Joker: Ever danced with the devil in the pale moonight?

Build and Guide Joker: Ever danced with the devil in the pale moonight?

Cheat Sheet
Skill Build       

Canned Laughter > The Killing Joke > Pick a Card, Any Card

Recommended Talents       

Flicker, Heal

Items       

Rankbreaker, Hermes' Select, Omni Arms, Fenrir's Tooth, Death Sickle, Muramasa

Arcana       

Rampage, Tyrant, Skewer

Introduction
The crown prince of chaos has finally graced the arena. The Joker is a character known for playing dirty and causes fear and chaos wherever he goes, and Arena of Valor is no different. With abilities to completely nullify physical damage for a couple of seconds, long ranged high damage burst abilities and a hit and run playstyle. He is sure to play a joke or two on the enemy team. Just when you think you're safe, he delivers the punch line. 

Skill Build
Canned Laughter > The Killing Joke > Pick a Card, Any Card

Canned Laughter is an ultimate ability with a short cooldown that is just full of effects that can be extremely useful to us in multiple situations. Joker rushes to the targeted enemy hero stunning them for a short duration. While Joker is using this ability, he becomes un-targetable by anyone. The ability then deals 440/650/680 damage and reduces the enemy's movement speed by 90%. The movement speed reduction wears off gradually over the next 1.5 seconds. After the canister explodes, Joker returns to his original position very quickly. This ability can be great for multiple reasons. I won't say it's great for its damage per se, but the real power is the lack of being targeted during the short duration. Making this one of the strongest abilities to survive when an enemy decides to tower dive. At any point, an enemy hero that relies on targeted skills gets within range to blow you up, you can simply cast this ability to buy yourself some time to escape or come up with a plan to do what you can. If you want a short reason this ability is strong, it's basically the same as using the talent Endure on a much shorter cooldown.

The Killing Joke is one of the greatest moments in the clown prince's comic adaptations, and this ability does the name justice. The ability is a very long ranged skill shot with a decently sized width that deals massive damage to anything it hits. The damage is reduced by 10% for every enemy it hits up to 40%. This can really show the difference between a good Joker from the bad Joker player. Not that we won't be just firing randomly at the enemy team at some point, it’s just an important piece of information about the skill to keep in mind. This ability can easily do well over a thousand damage even without items. With as many items as we will be building to raise our damage as high as we can, we can expect to basically have an extremely short cooldown ability with extremely high damage. Poke the enemy team before a fight as much as you can with this ability to help ensure a good fight in your favor. Any carry hit with this ability before a fight will be taken down to at least half health assuming they built mostly damage. Just keep firing the ability as much as you can, without risking your life, and you may land a lucky hit or two.

Lastly for active abilities, we talk about Pick a Card, Any Card. Much like the name, this ability is incredibly deceptive. Joker has cards that float around him and somehow increase his movement speed by a great amount scaling per level. This matches his kit well enough, wanting to stay out of range to charge your passive and fire Killing Joke from a safe spot. But this ability has another effect with what could be considered the greatest one on one fight winner, or a complete waste of time depending on your ability to use it effectively. For 2 seconds after casting Pick a Card, Any Card, Joker becomes immune to all physical damage. Since most enemy teams have one mage at most in today's meta, this works especially well. You have the chance, if you cast this correctly, to negate a massive amount of the entire enemy teams damage. Since it doesn't make you un-targetable like your ultimate, the enemy has plenty of time to waste all of their hard-hitting abilities regardless of how its cast. I will say, however, that this requires some training and game knowledge. If you are huge into MOBA's you might not know what trigger control is or similar game reflex controls. Basically, you never want to just mash this ability when you feel threatened. Get a feel for when the enemy will cast its biggest abilities, and you will make this ability way better than any other in the game. Learn to stay calm in fights, patience and the ability to stay cool under pressure will make this ability great. This ability is the biggest joke you can play on the enemy team on any character in this game.

Punch Line is the passive ability that really lets you know what they wanted with Joker from its use. After Joker has exited a battle, he loads one shot in his revolver. This essentially buffs his next normal attack to do bonus damage as well as reduce the movement speed by 90% of the next enemy he hits. The movement speed debuff gradually reduces on the enemy over time much like his ultimate's slow does. This is why we build Rankbreaker, and this is why so much of our kit is all about going in and out of fights till later in the game. Joker is a character who will spend much of his time messing with his enemy. Always just out of reach of the enemy if played perfectly. This also makes Joker a great ally in a gank, as if you back off for a bit and use this attack to slow the enemy, a 90% movement speed debuff is basically a stun. With the exception being that the enemy can still cast abilities to escape if they have any.

Recommended Talents
Flicker, Heal

Flicker - 120-second Cooldown: Teleports your hero a short distance     

Flicker is always a great Talent to use. It’s a free short ranged teleport ability that can get you over terrain or towards a position you want to be in instantly. I recommend using this ability and getting good with it, regardless of the hero used, unless you are the jungler.   

Heal - 120-second cooldown: You and nearby teammates instantly recover 15% HP and gain 15% movement speed for 2 seconds.

Heal is a great ability to take in duo lanes and becomes a better talent late game. Since the ability will heal the same regardless of how many teammates are around, it’s a very supportive ability. I still prefer the safety of Flicker, but if you are not a high enough level for Flicker, or are simply terrible at casting this in a direction quickly, take Heal.

Items
Rankbreaker, Hermes' Select, Omni Arms, Fenrir's Tooth, Death Sickle, Muramasa

Start with level 1 boots, Joker revolves around getting in and out of situations.

