History

8 November 2011: Build created

10 November 2011: Updated "Team Fights" section; updated "Jungling Routes and Ganking Strategies" section; Please be sure to read these sections first before scoffing at my builds please, since I explain in depth what I believe Shyvana should do in the team and also fine points that allow you MUCH faster and safer jungling.

Hi all, welcome to my jungle Shyvana guide. Above you will find 5 different builds. Six of them are built as a tank, while the fourth champion in group 1 is an example of a DPS (glass-cannon) Shyvana.

Shyvana is NOT A MAIN TANK. She has none of the characteristics of a true main tank, namely taunts or skills that disable the enemy or protect your teammates. Her role in the team is as a fighter/offtank. The reason I'm building her with so much health/armor/resist is because for her to do enough damage, she needs to stay alive in team fights. You can treat her like a glass cannon (see the fourth champion in team 1), but I think if that is your playstyle, there are better choices: champions who can stay back at a safe range to do damage (i.e. ranged AD or AP carries) or to champions that rely on the element of surprise(hello Shaco, Nocturne, Twitch, Akali, Kassadin, Evelyn, Teemo, etc.

Being a figher/offtank suits her much better because she can stay in the fight longer while dishing out decent amount of damage from items such as Atma's Impaler (buffed by the high health build), Sunfire Aegis and Thornmail. This build also makes you a very strong 1v1 champion (it is always a good feeling when you see your enemy sprint back to base as soon as they see you near!). It is also possible in normal games and in low ELOs for Shyvana to act as main tank (not a lot of people like playing a main-tank in a normal solo-queue match). I will expand more on her playstyle in subsequent sections.

Finally, thank you for taking the time to read my guide. I welcome constructive criticisms. Your upvote is extremely appreciated, but if you would like to downvote it, please do so after you have tried it out and leave comments for improvement. Thank you and I hope you enjoy this guide and playing Shyvana as much as I do!

Team 1: These builds require everything to go smoothly. Hence: no counter-jungling from the enemy jungler and you are able to complete your second jungle rotation without interruption (i.e. your lanes can hold without a gank until you go back to base for the second time). This saves so much money and allow you to rush your items. But they are risky and if you get counter-jungled, you are less likely to be able to recover well. You must use the mastery and runes I have used or you will die either at Golem, Blue or Red! You have been warned! (Summoners under lv 30: as a bare minimum you must have the equivalent of 9 Greater Mark of Attack Damages, 9 Greater Seal of Armors and 2 Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage - by sacrificing your Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist slots). Getting a good leash does not negate this need, since your second round is even tighter than the first one. I will explain more later in the Runes section.

Team 2: These builds are recommended for higher level games since it is unrealistic to expect no counter-jungling or early ganks in every game. However, you MUST conduct a successful gank after the first round, or you will be unable to kill red/blue in the second round due to not enough money to buy Health Potions. If you are unable to complete a good early gank, I will explain an alternative route later.

Champion 1: Agaisnt a balanced team

Champion 2: Agaisnt a physical dominant team

Champion 3: Agaisnt a magic dominant team

Champion 4 (Group 1): DPS build - use at your own peril... although can be fun in lower level/normal games

Champion 4 (Group 2): I think an even better DPS build than Champion 4 (group 1), GIVEN THAT YOU CAN LAND YOUR SKILL SHOTS CONSISTENTLY. The passive Fury of the Dragonborn's bonus on targets debuffed by Flame Breath causes 20% extra damage from Flame Breath per hit. I need not tell you that if you can land both your Flame Breath and Dragon's Descent consistently, a magic-penetration and AP heavy build (with some Attack Speed built in) is certainly superior than AD/hybrid builds. Do not start with a Vampiric Scepter for this build (since you won't use it to build anything). Start with Cloth Armor and 5 Health Potions

I get Frozen Mallet late in the build since as a jungler, you will get Red Buff and as a mellee character, you are well within your right to keep hogging it throughout the game

Unless specifically noted, the rest of this guide only applies to the figher/offtank builds.

