A 17-Page Color Coded Shaco Rework Returns -- Now with less pages and more infographics!
Hey all,
11 months ago, with some help from Workshop Shaco (now known as Seeded Rye Bread), I posted a Shaco Rework hoping to get intelligent feedback from the community. The post did fairly well here on the Gameplay Forum, and managed to make it to the front page of Reddit as well.
Through that first rework I met my friend DrugsForRobots, and we began to work on new reworks for Shaco. We did our best to take into account everything we learned from reading hundreds of perspectives on Shaco that were all shared on the first rework. This has been an incredible learning experience for both of us.
And now that the assassin update is approaching, we are just about out of time. So now we bring you two new Shaco reworks: a faithful rework, and a flavorful rework. After lots of consideration we feel that the healthiest way to improve Shaco (both thematically and gameplay wise) is not to give him more burst or killing power, but instead to give him more power to help his team in new ways. However, we adamantly believe it is not our place to determine what Shaco is or should be--we believe that is up to Riot and the community as a whole--however, we did consider the perspectives of many players, and do hope that our ideas can be considered moving forward.
Rework 1: A Faithful Shaco Rework (Click here to view):
This rework focuses almost exclusively on the feedback the first rework received. It's all about preserving Shaco's current in game identity and the way players see him. It hopes to fix what the community perceives as major problems (lack of counterplay, snowbally passive, weird power curve throughout the game, "useless" in teamfights, etc.) while doubling down on the things that make Shaco great (high skill ceiling, outplay tricks, quirky jungle clears, being "the mosquito of the jungle", working as AP, AD, or Tank, being adaptable, etc.)
This rework also has some various lore ideas/suggestions that connect him to Kindred, and adds a twist to Riot's story, "A Good Death". Special thanks to Luke Jeffrey (IGN: Gralph) for writing the italicized lore text.
Rework 2: A Flavorful Rework (Click here to view):
This rework takes Shaco's identity and puts it into overdrive. This is where we put our more extreme ideas for Shaco, turning him into a character that doubles down on the potential of playing both as a demon and a jester--fulfilling the fantasy of playing the dark subservient to comedy.
This rework also has some various lore ideas/suggestions that connect him to Jhin, and makes a case for why it makes thematic sense to consider making Support Shaco's secondary role.
Vision Overhaul (Click here to view):
We believe that, in order for stealth to be a healthy gameplay dynamic, there must be more interplay involved within the vision game.
This interplay already exists, but it is exceedingly rare, as few champions have interactions with it. As an extreme example, Lee Sin with his basic Sight is countered by Shaco's Invisibility. However, if he lands a lucky Sonic Wave, or if his allied Rek'Sai uses Tremor Sense to Detect Shaco, Shaco's plan is foiled. If Shaco is in danger after becoming revealed, his allied Quinn can save him by Nearsighting the enemy threats by skillfully blinding Lee Sin and Rek'Sai in the same shot. This would remove the True Sight threat of Lee Sin's Sonic Wave, but Rek'Sai could still use her Tremor Sense to Detect Shaco and close in for the kill.
More of these types of interactions would be great, but they are currently only on a select subset of champions. As a result, most of the time Stealth is either leaves the enemy champions with no way to react, or it is 100% countered with a pink ward. We hope that a look at vision, warding, and interactivity will help stealth to feel more rewarding.
Feedback--
What are your thoughts on this? What do you like? What do you hate? What would you change? What do you think we failed to consider?
We've worked on this for nearly a year now, and tried to consider all the feedback we received from the first rework, so we would love to hear what people think of these ideas!
EDIT:
Bonus Reductionist "Rework" -- An attempt to address Shaco's biggest issues with as few changes as possible (Explanations here):
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Change Shaco's passive to deal flat damage / level instead of a percentage of his bonus AD
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Boxes are placed instantly. Boxes have 6 hp and take damage according to this chart:
Abilities and Ranged basic attacks deal 2 damage
Melee basic attacks deal 3 damage
Smite deals 6 damage
- If Shaco's ult is out when he dies, it explodes instantly but deals 50% damage. Shaco's clone leash radius is visible to him, and the clone disappears in a puff of orange smoke to reappear next to Shaco if it leaves the radius.
's Shrines grant Sight around them, similar to Shaco's Boxes.
with a new single-target ulti that turns her prey and her totally invisible to everyone but each other, and makes clever use of overlays and the Fog of War to give both player's the feeling like they're totally enveloped in the darkness (similar to Noct's ultimate.)
's abilities all reveal / dispel the Fog of War as their projectile travels.
while Meditating he can detect nearby enemies' aura (like a blueish haze through the Fog of War in a large area around him. It would be distinct from Sweeping Lens' Silhouette effect as it wouldn't give you any indication as to who the enemy is, it's the same blueish haze for all enemy champs.) This is a detection effect.
's Heightened Sense now give her an ! icon if an invisible enemy is near (in addition to the huge AoE Sight reveal it has now.)
's Duskbringer now Nearsights his prey. His Shroud of Darkness turns him invis.
's Blinding Dart is now Nearsight, giving him a total of 3 ways of playing with sight (matching Shaco) and combos with his passive. (He can Q and hide.)
's Blood Scent now functions as on orangeish-red 'scent trail' (like Singed's Poison Gas trail) that flows from his prey. This would make it a detection effect, since it would not grant any sight, only information.
's Night Hunter could do something cool.
have True Sight on his ult.
What connects them? Heavy scalling with gold, they all struggle less or more when they get a little behind and have to be played as support / tank if they fail. Let's look at numbers of the rest of 
when her W,E,R had only ap scalling, she was totally useless unless you grabbed 
and old 
. While the AP one was just terrible in everysingle aspect unless you grabbed dfg so you could delete anyone from the map with combo. Similar to deceive mana cost is high to prevent shaco from box stacking in the early game. While i like the cdr change at closer look it's OP af.
and a ton of bugs 
he really relies on setup from his laners because he has only 2 forms of CC, his box and his E slow, the box has a 2 full second charge time before it springs open and fears and his E is not a strong slow early on, heck he doesn't even have a gap closer once he's in the gank as he needs to use Deceive to get into it, the other guy uses his mobility/
and he's out of the gank because he jumped over the box and 
and have all my 6 items. All of a sudden 
and make them back off and think twice. Another thing is that he just has so much outplay potential in his kit, maybe it does not seem like much but when you outplay someone with shaco by messing them up with a clone or you were able to place your box at the right time and right spot, it feels amazing and I hope that is also kept.
