Shaco, 'nuff said.

ATM his damage scalings are absurdly low.

100's of idiots going AP because 'its better' . no it isn't. Hydra+Ghost+Trinity = most burst+DPS u can ever get. 1 v 1 any kha/rengar/lee/amumu/any-bruiser/tank-in-the-game/most-assassins e.g. zed = ded. Really, just dead.

His ult remains a gimmick.

• Boxes are useless
• When invis and ulting , smoke is detectable = not fooled
• Using Q or Shiv , or really anything e.g. ghostblade doesn't apply to the clone
• Getting hit turns into a 50/50 rather than an actual outplay or 'i can count on not insta-dying'.

His early game has been gutted so hard.

• 1.5sec invis = no point and can't outplay or even gank. Would be fine if base MS was like 380 lol but using runes for this nerfs his early game damage even more
• Can't 1 v 1 amumu early.........yea......or mid.....or late....or anyday actually most jg champs e.g. kha/rengar
• You can't take krugs or raptors unless you're suicidal, and willing to spend minutes on them.
• In short, bad gank potential + shitty clears = painful early game

Boxes:

• Still get 1 tapped by AOE

• Still are useless outside of fear

• 2 second delay makes it impossible to plant for the fear itself

• Ult's boxes only do stuff if the enemy just ignores them

• Thunderlords doesn't proc worth shit

Overall I feel he is actually in a BALANCED state with his burst damage (assuming thunder procs), but overall falls flat in everything else.

VS Squishies he can't 1 tap them (which is fair) but they can 1 tap him and he can't chase worth shit (which is not fair). 30% (tops) slow is useless on anyone with dashes etc. Every second you spend walking towards the mage/adc is another second where they spam you to 0. Or you get stunned. etc.

Overall , after playing him for a looooong time (across 4 accounts or so), and one time in plat, this is possibly the lowest he's ever been outside of the tank meta. (Where it was still ok going bruiser and yolo'ing .-. back when sterak's was decent....)

Now, I'm not here to argue about your opinions on how to play shaco. I couldn't care less, or about how 'lol scrub' I am or 'how retaded he mis-spoke here' or 'his opinion is shit everybody gang up on him!'. Or about how Yasuo/Lee/Rengar hands-down fulfill the whole '1 tap 2+ people with uncounterable strats lol cuz Im skilled diz is fair git rekt non-meta champs' (although it is a problem.)

But rather about Shaco's Identity.

1 person alone, 'shaco legendary!' 3 people enter jungle, 2 come out and one of them's shaco. 'Triple kill!' 3 red scan trinkets + 2 pink wards on enemy team just for me 5 man yolo's , just for me Enemy Jungler afraid of his own jungle Support watching ADC get rekt Top lane fruitlessly chasing me across the map , only to eat 4 boxes....

The troll. The 'imma Q from way out of ward range and backstab you lul'. The 'you try 1 v1 but he just goes away...and then reappears 3 secs later to finish you off'. The 'I wish I was playing vs teemo'.

ATM He achieves NONE of these things simply because he jumps in, 'bursts', waits around for ~5 seconds while they all gang-bang him (with 40%CDR), maybe clone-dodges an ult or two, and invariably dies. Maybe gets 1 kill.......

1 v 1 ? Sure, he can kill 2 out of 5 people on the enemy team, the enemy mid/adc. Most likely neither if they're vayne/etc. cuz they just out-kite or stun and stuff.

1 v 2? You better hope the 2nd player is a tank, and you have clone up. Otherwise GG.

1v3? IDGAF if they run into 5 boxes, no damage, too short fear, and u can't kill even one before you die.

The only time you have success as shaco, is when you gank people who are low/half full. That's it.

There ARE exceptions, lucky games, being fed, etc. but a fed lee/rengar/zed is much more scary than a fed shaco. Trust me on this.....

People think he's OP since he usually gets fed ganking idiots who stay low-hp in lane In a straight up 1 v 1 fight, shaco does have the 'advantage' on squishies. But any other jungler either does this better (even trundle....) or has other+better utility (amummu/rammus)

I want to make shaco a nightmare to face not because of his insane damage, but the feeling that he will find you, and he will kill you piece by piece.

Here's a rework suggestion.

Passive:

• I don't care about crit builds, burst=nofun in my book. Backstabs should apply a stack of 'expose weakness'(get it), reducing targets damage by X% each, and reduces armor by Y%. X & Y scale according to level. I'm thinking 3-5% at level 18.
• A non-backstab should do reduced damage vs champions.
• Bonus lifesteal vs monsters.....like 5% or so just so he doesn't need life-steal to feel useful since his damage will be reduced

Q: 1.5 seconds is too little considering your MS is shit early, 4.5 late is great!!! (not OP, just 'great') but here's a nifty little idea. Why not transform this into a form of fighting closer to Kha's? Let him have a small 10-15 MS speed boost during stealth just so early isn't as painful/positioning is a tad easier. Let him have a 'maximum amount of invis'.

Multi-casts, delay between each one ~0.5 seconds. NOTE: ** Right now if shaco uses his Q there's a moment during which he cannot attack, as such the only purpose THIS delay serves is to prevent infini-dashing lol**

First Q cast: Larger ranged teleport than now(10-20%) + invis , until you hit something.

Further Q casts: A flash's worth of teleport, uses up 30-50% of 'invis time' or 1 second, whichever is larger.

