Rioters, how do you feel about Shyvana's use of Ability Power?

Embertine··1 votes·418 views

(I apologize in advance if this post gets long.)

I have a great amount of love for Shyvana, and have been playing her ever since I first got into league. In fact she is the very first champion I ever unlocked. I've been playing her ever since. I think it was around the end of season two that I started?

I remember a lot of the changes to her kit that had meaningful impact upon my gameplay with her.

The first change I remember is the removal of her armor shred from her E, Flame Breath. The armor shred was removed because a bug had a risen that caused Shyvana to shred far more armor than she was supposed to when she was using the Black Cleaver. At the time the bug could not be fixed properly so her armor shred was removed in favor of a health percent magic damage on strike debuff.

The second change I remember that impacted my gameplay, was the change that made it so her E could pass through units instead of only hitting the first unit. This change helped Shyvana a lot in lane as minions could no longer block her E, and she was able to mark multiple enemy champions with its debuff.

The third meaningful change to Shyvana that impacted my gameplay, was her jungle buff. Her W, (Burnout) was now more effective against jungle monsters, allowing her to survive in the increased difficulty that the jungle had been given. And her Q, (Twin Bite) had a full one second reduction of cooldown. Later her W was also given another change, where 25% of her W's damage was applied again if she was basic attacking an enemy while it was active. (Or it might have been at the same time as the jungle buff, my memory is a little foggy.)

I even remember when her passive ability, (Dragon Born) was restructured and split up between her other abilities, while her Ult's passive armor and magic resistance boost was moved over to take its place.

However in all my time of playing Shyvana I haven't seen any effort towards making Ability Power a useful stat on Shyvana.

Both her E and her R, (Dragon's Descent) build off of Ability Power. Yet there is no effective build for Shyvana that incorporates Ability Power in such a way to make it worth while to spend an inventory slot to increase the damage of these two abilities. At least not without sacrificing the use of a much more useful item for an Ability Power item.

So far as I have seen, there is only three ways to build Shyvana.

  1. Tank. This is where you build primarily defense items to soak up loads of damage for your team. Sometimes BOTRK will be used to offer atleast a reasonable amount of damage despite building as a tank.

  2. Attack Speed On-Hit effects. This is primarily the jungler build, and makes use of sated Devourer for damage.

  3. Fighter. (I use this one myself.) This build normally consists of one armor item, one magic resistance item, and attacks speed/crit chance items, as well as lifesteal for sustain.

I haven't seen any Shyvana players build Ability Power in any of my matches that I can remember.

As it is now the only Ability Power item(s) that works well with Shyvana is, item 3115 and item 3124 but I still haven't seen anyone build them.

I would like to know if there is any ideas floating about in Riot in regards to making Ability Power worth getting on Shyvana?

As it is Ability Power is a massively un-used aspect of her kit, and I would like to see that changed. I am aware that her E and R are very situational abilities, and that they are not nearly used as much as her Q and W. However as it feels now, her R is only really useful for engages, escapes, and occasionally peeling a very angry jungler off of your ADC. While her E is just for putting the health percent magic damage debuff onto an enemy, and has no other real use. Neither ability has very much damage, even when fully leveled. This of course is because no Ability Power was obtained to increase their damage.

So, are there any ideas floating among you Rioters? Any thoughts on where Ability Power sits with Shyvana?

7 Comments

Nanuk Pihoqahiak1 votes

As an addition to your post, she actually does amazing with Guinsoo's played top. Her already great waveclear becomes unmatched and she has enough cleave at that point to 1v2 people of equal farm or kills.

Embertine1 votes

I've thought about that item, and it does fit well with her kit, though I've not seen anyone use it. I'll edit the post and include it.

Nanuk Pihoqahiak1 votes

I played her a few times at the launch of preseason and did pretty well with it. A typical melee toplane like Riven or Illaoi struggle to fight her. The only downside is that something like BoTRK is still attractive on her for sustain / chase / Q interactions, so getting both delays needed tank items. But people vastly underestimate the damage a top lane Syvana can do, so getting fed usually isn't a problem unless they have a lot of outs.

Embertine1 votes

Personally I go critical strike and damage on Shyvana, with armor/hp and resistance/hp for tankiness, with lifesteal for sustain. There is something satisfying about Q'ing an Ezreal once, and watching his hp go from a full bar to 0 instantly.

However I am going to try experimenting with items. I'm thinking of using Guinsoo's and Nashor's on her and see if they offer enough to replace two of the items I normally use.

Nanuk Pihoqahiak1 votes

Crit Shyvana can be pretty good due to the nature of her kit, especially if the enemy team has a lot of squishies. The cleave potential is awesome with Q and I've seen some insane plays with Flash where she devours carries in seconds.

I like the aforementioned items because it makes it almost impossible to itemize against her since her damage would be split between physical and magical, not counting red buff.

Embertine1 votes

Thank you very much for your thoughts on this. I very rarely get to speak to anyone whom is willing to talk about Shyvana as anything other than either overpowered or weak. It's nice for a change to talk about itemization and the benefits/loss factor when choosing one item over another, and how much synergy they have with her kit.

I can honestly say this has been the best conversation I've had in regards to Shyvana. So again, thank you.

Uiraya1 votes

Shyvana is amazing.

I built abyssal scepter on her once and it was great. Game was like 7/10'ths AP, though.

The trouble with what you're asking, though, is that when a champ has more than one viable build (and in this case she already has three) if one gets out of control, Riot ruins all of them. They say they don't and that they only want to hit the one problem build, but we all know what their track record is like for that.

Balance in this game is so haphazard and so corrupted by favoritism that if your champ is usable, YOU SHUT UP ABOUT THEM AND DO NOT MENTION THEM EVER. The last thing you want is for Riot to start thinking about Shyvana. Because Riot thinking about champs is what gets champs dumpstered. Honestly, your best move at this point is to delete the thread.

Is it fair? No! Is it right? No! But that's how Riot's balance team works. You're either on the favorites list or you aren't, and if you aren't, you keep your God damn head down or it's coming off. Riot has 0 concerns about actually balancing this game; their priority is to get players playing the champs that they want them to play, and that is a small, boring list. Anyone caught making waves when Riot hasn't authorized them to do so gets destroyed.

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