Pros

• Easy to learn and play
• She is such a fast jungler, it's not funny...
• Naturally tanky due to Dragon's Descent bonuses and even more so when built correctly
• Decent damage such that you can't be easily ignored (oh hi Nunu & Willump!)
• Very strong ganks after level 6
• Extremely strong character from level 6 right through to late game
• Burnout & Dragon's Descent means you should be able to easily chase or run away
• She is so much fun to play (she can turn into a dragon!)
• Very sexy skin: Ironscale Shyvana

Cons

• Not as much damage as say... Twitch, but I suppose you live a lot longer too
• Somewhat weak before level 6
• Difficult to recover from a counter-jungle
• Not a main tank - you will die over and over and over and over again if you act like one!
• Flame Breath is more difficult to land than many other skillshots due to its narrow path
• Three of her skills are magic damage(even though Burnout scales with AD) meaning that straight armor penetration or magic penetration is not as useful to her as to some other champions

Team 1

There is no compromise if you are starting with Vampiric Scepter. You simply must have the equivalent of 9 Greater Mark of Attack Damage and 2 Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage. The reason for this is that with this setup, you can kill the two little monters near the Blue and Red Buffs with one use of a rank 2 Burnout without having to switch focus. There is no other way around this. If you do not have the AD runes, the extra damage you take from the two monsters will either kill you or make you unable to continue.

You must also have a minimum of the equivalent of 9 Greater Seal of Armor. You can play around with the third quintessence slot, but I personally use a Greater Quintessence of Resillience for safer jungling (one mistake therefore does not necessarily equal to death) and to boost my armor (since I'm using straight armor seals while taking magic resist/level glyphs).

You must also as a bare minimum, have Havoc , and these at full rank: Archaic Knowledge , Offensive Mastery , Brute Force and Awareness . The reason is simple: without them you can't kill the two little minions next to the Blue and Red Buffs with one use of a rank 2 Burnout. Plentiful Bounty is also necessary since without it, you have to actually be waiting around to buy your Health Potion after the first round. Her jungling speed also means that even with the mastery, you have to smite the Blue Buff (or Red - whichever you start with first) pretty much straight away for your smite to cool in time for the other Buff.

For this reason (and the fact that for this setup to work, you have to complete two perfect uninterrupted cycles), it is not recommended to do this in higher ranking games unless you are absolutely sure that you are not going to be counter-jungled and that you can afford to forego early level ganks.

As a consequence, only summoners level 29 and above are able to follow Team 1's strategy. Lower level summoners will not have the necessary masteries and runes to be able to complete this route alive. If you are not level 29 yet and really wants to jungle with Shyvana, please follow Team 2's strategy, but please try it out in a custom game first agaisnt a single bot (they can be target practice for ganking too!) to make sure you can successfuly complete the route without being executed. You can also pick up Heal instead of Flash, but this will greatly diminish your ganking abilities.

Team 2

If you are starting with Cloth Armor and 5 Health Potion, you have a lot more flexibility. The downside is that you are spending TONS of money on Health Potion. On average, I use about 8-10 just for the initial jungle + ganks +/- defending from counters. A successful gank after the first round is pretty much mandatory. So please let your target lane know in the beginning of the game so that they are ready and won't push the lane.

I prefer Greater Mark of Magic Penetration since pretty much all of my skills do magic damage and that I will also deal extra magic damage from the passive Fury of the Dragonborn's bonus on targets debuffed by Flame Breath Sunfire Aegis, Thornmail, Wit's End or Madred's Bloodrazer. Having said that, please feel free to experiment with other runes such as Greater Mark of Desecration or Greater Mark of Attack Speed. Same goes with your quintessences. However, I still do recommend 9 Greater Seal of Resillience and either 9 Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist or Greater Glyph of Magic Resist for safer early ganks.

