Don't be scared by this guide at first glance since it is a very special build which isn't easy to master but VERY effective if you manage to.
The reason I want to teach you all this is that Shaco is my favourite champion which has great potential if you look at him in some diffrent ways other than to the mainstream dps Shacos.Basically by reading this guide you will learn about how to use Shaco at his full support and kill/survival potential.

It probably won't show you how to become the best Shaco ever, since you will only gain this by experience and practice, but it will provide you some help to get onto the right path of skill.

Pros:

-If you follow this guide you will be able to 1v1 almost everyone and you will be able to solo jungle creeps and dragons quite early once you get your Madreds Razors.
-You will do loads of damage and help your team by taking out the enemys squishys.
-Late game you will be like a tank that does equal amount of damage to a full damage Ashe.
-You will be extremely hard to counter.
-If you get countered in the beginning of the game it won't matter that much since you will still be very strong late game.
-Greatest Ks'er in the world

Cons:

-You will take a lot of damage in teamfights, but that's good because your teams other squishies can focus more on damage since the enemy team has to focus on you.
- Squishy... Very squishy especially at beginning.
- Weak against a team composition consisting of mostly AoE Damage
- If you're team is doing bad, you will most likely be blamed for it
- In the hands of a Great Shaco, people will always call him OP...

Once you've read through the guide, I'd appreciate that you post a feedback comment about the things I should improve.

Basically you always got to try to use the full potential of backstab, so always try to hit them in the back. Hitting the enemies in the back is one of the most important parts of playing Shaco

Description:

Shaco deals 20% bonus damage when striking a unit from behind.



Deceive is best to use once the enemies are firing spells at you, because you can avoid them by deceive like you can avoid spells with flash. Also it's great to use after gaining level 3 in order to gank.

Description:

Shaco instantly stealths for 4 seconds, and teleports to target nearby location. If he attacks while stealthed, the attack is guaranteed to crit for a bonus 40/60/80/100/120% damage.

Cooldown: 10 seconds (Deceive cooldown triggers when leaving stealth)
Cost: 90/80/70/60/50 Mana



Jack in the box is extremely good to take the golem or lizard at lvl 1 and it's good for map control. It's really useful to stack 2-3 boxes in a place if you are quite sure that the enemy will come there to get an easy kill. The reason I said 2-3 boxes is because if you use the time to stack 4-5 boxes you could have done lots of other things in that time and you would just waste time. Also while putting boxes up if you are trying to kill an enemy in their jungle you should always try to do the small camps or the lizard/golem if it's up, because you gotta wait anyway till the enemies run into the boxes if they do it, and that way you wouldn't waste any time waiting.

Shaco creates a Jack in the Box at the target location. It will Stealth after 2 seconds, and pop out when an enemy comes near, fearing nearby enemies for 0.5/0.75/1/1.25/1.5 seconds and attacking them.

It deals 35/55/75/95/115 (+0.35) damage, and lasts 90 seconds while stealthed or 5 seconds while firing.

Cooldown: 16 seconds
Cost: 50/55/65/70/75 Mana



It's extremely important that you don't use this too early and it's the thing you mostly use to take the killing blows because it slows the enemy each time you hit them. Also if a teammate that got a stun or something is close to him and you aren't in range to melee hit him you should throw the dagger to slow him a bit so your teammate can stun him.

Description:
Shivs passively poison targets on hit, giving them a miss chance and slowing them. He can throw his Shivs to deal damage and poison the target.
Passive: While Two-Shiv Poison is ready to cast: Shaco's attacks poison his target, reducing their movement speed and chance to hit by 20/22.5/25/27.5/30% for 2 seconds.

Active: Deals half weapon damage + 40/80/120/160/200 (+1) Damage to target enemy, and poisons them for 3 seconds.

Cooldown: 13 seconds
Cost: 50/55/60/65/70 Mana




This skill is extremely useful because it's like deceive, basically you can avoid spells with it because you won't take any damage from enemy spells and you will not be stunned if you time this while the enemies spells are in the air.

It's also really good to make your clone fight while you hide in a team-battle and after that you just pick the enemies out. For example, If lets say "Xin Zhao" is really low on HP and he tower hugs, you use hallucinate and command with ALT key to attack xin zhao. Before your clone gets to xin, his Hp will get pretty low so most commonly Xin is going to attack the clone. Then the clone explodes and you pick up a kill :))

The clone is almost as strong as you are since it does 75% damage, so use it as it was an extra player, the only difference is that it doesn't really matter if it dies.

