Further, not all jumps are equal; while you can certainly patch the assembly and let the assembler manage the variant selection and relocations etc., doing bytecode patching is a different story. You might have to change the jump instruction altogether depending on how "far" away the pointer is.

Also, jumps hold conditions in most cases (the exception being an unconditional jump, JMP) which means that you have to adhere to whatever state is expected at that point in time.

The NOP approach is usually the soundest and safest.