Shyvana Build Guide by effinvices

Note

Introduction

Hello there, MobaFire dwellers! You probably haven't heard of me, because this is my first guide ever, and I'm more of a blogger than a guide builder. But because I am truly obsessed with Shyvana (check out my blog entries if you really wanna know how much I meant this sentence), I've decided to come out of my shell and create this guide.

This is probably not the best way to use Shyvana, but it is most of the time effective and has a great advantage late game. There are many alternative ways to use Shyvana effectively, and this is merely one of those ways. As the title suggests, this is a semi-tank build for a Jungler Shyvana.

Do enjoy my guide, and I very much appreciate some constructive criticism! Just as long as you're sure you've read through the guide before doing so :)

Thank you in advance ~ Let's do this!

Pros & Cons

Pros & Cons of THIS build, and of using Shyvana, too.

P R O S + Higher health & durability + No need for mana + You last longer in clashes, especially late game + Her Burnout renders relatively high jungling speed + Her Twin Bite helps a lot in breaking towers + SHE TURNS INTO A DRAGON!! ♥

SPACE

SPACE

C O N S - Not much damage early game - Needs some practice to use well - Lack of CC, you'll need to make up for this through items

Masteries

Actually, I have 2 mastery trees that I've been switching around with while Shyvana I have an Offensive Mastery Build and a Defensive Mastery Build. It is actually up to you if you'd want a more solid tank-like Shyv that takes a lot of enemies to kill, or a more aggressive Shyv that kills more enemies than usual (by nature, Shyvana wasn't build to kill, but to help her team mates kill).

• Summoner's Wrath improves your Exhaust by reducing your enemy's armor and magic resist by 10, great help for ganking
• Butcher is quite essential because remember, this is a Jungle Shyvana we're talking about. The faster you kill monsters, the faster you jungle, and the faster you will gain strength
• Brute Force , and Deadliness - Any extra attack damage you can squeeze out is always good
• Alacrity : More attack speed = faster jungle process
• Weapon Expertise and Sunder render armor penetration which increases the likelihood of you winning against someone of your kind: semi-tank, tank, etc.

• Summoner's Resolve - I chose this because I mainly use Smite and Heal for my summoner spells. It increases 10% health restored for Heal and grants 10 bonus gold for Smite
• Hardiness ensures that you last a bit longer in clashes or 1v1
• Tough Skin is also essential for junglers as it decreases the damage taken from monsters
• Durability concerns the matter of health, which at this point should already be high enough to resist some enemies
  {*] Bladed Armor is one awesome mastery for jungling. It returns 6 damages taken back to minions or monster/s you're up against.

Aside from the ones mentioned on the Offensive build,

• Indomitable and Honor Guard reduces the damage you take from enemies
• Veteran's Scars and Juggernaut increases your maximum health
• Initiator increases your movement speed

• Good Hands allows you to spend less time being dead, resulting to you counting down out loud because you're really bored
• Improved Recall is somewhat essential especially when you counter jungle, since you wanna be able to leave without anyone noticing you
• Swiftness to increase movement speed

REMEMBER
Whether you use the Offensive Mastery Build or the Defensive Mastery Build that is up to you. But (obviously) the offensive build will give you more kills on your stats while the defensive will give you more assists on your stats.

Summoner Spells

Smite is essential to every jungler! I changed my second summoner spell from Heal to Exhaust because people are recommending that it is more useful and efficient, given that AD carries usually have heal anyway, so during clashes, there's no need for 2 people to have Heal. I used this during the last few games I played, and yes! Proven much efficient than heal! (Thank you commenters for suggesting this!)

• Flash is a good spell, too, if you really like chasing or hate being chased. Although I like Exhaust much better
• Ignite comes in handy when the enemy is low on health and is starting to run back to his/her base

Smite damages enemy minions and neutral monsters (such as the Dragon, Baron Nashor, blue and red buff, etc.) A true jungler must have Smite, as it gives you better control of the Dragon and the Baron, and counter jungling would be much easier too. It renders faster jungling speed, which in turn makes you level up faster and buy items faster.

Smite Bonus ♥: While counter jungling, if you see an enemy trying to get the blue or red buff, you can wait til the monster's hp is low enough then steal it by using Smite and run away! (Much easier at blue buff though, because it's nearer to your territory, geographically speaking.)

Runes

I changed my runes from pure health build following suggestions of fellow MobaFire people. Gives me more damage and resistance, and changed the quints to + movement speed.

