Shaco Rework Idea (From a Shaco main. Constructive feedback welcome.)
The below is a copy/paste from a post I made on reddit. I want to get this some exposure since I know Riot! has a lot of trouble with how to rework Shaco. As he is my favorite champion and love everything about his kit, rather than just yoinking people while in stealth, this is my rework idea.
Alright, incoming Shaco main here. I know Riot has had tons of issues with a Shaco rework. There have been many delays due to this. I personally love Shaco, and agree that changing certain things are in order, but at the same time he is very unique in what he does so maintaining champion identity is nearly impossible. I hope to address this problem in my post, and hopefully get some Riot response if there is enough support. Alright well here goes!
Shaco is an ad/ap/hybrid, stealth assassin that relies on mind games and trolling to get his job done. Shaco isn't played like any other champion in the game, bar none, and as such there is no other inspiration to draw on to try and keep his identity in check. A similar issue was found when they first reworked Evelynn, and I will be calling upon similar changes as justification for Shaco.
Passive: 20% damage increase by yoinking people in the back. (Both AP and AD damage.)
Q: Stealth for 3 seconds, and auto-crit on first hit if used during stealth duration, followed by unstealthing. Crit damage is nerfed during earlier levels but increases per point into the skill.
W: Boxbox.stream Place a jack in the box down and they last a minute. If someone walks up they are feared and then hit by little pew pew lazors that scale minimally with AP.
E: Magic floaty dagger of doom. When on cooldown, you slow enemies for 2 seconds when you attack them. The active is throwing a knife that has 100% ap/ad scaling.
R: Stop clowning around. Summon a clone of yourself that explodes when it dies doing tons of magic damage, and has 100% ap scaling. For more details look on the wiki below. http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Shaco Now that that is out of the way, let's break down the changes I think would be worthwhile, while still maintaining champion identity. I will break it down into sections then discuss synergy and changes later on.
Passive: Currently the passive is one of the hardest things to balance around. Any buff to shaco's kit gets 20% stronger when doing backstab. For thought, think of deathfire grasp. 15% of champions health was taken followed by taking 20% more damage for 4 seconds. The latter effect is why the item was so broken. The problem is Shaco gets this without any gold input, and without having to make any meaningful choices. Suddenly it makes sense why his kit is so overwhelmingly weak compared to more recent champions isn't it? It was balanced around something inherently overpowered when taking the stealth from Q into account.
New Stuff Below Here
**New Passive: Move his stealth here (make it 4 seconds or so and don't unstealth on hit). I know most of you are going to look at me funny. Stealth isn't easy to balance around. Eve got a stealth change, Rengar is a problem they want to deal with, and Akali has a very specific stealth mechanic. My proposal is to make his passive on a 10-15 second cooldown, but change it to where Shaco stealths when hit by an enemy champion. This keeps his stealth from becoming a "I press Q then nuke someone" and instead gives people a counterplay option, forcing them to want to try and dedicate CC to him and kill him or ignore him entirely and run away. This forces people into mind games that Shaco is designed for in the first place, and is far less linear than the standard Q right now.
New Q: Keep it similar, but tweak a few things. Still keep the blink, remove the auto-crit, give it flat damage on-hit for the first hit, and give it a small AP ratio. (Think 10-20%.) This still gives Q a reason to be used as a necessary gap closer, and steroid to his auto. This synergizes with new passive. How? Before you were forced to Q in and hope to nuke or die trying, or use your Q in case things went wrong to get away. Suddenly your nuke is less reliant on crit and backstab, and now they always have a warning. This means you can make his assassinations stronger consistently at the trade-off of the warning shot. It gives the enemy time to decide to get under tower or continue the engage. It allows Shaco to punish greed in a meaningful way rather than just yoink someone then walk away as if nothing happened. It also makes safer gameplay more consistent for Shaco. If you accidentally run into a bush with someone, it gives you a chance to react in that stealth and run away, again, being consistent with mind games Shaco likes to play.
New W: Keep the boxes, change the lasers. Shaco's flagship is his ult. People love clones. I feel the clone concept is underplayed and it could be changed here. Make a clone crawl out of the boxes quickly and spawn behind the feared target, following up with an instant auto attack and let it chase the enemy for a couple seconds. (Think shadow shooting out of the box between enemy legs and spawning a clone behind the enemy.) This escalates with multiple boxes. They would have their own health bars on the clones rather than the instantly disappearing boxes. This gives the Shaco player a chance to Q behind them from the bush and the targeted player now has to guess at which shaco is the real one. Allow the clones to proc on-hit abilities, and give them a small AP ratio for their autos.
*Edit: DoubleGio on the reddit had a good idea of giving his boxes the Caitlyn trap treatment. Allowing X number to stack up over time so you can place a few at once is a great idea here. It makes AP shaco and box setups more viable, as well as makes his clearing abilities at buffs better after the first one.
New E: He has more than one dagger. Why throw one? His E is the thing you max whether going AP,AD or Hybrid. Let's turn this click targeting skill into a skillshot shall we? Let him fire 3 shivs. Just make his hands go forward then spread out as if hes throwing a bunch of knives. Make the angles similar to Khazix upgraded W. Keep the 100% ad/ap scaling, but make it do X% reduced damage per shiv taken. The closer you are to your prey, the more damage you do. Again, forcing players into wondering if they want to engage with Shaco keeps up the concept of mind games. Graves has this along with many other broken mechanics and it's fine.
New R: Keep the clone. Give it an auto-detonate by pressing R a second time. Keep the AP ratio. Maybe change it to physical damage done rather than magical. When you Q, let it come with you, and when your passive causes you to stealth, make your clone stealth with you. This again adds to the mind games shaco can play.
Gameplay: With the following changes, shaco can still do his level 1 box stack on jungle camps. He can still do the level 2 early invade because you are wall jumping to a bush. He can still gank and nuke as an assassin, but have actual counter play that isn't a pink ward at the trade-off of doing his job better. He no longer has backstab so that means tweaking his damage output due to unforeseen issues won't be nearly as hard. His stealth having a decided mechanic, that still synergizes with Q as a stealth engage, makes him unique, keep his identity, but at the same time not cancerous.
Shaco was by no means a super OP champion, but the way his kit operated relegated him to solo play for the majority. These changes let him have more impact on his damage, have way more mind games that Shaco is designed around, give him the ability to be touched in the numbers without gutting something by accident, and mostly let us Shaco mains still do our thing, while removing the cancerous "lol I just walk up and one shot the ADC with no consequences" crap that stops Shaco from being able to be buffed in other areas where he needs it.
Yoink in the back is a very small part of his identity and isn't entirely removed here. Clones, trolling, and mind games are more core in my opinion, as well as build versatility. I left some of the damage ratios and stuff general as the main point of this post was to address gameplay style. Constructive criticism from the Shaco community is welcome, and how does this effect your opinion of the champion? I just ask you keep in mind Shaco was inherently DESIGNED to be annoying/trolly and I want to keep that a part of his identity.