Hitting SUCCESSIVE backstabs adds ~2 seconds to his 'invis' total. and reduces CD of Q if it is down by X seconds

** FIRST BACKSTAB DOES NOT COUNT ^**

Getting a non-backstab reduces invis total

If Q is not used for ~5 seconds or you start to 'back' Q goes on CD just like now. ~10 secs or so

And remove the damage scaling on this

Reasoning: I do NOT use Q to do damage. I use it to get behind someone and crit then from the back, to escape, to troll around with invis and b8 them to flash over wall. And so on.....damage is kind of negligible.

With the aforementioned setup shaco should be able to be significantly more mobile, and yet at the same time to less burst damage than he's doing now. Since crit is the most DPS in the game, having a backstab that removes that advantage (trade off between the repeated Q or your own crit) means that you cannot build him to chain obscenely high damages

I have a dream where a shaco can:

• Win extended fights provided he gets his backstab off and doesn't get caught. Yi is much more dangerous in a DPS fashion, shaco just is annoying to nail down ^_^
• Have a chance vs tanky shits/some other utility with his passive , given that he chains it properly on ONE target. + slightly better ganks (see shiv notes later)
• Outplay the bejeezus of everyone with good timing
• Can wait for the perfect Q moment....twice+ :D

If he uses his Q to get into your lane, he'll get maybe on 1 backstab off or so and that's it, unless he positions properly and gets ~2 giving him chances to go ahead and repeat that. Otherwise if he's fighting 1 v1 and used up only ~1second to get near you, he has a few more tries.

This is preliminary, I'm going to rethink it a bit just to adjust for the box edits below and some renumerations on timing.

Just imagine.....a jester blinking in and out, backstabbing you , fearing you with boxes, NOW THERE'S 2 OF THEM??? and then he laughs + belly dance ^_^ And you stop playing jg cuz the enemy jgler is to scary......

His boxes: 66% AOE damage reduction (Why is this not a thing??) Dies to TWO AA's , NOT 3. Reduce stealth-in time to 1 second. (trust me, it's only used for the brief fear and we're maxing this last anyways) BUT make AA's reset their-in-stealth timer. Make them also have a 40-50% slow on their attacks.

Invisible if placed while invisible, and no smoke cloud. Total of a 4? second delay then instead of 1 second. Lets me Q, W, engage and hope box placement was good.

Don't trigger on minions (monsters/etc. fine)

That's about it....if AP shaco is a thing then a 1 second delay is ok, if that's his entire pool of damage then just kill box = win lol.

=> Utility in the middle of a fight, good placement lets you combo it with some sweet damage. Boxes still die easily, let you place them if you running away and make MUCH better ganks >:D

Shiv: Same passive slow. Active slow = 40-50% Damage should scale based on expose-weakness stacks in addition to missing health. Reduce AD scaling, increase AP scaling. (-0.15, +0.15 or so) Hitting shiv should be able to backstab,(adds invis if in that Q mode + does more damage) and it adds 2 stacks of expose-weakness

Clone:

• No smoke
• Item actives e.g. ghostblade should trigger on this too
• Pressing R on inhib/nexus should work, only alt-right click works right now -.-
• Illuminati boxes spawn invisible. Reduced box damage.
• Can trigger a forced clone explosion somehow, (alt-R? XD). Good combo with spawn-invis above.
• Takes X % of damage to original shaco. (Like bond of stone , only it takes 'increased' damage lol)
• Maybe throws a shiv just like Shaco? Would be nice....or places a DUPLICATE BOX!!! :D

I think that solves every problem.

• He has significantly higher out-play potential as a trade-off to his older 'insta-burst' playstyle.
• His early game is better, I assume the % scalings will be tweaked to perhaps be part flat and part scaling? anyway, that's just #'s and now that 'short' invis is better
• WAY more utility. Boxes are actually useful! Clone/invis!
• INSANE strats with clone/boxes/invis plays. A LOT of thinking ahead will pay off REALLY well.
• Can , if real damn pro + lucky, go 1 v 3 or more with 10/10 placement
• Cannot burst anyone down but still feels like he's useful. Can sorta-burst down ADC over ~2+ bursts at least.
• Perfect finisher on low hp, decent dmg over time, not as weak vs tanks (still is) or as op vs squishies.

Most assuredly needs tweaks, most of it was me guesstimating #'s that feel like I can play and be outplayed. AP Shaco more viable (Stacking up Shiv 'weakness' stacks to increase damage and tp'ing all over the place) Weakness benefits AP and AD equally, -%AR for the latter and % bonus shiv damage on former. Healthier clears, maybe a tad faster/slower but still healthier.

Basically for a 'burst' shaco you go AP and 1 tap noob weaklings. And then get rekt by cc etc. For a 'mind melt enemy team' shaco you go AD and tp all over while back-stabbing. then get rekt by cc or not killing target fast enough. (current shaco does latter, :< useless..)

High risk, High skill, (NON-OP REWARD =>cough not lee-sin cough)

Might rethink/edit some more if people respond at all..... FYI basically if shaco misses backstabs he dies, if he lands them he has a chance to do more damage. with all the delays it might take him 4+ stabs so 4+ seconds to kill a bruiser-ish guy. If he lands everything and the enemy ignores him...so most Q's will be used to dodge enemy shit (just like Yi!) or chase down a bullshit dasher t-t

Please do NOT downvote if you think I'm an asshole/idiot. Comment instead of doing that. Rank is unimportant.

Plus, if you think he's '2 op' then I'm fine just making him even more squishy as long as he gets to have so much outplay :D