Shaco has recieved balance changes in 4 patches - since the origin of the mastery system in Season 1
Can we atleast get an explanation as to why he isn't even mentioned in the assassin's update? Can we expect a complete overhaul soon?
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Shaco's definitely getting a Sion-level rework someday, but it could be far off.
I think they mentioned somewhere he would get some small changes in the Assassin update, likely to modernize his mechanics such as making his boxes apply spell effects, giving his boxes health similar to wards or Teemo shrooms, and things such as that.
I literally haven't seen shaco in maybe 4 months, if anything they will give him some love in the small changes
Some Rioters said he's KINDA balanced right now. He can't one shot a squishy in half a second unless he's far ahead, he has some utility with his pushing power/vision control/dueling potential and does his job fairly well.
Take Talon for example: You press EWQR as fast as you can and the target is dead while you run away invisible. Take Zed: RWQER and the target is either dead or about to die. You're also two miles away spamming your laugh. Kat: QEWR kill and repeat until penta.
I could go on, but I think you get the spirit. Almost every assassin out there has a way of one shoting people with little to no counter play while also being either able to get out or reseting their skills for more murdering. They are very binary. They either go in (and most likely kill your adc) and gtfo with the press of one button, or they go in (and most likely kill your adc) and proceed to clean up the fight by themselves.
Shaco, on the other hand, has to use his only escape as an engaging tool and quickly follow that up with his Shiv. After that the target is usually one AA away from death. The thing is: landing that AA is usually really hard if the Shaco player haven't took in consideration what abilities have been used, if the target has any mobility, any cc is still avaible, any heal is still avaible and if he is going to be able to follow the enemy for that last melee range AA AND be able to get out later on.
Sure, other assassins have to take that into consideration as well, but to a much lesser degree.
Then we have the fact that for a escape, Shaco has only 2 tool that are really unreliable: His boxes and his Ult. He either can try to place a box during his attempt at assassination or he can try to lure his oponents with his clone. Both depend both on the enemy as on the Shaco player. His boxes take 1 or 2 auto attacks to be destroyed (or one spell), his clone is the definition of a squishy target and is easily destroyed in a couple seconds.
With that in mind, Shaco has all the tools he needs to be able to one shot a target with his Q+E combo IF PLAYED CORRECTLY. His early game is pretty powerful and if properly abused, he can get snowballing easily. Even when behind, he's one of the scariest split pushers in the entire game. His W and his Q grant him his sliperyness that allow for the player to avoid 5 man ganks with relative ease if ever caught during his split pushes. Alternatively, if build for such a situation, he can 1v1 almost any single enemy that tries to stop him.
With what Riot said they want in their assassin update, we can pretty much see that Shaco is sort off what they are going for. Not likely to burst you in half a second, offers counterplay in teamfights (looking at you Talon) and has more utility than raw power.
I doubt Riot is going to change him much in this update and I'm certainly happy about it. Assassins should have to think, not press his buttons in the right order to easily kill and get away.
hope they VU him.. he has so much potentail imo
Shaco is in a weird position where he could use a rework to better match his potential but:
A) there is no pressing need for one (this isn't season 2) B) The scope of the rework would likely be larger than the "big" updates during the class updates, so don't have the available resources to do it then, but Shaco doesn't really need a smaller scale but still large update.
He might get minor adjustments (like what happened to some of the mages) but I can understand why he wouldn't necessarily be a major focus.