• greater seal of defense gives +0.15 armor per level
• Greater Seal of Armor renders more armor for you to survive, more tanky, so to say
• greater quintessence of endurance if you want more health, that is. But I'd still go with swiftness

Shyvana's Abilities

Ability Sequence

The reason for such priority comes pretty much of their functions mentioned in the Shyvana's Abilities section. This sequence, however, is more optimal for jungling than for laning, though it can be used for laning, too.

Items: Shyvana's Closet

There are several possible item builds you could use for Shyvana, all depending on the type of enemies you have. But here are some stater and core items that should be very useful.

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Cloth Armor would later on be built up to Wriggle's Lantern.

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Wriggle's Lantern grants you starting armor and attack damage, but the most important part is that its UNIQUE ACTIVE allows you to place a sight ward with 600 range which cools down every 3 minutes. Free wards, so to say.

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Boots of Speed gives you your initial movement speed early game. You can use it to build up to different kinds of boots depending on your needs ( Boots of Swiftness if you really need more speed, Mercury's Treads if you have some strong AP enemies, and Ninja Tabi if your enemies are mainly AD).

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Phage grants you some attack damage power and adds 225 to your health. It also gives you 25% chance to slow your target. It's a requirement item for one of the core items which is Frozen Mallet.

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Giant's Belt is a very important item, granting you 430 health. Expensive (costs 1110 gold) but worth the price. It builds up to 2 of my core items: Warmog's Armor and Frozen Mallet

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Warmog's Armor is essential to building up your health, giving you up to 920 health and 3.5 health per minion kill. Aside from that, champion kills and assists also grant 35 health. By the time you reach level 18, assuming that you have been diligently killing minions and enemies (or at least assist in killing them), your health would be through the roof, making you harder to kill.

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Frozen Mallet though not essential, is my favorite. Aside from the fact that it grants both health and attack damage, it also slows the target, reducing his/her movement speed by 40% for 2.5 seconds. As I've been ranting above, Shyvana is quite slow in chasing. This usually does tremendous help to my games.

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Randuin's Omen +armor, +health and +health regeneration. It also gives 5% cooldown reduction and when activated, it reduces both movement speed and attack speed of surrounding units by 35% for 2 seconds. Perfect for clash times.

SOME OTHER OPTIONAL ITEM CHOICES

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Sunfire Cape gives you armor and health, and also has a passive that deals magic damage to your surrounding enemies, perfect for Burnout and Dragon's Descent.

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Atma's Impaler is one of my favorite items in the game. With high health late game, it's not only the armor that I'm after, but also the additional damage it gives - which is up to 1.5% of your max health.

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Guardian Angel is a great defense item, rendering both magic resist and armor. But wait, there's more! It makes your champion really annoying to your enemies because it revives you at death, restoring 750 health. Although this can only happen every 5 minutes, it would still make you pretty annoying (lol)

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Thornmail is only optimal if you have some really badass AD enemies that are really bringing your game down. But as I've learned, is not optimal for every game use since you can buy some other useful stuff you need when your enemies are more of those badass APs.

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Force of Nature is one of the great choices you can choose from when your enemies are more on those badass AP types, because it gives you a whole lot of magic resist (and aside from that, it gives you pretty good health regen, too).

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Quicksilver Sash is another viable option if you're going against AP enemies.

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Maw of Malmortius is a great combo item to use against AP enemies. It doesn't only give you magic resist, but also 55 attack damage with awesome passives such as +1 attack damage for every 2.5% health missing, and when you're at 30% or below health and receiving magic damage, you gain an armor that absorbs 400 magic damage for 5 seconds!

POSSIBLE ITEM BUILDS

NOTE: THESE ARE MERELY OPTIONAL, IT DEPENDS ENTIRELY TO WHAT KIND OF ENEMIES YOU ARE AGAINST IN THE GAME.

As mentioned above, there are many possible item builds for Shyvana depending on your opposing team. These are just some of the options:

Jungling & Ganking

Now, if you have no idea what jungling is, you should read Xenasis' Jungling 101 - What You Need to Know Guide (click the link to see guide). It pretty much explains what jungling is, and all the techniques for jungling are there, too.



I have here 2 jungling routes for you: the Blue Route which is commonly used, and the Red Route, and alternative if you feel like you wanna differ from the usual (lol). It is up to you to choose, but most people would recommend starting at Blue. However, if you choose to use the Red Route, I recommend you gank immediately after killing the red buff just to surprise the enemy.




