Mrs Shaco and Phytes' updated Shaco guide

TL;DR - You explode people, they die, you take objectives, you piss off the enemy team. If this is really too much of a shitty format for people, I'll throw this onto something like mobafire or something if that's easier to digest.

A small, clean and concise guide by Mrs Shaco(British Assassin) and Phytes. Two longtime Shaco mains, we collaborated to make this simple guide. We’ve left out match-ups with the intention to answer these in detail on this post, or on Phytes’ Stream. Originally started as ‘If you want to learn Shaco, start here’ by Mrs Shaco, this has been significantly trimmed.

Intro Kit rundown Why pick Shaco? Runes/Masteries Items Misc Notes

#Shaco, the Demon Jester.

A Quick Run-down of his Kit. Passive Backstab Shaco deals 20% bonus damage when striking a unit from behind with his basic attacks or abilities

What this means: Try to hit everything you're attacking from behind when possible. Bonus damage! Worth mentioning: Backstabs bonus damage applies to Shaco's autoattacks and abilities, except for Jack In The Box[W].

Q Deceive Shaco instantly blinks to a target nearby location and enters stealth for up to 3.5 seconds. Dealing damage will break stealth early. His next basic attack within 6 seconds is guaranteed to critically strike for modified base critical damage. Bonus critical damage from items, runes and mastery is applied for the full amount.

What this means: This is why you are incredibly annoying, you've got a crit, you have a flash every 11 seconds, and this is also why you can take Ignite or Exhaust with your smite.
Worth mentioning: This has the exact same range as flash. Cancelling an auto cancels your stealth. This goes on CD as soon as stealths over.

W Jack in the Box Shaco summons a box at the target location that stealth's after a 2 second delay and lasts for up to 60 seconds. When an enemy comes within 300 units, the box springs open: causing surrounding enemies to turn and flee while it attacks nearby enemies for up to 5 seconds. What this means: This is what helps Shaco in the jungle. Dropping a box in a position that allows you to use auto-attacks and abilities behind jungle creeps will increase your clear time. Box placements during ganks will help secure kills. Worth mentioning: Not worth maxing second, they get one shot fairly quickly, and often are unreliable.

E Two-shiv Poison PASSIVE: Shaco's basic attacks poison his targets, reducing their movement speed for 2 seconds. It also gives affected non-champion units a chance to miss their attacks. ACTIVE: Shaco throws a dagger at a target enemy dealing magic damage and applying his slowing poison to them for 3 seconds. The passive is deactivated during the cooldown. What this means: This is where your perma-slow comes from, provided you can keep auto-attacking the enemy. Worth mentioning: Do not throw your shiv too soon, you will LOSE the passive slow. Only use if an enemy champion is out of your reach or to secure a kill.

R Hallucinate Shaco vanishes for 0.5 seconds, then creates a clone of himself that will last for up to 18 seconds. The clone deals 75% of Shaco's damage and receives 50% extra damage. This clone deals 50% damage to towers and inhibitors. At the end of its duration or when dying the clone will explode, dealing magic damage to nearby enemies. What this means: This is why Shaco is such an amazing duelist - you can duel anyone by dodging things, and dealing amazing amounts of damage, as well as juking. Shaco literally vanishes off the map upon casting this. This allows you to avoid ultimate’s like Amumu’s Curse of the Sad Mummy and Morgana’s Soul Shackles. A little bit of luck will play into this, as you have to do a bit of guessing, but it can be done! WARNING: Brand Ultimate will hurt MORE!! Worth mentioning: Shaco faces the same direction as he did when the ability was cast. The clone faces towards the top of the screen. The clone will apply on hit-effects just a Shaco would. If you have buffs on you, or were pinged prior to ulting, it's easy to tell you, from your clone.

So why pick him?

Simply put: Great ganks, amazing objective control, and can even help with ward coverage for maximum efficiency. His ability to gank from so many ways, perma slow you, juke you around can make people mad. You can camp someone and they'll simply have no way of warding every possible gank path against you without help from their own jungler - who will presumably be warding their jungle in fear of you. Your jungle clear is fantastic, and you can often clear without using either of your two pots. I'd also like to mention how fantastic Shaco is at making picks. Making a pick is having vision somewhere, and finding someone alone and just instagibbing them.

All around, he’s just a fun champion to play.

Your goal as a Shaco.

