Jayce, the Defender of Tomorrow Revealed!

If you’re ready to add a little versatility to your fighter or ranged carry game, look no further than Jayce, the Defender of Tomorrow. Jayce’s transforming weapon allows him to adapt to nearly any situation, making him an extremely versatile champion for whatever role you need filled on the Fields of Justice.

The lynchpin in Jayce’s kit is his ultimate. Starting with a free rank at Level 1, Jayce can activate his ultimate to transform his weapon into either the short range Mercury Hammer or the long range Mercury Cannon. Each time he transitions he’ll receive a bonus effect on his next basic attack that either shreds the target’s defensive stats (ranged mode) or deals significantly increased damage (melee mode). 

Selecting the right weapon type for your current engagement is the key to playing Jayce effectively. While ranged, Jayce can pepper enemies with ranged attacks, deploying Shock Blast and Hypercharge to wear down opponents while utilizing Acceleration Gate to keep his team at a safe distance. Having worn an enemy down in this manner, Acceleration Gate can be repurposed to give chase, allowing him to shift his weapon into its hammer form and leap into the fray with To The Skies! 

Once he’s closed the distance, he can utilize Thundering Blow to pick up a quick kill, while the additional Armor from being in melee mode gives him the toughness necessary to either withdraw or continue fighting at close range. However you choose to play Jayce, canny shifting between his weapon modes will make or break your success on the battlefield.



Abilities (Mercury Hammer):

• Hextech Capacitor (Passive): Jayce gains a quick burst of movement speed and ignores unit collision each time Transform is cast
• To the Skies!: Jayce leaps to an enemy dealing physical damage and slowing enemies.
• Lightning Field:
  • Passive: Jayce restores mana per strike.
  • Active: Jayce creates a field of lightning damaging nearby enemies for several seconds.
• Thundering Blow: Jayce deals magic damage to an enemy based on their maximum health and knocks them back a short distance.
• Transform: Mercury Cannon (Ultimate): Transforms the Mercury Hammer into the Mercury Cannon gaining new abilities and increased range. The first attack in this form reduces the target's Armor and Magic Resist.

Abilities (Mercury Cannon)

• Hextech Capacitor (Passive): Jayce gains a quick burst of movement speed and ignores unit collision each time Transform is cast
• Shock Blast: Jayce fires an orb of electricity that detonates upon hitting an enemy (or reaching the end of its path) dealing physical damage to all enemies in the area of the explosion.
• Hyper Charge: Jayce gains a burst of energy, increasing attack speed to maximum for several attacks.
• Acceleration Gate: Jayce deploys an Acceleration Gate increasing the movement speed of all allies who pass through it. If Shock Blast is fired through the gate the missile speed, range, and damage will increase.
• Transform: Mercury Hammer (Ultimate): Transforms the Mercury Cannon into the Mercury Hammer gaining new abilities and increasing Armor and Magic Resist. The first attack in this form deals additional magic damage.

Lore:

Armed with wit, charm, and his signature transforming hammer, Jayce lives to protect his native Piltover. He rose to prominence as an inventor, one whose magnetic personality and innovative creations brightened the lives of his nation's people. However, his technological marvels also attracted the attention of Piltover's enemies. Viktor, the machine-augmented scientist from Zaun, staged a deadly raid on Jayce's laboratory. Barely impeded by the lab's meager security force, Viktor stole designs for an arcane power converter. Jayce was sure Viktor would use his technology to create devastating weapons. He implored the Piltover government to respond, but the officials were unwilling to support an act of aggression. He decided to take matters into his own hands, realizing that if he did not strike back now, Piltover would never be safe.

Jayce returned to his laboratory and began making preparations for his one-man attack. After an intense period of research, development, and hands-on testing, he emerged. He had created an array of powerful armaments, including his crowning achievement - the versatile, transforming Mercury Hammer. Armed and ready, Jayce began his assault, easily smashing aside Viktor's acolytes as they rushed to stop him. Jayce fought his way into the heart of the lab and confronted Viktor, forcing the Zaunite to flee. After destroying Viktor's prototype weapon, Jayce returned to Piltover where he was hailed as a hero. He reveled in the adoration, but he knew that his actions had provoked the nation's enemies. Now devoted to the defense of his people, Jayce is Piltover's best hope for a bright future.

''Trust me: if we're smart, Piltover can stand strong against any threat. Hey, I'm living proof.'' - Jayce

Hi everyone,

We’ve been keeping an eye on this thread today (and others about Jayce and Viktor), and now that we’ve had a chance to listen to you guys and contemplate your feedback, we wanted to jump in.

Let’s talk about Viktor and Jayce, as we envision them:

We’d like to evolve Viktor into a complex, tormented villain in the League of Legends story, but we also want him to remain the sympathetic – and possibly redeemable – character he’s established to be in his own lore. Tormented and obsessed with the superiority of machines, Viktor is on a slow descent into madness, and he seeks to push his “glorious evolution” – the transformation from man to machine – onto Runeterra at large. His confrontation with Piltover, a place he sees as weak (full of puny-minded scientists who could, after all, be “so much more”) was a step in this direction. The “acolytes” mentioned in Jayce’s bio were not random minions but in fact Zaunite humans Viktor has swayed to his cause (and augmented, of course, with “improvements”). Jayce stood against him, and such opposition is the first setback in Viktor’s plan – something he’ll have to overcome.

Unfortunately, within the storytelling constraints of a bio, we weren’t able to paint this nuanced picture of Viktor as we envision him.

Jayce’s bio is a story about Jayce. This is the way in which the humble inventor became a hero, but it’s also just the beginning of his journey. We wanted to hint at a lot of flaws he’s going to have to overcome: he’s brash, he has trouble with authority, and he’s more than a little arrogant. For example, from anyone’s perspective but his own, destroying Viktor’s lab in its entirety might have been overzealous. Secondly, Jayce ignored the warnings of the Piltover government to strike against Viktor alone, which speaks to his recklessness and arrogance. His actions had the greater good in mind: Jayce truly does embody Piltover’s focus on the purity of science and progress, and Viktor stands directly in opposition to those values. Jayce may have gotten a little bit lucky this time, though. Viktor underestimated Piltover, and thus underestimated Jayce. Things might not turn out so well for the Defender of Tomorrow the next time the two cross paths.

Overall, we want to set the stage for an epic struggle between our two paragons of science in Piltover and Zaun. After listening to your feedback today, we don’t think we quite accomplished that with Jayce’s bio. With that in mind, the Creative team is going to take a look at Jayce’s bio over the coming days and evaluate ways to improve it.

You might think a thread like this would be hard for us to read – but it’s actually incredibly rewarding to hear how passionate you all are about our characters and lore. Thanks for your enthusiastic feedback!