Backstab - 25% more damage... if you attack the enemy from the back. This can make a massive difference in your DPS and also will make the enemies dig their own grave when running away from you. When playing Shaco it is very important to install a psychological advantage to your enemies, make them fear you. Make them scared. Shaco feeds off this fear and it only will make him stronger, consider this idea: if you scare the enemy, his natural instincts will be to run away from you, an attempt which is quite foolish when you think about all the abilities you have to catch up to them, whilst the enemy is running away his back is turned to you... this means when auto-attacking you will deal 25% more damage so you kill them faster.

Also, I hear rumors that Deceive damage gets increased when attacking from the back, I personally am not too sure about this, so feel free to correct me if I am wrong.


Deceive - A very misunderstood and confusing ability, this does not deal Critical damage.. It deals Bonus damage. What this means is that Critical damage runes, infinity edge, sheen proc's will NOT affect the bonus damage this skill does. Counting on this skill to deal heavy damage is a very bad move many Shaco players make (because the old Shaco's Deceive worked like a critical).

The real use of this skill is for trickery, escapes and initiates. This skill in short is a spammable flash with motherf***ing stealth. Many Shaco's panic a little and think their stealth will not last long so they just Deceive and attack instantly, this is a decent move but you should understand that the stealth is 3.5 seconds long, you can deceive in and like the mad twisted clown you are stalk the enemy for a good 2 seconds before you make your move, always remember to attack from the back.


Jack In The Box - Right about now this section is looking like a motherf***ing rainbow with all these colors, but I can't help it, I want you to understand the proper uses and understand how to play Shaco. This now comes to his hardest skill to master, the dreaded JiTB.

These boxes are very fragile and have a terribly long and boring cooldown, the damage they deal is pretty good early game but just slack off mid-late game without ability power. The best feature of these boxes are the AOE fears, which is basically an AOE stun. When ganking, after you deceive attack the enemy place a box right infront of the enemy or behind the enemy, basically try and interpret the path he will be taking as an escape and place the box there for hopefully a fear which will secure the kill for you. Use these boxes as a map ward also 90 seconds of stealth is a great way to ward the map and control your surroundings! The sheer number of uses this ability has is limitless!

Two-Shiv Poison - The best part of this skill is the inbuilt phage effect that stacks with phage (trinity force) and Red Buff. Your auto-attacks will slow the enemy so you will be able to land more auto-attacks and reduce the chances of an enemy running away. The active however is difficult to use because once you throw the dagger you have 3 seconds of a strong slow to finish the enemy off, if you fail you cannot slow with auto attacks for 8 seconds (or how long it takes for the two-shiv poison to get back up).

Use the active when the enemy flash's away, ghost's or uses some escape mechanism. You can also use it to finish off a kill since it does Magic Damage: 40 / 80 / 120 / 160 / 200 (+1 per ability power) + (+0.5 per attack damage). As you can see the sheen will greatly help since it gives ability power.


Hallucinate - *Sigh* I honestly don't know how good this skill is. I mean once you think about it the clone deals 25% less damage, receives 50% extra damage and deals half damage to towers. All that **** for a long *** cooldown. Even the animations are messed up! It doesn't show the Buffs or sheen proc's, so you stand out really hard, no point using this skill for trickery since you will just make a fool of yourself.

The only practical and good use of this skill (WHICH EVEN THEN IS EFFING HARD TO TIME) is he immunity it will grant you. Hallucinate has a slight delay before the illusion spawns, allowing Shaco to evade damage and projectiles, including things such as Karthus's Requiem or 1 tick of Ignite.

Another use is when tower-diving, using Hallucinate will reset tower aggro from you to the clone, so if your planning on a dive, try and plan when to use his ultimate, I think the best time to use it is for escape purposes. This ultimate can also be used to tank towers when backdooring but considering how fast it dies off I question how useful it really is.

Controlling the clone is simple, HOLD ALT+RIGHT CLICK