Shaco support is all about assisting your team with area control by creating safe zones for your team and zoning off enemies.

Because AP Shaco is a mid/late-game champ, and the laning phase is his weakest period throughout the game. The safest option is to mitigate enemy plays and focus on securing objectives, as this is one of Shaco's biggest strengths. And looking to scale into the mid/late game. But not all ADCs are compatible with that. A Samira has to snowball, or she is useless, and although your early game is quite weak, you can still make some incredible plays with Shaco, but those tend to be a bit harder and can be more risky. I go over some options to engage/play for champs like Samira in "How to Engage?".


If you can just scale alongside your ADC, your focus will be on denying enemy plays, and there are a couple of ways you can do that.

• So against hook and poke champs, you want to limit their ability to find an angle to either land skillshots or hooks from. By placing boxes in those spots they may try to land a skillshot from.
  
  
• Against champs that have to get onto you or your carry to get CC off or deal damage, like Samira or Alistar for example, another good option is to place a box in the spot your carry is standing while farming. So when they engage, they immediately get CCed.

Note: you can find pictures with example setups In the "Setups" Chapter.

• Double Boxing

  
  One pretty safe way is having your setup like shown above and double boxing as soon as the enemy walk into one of your previously placed boxes. This CCs them for long enough that your ADC can chunk them down and you can hard commit on them, as they should be around 30-40% max HP.
  
  • Definition-Double Boxing: placing a box in an enemy's spot when they just became or are about to get feared from another box you previously placed.
  
  

• Hard Commit

  
  Useing Deceive to get behind the enemy duo and placeing a box between them and their tower and start auto-attacking away. Only do this if you have an immediate way out, like having a box in the brush you engaged from or being 2v1 with your ADC or having some other kind of advantage.
  
  
  

• Ult-Bombing

  
  Ult bombing: Useing Hallucinate and placing your clone in a spot where the max range indicator (shown below) lines up with the location of the enemy who you are trying to engage on. Then use Deceive to pass over the indicator line while you are in stealth so the clone TPs to your location.
  
  Now either you have timed it well enough and the clone immediately explodes and Fears them on arrival, so you are in no risk of dying when you eventually leave stealth.
  
  Or you now have to sell it - that that clone is you. One way of doing that is faking a risky engage.
  Here is an example of how that Engage could look like:
  placing a box behind them and auto-attacking their carry from behind, capitalizing of your passive.
  So to fake that engage, place a box behind them before crossing the max range indicator or immediately when the clone arrives, and press R on the enemy you want to auto-attack with your clone.

Things to be aware of when Ult-Bombing

If they don't kill your clone nearly immediately, you will leave stealth, and they will know that that is your clone.
If that happens, the worst case is that they will engage on you, as you are probably still pretty close to them. That's why it is a good idea to either

• play the ult-bomb in such a way that you can quickly get into a bush (they don't have vision in) or you have a setup that you set up previously in which you are safe.

• Or you simply have some kind of advantage over them that prevents them from engaging on you, like more health/a lead/the jungler is with you.

This is actually also one of the most essential things to learn as Shaco to predict what your enemy is going to do next, whether macro so you can set up to catch them or micro, knowing whether you have to place a box (offensively: behind them) or (defensively: behind you/your carry).











Your goal with the safe/fallback zones is to make it safer to push out lanes by letting your team know early if someone is looking to engage on them from the jungle, as well as making their retreat much safer. We do this by placing boxes through out the chokepoints of the jungle and placing wards as needed to have vision of crucial points the enemy might engage from.

If you only set up on one side of the jungle (like most times due to how many boxes you can control), make sure you have some wards or a few boxes on the other side of the jungle bordering mid lane so your team won't get engaged on from there.(Only relevant if someone is in midlane, obviously)

If none of your teammates feel obligated to push out a side lane, you can also do that yourself. Just make sure to have an eye on the mini map to quickly go help your team if needed.


I have made a box map with the most common box placements I use to lock down jungle through out the game:




Usually I position myself on the other side of the objective pit or in the enemy jungle when I have a proper setup, so I can go for a double-boxes or let my clone zone them off through its presence. Also, I maximize my damage that way, ensuring they lose as much health as possible on their way to the objective.

How to play Teamfights

Depending on if your team has an advantage or not, you want to play fights differently.

• If your team is behind you want to create a safe way out or prevent the enemy from engaging your team in the first place.
• If your team is ahead and doesn't need you to protect them, you can look for a flank onto the enemy ADC or cut off their way to escape the fight.

If you want to flank them, you want to look to cut off a team member that might be late or just throw a couple of shivs at a near squishy target.
Alternatively, just letting your clone walk on them can often have a big effect, as they oftentimes act like you are a bigger threat than you actually are, which results in the ADC potentially turning focus on you/your clone away from your team, as their priority is to stay alive and hit the target they can reach.

Your goal with both of these tactics when flanking is to take focus off of your team so they ideally have an "effective" numbers advantage.


You should also be aware if the enemy has AOE damage; placing boxes on the spot the fight is currently taking place won't work most of the time, and you will have just wasted that box.

Some things to have in mind

One rule that is very important to remember is that you should be prioritizing a safe, properly set-up way out over a quick one or an offensive setup focused on catching enemies.

Also, I tend to put pressure on myself if I haven't played Shaco in a while, to make a play. And I always have to remind myself that it is alright to just chill out and wait for an opportunity to make a play. Depending on your elo, this won't always be a good mindset, but until you have gotten back into playing Shaco, it is a good mindset to go with.

