Here are a couple of reasons as to why i think Shaco is 100% worth picking up as a new champion or even OTP

* A lot of fun to play
* Insane Outplay potential
* Challenging but not too hard to learn
* Regarded as the best SoloQ Jungler
* Annoying for the enemy team
* Most people don't know how to counter Shaco

Of course every Champion has his Pros and Cons, because if a Champion only had Pros he would be the best Champion in the game and no one would be able to touch him, here is a list for both the ups and downs playing Shaco has:

Pros:

- Best LVL 1 Clear in the game
- Doesn't need a Leash
- Fast Clear with 3 points in his Box
- Good Counter Jungler
- Very Strong LVL 3 and LVL 6 Power Spikes
- Having a low Cooldown Flash on your Q that also has invisibility and damage
- Able to play with Ignite for strong early Duels and Ganks
- Insanely Frustrating to play against
- Arguebly the best Assassin to 1v9 with
- Very snowbally
- Great Splitpush
- Easy to take Objectives with Ult
- Huge Outplay potential
- Very powerful when Mastered

Cons:
- Takes time to Master him fully
- Invading and destroying his Boxes LVL 1 makes the first clear really tough
- Armor greatly reduces Shaco's damage
- Somewhat useless if behind
- A couple of Bugs that make it a tad frustrating to play Shaco at times
- Requires Items to be strong

Shaco's playstyle is really hard to define, but I'll try my best to give you a general idea of what it is like playing Shaco. His class is Assasssin, which means you are generally going to kill the enemy backline by outplaying them and then trying to get out.

Every Assassin has some kind of initiation tool, for Shaco it's his Deceive, the 3.5 seconds of stealth and the Flash range blink built into it makes it really easy to get on top of your target. Here is where things get tricky though and this is something that ultimately comes down to experience. You have to know your limits and damage you are able to dish out. Someone like Rengar can usually jump into 3 people, kill someone and get out, Shaco on the other hand has to be a lot more careful and going for these kinds of plays requires a lot more planning ahead as well as knowing what your champion is capable of.

A big advantage over other Assassin Junglers it that Shaco has a great splitpush, because you have high base attackspeed and his Jack In The Box, clearing the waves becomes really easy. You also have your Jack In The Box to block off pathways the enemy team could use to catch you, allowing you to pretty much always get out of any sticky situation when splitpushing.

Hallucinate makes it really easy to duel pretty much anyone in the game that is trying to hinder you from splitpushing. This allows you to not only kill them, but then also have you and your clone push pretty much twice as fast allowing you to put insane pressure on the enemy team.

One of the coolest things about Shaco though, has to be his insane burst if you manage to get a decent enough lead in the Early Game, not only is it fun to see the Enemy Squishies poppin in less than 1 second, but whats even better is seeing their reaction in All Chat.

TLDR: Shaco requires you to know his limits and kit really well to be able to use him to his full potential, but once you get that down, he is the most rewarding and fun to play Assassin in the game, hands down! So if you want to put the time into learning Shaco properly, then you are in for a fun time, I guarantee it!

AP SHACO:

This playstyle is rather hard and requires a lot of confidence and experience! AP Shaco is all about outplaying the enemy through boxes and good Clone micro, meaning you have to be able to control your Clone properly to make this playstyle work!

The main objective outside of the early game is to try and bait the enemy team into your Jack In The Boxes, get your Clone to explode inside of the enemy team and just being a nuisance to the enemy team in general by poking them with
Two-Shiv Poison.

Lets start off with the Jack In The Boxes, there are several ways you can place them or use them. The usual way you want to use them is by putting them at choke points like lane entrances or at spots were the enemies usually path through, here is a little screenshot to give you a general idea of what im talking about:

The red dots obviously mark the areas in which you want to place Jack In The Box, but so do the 2 red lines, you can place boxes anywhere on that line aswell, these are especially useful for making picks when grouping or helping you to disengage when the enemy team tries to force a teamfight!

When it comes to using your Clone properly, this is where it gets hard for most people, you have to be able to control your own and the clones movement at the same time which is hard. There are several tricks to you can do but I'll run you down on the 2 most used ones.

The first one simply requires you to Deceive into the enemy team and then using Hallucinate, this does NOT reveal you but keep in mind that your Deceive stealth duration is not so long! Now all you need to pray for is the enemy team killing your clone so it explodes. The other trick you can use is to Hallucinate early, making your Clone run away from you while you Deceive into the enemy team, at a certain range the Clone will teleport back to you, so if you time it right he will leash back to you once you reach the enemy team. Again, this comes down to experience but is a better version of the trick above.