1. Start at the wolves immediately at 1:40
2. Get the Blue Buff
(*) counter jungle the Enemy's Red Buff, only if there is no jungler on the enemy team.
3. Kill the Wraiths next to my blue buff (or wolves again, if they've respawned in case you counter jungled enemy's red)
4. Kill the Red Buff
*counter jungle the enemy's Blue Buff if possible
5. Get the double golems
7. Kill wraiths again and then go start over at the wolves.





1. Start at the wraiths immediately at 1:40
2. Get the Red Buff, having someone to leash you here is very critical to whether you will survive your next move or not.
(*) Counter jungle the Enemy's Blue Buff, only if there is no jungler on the enemy team.
3. Kill the double golems next to my red buff
4. Kill the wolves
5. Get the Blue Buff
* Counter jungle the enemy's Red Buff if possible
6. Go back to the Wraiths and start again.

Always remember that controlling the Dragon and Baron Nashor gives your team an advantage against the enemy team. So my advice is that

• Be mindful of the time mark of when you killed the Dragon and/or Baron, so that you know when it will respawn again
• Wards, always put wards in the area of Baron and Dragon, so that you can ambush enemy teams and steal the kills
• Remember that the dragon gives +190 gold globally, so kill it each time you get a chance so you can buy items faster
• Remember that Baron Nashor grants the buff called Exalted with Baron Nashor, which renders 40 ability power, 40 attack damage, and regen power ups while the buff lasts (4 min). Which means you and your team have better chance at killing enemies in a clash. Use it wisely.

Ganking using Shyvana is usually quite difficult pre-level 6, or at least for the duration that you do not have your boots yet. However, ganking early (if you're confident that you're going to survive) is also great since enemies wouldn't expect you to do so. Always check with the champion doing the solo top if he/she needs help, and always ask before ganking. If the player seems to be (or says that he/she is) fine, continue jungling. Now, though I said ganking pre 6 can be hard with Shyvana, Exhaust should clear this problem out. Just be a good ganker and do not go out of the bush before you're supposed to.

Before you Go

♥ If you have any suggestions for revisions, please do leave a comment. I appreciate constructive criticism! :)


♥ If you liked the graphics in this guide, I made all of them thanks to tutorials by many of MobaFire's artists. Their names can be found in the credits (last section of this guide)


♥ If you want to know more about me, do visit my profile and my blog. I actually am pretty new on MobaFire and to RTS games myself


Thank you so much for reading my guide (assuming you've survived til this part XD)

Change Log

• //07.29.12 ~ 0830H// Edit out parts of Pros&Cons, Summoner Spells, Shyvana's Abilities, and Jungling; Changed Item Purchases and Shyvana's Closet option 1 and 3.
• //07.29.12 ~ 2225H// Changed rune build and item build; Changed summoner spells; Edited ganking.
  
• //07.30.12 ~ 0200H// Changed main mastery tree (top of the guide); Changed Offensive Mastery Build; Changed rune build; Changed item purchase sequence; Changed item build Option 1 in shyvana's closet chapter; Edited introduction chapter; Edited Pros & Cons chapter; Added "Blue Route" to Jungling; Added "Change Log" Chapter to guide due to numerous revisions (lol).
  
• //08.01.12 ~ 1250H// Added beginning note; Edited Pros & Cons; Edited Masteries in Cheat Sheet; Edited Offensive Mastery Build; Edited Summoner Spells; Added viable items in Shyvana's Closet; Changed Item Build in Cheat Sheet; Edited Item Build Option 1 in Shyvana's Closet; Edited Runes;

Credits

• Thank you jhoijhoi for the line dividers, photoshop tutorials, and the tutorial on how to create build guides! ♥ I owe you so much!
• Thank you Kaboom, shivaness294, chrecand, greentunic and chrier on DeviantArt for the graphic resources! Your awesome materials made my guide banners possible!
• Thank you LaCorpse for your tutorials and graphic resources, I was inspired by your build guide to create this build guide (lol) ♥
• Thank you Xenasis for teaching me how to jungle! :)

Thank you so much for reading my guide! When I become obsessive with some other champion, I shall make another one! (Probably Zyra, hahaha! ♥)


If you have time, please do visit my blog. Like I said, I'm more of a blogger than a guide builder ♥