• Objective control
• Accelerating the game in your teams favor
• Vision Control
• Map Pressure

You get the idea. All stuff you want from your jungler, and Shaco excels at this. He's not going to be afk farming for the first 15 minutes of your game, he's going to want to be everywhere getting flashes kills and just being there. He wants to make this game as hard for enemy champions as possible.

So you might have heard "Shaco has no late game, he's just a glorified split pusher." Well, yes and no. “It comes down to the player behind the champion. Personally, I prefer teamfighting as Shaco. There will be games where it's better to split push or to counter split push, i.e. versus an enemy Shen or Master Yi, as these are two champions you can 1v1 in the end game. If you like a champion, play that champion and master that champion.

Runes for Shaco.

http://puu.sh/jy91K.jpg Greater Mark of Critical Chance x1 Greater Mark of Armor Penetration x8 Greater Seal of Armor x6 Greater Seal of Attack Damage x3 Greater Glyph of Attack Speed x9 Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage x3

Items

Red or Blue smite(Warrior, Devourer, Runeglaive) - Triforce, Youmuu’s ghostblade, Black Cleaver, statikk shiv, ravenous hydra, boots(tabi,mobi,merc), Blood Thirster, Infinity Edge, Last Whisper, Blade of The Ruined King These are a general list of the items Shaco can/will build.

Crit items(Triforce, Shiv, Infinity Edge, Youmuu’s Ghostblade) are great on Shaco because of his q guaranteeing a crit on his next Auto-Attack.

The Armor pen items are for obvious reasons, besides AD you get to penetrate their armor. Those also give CDR. Lifesteal for sustain, I don’t think this needs an explanation

Other items worth getting include Banshees, Maw of Malmortius, Sightstone, GA .

Honestly, build for what works for you, what do you like? How do you play? Think on your toes, and get what you need.

So what different ways are there to play Shaco?

Things I really want to stress. Vision control Vision helps everyone, and if you’re invading it’s helpful to leave a deep ward. Map awareness If you notice their jungle ganking top you can gank bot, or try to pick up dragon. If they’re a devourer jungler it’s also worth clearing their jungle out to deny stacks.

Kiting to boxes. If you're pushing a lane alone and you can't see anyone/only one person on the other side of the map. Start placing boxes behind you to kite to, should they try to collapse on you. This small action can help you duel them, juke them, run away safely, whatever. It's 100% worth it, and really annoys them. Juggling Aggro. Juggling aggro is juggling between you, your clone and your box to take less damage, while clearly it. Shaco has easy solo dragons with his clone at level 6. Back to the vision control thing, if you know the junglers topside jungler from a ward, it makes it a lot safer to take drag.

Don't pigeonhole yourself into one set build either. The items depends on the matchup. Do not corner yourself into thinking you MUST get this item EVERY time EVERY game in the SAME order. It's a nasty habit, and you should learn to build situationally.

Mistakes I see New Shaco Players Make. Forgetting you have boxes: Walk up beside someone in stealth, place box behind them, or where you think they'll run to escape. Remember, the crit from your q lasts 6 seconds. Controlling clone, for clone jukes: Don't forget you can use alt+MB2 to control your clone. Just like Tibbers. Master this, and you'll be considered a god. Using your q too soon, or too late: I highly recommend going into a custom, and figuring out how far you can get while stealthed. Note: Masked Shaco's poof of smoke is harder to see, as it's purple, not bright orange like every other skins.

Trying to force things: Don't do this, it usually hurts you more than anything. Trying to force unnecessary fights doesn't always work out.

There are dozens of handy tricks to remember, from how to reset your q cd (If you q'd over a wall, and want to gank) immediately start your recall, then cancel it. Your q is now on CD.

But overall, Shaco is about maintaining your cool downs, figuring out your own play style, and what you're comfortable with. If you go into a match thinking you'll do bad and don't trust yourself with him, you'll probably do bad. Start identifying your mistakes, what could you have done better? Should you have ganked that lane then? Who had minion advantage? Who was oom? Who used their cd's? In playing Shaco, I found my own personal awareness for many things go up because of how much I realized I didn't notice before, that became necessity now. Don't forget, even if you can't gank for your team, you can secure global gold objectives(Drag, help push towers) and ward for them.

> As always, a thanks to the Shaco mains of old and new for any help they offered. Derp Shaco and Mey Yags were big helps, and of course a big thank you to MrStealYourBuffs, and many others