Now You See Me, The Shaco Rework

So I had been working on this concept for for a while now. It was extremely tricky because I do love playing Shaco. But he feels... Old, out of date. I know, I know, there's a lot of Shaco mains out there that are yelling blasphemy right now, but here me out. Aside from being occasionally good in the jungle, or getting item buffs that allow him to play top lane, he does't really have a good solid place in the meta right now. And unless you're a main, you rarely see anyone play him, because of Shaco Syndrome. You know, it happens to everyone. Whenever he's on the enemy team, he's a god. But lord help you if he's on your team, cause then he might as well be beating his head against the keyboard. Every.... Single... Time... Like clockwork. So I wanted to give him a little bit of a rework. Not changing too terribly much, more of moving some things around, making a few small changes, and giving him a few more options. The goal of this is to make him easier to pick up and be decent with him, but still keeping that high skill cap, so that the mains still have that high outplay potential. I wanted him to be able to have more options as far as play style and build, but still keep his personality as a champion. Now I don't know how ALL of the numbers will work out with the reworked version. I'm sure the numbers part would take some play testing and tweaking slightly, but I'm sure for the most part the base numbers and stats wouldn't have to change too much. So for that reason, I will not be including too many numbers in this draft, just kind of a rough estimate to give you an idea of his new abilities. I am also neither a story writer nor an artist, so I haven't come up with new lore or artwork, but I do feel like he'd need a good splash update, maybe take certain animations(to be explained later) out. In this discussion I will be listing the new abilities, with some notes of changes and the concept behind these changes. So please, read through the entire thing before reviewing the individual skills.

Thank you, and without further ado I give you:

Shaco The Demon Jester

Passive: Two-Shiv Poison Shaco no longer critically strikes when attacking from behind.

Shaco now applies a stacking poison when attacking from behind that deals bonus adaptive damage over time and slows the target.

I wanted something that felt useful regardless of how you want to build him, that plays into his other abilities, while still keeping his personality of demonic assassin jester. I also wanted something that gave him more options, something that rewarded those longer trades you can sometimes find yourself in, and give him more laning potential.

Q: Backstab Point and click

Shaco becomes untargetable and teleports behind an enemy and stabs them in the back, dealing bonus damage and applying two stacks of his passive.

_This one is pretty straight forward. It makes him temporarily untargetable (like a Xayah Ult, but not as long) while he does his initial teleport. I wanted him to have a bit of an easier time actually being able to use his passive. Which ties into the wanting to make him a bit easier to pick up for new people, but once again still keep his identity, and still be able to pull off early ganks. I wanted it to be rewarded for smart play, but punishing if you use it wrong. _

W: Jack In the Box Remains mostly unchanged.

Jack in the boxes refresh an enemy's current stacks of Shaco's passive.

This one I still love and wanted to keep in, but still have it tie in with his other abilities and give him more options when playing him. I have thought about lowering their duration while increasing their initial damage. Also possibly making them bigger and scarier looking. Would love to hear thoughts on that idea.

E: Twin Blades Skill Shot

Shaco throws both of his daggers in a target direction, dealing adaptive damage to the first enemy hit and consuming all of the enemy's current stacks of poison to apply their full damage and slow immediately.

_I'm not sure if I worded this one correctly enough to give a good idea of the concept. Pretty much if the enemy has two stacks of his passive, Twin Blades will cause that damage and slow to be immediate instead of over time. Once again, I wanted to give him more options and outplay potential, while still keeping him balanced and in his role. _

R: Hallucinate

Shaco turns invisible and creates a duplicate that auto attacks and can be controlled. Shaco remains invisible for the duration of the clone, or until he attacks again. When the clone dies, expires, or when shaco attacks again, it turns into a large Jack in the Box dealing damage and fearing all enemies within a short radius briefly.

I wanted this to be where Shaco's Invisibility went, to still give him that Shaco feel. This ult would have a shorter duration, but also a shorter cooldown, and still give plenty of options for outplaying your opponents and terrifying them with a giant Jack In the Box. I didn't want it to change too much about it, as I felt it would ruin Shaco's identity. But I did want it to work a little different and give a few more options for playability.

Splash Changes

I think everyone can agree that he needs a little bit of loving in the visual department, he's just been around for so long with very few changes in that department. A few things I had ideas about were the boxes, as mentioned about. Making them slightly bigger with a more evil jester demon look to them, but also have them throw tiny shaco knives instead of shooting little blasts. Also one that is kind of important, is taking away the particles on his ult and making it work more like Wukong's clone on that affect. Where you don't really notice that he's left the clone, that way the invisibility for the duration of the ult makes a little more sense. I feel like it would give more ability to trick and outplay your opponents. The last visual idea is giving him more random movements to his walk, once again this is just to make him more aesthetically pleasing. Like a random tumble or cartwheel here and there, nothing that changes any stats or makes him faster, just fun to watch and play.

Conclusion

I really appreciate you taking the time to read this, and I'm completely open to feedback. Let me know if you love it or hate it, or if you would make other changes or tweaks to it, or just your ideas in general. And if you need anything explained more in detail to get a better idea of it let me know. If people enjoy it and like the idea, I'll work on numbers and artwork and possibly new lore for him. Thank you all again :)