Should Shyvana be balanced around on-hit builds?

Linna Excel··1 votes·892 views

There is a discussion about AP shyvana being good right now, but I noticed that like the old AD shyvana, shy builds at least one AS/on-hit item: Nashor's. Now I am bothered by AP glass cannon shyvana being a thing but that got me to thinking, should riot balance her more around building AS items and stuff that gets value from hitting. You have to consider that many popular on-hit items have AS built into them.

item 1416 item 3153 item 3124 item 3115 are example items.

So how would riot pull this off? Well, riot could rework her passive defenses to scale off of AS instead of dragons taken. I'm thinking a ratio of 4% AS = 1 AR/MR as a starting point. Since shyvana is supposed to be a juggernaut, it makes sense for her to be a little more rugged. However because she always builds AS in some form and it's been a part of her core gameplay build for as long as I remember, maybe riot should do this to shore up her gameplay identity. This would have a secondary bonus of fixing shyvana in other game modes that don't have dragons for taking. That'd be one less thing for riot to have to keep a track of.

So how would that change her builds and keep the wrongness that is caster shyvana from continuing to be her go-to build (I'm not asking for riot to kill it off completely though, I'm fine with it as a niche build.

Option 1: item 1416 item 3153 item 3124 give 100% AS. That means she'd have 25 armor and mr which just happens to equal her getting 5 dragons. Not terrible at all. If she rounded her build out with item 3022 and item 3748 she might not be a full on juggernaut, but she's still a fighter, which I think could work for her. It would also mostly, but not completely, offset 2 leathality items meaning that against assassins she probably wouldn't want this build.

Option 2: item 1416item 3078 gives 90% AS or 22 armor/mr. If she builds full tank afterwards that is a nice little bonus for a more beefier shyvana build.

Option 3: the enemy team is all magic damage and your team is all physical so you go item 3115 item 3091 item 3124 for 115% AS or 28 armor and MR plus some extra MR from wit's end. That seems pretty decent encouragement to go AS in this situation for those people who like magic damage.

So I'd like to see riot try this out. Try changing her passive defenses into scaling off of AS instead of taking dragons. The numbers are in the ball park of her current passive, work on multiple maps, and encourage her to build more AS damage items instead of going full AP.

1 Comments

Doge20201 votes

I personally think that tanky on hit should be the core build. If she goes full ap she relies on e too much and her E isn’t fully guaranteed to land and one shot somebody. And by going tanky you can use her r to the best potential by diving into the enemy team and cause them to scatter, which helps your team by giving the assassin a chance to kill the back line or your team to easily pick off the enemy team.

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