So a lot of people ask me this question every day and it is probably the most asked question ouf of all. Is AP or AD Shaco better??? The answers to this question is sadly a lot more complex than most people think, which is what makes this somewhat tricky to answer.
I already went over the differences of each playstyle in the "Playtyle" chapter, so if you wanna know more about the playstyle, read that first. Now to actually answer this question, both are equally good... yeah...not what you expected.
The thing is that both playstyles just excell at different things, AD [Shaco can oneshot people really easily and then get out, while AP Shaco can keep the enemy team at distance and have great poke damage with Jack In The Box and your Two-Shiv Poison while also being great at turning around huge fights with your Hallucinate explosion.
So here is the actual answer to this question, yes both are equally good, that wasn't a lie, but because both excell at something different, there are scenarios where one is better than the other but that is really difficult to break down and is something you pick up after hundreds and hundreds of both AP and AD Shaco games.

Just a quick run down of the Runes I use and why I use them.

AD SHACO:

So lets start off with the keystone, Hail of Blades is in my opinion essential for the crit Shaco playstyle, it allows you to get those initial 3 auto attacks in faster, which is huge especially once you have your first crit item, allowing you to pretty much one shot squishy targets. Another reason why Hail of Blades is just insanely strong is because of how it interacts with the Shaco's Clone. The way the Clone works is he copies your stats the moment you cast Hallucinate, so if you cast it anywhere between your first 3 auto attacks from Hail of Blades your Clone will have the attack speed bonus permanently, not only for his first 3 auto attacks. This makes Shaco really strong through out the entire game, even if you die, your clone will still deal nasty damage if untounched.

As for the 1st row, there is a debate in the Shaco community whether to run Cheap Shot or Sudden Impact. I personally prefer Sudden Impact because it outscales Cheap Shot fairly quickly. While Cheap Shot allows you to have a little bit more damage in the first couple of LVLs, Sudden Impact gives you Lethality that enhances the damage of your entire kit, thus outclassing the little bit of True Damage you get from Cheap Shot.

Since Shaco is an Assassin, the best choice for the 2nd row is Eyeball Collection. Shaco is really snowbally allowing you to get the 20 stacks super quickly if you play the early game right.

Relentless Hunter is easily the best choice out of the 4 options you have in the 3rd row, you get an insane amount out of combat movement speed! This is useful in so many ways, but mostly because it allows you to travel further during Deceive, making it easier to catch up to targets in stealth. But it also allows you to create more pressure on the Map by being everywhere a lot faster, allowing you to win games more easily.

As for the 2nd tree you run Inspiration, because Magical Footwear allows you to rush a Serrated Dirk which is a really powerful early game item and for 1100 Gold will greatly boost your damage.

I used to run Cosmic Insight, but recently fell in love with Approach Velocity, this Rune just feels amazing, it is really useful especially in the early game. It allows you to stick to your target because it gives you movement speed when walking towards enemies that are slowed and since your Two-Shiv Poison's passive slows have you pretty much infinite movement speed boost when chasing someone down.

AP SHACO:
Dark Harvest is by far the best choice for AP Shaco it has insane synergy with your Two-Shiv Poison so stacking it is pretty easy. If you don't like Dark Harvest you can also run Electrocute but that is usually more burst oriented which AP Shaco isn't really about.

The rest of Domination is the same as for AD Shaco except for Ultimate Hunter, so if you want the reasoning for that, just scroll up a little! Ultimate Hunter is insane on AP Shaco, having the reduced Hallucinate cooldown makes it so that you have your Hallucinate every fight, sometimes even twice, which if used correctly can turn any game around!
Ravenous Hunter is okay too, the healing is really nice, but nothing compared to the likes of Ultimate Hunter.

As for the secondary tree, the best choice is by far Sorcery, it gives you insane amounts of AP and with the setup im running it gives you even more AP!

I personally really like to take Gathering Storm as it gives you a lot of AP which comes in super handy during the mid game and especially during the late game where this playstyle really shines.

As for the second rune in Sorcery you take Transcendence this gives you more CDR which is really nice and allows you to get more boxes down which is what AP Shaco does best anyways. It also allows you to spam Two-Shiv Poison for some nice poke damage.

Okay, a more in depth run down of what i build, here we go:

CRIT SHACO:

So first of all you want to start with Emberknife, it is generally the better option of the 2 choices you have, because it has greater dueling power which comes in super handy especially because the current meta is really fight heavy. You can opt for the Hailblade though if you feel like you need the slow and movementspeed buff from it over the dueling power.

Eclipse has decent damage but is more utility focused as it provides a small shield and movementspeed buff which is meant for a duel oriented playstyle, this doesn't mean that you cant oneshot with it, but it doesn't give you the fastest burst but rather sustained damage that is still good enough to oneshot people when fed. The omnivamp is also super nice when clearing your jungle and i have won a lot of 1v1's because of it in which even higher burst from Prowler's Claw would not have saved me.