Another thing that is quite usefull to know about the Clone is that it got all the items you got, so basicly if you got aura items your clone will have those aswell. That means you will get double aura, Your aura range will be bigger and you dont even need to be close to a teammate to help him. That is extremly usefull in a teamfight because that way you can hide, and you will still be able to help your team with auras if your clone is close to them.

Description:

Shaco creates an illusion of himself near him, which can attack nearby enemies. Upon death, it explodes, dealing damage to nearby enemies.
Shaco creates an illusion of himself nearby, which deals 75% damage and receives 150/150/150% increased damage. On death, the illusion deals 300/450/600 (+1) magic damage to nearby enemies.

Lasts up to 30 seconds.
Cooldown: 105/90/75
Cost 100/100/100 Mana

The right Summoner Spells are important for Shaco. With his free flash, Deceive, there is almost no need for an "escape" spell.

I ALWAYS run:

Smite

And



Since you should never be laning, I take Smite. Then, I have Exhaust to Slow and reduce resistances of opponent so I pick up a kill quicker and more frequently. Ignite is probably my favorite Summoner Spell but in terms of Shaco, you don't that extra offensive power.

Spells that are Completely Viable:
Ignite
Smite
Exhaust
Ghost


Spells that are decent:
Flash
Cleanse
Teleport
Surge



Spells you should never use for Shaco:
Clairvoyance
Revive
Heal

The runes should look like this:

3x Greater Quintessence of Fortitude


9x Greater Mark of Desolation greater Mark of Desolation


9x Greater Seal of Clarity


9x greater Glyph of Clarity


You could also get Greater Seal of Evasion in the yellow ones instead of the mana regeneration/level. It's also really good because I just often run low on mana, but that might be just me :D.

For blue runes you could use MR Runes Greater Glyph of Shiedling

What items should a Shaco have and why?

I believe that Alot of Shacos fail because they are building their Shaco extremely squishy, and that's why you will build him with either one of these builds.

Another thing you most likely will notice is the most common item used on Shaco is Sheen but its not that useful. Probably you want to know why: it's basically because sheen is around 60-70 damage extra late game since it's only base damage and sheen is pretty bad.

I think that this build is the strongest one out there because it just works perfect with Shaco in every possible way i can think of. This is my actual standard build:

- berserker's Greaves



- Madred's Bloodrazor



- Guardian Angel



- Bloodthirster



- Randuin's Omen or Bloodthirster



- Infinity Edge or Last Whisper


There are obviously other build I use like:

Anti-AP

OR


This build is for when they have TONS of AP, Burst Potential, CC, and Magic Damage. Team comps like this includes Annie, Vieger, Karthus, Kassadin, and Garen (Stacking Sunfire capes). In this team comp, your primary objective is to kill their squishiest champ OR their fed carry. Do you see Vieger chillin' in the back sippin' a Margarita? Freakin' rush that scrub and spill that **** all of 'em >=[ DIE VIEGER!!

Your only damage will be coming from IE and Bloodthirster/Hexdrinker though, the rest is for health and MR to survive those crazy, AP filled AoE Team Skirmishes.

Taker Down

or


A Team with 3+ Tanks. These guys can be tough to take down if they are well coordinated. If you do not focus one target, they will eventually roll your team over just because they are so freakin' Tanky.
Rush Madred's ASAP, and grab some survivability while you're at it.

Situational Items

- I find them useful in chasing and escaping. It is very beneficial to use in decieve. Grab them if you have problems with one of these.

- If you need more health and armor feel free to grab these. Its useful to stack these with

- In my opinion Madred's Bloodrazor is better because of it's passive. BUT if you want a free sight ward + a nice amount of lifesteal grab these. They are really effective aswell.

- Having trouble with ADs like Tryndemere?? Grab it immediately.

- Great supply of crit chance/attack speed/movement speed. Mostly I dont use them unless there are lots of squishes in the other team

- This relates to what I said in my Anti-Ap build. Grab it if theres a lot of Ap nukers.

- Relates to what i said about sheen. JUST NO!

- Great item. Grab it against tankers. Mix it with my Anti-tank build.

- Could use it to increase Health. remember that Warmog is nerfed now but is still reliable.

- Since Riot re-builded Starks Fervor, it is no longer in my anti-tank build. Now it is absolutely useless... DONT BUY IT, unless you are support :P

Lets just firstly take a look at trinity force:

- 30 Abillity Power
- 30 Damage
- 30% Attack Speed
- 15% Critical Strike Chance
- 250 mana
- 250 health
- 12 movement speed

Pasives:
- 25% chance on hit to slow the target for 35% for 2.5 seconds
- On cast, increases your base attack damage by 150% for one attack.

