can we just address AP shaco already

its a brainless 0 counterplay trashpick that used to be slightly hard to play due to the mindgames you had to play and the kit being suboptimal compared to the now broken batshit S-tier shaco kit.

they gave him too many QoL changes for him to be viable AP.

his boxes take out a quarter of an ADcarry's health bar without fail at level 1, makes going into bushes in lane impossible when played as a support, and during the midgame he has a free flash+stealth that allows him to take double combat summoners. he cannot be punished, cannot be outtraded and cannot be pursued, because he leads you into a box at some point or puts one in your path forcing you to avoid it, by which time his Q is back up. in the old times the only people that could use shaco AP are pink ward and a few other streamers, now all you have to do is run your clone under turret and get that instafear AOE annie ult.

Riot needs to realize that their attempts at forcing champions into multiple different roles are a horrible idea and leads to overtuned kits.

Pyke, Qiyana, Sylas, Ekko, Irelia, Akali and soon to be Senna all suffer from this since their massively overtuned kits made it so that the only window to punish them would only be tangible if the pilot fucks up, its like another azir situation except they don't admit it until they "assess the situation" and finally nerf the 55% WR champion after 2 months.

I honestly think they should start ripping shit out of his kit if he's allowed to have his AP playstyle, much like what they did with irelia and akali. even with true sight on his boxes they still fear you when you go in proximity, meaning its impossible not to be punished for attempting to clear them as a melee champion. while some may argue that you can just avoid them or wait for a ranged champ to clear them, this still doesn't make sense since he gets massive objective control, and requiring a ranged character to back you up for something that's of cooldown every 8-16 seconds or so means that he punishes half of league's roster.

when tryndamere built AP they shut that shit down in 1 month. I get that since tryndamere is a statstick with a flash on e and death defy on ultimate, making the changes more pressing, but Shaco has cc on 3 of his abilities and an AOE instant fear that can potentially be teamwide and can chunk as AOE or Burst as single-target. and riot even encourages this playstyle as evidenced by their rework comments.

last point: I realise you can auto his boxes to death before they finish their setup but unless youre Caitlyn lategame or he's actively putting them in plain sight you have no chance of taking them out in this fashion. besides, having to stop attacking shaco and instead autoing his box to avoid a fear is super dull of an idea.