’s out today, and with him comes four new skins for purchase in the League of Legends store. For the Jarvan lovers among you, you can pick between Commando Jarvan and Dragon Slayer Jarvan.

For the rest of us, this patch gives us a chance to play as Loch Ness Cho’gath and Hextech Anivia. I love both of these skins. The splash work for each is fantastic and frankly, if they look that good in game I’ll be hard pressed not to buy them.

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Is it just me, or does the splash screen above look like it’s from a totally different game than League of Legends? Well, I promise, that’s Riot’s official Jarvan artwork (here’s the proof). With the artwork we’ve got the official skill list.

As I mentioned a couple days ago, I’m not thrilled about the Jarvan release. He looks an awful lot like another spear wielder. Though his playstyle seems a little different, he does have some basic similarities to Xin Zhao. It looks to me like he’ll occupy the same role as Xin: a carry killer with enough staying power to hang with the tanks. Yikes.

Here’s the list:

Dragon Strike: Jarvan IV’s spear extends through his opponent, dealing physical damage and lowering their armor by a percentage. If this ability is cast on the Demacian flag, it will pull Jarvan through to his Standard, knocking up all enemies in his path.

Golden Aegis: Jarvan IV calls upon the ancient kings of Demacia to shield him from harm and slow surrounding enemies.

Demacian Standard: Passive: Grants Jarvan bonus attack speed and armor. Active: Throws a Demacian flag, dealing physical damage and granting passive benefits to nearby allies.

Cataclysm (Ultimate): Jarvan IV heroically leaps at his target, dealing physical damage and creating a circle of terrain around them for a few seconds.

Martial Cadence (Passive): Jarvan IV exploits his target’s opening, dealing a percentage of the target’s current HP as magic damage. This effect cannot occur on the same target for several seconds.

Looking at his first three skills I’d say Jarvan actually sounds pretty cool. I like the synergy between Dragon Strike and the active on Demacian Standard. I’m a little worried about yet another champion getting a shield, especially when a different skill grants him bonus armor as well. My biggest concern, though, is his ultimate. I’ll have to see it in action to really know how it works, but here are a couple points of concern. First, trapping a carry with a carry killer just seems harsh. Second, what about all the different ways characters can escape from this kind of skill? There are so many dashes, not to mention Flash, that essentially negate the ability. Unless it’s some kind of stun, which sounds like a nightmare, or creates impassable terrain, which sounds like it could be buggy, his ultimate could be extremely conditional.

His passive also gives him the interesting ability to switch between targets and deal big damage. Because it deals a percent of current health, Jarvan is most deadly when switching between high health targets. It’s a weird mechanic, but it could make him much more deadly than similar characters. A champion’s ability to deal big damage to consecutive targets is typically limited by a couple factors: cooldowns or farm, and in some cases mobility. Depending how hard his passive hits, Jarvan’s passive puts him in a unique position for dealing damage to multiple enemies. Again, we’ll have to see how this plays out.

I hate to sound like some harbinger of doom lately, but the design on these kind of big DPS melee champions is a little confusing. Check back on Tuesday for my full impressions.

Riot has released the champion sneak peek for Jarvan IV, the prince of Demacia who was previously leaked in PC Gamer. There isn’t much official information about him, other than the fact that he wears some thick armor. I’m a little bit worried about his release, to be perfectly honest. Tanky DPS characters tend to make the game very unenjoyable for the softer characters out there. The potential skills PC Gamer previewed make him sound like a 1v1 duelist with high survivability and damage output. That’s not exactly what the game needs.

Here’s what the PC Gamer leak had for his potential ultimate:

Jarvan’s ultimate has him leap into the air and slam down lance-first into an enemy champion within range. Upon impact, an arena springs up from the ground to create a one-on-one duel between Jarvan and his unfortunate nemesis. This sounds like a combination of Pantheon’s and Poppy’s ultimate abilities, although it was undecided if the ultimate will be global or how long the duel would last.

That. Sounds. Terrible. DotA players may remember this sort of skill from Clockwerk, a robot champion that could trap enemy or allied units in a cog prison for some 1v1 action. Though it was pretty fun to play, it was infuriating to play against. If the skill is global, it becomes even worse. I’m really hoping Riot reconsiders this skill.

I’m also curious to see how Jarvan will be differentiated from Xin Zhao. We already have a spear-wielding locomotive of a carry killer. What makes Jarvan different? Keep an eye out this weekend for the official skill list. Hopefully we’ll be playing him by Tuesday.