Hey, welcome to the guide! If you don't know me, I'm Zefath and I hit Challenger 1200LP playing AP Shaco just a few months ago. On EUW I am the highest ranked AP Shaco player, not counting people who play him both as AP and AD. As I'm making this guide, I'm currently Grandmaster in the 800-900LP range, and I stream every game I play on https://www.twitch.tv/zefathwastaken
I wanna make something clear with this guide - AP Shaco can be played in many different ways, many different runes, items, playstyles, etc. I am not versatile enough to play a whole bunch of different ones.
I'm simply making this guide to teach you guys how to play LIKE ME.

I always path towards botside when playing AP [[Shaco, so I start topside.

If you're on blue team, start with 2 boxes Jack In The Box on Wolves and 1 on Gromp, then start taking your Wolves and use W Jack In The Box when it comes up, then run directly to Gromp to clear it and move on to your bluebuff. DON'T USE Smite YET.
Put a second point in your W Jack In The Box at level 3, then clear Raptors and move on to red - now you can use Smite on red, and move on to your Krugs, clearing them at around 3:15 and still have a Smite left for Scuttle Crab.


If you're on red team and starting topside, put two boxes Jack In The Box on red buff, and a third on Krugs. Start killing the red buff and use your W Jack In The Box when it comes up, then jump Deceive to Krugs and finish them off, moving on to Raptors. DON'T USE Smite YET.
You can potentially go for a mid gank here, if that's the case you should level E Two-Shiv Poison, but I prefer going straight to Wolves with another point in W Jack In The Box, then to Gromp which I recommend using a Smite on, then to Blue and be done with it all around 3:15 before Scuttle spawns.

If you have a hard time visualizing this, I recommend either stopping by my stream or my Youtube to see it.

There's a few things that are very important when ganking - First thing is, if you're ganking either top or bot, if you can Q Deceive into the lane and use your W Jack In The Box in a bush behind the enemy, that will be your best shot at a successful gank.
When using your W Jack In The Box in a bush that isn't warded, there's obviously no indication it's been placed for the enemy. So if you also use it while you're in your Q Deceive stealth, they won't see your W Jack In The Box animation coming from Shaco either. This means they have no way of knowing there is a box placed down at all, and are very likely to walk into it.

Another thing that's important is to use your E Two-Shiv Poison passive - "While this ability is off Cooldown, Shaco's Attacks Slow the target by 20% for 2 seconds."
This means you shouldn't use your E Two-Shiv Poison when ganking, as keeping it off cooldown will allow the slow to apply on all your autoattacks, and you should instead try to just repeatedly auto-attack the enemy until they're either out of your auto-attack range, or in range to die from your E Two-Shiv Poison.

The last thing is to use your clone Hallucinate during ganks.
My favorite gank is what I call the clone dive, where you Q Deceive in behind the enemy and use your ultimate Hallucinate before your stealth runs out. You can now send the ultimate Hallucinate under their tower, so if the enemy runs to their tower, they get hit with the explosion, and if they don't, you can just kill them with help from the laner.

I have a Shaco guide on my Youtube channel demonstrating and talking about all these plays, if you're interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap7s4izPOnc

Building on Shaco can be extremely confusing, as there are simply so many different builds out there and so many different playstyles.
What I do, is my core build is Blackfire Torch, Boots of Lucidity and Liandry's Torment. Anything after this, is completely dependent on the game and can be adapted.
If you need antiheal on your team - get Oblivion Orb after these 3 items.
If enemy team has fed assasins ( Rengar, Talon, Qiyana, etc.) - get Zhonya's Hourglass.
If you are fed and you wanna snowball the best you can - get Rabadon's Deathcap.
You can also go Rabadon's Deathcap if you're the only AP on your team and you feel confident enemy team won't buy MR.
The safest item to buy after your core build is definitely Cryptbloom, as it gives you a little bit of everything you want, no matter the game state. It's always really good and really solid on Shaco.
However, if your team has 3 or even 4 AP champs, it can be a good idea to go Bloodletters if no-one else does it.

Play around objectives.
What makes AP Shaco strong is his boxes Jack In The Box, but how do you consistently make the enemies walk into them? Well, you get prio around objectives and make sure to set a bunch of them up before it even spawns.
Having the enemy team be forced to come to you when you're standing around Drake, Attakhan or Baron makes it extremely easy to bait them into traps.
It's extremely important to play around objectives both as AP Shaco, but also when you have an AP Shaco on your team.

You don't have to put the tramps around the objective itself - If you're there before neemy team is, it's a good idea to go into their jungle and put the traps down in a bunch of bushes that you expect them to run through on their way to the objective.
Because of all your burn items, your Arcane Comet, your Cut Down, this will be some genuinely good poke damage, and by the time they get to the objective, they'll already have lost a good chunk of their HP.

AP Shaco is not the strongest champ in the game. If all you care about is climbing, you should play a different champ. I simply love this champion for how fun and unique he is, and I hope other people can enjoy that too.

I hope you learned something from this guide, or felt inspired to try AP Shaco.
If you have any questions for me, feel free to ask either here in the comments, or check out my Twitch or Youtube and I'll be happy to help you guys improve with and have fun on Shaco the same way I do.
Thanks for reading!
https://www.twitch.tv/zefathwastaken
https://www.youtube.com/Zefath
-Zefath