Shaco is a very macro-heavy champ, and because of that, his playstyle is very demanding. So managing your mental state is crucial for having success in ranked as Shaco Support. Some things that may help you perform your best in ranked:

• Only queue for ranked when you're mentally alert and are able to focus.
• Know your limits. (For example, I'm only capable of playing four games in a row before my reaction time suffers and my macro becomes worse due to a lack of focus).
• Take a 10-20 min break every one to two games.
• Stop playing ranked for the day if you start to become tired/slow in the head or just tilted. There are always normals if you want to continue playing.

Grinding while fatigued or tilted is counterproductive. You should be Prioritizing quality playtime over quantity, knowing your limits, and cultivating focus are your most reliable tools for climbing efficiently. Although you might only be the deciding factor in 40% of your games, there is no point in losing those winnable games because you aren't in a good state.

DISCLAIMER

This whole section might come off as a bit abstract; what I was trying to do with it was to give some insight on how everything might eventually come together when you have enough experience with Shaco and what is going on in my head when I'm playing. From what I know, this will most likely be different for everyone, so don't take this section too seriously.

Definition:

In League, the flow state is when your micro happens subconsciously, like someone else is playing for you, freeing your conscious mind to focus entirely on the macro.

So how to get there?

• First of all, you need to be comfortable with your champ; controlling them should feel like they're an extension of your body. This comes with practice.
  
  
• One technique to enter flow state faster is listening to music while playing.
  However, this can backfire depending on your playstyle; when you're playing Shaco more roam-heavy for example, you need to be a lot more reactive and adjust your game plan a lot more, so you have to be a lot more present. Listening to music tends to make that harder. What I do instead is talk myself through what I'm going to do next (you can imagine you're a streamer explaining your macro to Chat). Usually that results in the same thing, but you might have to find your own way of getting there.
  
  Since my preferred playstyle is less reactive, listening to music helps me to get into that flow state; also, boredom-induced mistakes tend to happen a lot less often because I'm entertained.

Note: For most people the flow state will just come with time and when they are comfortable with their champ /role and have gotten into their routine. More on the routine later in "A Note to Newer Players."

How does this help to be successful in ranked?

Your reaction time is way better, and your mental load is way less, which leads to better macro decisions. So knowing when you can get into that state and when not is a good indicator to see if you should be playing ranked that day.


Because Shaco has a very high ban rate in some ranks up to 30%, it is necessary that you have at least one other support champ in your pool to switch to. You don't have to play them a lot, but getting a couple games in is beneficial so you don't grief those games where you have to play them.

My personal backup is Bard, as he can just do a little bit of everything and is very fun to play, but just try a bunch of champs out. There will be someone who is fun to you. Alternatively consider fill-picking a champ your team needs in those games if you're comfortable with that.

Also, although Shaco can engage pretty well, that is also one of the hardest things to do, so when you aren't comfortable yet with ult bombing, it might help to get a dedicated engage champion like Nautilus into your pool. Some ADCs (think Draven, Samira, etc.) need to snowball, and if you can't engage for them, you're severely handicapping your carry. So having a dedicated engage champ in your pool until you're comfortable with engaging is crucial to winning those games.


Playing LoL can be extremely overwhelming when you're new, and I think very few people actually talk about how it truly looks to manage all the things you have to keep in mind. Usually good players present it as if they are masterminds able to think of 20 different things at the same time, and yes, some really good players might actually do that, but that isn't the case for the majority of good players. You really just have to play a lot, and as you should be looking to play the same game over and over again, all of this overwhelming mental load will become easier to deal with as it just becomes a routine for you. And getting into that routine is exactly what helps unlock the "flow state" discussed earlier.
One thing you should be aware of, though, is that when you're only playing one champ, that is going to happen a lot more quickly.

This box placement is very useful when the enemy duo is pushing you under tower, as it allows you to deny them the opportunity to step up and poke you without needing to overextend. This might look like a useless box, as they can easily walk around it, especially if they see it, but because of the way movement works in League, they do often end up stepping in, and even if not, when you place that box, they take focus off your ADC for a moment and either focus on you or the box, letting your ADC farm freely.

The RED Box shows where your cursor should be. But rather place it in the upper part of the square than the lower, as it might end up in the minions otherwise. The way it is placed here, it doesn't get triggered by the minions.

Another good box to set up before getting pushed in is in the bush closest to your tower. Like I said before, adapt your box placement depending on where they are looking for angles to poke/engage from.

Double boxing:

There are incredibly many mechanics on Shaco and different ways to play him, and I am not able to teach them all in this guide, and for now I kept it to the very basics that you need to function on Shaco. Therefore, I highly recommend watching some Shaco one-trick ponies (OTPs) to expand your knowledge of the various ways to play Shaco and improve your mechanics.

If you haven't done so already, consider reading "Fear the Jester's Guide." Their guide is very well written, and you can learn a lot from it if you have the basics down.

If you have any questions, feel free to write a comment. It might take me a few days to respond, but I check in regularly. Also I appreciate any feedback to improve this guide.

In this section you will find what im planning to do with this guide
Since the current update already took me nearly two months or 30 h (which, yes, really isn't that much, but I also only had limited time to invest), don't expect any major updates too soon. But I plan on:

• Giving the Cheatsheet a little update and coming back to what I haven't done yet
• Pros&Cons/Champ profile
• Depending on your feedback, I will also expand or add some new topics.
• And of course I will keep the build section up to date.