Okay, so basically here are some reasons why I DO NOT use Trinity Force:
- Gives low AD
- Mana stat on Trinity Force is wasted on Shaco.
- 250 health: not a lot and we have got our and for survability
- 30 AP: we don't need that...

Good Things about Trinity Force :
- Crit Chance
- Movement Speed
- Attack Speed

BUT! Most of the people buy Trinity Force for it's 'great' passive that increases base attack damage for by 150% for one attack. I believe the passive is only useful for champions that constantly use abilities like or .

Why I think that Trinity Force passives are useless for Shaco:

The slow passive is good BUT we already have a slow passive on our

The increase in base attack damage is for me unnecessary when I got my IF. In late game it only adds about 60-90 damage which makes no big difference. Without Trinity force you have more AD; you save a slot to build another bloodthirster and the stacks are well guarded by guardian angle.

Read it, learn it and DONT buy Trinity Force.

Here i will explain exactly step to step what to buy and so on.

Basically you start off by buying Boots of Speed and 3x Health Potion

Now you will start working towards Madred's Razors but once you got money for this be sure to farm a little extra so you can be 2-3x Health Potion

Now you will continue jungling and do some jungle creeps because they are really easy with a box and Madred's Razors because you wont take that much damage. You can now quickly kill golem or lizard without stacking lots of jacks.

Now you can either decide to go straight for a Pickaxe or buy a Vampiric Scepter or just get both you will need them. Berskerker's greaves comes after that.

After you got that you will be able to jungle without lossing any hp because of the lifesteal scepter and you will start working on getting Recurve Bow or just getting money enough to finish the entire Madred's Bloodrazor

After you got Madred's Bloodrazor you will have enough damage and at that point and you will start working towards a Warden's Mail if the enemy team got some physical heroes. If they dont have physical heroes you will get a Guardian Angel instead.

After you got one of those you will get a and you will start working towards getting either Infinity Edge or if you brought Warden's Mail at the step before you could also buy a Randuin's Omen.

Later on buy another or get

This is my jungling route:
(It applies to blue team but just simply reverse it if you're on purple team.

Keys

Golem
Lizard
Other Creeps (Wraths, Wolves, Golems etc.

1. Firstable you start by stacking your JITBs in the BUSH next to Blue.You will need around 4-6 JITB. Some people decide to stack them right behind the blue but I believe that it's a bad idea. Why? In case of when enemy tries to jungle trap you. If the boxes are stacked behind blue, you will not be able to pull them into the boxes to pick up a kill. Where as in bushes, you have more chance of picking up a kill because they'll walk into it. auto attack blue and run into bushes where you stacked Jacks. Do NOT use smite yet as you will not need it to kill the blue. JITB will simply do it for you.

2. When you killed blue you are going to level up to lv 2. Take a point in and go to wolves camp. Stack about 1-2 JITB and pull the giant wolf with "E". You can now use smite on the giant wolf and the rest will be taken out by JITB.

3. Now go to wraths, again stack about 1-3 JITB and pull the Wraths.

4. Now walk towards golem camp. By that time your smite should be ready to cast and if not, you need to stack more JITB. Stack about 1-2 (with smite) or 3-4 (without smite).

5. By the time you killed the golem camp you will have level 3. Take a point in and start to gank. Before you gank consider which lane needs the most help and find which enemy has the least HP. Therefore it is easier to pick up a kill/assist so you can feed even more and more. If you feel there is no point of ganking go Counter Jungle!(I'll talk about it below)

6. Finished with ganking? Great. By that time you should atleast have so move on to Red. Since you have a Madred's Razor you no longer need to many boxes. Put 2-3 and it'll be fine.

That's simply mu jungling route for Shaco. You also need to know how to Gank:

Basically the most obvious thing is to use . Before you use it always stand in the bushes for obvious reason. When the enemy starts to push and gets half-way away from his turret, use it and remember; always try to attack him from the back! DO NOT use Two-Shiv Poison straight after you attacked him. Use it for killing blows. If you need slow remember your E's passive. You can also use exhaust!

This section is so important that I needed to make a whole different topic about it.


Counter-Jungling simply put is when you disrupt/ruin the jungling of the the other team's jungler. You do this by...well...killing them. One of the easiest ways to counter a jungler is through the uses of Sight Wards. Early in the beginning, a good indication of where your enemy jungler may be is correspondent on your current location.




