The Start for Jungle Top
When you start off the game, you want to do a "normal" jungle rotation, starting at your top healer camp and going from top to bottom. It's very important that your support hyper levels you, because you'll need to reach level two and gain your
Rocket Leap before you encounter any enemies. Even upon reaching level 2, it is unwise fighting at your jungle shop considering Joule is very weak before the two minute mark. There are a few circumstances where you would engage after the first rotation, such as fighting another weak early game character like
Rona or
Ozo, or if your laner comes down to help you 3v2. At this point, ganking is your best option because in most circumstances, you don't want to take an early teamfight.
Joule is a very good character for ganking because of her long-distance stun. If the enemy laner is playing very safely and out of the range of your
Rocket Leap, don't stay for too long because you will get behind in farm. However, if they are over-extending a bit, feel free to gank them constantly!
The Start for Lane Top
As
Joule is meelee and the majority of lane heroes are ranged, Joule is disadvantaged when it comes to poking the enemy laner. It's usually best to mind your own business in lane, and not try to engage the enemy laner. Poke them when you can with your thunderstrikes, but don't go all the way in and try to land a basic attack. Now, there will be two types of enemy laners. Ones who are poke-happy and do everything in their power to annoy you and make you miss farm, and those who mind their own business. If you're going against a more passive laner, feel free to farm as you will. However, if they just constantly hit you with ranged attacks, freeze your lane. For those of you who don't know, this means only damaging minions to last hit them so that they end up shifting towards your turret where it's safer for you. One more thing to know about laning is when to use your
Rocket Leap. The only time you want to use this as an engage is when you know the enemy jungler and support are busy else where, like on their jungle. This requires commitment towards killing the enemy laner, because once you jump on them you're not just going to walk away. Otherwise, if you don't know where the enemy team is, it would be wise to save your
Rocket Leap as an escape tool incase they try to gank you.
The Build Top
If
Joule is built right, she can crit for massive damage. She has to be built correctly from the start, or else you won't get fed enough to do well in the game. Start by rushing
Sorrowblade. You should aim to get this quickly so that you can start doing massive damage early. Once you've got your base damage, you'll basically be building crit chance. Around the time when you have your
Lucky Strike and
Six Sins is when you should consider buying defense. You'll want
Coat of Plates if the main (or both) damage dealer(s) on the enemy team has attack damage (red items). You'll want
Kinetic Shield if the main (or both) damage dealer(s) on the enemy team has crystal power (blue items). Then once you have that, you should get a
Tyrant's Monocle and
Tornado Trigger.
Build Modifications Top
There are really only two times you should need to modify your build.
The first reason you will need to alter this build is if your enemies are building armor such as
Coat of Plates. If this happens, then replace your
Tornado Trigger with a
Bonesaw so that you can shred their armor. To make up for the lost critical hit damage that you would have gained from the
Tornado Trigger, you'll need to replace your second
Sorrowblade with another
Tyrant's Monocle. Note that you should still have one
Sorrowblade.
The second reason you will need to alter this build is if you are facing a hero with a
Breaking Point. If this happens, then you should consider replacing your
Metal Jacket with an
Atlas Pauldron to counter the hero's attack speed. Some heroes who commonly build a
Breaking Point are
Krul and
Ringo. Remember that these are not the only heroes who can build a
Breaking Point, so it's a good idea to always check the enemy build just in case.
When to use your Ultimate Top
Note: It is still of my opinion to overdrive your
Rocket Leap instead of your ult in 1.16, regardless of the buff. I still think Joule can do more damage by simply fighting with her basic attacks and thunderstrikes
Let's be honest: your ult
Big Red Button is only meant to be used by CP Joules. That's why in the build section, I opted to overdrive your stun instead of your ult. However, your ult can still be useful if it's used correctly. You'll need to know when and when not to use it, because otherwise it could end up getting you killed. The cut off for you ult's usefulness is around the 15~18 minute mark. If you use it in a team fight after that, your contribution to the fight will drop immensely because by that point your basic attacks and abilities do way more damage than your ult. Now, even before 15~18 minutes, your ult still needs to be used properly. I prefer to use it similarly to the
Hellfire Brew, where it's used as an engage or a finisher. If all of your opponents are lined up in a nice line at the very beginning of the fight, feel free to let it rip. If you don't get a chance to use it to engage, than use it to snipe an opponent who is trying to run away at the end of the fight. Otherwise, just keep it in your pocket for later.
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