Grading Shaco's update based off of Riot's goals

So, as many of you have probably see, there is a noticeable outcry stating that the rework Riot has done to Shaco, the Demon Jester, has killed his play-ability or nerfed him into the ground. This is not another one of those posts. to gauge the success of his rework should be gauged on Riot's achievement of the goals they set for themselves, as stated in their own post.

Goal 1: Healthy Gameplay 1.1: "Assassin damage needs to not happen literally in the blink of an eye."

In the years I have played Shaco, he has never been one to erase a single target instantaneously without a considerable lead due to his reliance on auto attacks. However, you could put out a significant amount of damage via spell weaving and animation cancels, but this is a moot point seeing that many other champions and ones on the opposite side of the damage spectrum can do the same and still put out a considerable if not lethal amount of damage.

What Riot seems to have done to change this is by removing the critical strike damage from his Q (Deceive) and giving it an empowered auto attack that is a better version of Lich Bane effect that deals physical damage. Additionally, this empowered auto attack interacts with his changed passive (Backstab) which gives him scaling critical strikes scaling from 120% to 145% total damage. Contrasting this to his old Q and Passive combo of 140% to 220% critical strike plus a 20% damage bonus, on paper looks to deal more damage. Sure the player deals 264% damage in one hit, slightly better than an ADC building % Critical Strike and has an Infinity Edge in the build, a formerly fairly standard ADC build. But this damage only scaled with the AD the player had.

Shaco's E (Two-Shiv Poison) now has abysmal base damage, starting at 5. Yes, that is a 5. I didn't miss a 0. This ability scales up from 5 to 125 base damage scaling 90% AP and 85% **total **AD. His old E was 50-210 base damage with a 100% AP and 100% **bonus **AD. His old passive also interacted with is E granting it 20% additional damage to an enemy facing away from him. In order to compensate him for a loss in power his new E has scaling % missing HP damage, scaling from 3% to 8% damage. His E still deals magic damage. To show the power discrepancy his Es have, lets assume it is a max rank, because this is usually the first ability you will max on him, and he has 100AP and 200 AD, 50-50 split between base and bonus AD. The raw damage the old and new deal are 410 and 390, respectively. At this point the % missing health only has to make up 20 damage to equalize; a target missing 250 HP, not a whole lot. But his old passive interacted with his E giving an additional 20% damage to someone facing away from you, if the target was facing away, it would deal 492 damage. At this point the % missing health has to make up 102 points of damage to equalize. To do this the target would need to be missing 1275 points of damage.

In many ways the % missing health damage is a source "hidden power" that Riot has slowly been trying to remove from the game. An example of hidden power in champions would be like Fizz's Sea Stone Trident, which before the assassin's rework had a DOT that had a % missing health damage scaling, causing many people to rage because they survived a dive only to realize they still died from the DOT.

With his changed passive being a single strike on a timer as opposed it being a persistent % damage increase while striking someone from behind, and that the crit. amplifies his damage from his Q, Riot has front loaded his damage, especially if it is an AP Shaco. To me this is giving Shaco the ability to eliminate a target in a blink of an eye better than ever before, and if not there's an unbridgeable execute.

1.2: "Assassin damage needs some level of variance."

The way a Shaco on live would likely deal damage to a target involves sneaking up on them with their Q, Backstabing them, and auto attacking, periodically using a Box or his ult to further confuse or misdirect their target to show their back to them for the 20% bonus damage. Said Shaco player is needing to be smart enough deceive their opponents as to which is the real Shaco and which is the clone. When the target realizes they can't win and flee, a Two-Shiv Poison would be used to hopefully execute them, but at the very least slow them down to be chased after. Additionally a really knowledgeable player fighting the Shaco would turn to face the Two-Shiv Poison before it hits them in a similar fashion as one would try to face away from Cassiopeia's Ult to not get petrified.

The PBE/post rework Shaco looks like he'll try to do the same thing without the mind gaming of which one is real and which one is fake because he no longer gains a bonus for getting his opponent to face away from him. It would be smart to do the mind game cause it will reduce the damage taken and get the clone to pop, but that's about it. At the tail end of the fight the Two-Shiv Poison would be flung at the target to execute them or slow them down, without giving the target a way of reducing the damage taken because it is just damage plus % missing health damage.

Goal 2: Ensure each Assassin brings something unique to the table

Out of all of the assassin's Shaco is one of two champions classified as assassins who has traps, with the other being Teemo. As he is now and as he will be with his changes he will remain basically the same in the kind of role he brings to the team, an aggressive ganger with counter jungling potential in the early game, and come late game he's gonna be just as useless as he is now in a team fight and can only really split push and irritate the enemy team for being very difficult to catch. As a top laner he will probably become even more of a lane bully that will work to get early leads and push as far as possible and tp gank when he can.

Both AP and AD Shacos probably going to remain good at being skirmishers, finding and winning lopsided fights. However there is a possibility that his ability to jungle will suffer greatly due to these changes of camps including more and more creeps in them and his lack of AOE damage and resign him to becoming an AP top laner, possibility bringing a renaissance of the old AP Shaco that was nerfed into the ground years ago.

Goal 3: "Allow Assassins to meaningfully contribute toward their team winning the game"

Nothing in his kit has changed to increase his presence in a 5v5 team fight. At best he can assassinate a squishy. Same as always.

AP Shaco has the potential for a greater ability to control the map with how the boxes gain additional time with the more AP you have and can allow the team to win in a macro game more easily with vision and bush control because of his boxes.

So if I were to grade Riot's success at reworking Shaco with their own goals I would give it a D. Goal 1.1: F Added additional hidden power with the E, reduced the damage taken window with the Passive and Q

Goal 1.2: F Removed dynamic/situational additional power on the Passive and player ability to out play, removed the need to strategically place oneself to maximize their damage during a dual or skirmish

Goal 2: C or less Provided he is still able to clear the jungle and gank as an AD nothing will have changed

Goal 3: D There were no changes to his practical ability in a team fight, no changes to his skirmish or dueling potential, and build situational increase for map and vision control.

He is still slated for a game play and visual update (i think), hopefully a more proper rework than this. With many of these changes that don't help any aspect of his game play nor adequately address any of his actual problems and could in fact negatively impact his play-ability, I would prefer him to remain as he is on live until he gets a proper rework that isn't a cobbled mess. But this is just my opinion.