Alternative mastery setup is to go down the utility tree (or at least until you can get Utility Mastery . However, I feel that Tenacity is such a great skill on Shyvana that I am willing to forego the extended buff duration.

There are not a lot of choices. Essentially:

Dragon's Descent

Get it at Levels 6, 11 and 16. This is your opening gank move. It is best to start froma brush, wait for the enemy to come in between you and your teammate, then ultimate. Remember that your ultimate pushes them along the path. If they are too far away from you, it is acceptable to walk out of the brush (or for a more spectacular effect use Flash), then ultimate as soon as you are in range. Just make sure you push INTO and not away from your teammate.

Burnout

This is your main damaging skill (apart from your ultimate of course). Level it whenever you can without delaying your ultimate. When jungling, always activate this when you are in range of all monsters. For example, when doing either of the Buffs, you stand right in the middle so both small monsters are standing in your Burnout area. Autoattacks increases its duration. You want to make sure that you reactivate this skill as soon nas available. Yes, even if there is only one monster left and it hasn't got a lot of health. Remember the movement speed buff you get too! Use it when chasing, retreating or even when walking from your base back to your jungle!

Twin Bite

This is your next priority after Burnout. It reduces the cooldown whenever you auto-attack. When jungling, I normally activate this just before I begin, then get myself in position for the most effective Burnout, then start. Make sure you activate it again as soon as it cools.

Flame Breath

Get this at level 4, then level it last. You mainly use it for the armor debuff (important while jungling to kill Blue/Red Buffs), and also while ganking and as the only ranged damage you have to shoot down that retreating enemy champion with 10 health left! At maximum level, this is a powerful ability. However since it is a skill shot (and not useful beyond rank 1 for jungling), this skill has to wait. If you forgot to get it at level 4 (as I often do), it is not ideal, but is not a disaster either. Just pick it up later at level 8.

Smite

You can't jungle without it. Simple. No argument. As a side note, unless a steal from an enemy jungler is particularly worrying, use smite early rather than late on Red/Blue Buff since her speed means that it may not be available when trying to kill the second Buff, resulting in a very very very embarrasing moment announcing "EXECUTED"...

Even if you work out how to jungle without Smite, you still need it. The reason being you NEED to jungle at a rate that allow you to be higher level than the solo laners. Given that ganks (which do not always suceed) will often slow down your jungling, causing you to drop behind in experience and gold, you need ALL the help you can get to jungle so fast that ganks do not take away your experience and gold gain (meaning the time you take to finish jungle AND gank is either faster or slightly slower than the jungle respawn time).

Know how much your Smite does (hint: rollover the icon) and use it to FINISH off Dragon and Baron. This will avoid the other team flashing in and stealing your dragon (same rule applies to Baron). Matches have been won and lost on the ability of the jungler to land smite to either steal or prevent a steal on Baron and Dragon. If you jungle without Smite, you can't do this. This is one of the very important reasons why you MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST have Smite! (Unless you are laning, which means that your jungler has it - and why the hell are you reading a jungling guide if you are laning anyway? :P). PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, I'm begging you: PRACTICE LAST HITTING DRAGON AND BARON WITH SMITE . I cannot stress this enough. Remember that especially when multiple people are hitting Dragon and Baron: The health goes down fast and you need to factor in your latency and reaction time. For example, you have worked out that at level 18, your Smite does 870 damage. In this situation, you DO NOT want to wait until 870 health is left. Because by the time your reaction time and latency kicks in, you are actually too late and the enemy jungler has stolen it from you! Judge your reaction time, latency, the rate of Dragon's/Baron's health decline and therefore the best time to Smite. This comes with practice over and over and over again! There is nothing worse than for your team to be leading, then all of the sudder the enemy steals Baron off you and wipes your team leading to the game being turned to the enemies' favour!