Prowler's Claw on the other hand offers a lot more burst and a neat little dash that adds a small debuff onto the enemy, allowing you to deal 15% more damage to that target. Another important thing to mention is that you can cast your Prowler's Claw during Deceive without getting out of stealth, this makes assassinating your targets a lot easier and gives them as little reaction time as possible. This is actually the only advantage this item really has, it offers more burst and a more nuke your opponent kind of playstyle.

Your next item after this are Berserker's Greaves, they allow you to clear even faster than you already do and give you a great boost in dueling power.

Next up is Essence Reaver, it now offers insane burst and great stats for its cost, you have a Sheen proc that scales off of AD and get a decent amount of AD, Crit and Ability Haste. This is probably the best item to buy because it gives you pretty much everything you want.

Now is where you can start "adapting" your build depending on what you like and what you feel like you need. I'll do a quick rundown on possible items, you can choose whatever you like or just take a look at the recommended build at the very top of the page.

Now the situational items:

Navori Quickblades is not that great, its way too expensive and doesnt offer you any damage, you can get this as a lst item if super fed but i usually dont recommend building it because almost all other items have more to offer for less gold.


The Collector can be good if you are really far ahead and the enemy team wont build any armor soon. Because as soon as the enemy team even builds one Cloth Armor, Lord Dominik's Regards will already outdamage Collector which is why i would recommend building Lord Dominik's Regards instead in 99% of the cases.

Infinity Edge is great once you already have a few Crit Items because the more Crit chance you have, the more damage your Crits will do. This Item basically provides you with more damage the later you build it and is such a huge powerspike if you buy it as 4th or 5th item, you will love it.

Lord Dominik's Regards this is always my 3rd item after Essence Reaver because it transitions us nicely into the 60% crit build because all we need now is Infinity Edge to finish off our "core" build.

AP SHACO:


Start with Hailblade and a Refillable Potion, AP Shaco wants to stay away from his enemies and keep distance between them, that makes Hailblade a lot better than Emberknife because for you to make use of that you want to usually be up close in a duel trading auto attacks.

Your next goal is to finish Liandry's Torment as fast as possible, this is your first huge power spike allowing you to farm your jungle a lot faster and also have a decent damage spike. You will not be super powerful yet, but your Two-Shiv Poison damage and the burn will be enough to chip away the enemies HP.

Now you try to finish your Sorcerer's Shoes, this offers you a lot of damage in form of magic pen and is now my favorite choice of boots.

Cosmic Drive is almost always my 1st item after Liandry's Torment, it offers 30 Ability Haste and decent AP as well as a nice passive that makes you pretty slippery and allows you to go for better Two-Shiv Poison poke. The Ability Haste is also super good for your Jack In The Boxes as you can pretty much just spam them everywhere and in combination with Liandry's Torment you will have a lot of annoying poke which is hard to deal with for the enemy team.

Demonic Embrace is a great item, it is basically a 2nd Liandry's Torment just a bit weaker and offers a bit of defence as well. Once you are at this stage of the game you start to become a serious threat, you have insane poke and running into a bod can easily chunk them 1/3 or 1/2 of their hp depending on how tanky they are and if you are able to follow up with a Two-Shiv Poison.

Void Staff is probably the best item after Demonic Embrace, it allows you to shred so much magic resist and in combination with Liandry's Torment you can shred even the beefiest of tanks. Even if the enemy team doesn't stack as much magic resist this item is still great because you can pretty much just deal next to true damage which is always great on AP Shaco

Morellonomicon is good if you need its Healing Reduction. This is somewhat situational and usually you would want your AD Teammates to build Executioner's Calling but if thats not the case then you can definitely pick this up.

Zhonya's Hourglass is really really nice to have because it makes your outplay potential just so much better, it has good stats, but the active just makes it super OP. Being able to Deceive into the enemy team, then Hallucinate and then bursting the enemy team down once your Clone pops is already really strong, but also being able to Zhonya's Hourglass afterwards to prevent anyone from killing you is just amazing. You can use this item in so many situations, you can dodge skillshots, you can buy time for your cooldowns to come back, bait the enemy team into attacking you but then using
Zhonya's Hourglass and many many more.

Rabadon's Deathcap is something i don't build too often. While it is insanely good because of the raw amount of AP you get from it, it doesn't have anything apart from that where as most other items have some kind of active or passive that really benefit Shaco. Don't get me wrong, having huge amounts of AP is good, but if you are not snowballing this item is kinda wasted in my opinion.

Banshee's Veil is a good choice if you need the MR from the item or want the initial spell shield to not get cc chained right away when looking for poke with your Two-Shiv Poison or when placing boxes. I generally dont recommend building defensive items because if you are good on AP Shaco you shouldnt die too much anyways, but if you struggle with it or really really need the item, then go ahead, not a horrible choice.