Rush Rankbreaker as it compliments everything The Joker does. Speed buff when your passive is up, armor piercing to make your passive buffed normal attack do more, and to make Killing Joke hit harder. Normally I wouldn't touch this item since most heroes don't want to get out of combat as often as Joker does, but its fits our kit perfectly.

Hermes' Select is our level 2 boots rush. More of that sweet out of battle buffs to help combo with our kit and Rankbreaker. War boots is a close second, but it sadly ruins the point of our passive if we constantly keep attacking, and if we use our passive a lot we waste the attack speed buff. 

So, this is where our main combo comes out. Hitting someone with The Killing Joke and then hitting them with the unique passive of Omni Arms and our passive does a lot of damage very quickly. It’s a great way to start any 1v1, or quickly eliminate someone if we do enough damage to them.

Fenrir's Tooth allows us to deal 30% bonus damage when someone is below 50% of their max health. Allowing our passive or The Killing Joke to pick targets off that others have gotten low on health. Overall, it’s a great item to finish off enemies quickly.

Death Sickle could be replaced with Ancestral Glory, but it does a bit more for us. Since we don't gain much health from our build and we don't have any super strong escapes I go with Death Sickle. As this allows us to survive at least one killing blow and gains a small movement speed buff. This is much better in 1v1 situations since we can still respond to the enemies attacks with our own instead of just waiting to die.

Muramasa is a great end game for anyone looking to do a majority of physical damage. 45% armor pierce might come a bit late for some games, however, so feel free to build this before Death Sickle if the enemy is stacking armor early.

Arcana
Rampage, Tyrant, Skewer

Rampage allows us the small chance to crit with our attacks as well as do a bit more damage on those crits. Considering I don't build much in the way of critical chance items, you are free to build anything that gives armor pierce or attack damage instead.

Tyrant is a bit more crit chance and health. Just to help us get those sweet random critical on our passive buffed normal attacks. One again anything that gives damage or pierce works here.

Skewer is good early attack damage and armor pierce to allow for some great early game poke. In most of our matchups, we want more damage to allow for our combo of The Killing Joke and our passive Punch Line to give us the upper hand in fights.

Early Game
Early game if you follow my Arcana is a lot of hit and run tactics with our passive normal attacks on the enemy carry when they go to normal attack minions. Use this to harass and knock them down whenever they attack another target. This makes it so they can't return an attack back at us before we can run away. If this happens to crit from our Arcana I generally try to fight immediately.

Mid Game
Middle game we start looking to push our tower down if we haven't already. Every time the lane pushes into the enemy tower, see if you can land an attack on your enemy's tower with your passive buffed attack. After that, you just want to roam to the lane that needs you. Normally teams will move to mid lane, so I would look into moving to that lane. Make sure to push your lane from time to time as well, so you are not wasting the minion gold in the side lanes. Use The Killing Joke to harass the enemy team down until either both teams fight, or the enemy starts to teleport back to base to avoid dying. Use the time they need to take to get back to take minions and towers.

Late Game
Late game is where Joker plays an interesting role as far as ranged carries go. You can continue to poke with The Killing Joke and Punch Line as you have been, but in team fights, you need to decide when you stop doing that and start fighting like a normal ranged carry. If you continue the ranged hit and run tactics you start to fall behind on damage compared to other carries. As your role is a primary dps, you cannot let yourself fall behind on your job.

FAQ/Tips
Pick A Card also reduces the cooldown per point you level into it. Why do you max Killing Joke first? I don’t like how inconsistent Pick A Card can be. Many times, I try to use it and dodge an ability, I dodge nothing and put it on that long cooldown. Preferring to have more damage on something I am more constant with, I max The Killing Joke first.

Be aware what your damage is doing at all point of the game, and learn when it's better to do continuous damage. If you run away to build up your passive during team fights you will only reduce the amount of damage you could be doing in that fight.

Matchups
Valhein, Easy

Valhein is known for being the easier matchup for a lot of ranged carries. His range is abysmal and his skill set offers no mobility to speak of. He makes up for this in easy to land hard crowd controls with a great passive. For him to get in range and trade with you, he will need to rely on his support.

Violet, Easy

Violet does a lot of what The Joker does already. Having both a long ranged skill shot that does good damage and the ability to buff her normal attack. While she can buff her normal attack more often, it also costs her quite a bit of mana. whereas our is free to use as long as we are out of combat for a short while. Also, she has to roll towards you to get within range of you, you have a very clear indicator of when you should use Pick A Card.

Yorn, Easy

Yorn is not great at one on one exchanges. That’s why Yorn tosses out that giant moving area of effect that deals massive damage. He wants to put a barrier between him and whoever he's poking from a range. You, however, can use Pick A Card and run right through it, since it does physical damage. Using this to your advantage, poke him down and use his abilities against him. The player will feel some comfort knowing people will avoid this ability, and you can use that shock factor to catch them really off guard at least once. So, don't waste the surprise.

Tel'Annas, Hard

Tel'Annas' greatly outdoes us in the range department. There is no way for us to simply poke her from a range, as she will hit us anyways. The only thing you have that benefits you is the ability to negate physical damage. This would be the matchup where you may consider maxing Pick A Card, Any Card first, to help survive her damage a bit easier in the lane.

Thane, Hard

Thane as a support offers many things that make your day a bit harder. Considering you constantly want to be at a safe distance from the enemy to abuse your range. Anyone who locks you down giving their allies time to get in range is bad. Thane is especially good at locking people down and keeping them in place for an extended period of time.

Grakk, Hard

Grakk has a pull that has a good long range, and a good big hitbox. Joker will have to waste his Pick A Card to dodge this pull, or hopefully dodge it on his own. Because if Grakk grabs you, there is no getting out. This is one of those matchups where Flicker is 100% necessary.