Flash

This is the most powerful summoner spell in the game. Use Flash + Dragon's Descent combo from a brush and watch your enemies have a heart attack while you score a successful gank! Don't forget to (preactivate) Twin Bite and use Flame Breath too!

Exhaust

Should be considered if agaisnt an AD-heavy team. If you do blind pick however, always pick Flash in preference. If you prefer the element of surprise, even agaisnt this team: Master Yi, Twitch, Caitlyn, Renekton, Tryndamere (why anyone would form a team like this is beyond me, but it has happened before); Flash is still as good! So only pick Exhaust in very special circumstances.

Teleport

Can be viable if your team wards their brushes a lot and you are able to teleport to the hidden ward. Pick this only in special circumstances with a cooperating team. As you are the jungler and meant to roam (and have good map awareness!) anyway, this summoner spell is of somewhat diminished value.

Heal

If you are a low level summoner who doesn't have the necessary runes, but still really really really want to jungle with Shyvana, then you can pick this as your second summoner spell. You will still need Smite though. Perhaps you can look at other champions that can jungle with a blank rune page and no mastery such as Warwick and Nunu & Willump. Remember that 4/4 Awareness is still mandatory and the most important mastery even for low level summoners with limited mastery points. It is better to sacrifice points in the Offensive tree to gain this.

The route I specify below will mean that you will always finish our route closest to your top lane. In a solo-queue game, I always prefer to gank top first, because:

• You don't know the people you are playing with and against
• The top lane is either a 1v1 or a 1v2 lane
• If it is 1v1, you are more likely to successfully gank given that you have just turned it into 2v1, rather than if you are going bottom and have to 3v2
• If it is 1v2, your solo teammate is more often than not pushed back to his/her tower and is struggling with farming. By prioritising top ganks you are relieving him/her some of the pressure and possible causing the other team to be more reluctant to engage, allowing your top laner to farm better.
• If your top lane is not suitable to gank, you can always go gank middle!

When jungling, remember to focus one monster at a time, generally starting from the "boss" first (the buff monsters, blue wraith, big wolf, etc) before killing its smaller sidekicks. Also always position yourself BEFORE starting so that when you do start, every monster is going to be standing in the range of your Burnout. As general rule, I always pre-activate Twin Bite, go in, Burnout, then Flame Breath the "boss" monster. Then just press whichever skill becomes available next.

Leashing

I will also need to introduce the concept of "Leash". You will need this when starting at Double Golems (no need if starting at Wolves). It basically involves the laner closest to you (either bottom or top depending on which team) to stand with you at Double Golems until they spawn at 01:40. Then they will need to either autoattack (or even better use a skill) to pull the golems. You then need to start attacking the golem (whichever one has lowest health) while the laner runs back to his/her lane. It is very important that your teammate do not hang around nearby when you kill a golem since they will then "steal" your exp and you will not be able to continue to jungle. With the correct masteries, you should be level 2 after killing double golems.

People not understanding how to leash properly is the source of a lot of frustration and anger to junglers. If you are with randoms and do not think they understand what is being asked, just start at wolves regardless of whether you are in the blue or purple team. If you are in a team with people who know what they are doing, please ask them to guard your wraith and either your Double Golems (if starting at Wolves) or Blue Buff (if starting at Double Golems). Asking them to guard the entrances to your jungle in the beginning is also a smart idea.

Team 1 Route

Blue Team (or Purple Team starting at enemy jungle)

• Buy Vampiric Scepter
• Wolves (no need for leash)
• Wraith ( Smite the blue wraith before engaging, then immediately Burnout, pick up your Twin Bite and use it as well)
• Double Golems
• Back to base, pick up [Cloth Armor] and one [Health Potion]
• Blue Buff ( Smite - open with it if safe to do so and pop your Health Potion immediately). The two small monsters should die by the time your Burnout runs out. If not, you are doing something wrong. Check your masteries, runes, skill order and your positioning
• Wolves
• Wraith (you won't have Smite for this)
• Red Buff (don't forget to Smite)
• Double Golem
• Gank top/mid lane
• Keep jungling, warding and ganking until the laning phase ends, make sure you offer subsequent Blue Buffs to your mid laner (help them, but make sure you do not get the last hit). You only need the first one for the exp! You may keep hogging the Red Buff since you are a melee character and if you follow my guide and get your Frozen Mallet late, you will almost certainly need Red Buff to gank sucessfully.

