Counter Guide

How to Beat Jarvan IV

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Jarvan IV builds a small room around one person and asks the rest of the map to sort it out later. Most of the time nobody can.

He's the most decisive jungler in the game and the least flexible, and those are the same trait viewed from either side. He arrives over a wall, in one motion, from a direction that didn't look like a path, and then the ground itself decides who is allowed to help. What he doesn't have is a second attempt. Once the flag is down and the arena is up he has spent everything he owns, and the version of him that loses a game is the version that spent it on the wrong person or on nobody at all. Beating him is mostly about arranging that.

Matchup Snapshot Jarvan IV, the Exemplar of Demacia

Where You Meet Him Jungle

Damage Type Physical, and it shreds what you bought

Why He Is Frustrating Your team is standing outside a wall

Mobility One leap, over terrain, on a short timer

Biggest Threat Cataclysm [R]

Hardest Counter Master Yi

What a Counter Needs

A way to survive being isolated for a few seconds
Something that punishes a champion who has committed and can't take it back
The vision to see the angle he's planning to arrive from

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Jarvan IV on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Jarvan IV

Master Yi3,883 games54.0%
Cho'Gath2,443 games53.5%
Warwick1,627 games53.3%
Xin Zhao1,192 games53.1%
Kindred975 games53.0%

Picks Jarvan IV Beats

Rengar1,043 games47.3%
Hecarim1,425 games47.5%
Qiyana1,911 games47.5%
Zed1,101 games47.6%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the jungle against Jarvan IV. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 76,893 Jarvan IV games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Jarvan IV Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

He arrives from somewhere that isn't a path. Demacian Standard [E] plus the pull covers walls, so the gank comes from the direction the ward wasn't watching.
The engage lands with no windup you can react to. It's one continuous motion, and by the time the flag is visible the knock up has already been decided.
Cataclysm [R] removes everyone else from the fight. It's a wall built around one person, and it turns a five on five into a one on one he picked.
He shreds the armor you bought for him. The item that was supposed to answer him is worth noticeably less by the second hit, which is why trades against him go worse than the numbers suggest.
He's strong from the very first clear. There's no weak stretch to play around. He's looking for an early fight and he's usually right to.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

The arena traps him too. He's inside it with whoever he caught, and if that person survives, or if his own team can't get in, he has walled himself away from all four of them.
Everything he has is spent in one go. There's no follow up (flag, then arena, then nothing). A dodged combo leaves a melee champion standing in the open with a shield and no way to leave.
He needs the flag to reach anybody. Take that away, or stand somewhere it can't be placed usefully, and the gap closer (flag plus pull) stops existing.
He falls off as the game gets longer. Granted, the early pressure is real and it's most of him. At four items he's a tanky champion who starts fights rather than one who wins them.
Vision beats the angle. The gank depends on arriving where nobody was looking, and where nobody is looking is a decision your team makes rather than one he does.

Countering Jarvan IV

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Jarvan IV comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Hold your escape until the knock up has landed. The engage can't be dodged once it starts. What can be answered is the two seconds afterwards, and that's where the summoner spell belongs.
Make sure the person he catches can survive alone. The arena is only a problem if the answer is on the wrong side of it. A front line that can hold for three seconds turns his ultimate into a wall around his own death.
Ward the walls he can flag over. Leave the entrances alone. The angle is terrain, and the ward that would catch a jungler walking down the river is watching the wrong ground.
Fight him once the ultimate has been used. It's a long cooldown and it's the entire threat. A team that takes the objective on that timer is taking it against a champion with no engage.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Jarvan IV Matchup

Play the early game away from him rather than through him. He wins the coin flip skirmish and he's looking for it, and there's no reward for finding out which of you was right about it.

Ask your solo lanes (top and mid) to hold their crowd control for the flag rather than for the gank. Everything he does begins in the same half second, and interrupting it is worth more than any amount of damage afterwards.

Take the neutral objective while his ultimate is down. That's the one window in every few minutes where he can't start a fight on his own terms, and it's long enough to matter.

Best Jarvan IV Counters

Three ways to beat somebody who isolates one person: survive being the one, beat him in the duel he wanted, or shut the combo off before it finishes. One counter each.

Kindred Survives The Isolation

The one thing his ultimate is built to produce is a person dying alone inside a wall, and that's exactly the outcome Lamb's Respite [R] refuses to allow.

It also flips the situation completely, because the four teammates he shut out are now watching him stand in a small room (his own) with somebody who can't die.

Trundle Wins The Duel He Wanted

He takes the fight Jarvan was trying to arrange and somehow comes out of it with the stats Jarvan bought, which is the least fair exchange in the jungle.

The pillar answers the escape as well. Once the engage has been survived, Jarvan has nothing left, and Trundle is very good at making sure that matters.

Cho'Gath Silences The Combo

Jarvan's engage is two buttons in a row: Demacian Standard [E] goes down and Dragon Strike [Q] pulls him to it. Feral Scream [W] silences every champion in its cone, and a silenced Jarvan can't press the second button or follow up with Cataclysm [R].

Being shut in a ring with Cho'Gath is bad news for Jarvan anyway. Rupture [Q] knocks up for a second and slows afterward, and Feast [R] deals true damage, which his armor does nothing about.

Itemizing Against Jarvan IV

The first two are the matchup and the last two are ordinary insurance:

Plated Steelcaps is the ordinary answer to a champion whose damage arrives as basic attacks with a shred attached, and the component is worth having early rather than after the first bad fight. Zhonya's Hourglass is the specific one, because the arena lasts a fixed length of time and most of it can simply be sat out (he's left standing in a small room with nothing to do while four people arrive). Frozen Heart takes away the attack speed that the armor shred was feeding on. Randuin's Omen is the version of that for a team fight rather than a duel, and it's aimed at the moment after the knock up, when everybody has been thrown into the air at once and the follow up is landing.