The problem that most people have with having a shaco on their team is that he has a hard time making a presence in team fights. My solution to this problem for a long time has been getting GA. Usually if Shaco dives in with Decieve into a fight, he will be immediately targeted and killed. Of course, you can't always depend on your clone to get you out of trouble, so there must be another way to be able to target squishies in the back of a fight AND manage to stay alive. GA has been the answer for me, it of course provides the revive function which can and will save your *** a ton of times, but also provides enough armor to give shaco approximately 180-something armor at 18, combined with runes and razor, which makes you very good at taking on carries. Many people will say, "Oh well your damage output is terrible with this build, you only get 1 damage item before GA". My answer is that you have hardly any damage output at all if you can't enter a teamfight without being exploded in 5 seconds. Shaco's role is to snipe out carries, so its critical to use deceive to avoid most of the enemies, so you don't really have time to save it just for escaping. Also, I see a lot of shaco players mistakenly going IE in hopes that it wil increase the crit dmg% of decieve. It will not. IE only affects the crit dmg of attacks that are treated as normal 200% crits, not deceives auto crits. In addition it is imperative to get lifesteal on shaco asap, so get a vamp sceptre before getting GA.


Another build I am currently testing involves using clease. I have recently been up against rammus and shen players who, after my GA's revive ends, are waiting for me and use their taunt when I respawn, which is the more common case, or just a time when I am taunted in general, and leaves me unable to deceive. Naturally, I am killed before the taunt ends. Ghost, in this situation, is not very useful, so cleanse can be substituted. This is mostly for ranked games when you find that the enemy team has a lot of stuns and taunts. I also used this build with wriggles lantern instead of bloodrazors, and then getting Ghostblade for nearly maxed cdr if I have blue buff, so that I can deceive more often, which lets me enter teamfights MUCH more safely. With clone and maxed cdr, I've dived into 3 champs, killed a squishy and made it out alive. With GA you can do disgusting **** and still get away with it. So even if you deceive in, attack and die in two seconds, your cooldown on deceive will be over by the time you respawn, because it's cooldown will be just over 6 seconds with blue buff, ghostblade and the cdr runes, and the cleanse lets you break any stuns or taunts that prevent you from using deceive when you respawn, so all that can kill you is truesight, but even still you have teleported a good distance and will probably make it out if you set up an escape route with boxes, which you should seriously do before any fight.

So, the difference between these two builds and most is the GA, which at first seems like a waste, but after trying it you will see where I am coming from. Also, don't waste too much time on crit shaco, what happens to a build like that is he cannot deceive into a battle and make it out alive 100% of the time, like this build. The only other survivability item I would take on shaco is Frozen mallet, but I feel you are wasting money on a slow that you don't need, and it costs a ton of money while only giving you 20 ad and still not giving you the same level of survivability as this build. Add comments please, I am still trying to figure out the best and most cost efficient way to build a shaco that can teamfight so advice is appreciated.


Also, because it's rammus free week I wanted to share a hint on how to beat him. When hes rolling, plant a box directly on top or in front of him and he will bump into it, wasting the stun on a box. Its not hard whatsoever and will really kill the initiating power of rammus, plus will catch him off guard and make it impossible for him to chase you.
This also applies to any skillshot projectiles that can hit boxes, and can only hit one target. I don't have a full list so I won't get in to that.