Purple Team (or Blue Team starting at enemy jungle)

• Buy Vampiric Scepter
• Double Golems - Don't forget to ask for Leash!
• Wraith ( Smite the blue wraith before engaging
• Wolves
• Back to base, pick up [Cloth Armor] and one [Health Potion]
• Double Golems (no need for leash)
• Red Buff ( Smite - open with it if safe to do so and pop your Health Potion immediately). The two small monsters should die by the time your Burnout runs out. If not, you are doing something wrong. Check your masteries, runes, skill order and your positioning
• Wraith (you won't have Smite for this)
• Wolves
• Blue Buff (don't forget to Smite)
• Gank top/mid lane
• Keep jungling, warding and ganking until the laning phase ends, make sure you offer subsequent Blue Buffs to your mid laner (help them, but make sure you do not get the last hit). You only need the first one for the exp! You may keep hogging the Red Buff since you are a melee character and if you follow my guide and get your Frozen Mallet late, you will almost certainly need Red Buff to gank sucessfully.

Team 2 Route

Blue Team (or Purple Team starting at enemy jungle)

• Buy Cloth Armor and five Health Potion
• Wolves (no need for leash), use [Health Potion] immediately
• Wraith ( Smite the blue wraith before engaging, then immediately Burnout, pick up your Twin Bite and use it as well)
• Double Golems (remember to always use [Health Potion] to keep yourself above 1/2 health)
• Gank top or mid
• Back to base, buy your items (if gank was unsuccessful, buy more health potions and redo the route above once more). You want at least 5 [health potion] or [Vampiric Scepter] and 1 [health potion] before starting the route below
• Blue Buff ( Smite - open with it if safe to do so and pop your Health Potion immediately). The two small monsters should die by the time your Burnout runs out. If not, you are doing something wrong. Check your masteries, runes, skill order and your positioning
• Wolves
• Wraith (you won't have Smite for this)
• Red Buff (don't forget to Smite)
• Double Golem
• Gank top/mid lane
• Keep jungling, warding and ganking until the laning phase ends, make sure you offer subsequent Blue Buffs to your mid laner (help them, but make sure you do not get the last hit). You only need the first one for the exp! You may keep hogging the Red Buff since you are a melee character and if you follow my guide and get your Frozen Mallet late, you will almost certainly need Red Buff to gank sucessfully.

Purple Team (or Blue Team starting at enemy jungle)

• Buy Cloth Armor and five Health Potion
• Double Golems - Don't forget to ask for Leash!
• Wraith ( Smite the blue wraith before engaging
• Wolves
• Gank top or mid lane
• Back to base, buy your items (if gank was unsuccessful, buy more health potions and redo the route above once more). You want at least 5 [health potion] or [Vampiric Scepter] and 1 [health potion] before starting the route below
• Double Golems (no need for leash)
• Red Buff ( Smite - open with it if safe to do so and pop your Health Potion immediately). The two small monsters should die by the time your Burnout runs out. If not, you are doing something wrong. Check your masteries, runes, skill order and your positioning
• Wraith (you won't have Smite for this)
• Wolves
• Blue Buff (don't forget to Smite)
• Gank top/mid lane
• Keep jungling, warding and ganking until the laning phase ends, make sure you offer subsequent Blue Buffs to your mid laner (help them, but make sure you do not get the last hit). You only need the first one for the exp! You may keep hogging the Red Buff since you are a melee character and if you follow my guide and get your Frozen Mallet late, you will almost certainly need Red Buff to gank sucessfully.