Once you have finished with Golems, notice you will become level 3. Level up 1 rank in Decieve, head towards THEIR Lizard. Wait around the brush by the lizard where you have complete sight of the lizard but are still invisible because of brush. If you get there, you will notice 3 things:

1) The Lizard Buff is gone
-Their Jungler started with Lizard buff first, go ahead and continue Jungling, not much to do here

2) The Lizard Buff is still there
-The enemy is coming soon, could be just below finishing up wraiths. Be patient until they come. You could start to stack boxes for an ambush.

3) THEIR JUNGLER IS THERE!!
-You're should be off cooldown. Here, you can either score blood and smite, or smite liz first, then score blood. Be creative here, remember you have so blockade 1 of his 2 possible escape routes before engaging.


This is a very dirty trick I have not seen much people doing it here in League of Legends. You are essentially making a great gamble by doing this because the time you have spent over there looking for them, you could have used that time gaining more exp and gold in you're own Jungle. But then again, I don't head over there every single game I need to counter-jungle. Here are 2 amazing tips for you to help you decide whether or not you should do this dirty trick.


Counter-Jungling Tip #1

F.o.W or commonly known as Fog of War. Fog of War is being able to hear the enemy on the map without direct line of sight. Characters like Shen and Udyr give off a very distinct sound when they jungle and therefore, gives you their EXACT location. Use this to you're advantage and when you are jungling, look in their jungle and see if you can hear that sound.


Counter-Jungling Tip #2

Enemy Creep Kills. Yes, you can actually use this to you're advantage as well. Bring up the current game summary by pressing "Tab" button on your keyboard (or laptop, I don't use a laptop) and look for their jungler. Does he have 4 Creep kills then 5? Did he have 7 Creep Kills and after 30 seconds, it still at 7? The longer it takes for them to get the next creep kill is a remarkable indication he is doing one of the buffs or recalling. If he's killing plenty in a row, look for the lesser known creeps in his jungle to find his position.


I use both of these tips to screw their Jungler up.



Whenever you decide you need to port to base, if you can, ALWAYS pick up Health Pots and 1 or 2 Sight Wards. Potions and Sight Wards will never go out of style. The most important spot to ward is Dragon. Place one by dragon and continue jungling.

By the 7:00 min Mark, both golems should be respawning by now. You can either ward their Golem and steal it, or play it safe and take your golem. But this guide is focusing on Counter-Jungling so we will steal their Golem. Start setting up your JiTB in the bush next to their golem but be extra careful about him coming. You should have Madred's Razors by now, 3-4 good JiTB, a couple auto-attacks, and smite will usually be all you need to steal their golem.


"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte


Remember this important tip: Always leave behind atleast ONE of their neutral creeps when taking their buffs. Not many people know this but if you decide to take Lizard/Golem camp but leave behind 1 of their neutrals, their buff will not spawn again. In order for it to spawn, you will need to kill every living creep in that camp. With that said, leaving behind a neutral creep ensures that they cannot take that golem again until they kill that last remaining creep. This will completely aggrevate enemy ; He needs to wait an extra 6 Minutes for HIS golem to spawn again. =D

1) Shaco's Ult acts like Flash in that you can dodge particles in Mid-Flight

2) Shaco's Lesser Twin carries everything you have

3) You're Deceive can go past walls and obstacles

4) When being chased by the enemy, pretend you will deceive a certain way, but in fact, deceive passed behind them and hide in a brush. You can safely teleport home after.

5) You can smite through walls so long as you have vision of the target Buffs. (Another reason why wards are important)

6) Ward you/their jungle!!!

7) Farming Rule; LAST HIT EVERYTHING! :D

-Always be on the lookout for a gankable target. Get them to be paranoid of your absence early on.

-Try and memorize the enemy team Summoner Spells to know what you'll be up against when ganking. ALWAYS!!

-Never initiate, stay back and wait for a perfect chance to come and fight. Best time is when they have exhausted most of their CC on fellow teammates, their Ultimates are depleted, the majority of them are half health, or when team member Fiddles Ults in between all of them.

-Always push towers when you have a free lane and your teammates are holding their own

-It gets harder playing Shaco in high competitive scenarios. Whenever you are on a downward slide, take a break and pwn scrubs another day.

-Control the map. Buy wards and ask your teammates to do the same.

-Never call "GG" before the game even starts...please, you're not helping your team to victory by doing this.

-Remember this, Your job in any teamfight is to kill their squishest champ or their carry.

Note*

I'm only writing this guide to help you guys out.
Please rate and lemme' know your successes =]


Hope you Enjoyed my very first guide =]
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free
to drop me a message here. Thankyou for the comments and I will consider all questions in due time.


Thank you =]

Terixen

Things to come:

20.1.12: Chapter about Trinity Force (DONE)