I'm no Shyvana goddess but I do consider her my go to girl when I just wanna make people cry. Her current play style is fun as hell to me and few people in solo see her coming as the monstrosity she likes to turn into. She can assassinate ADCs, Magi, Assassins, and tanks alike in almost any 1v1 duel. The ones she can't kill she simply runs away at a speed that is frankly inane and a bit unfair.
However. . . .
Shyvana's play style rewards non-interactive choices. I find joining team fights or ganking with her is a moot point due to her lack of any true gap closer aside from running up to someone. If they're over extended, come in and punish them greatly. However lanes like Graves/Thresh or Lucien/Lulu, Zed, or really anyone with a dash or teleport make her ganking them pointless. In team fights she can easily run around behind someone and cause enough chaos to allow for a solid initiation but actually lacks anything else besides being a surprise tank at that point. While these can be gotten around by doing as Trick2G would call the gates it does not mesh with her flavor in the least.
What Shyvana needs is a re-imagining. She can be good and with the right items absolutely devastating as a split pusher/assassin. Her general character type does not mesh with this though. Augmenting her dragon form and making her more like Gnar would be cool but would also present her with the same problems Nidalee, Elise, Gnar, and any other alternate form champ possesses of being too loaded. The way I see it there are 3 paths they can take to make Shyvana more congruent with her lore and archetype.
Path 1) They completely redo her lore and make her aggressive but less up front. Make her more about insanely quick take downs and mobility over being a bash your face in brawler. This would paint her more as a fighter/assassin like Master Yi and would make sense with her HP shred damage, speed boost, and mostly insane killing potential. Her kit would have to change just slightly as well.
Q - Twin bite is left fairly unchanged due to it applying on hit effects twice. Her character is reliant on speed and aggression meaning on hit damage would be her bread and butter as it is now. The only slight change I could see to it is add a passive AS boost to her attacks but that seems largely unneeded.
Q Dragon - Instead of the cleave attack this would be changed into a bite/stun. She'd stun them just long enough for her to tear them apart and move on to the next target. This means it loses its ability to massively sustain dragon form but she doesn't need it in this kind of character build. In dragon form it'd probably lose its cooldown on hit but if it didn't I can see the stun being something akin to a slam (Mega Gnar ult) that does little damage or a slow.
W - This would remain her bread and butter mobility tool. Literally nothing would change from this besides maybe a couple number tweaks.
W Dragon - Instead of scorching the earth this would cause her to fly with absolutely insane mobility. It'd function something like Quinn's new ult but I could see this also granting her vision over walls as well as the ability to pass through them freely. Powerful? Oh hell yes. But it'd be limited time and attacking would cancel the effect immediately.
E - This would be probably need to be changed back to its original version to a degree. Remove the ability to pass through objects and simply apply the mark to the first creature hit. The %HP damage would remain largely unchanged but it'd force the dragon to pick her target to overwhelm much more carefully.
E Dragon - This would just be flat out replaced. Rather than being a semi-useful cone of marking fireballs it'd be focused on taking down that one target and just obliterating it with extreme force. The %HP damage would be applied to each auto attack but upon activation it'd pick a melee ranged target up and slam them on the ground for an execution attack. CC unneeded but optional for flavor (though largely unbalanced).
R - The rage passive could be pushed back over into her actual passive, removing the free defensive stats. It'd make her squishier but considering she's more overwhelm and destroy oriented she doesn't need the free stats. The meat of this ability would be the icing on the cake. Rather than a medium ranged burst that drags people with her when she uses it she'd fly into the skies and gain full movement speed as if W was active. If she uses the ability again within a few seconds she becomes a one woman Tibbers and comes crashing down on some helpless fool. While flying I'd like to see her being a true dragon and be untargetable except by ranged attacks and abilities. That may pose a balance issue.
This path would make everybody's favorite dragon girl into an overwhelming force when it comes to melting someone in a one on one duel. Unlike assassins who want to move in and take out a squishy before fading back into obscurity she would be perfectly willing to toe to toe juggernauts, ADCs, assassins, tanks, or magi equally well. Her key fault would be her relative squish should she be outnumbered or out CCed. If a CC heavy team comes around she could just become a split-push goddess with a slight item tweak too.
Path 2) In order to keep her lore of being this absolute monster who can wade through armies her kit would need retooled to bring her in like more with juggernauts. Without turning her into a true juggernaut or tank a hybrid would have to be sought out. Adding in some CC would help as well as making more of an emphasis on just how chaotic she is once she dives head long into a team of five.
Passive - This currently just gives free stats which is kind of lame. Free stats can be strapped to an ability. Lets make her tanky but add some counterplay to her becoming a goddess in heavy armor (Hi Leona). Why not have it so every time she hits a target she gains a stacking defense buff. If we wanna make this dangerous we could have it be like Mordekaiser's armor where she gains a shield for each auto. All damage done to this shield would be treated as true damage just to make it somewhat fair. Another rout is to have her autos to grant stacking armor/magic resist. That way the longer she fights you the more difficult she is to drop. These are just a couple ideas and there are many other possibilities.
Q - This would need to be changed from a core damage ability to an impact ability. Right now she wants to stack as much attack speed as she can to make the best use of this as possible. However, this would probably be better off as an AoE melee spell that lit the ground beneath her target on fire. This would cause fighting her straight up to be especially dangerous unless you kite.
Q Dragon - Shyvana needs CC to be relevant as she's portrayed. Dragon form should be where that CC comes from. Considering its strapped to a limited duration alternate form we can get away with loading her down with CC galore. For her Q the flames would probably still be there but she is now a big mean dragon. She can bite you, pick you up in those jaws, and slam your sorry hide down like a rag doll. A stun would be the least this could do.
Got increadibly tired and need to shut down for the night. I will finish this tomorrow.