Ganking Strategies

Obviously this would be influenced at what level you are at and the specific circumstances of the ganks. But here are the general rules:

• Always check with your lane where enemy wards are - do not be silly
• Prioritise (almost always only gank) the lane that are being pushed: that is the enemy is closer to your turret than their own. Almost never gank a lane where your teammates are close to the enemy tower - that is unless the are really low health and that you KNOW that you can safely tower-dive them: remember that the enemy jungler is more than likely to want to gank this lane too!
• You want to normally start either out of sight, or in an unwarded bush
• Wait until the enemy is sufficiently close to your tower, then start
• MAKE SURE THAT YOUR LANER IS NOT ASLEEP AND IS AWARE THAT YOU ARE JUMPING IN: I have been guilty numerous times of either ping-ing or alerting my laner assuming that everyone has great map awareness. Remember that you are playing with randoms! Even if you ahve your own great team, they can still have moments of lapse in concentration or they might be concentrating on something else (farming, considering helping another lane, thinking what to buy next, etc).
• Before level 6, do not hesistate to flash and use your Burnout as soon as you reveal yourself: remember it's movement speed bonus. Hold off on Burnout until much later if your laner can CC (stun, slow etc) since it may be invaluable to chase down enemies running away with 10 health left.
• After level 6, I advocate opening with Dragon's Descent + Flash if out of range (Don't forget to preactivate Twin Bite. MAKE SURE THAT YOU DO HIT THE ENEMY AND PUSH THEM INTO YOUR TEAMMATE! Not only does this do a lot of damage, but it also created more distance for the enemy to escape. Then activate Burnout when you feel it is best to. Remember the movement speed bonus which might be useful to chase later when the enemy recovers and starts to Flash and run.
• Again, if the laner has CC and is sure to land it, you can hold off Dragon's Descent to push the enemy back closer to your tower when the CC wears off.
• WATCH FOR PINGS: These almost always mean that your teammate is either in trouble requiring help or is trying to alert you to something.

IT IS YOUR JOB TO BABYSIT THE LANERS. Do not complain if a laner is asking you to help push the lane a little to relief some pressure of them. Do not complain if your laner is asking you to defend their lane while they go back to base. Do not complain if your AP carry or support asks for the blue buff (the first blue buff is yours, subsequent ones only if no one else is interested).

Do not complain if you are asked to buy and put down wards (remember that you have a free ward with Wriggle's Lantern - plus it is ALSO the job of the jungler, not only the support, to provide map control - in fact don't wait to be asked, be smart and do it yourself. There are a lot of good warding guide around). Do not complain if you are being asked to stave off an enemy-ganking effort. In fact, why not drop some Sight Wards down at the usual bushes used to plan a gank to negate enemy ganking efforts?

Remember that killing dragon is worth 2 champion kills. With wriggle's lantern and a health potion, you should be able to solo (or close to) dragon. Don't do it unless you are sure it is not warded. Know how much your Smite does (hint: rollover the icon) and use it to FINISH off dragon. This will avoid the other team flashing in and stealing your dragon (same rule applies to Baron). Matches have been won and lost on the ability of the jungler to land smite to either steal or prevent a steal on Baron and Dragon.

You are a good initiator of team fights. This is great if there is no tank in the team or if the tank prefers you to start (some Shen players I know like you to initiate before teleporting in using his ultimate). Otherwise jump in after the tank does. You (almost - keep reading below for circumstances when you do not) always jump in with Dragon's Descent (+/- preactivating [Twin Bite]), then immediately activate Burnout while approaching and focussing on the other team's squishiest/most dangerous carry. This will normally be the ranged AD carry or the AP carry. Make sure you coordinate with your team as to who to kill first. In dragon form, your Flame Breath becomes an AOE, so keep this in mind when using it. Armor debuff on every member of the enemy team can be deadly and your AD carry will love you big time.

The reason why you activate Dragon's Breath first is for the doubling of Armor and Magic Resist bonus. This is especially important for when you are jumping first. However, it is also as important when jumping in straight after the main-tank. Remember that the roles of tanks and bruisers are to either kill the enemy carry or make them unable to participate in team fights. Dragon's Breath pushes enemies along its path. Pushing back enemy carries from their team (you only want to push the carries away and not the entire team) accomplishes what you are trying to do. Now there are four scenarios that will follow after the jump with Dragon's Breath:

1. You KILL the enemy carries (which is very possible if they go glass-cannon or are dumb enough to stand there and fight you): then what you do is turn back and sandwhich enemy's bruisers and tanks and kill them.
2. The enemy carries are pushed to low health and runs away: you DO NOT chase them. Remember that the enemy's tanks and bruisers have the same idea as you and will start harassing your carries. Turn around and help your carries.
3. Your carries got harrased and started to run away: you now have to assess the situation. Are your carries able to get away? If yes, then try to either kill someone on their team before your inevitable death, or try to get away yourself. If not, then it is your job to PREVENT the death of your carries, even if it is at the cost of your own death. Remember that games are won by fed carries. Also it is more likely that your carries hold killing streaks too. It is much cheaper to allow the enemy team to kill you while your two fed carries make the escape.
4. Your carries got harrased and started to kite: well this is easy... if the enemy bruiser is comitted to kill your carry, you just start to damage them while your carry run around kiting. If they switch back to you, then great! Your carry can then stand still and unload their full potential. If the enemy carries attempt to join the fight again (that is if you didn't kill them earlier), switch back to them to discourage them to rejoin the fight (or make them pay dearly for refusing to run).

Now do you understand why it VERY IMPORTANT to build Shyvana like you would a tank? We are not trying to make her a main tank (there are better champions for this), but to be able to fulfil your role, you NEED to stay alive the whole encounter (or at least long enough for your team to decimate the other team). In Dragon Form, your Burnout leaves a trail only idiots will stand on (causing difficulties for enemy carries to rejoin their tanks and bruisers). Your Twin Bite and Flame Breath both does AOE damage (and debuff). Everything is AOE. While you are alive, you are a MASSIVE threat. This is good because then it causes a dillema for the other team. Allowing you to go unchecked = decimation. Focussing on you = your carry unleashes their wrath. You are NOT an assassin (which is what a DPS Shyvanna is - massive damage and dies within seconds of engaging). You are there to debuff, provides continuous AOE damage, separates enemy team, or if needed, as a big threathening dragon providing alternative focus for the enemy team!

Okay now for when to NOT start off with Dragon's Descent:

• In team fights where the tank already jumps in and is able to successfully isolate the enemy carries (or if you came late to team fight). You do not need the extra defensive stats here since you are not exactly fighting enemy carries. Your role here is to then assist your carries. Dragon's Descent can be saved for later to push the enemies back into the range of your carries, get melee characters off your ranged AD/AP carries, chase that Twitch with 10 HP left at the end of a teamfight, etc. Don't be reluctant to use Dragon's Descent outside these situations though, even if you are late into the teamfight, because remember that the base damage of your abilities are already massive and in Dragon Form, they all become AOEs, which means crazy increase in your damage output!
• When either your team is soooooo far ahead or if you are REALLY fed and there was no chance the other team can kill you easily. You might opt to just go in and start chasing enemy carries while saving Dragon's Descent for later.
• On certain circumstances when ganking (See the end of "Jungling Routes and Ganking Strategies" section)

That is all, folks! Please leave constructive comments and questions. I am more than happy to implement your advice. Also if anyone has good experience playing a DPS jungle Shyvana, I will dedicate a section for it if you let me know!

Your upvote is extremely appreciated, but if you would like to downvote it, please do so after you have tried it out and leave comments for improvement. Thank you and I hope you enjoy this guide and playing Shyvana as much as I do!