Shaco is a very misunderstood assassin, some people do not know his true strength. Shaco's use in solo queue is to apply pressure early game, split push when losing or necessary, and kill the enemy carry at all times. Some people that have not played with or against a Shaco player as good as me think that Shaco loses his strength and presence as the game goes on. They are wrong and I am going to show you how to play Shaco to his highest potential.

To play a good Shaco, you will need good map awareness, need to know when to fight, need to know which champs you can handle, and you will need to know the range/dmg/cooldown of all the skills the enemy have or else you will die. Unfortunately, you will not learn most of these things through a guide, that's why you need to practice. I will try to cover as much as I can in this guide. Once you learn Shaco you will learn how to manipulate players and destroy players who don't know their champ.

Smite is a no brainer, no explaination needed there. I also like to smartcast my smite key because the half a second it takes you to click on baron or dragon it may already be dead and those are gamechanging. Also, Shaco's passive DOES work with smite.


Smite Table:

w/o and w/ Backstab
1. 445, 534
2. 470, 564
3. 495, 594
4. 520, 624
5. 545, 654
6. 570, 684
7. 595, 714
8. 620, 744
9. 645, 774
10. 670, 804
11. 695, 834
12. 720, 864
13. 745, 894
14. 770, 924
15. 795, 954
16. 820, 984
17. 845, 1014
18. 870, 1044


Exhaust because it's op. This summoner spell will help you kill that fed enemy carry 1v1 and 1v2 if equally farmed. Exhaust may help you gank during your red buff downtime. I also use when ganking early champs with strong dmg like Irelia,Shyvana ,Riven and Pantheon to name a few.


I normally choose ignite if I'm looking for a 20min game or the enemy has hella healz

My skill order is W>Q>E>W> I grab [R] when I can then max [E] for a bigger burst when ganking. The reason I take 2 [W] into early is because the extra fear length helps alot when you don't have your razor yet and rank 1 boxes just don't cut it when counter jungling.

By now everybody is between lv6-11 and can burst you down with their ultimates. If you are playing a bad Shaco and underestimating your opponents then you WILL lose the game so don't make stupid mistakes.

•Keep looking for ganks and doing everything you did from the chapter above, just don't die and let the game snowball from it.
•Mid game you will want to pink ward dragon. Safe times to do dragon is when there is 2 top or you just have a fed carry to snowball the game. Keep a timer on dragon, it spawns every 6 mins.

When doing dragon activate your ult and let your ult tank by making it hit first.

•If a tower is down on either side then you should try and push it as much as possible. Keep jack in the boxes in bushes and ward the red/blue buff area on that side. If you are fed then keep trying to find ganks and let your team farm that lane. When you are fed and mia you will put more pressure onto the enemy team while letting your teammate catch up on farm.
•Jungle buffs respawn every 5mins. If you know that the enemy jungler started at blue then it will spawn before 7:10. Try and set up jitb's and call your team for a gank. Be careful for wards and watch out for mid mia because he might be heading to grab blue.

Late Game Shaco you are one the best split pusher in the game. You will kill anybody 1v1 and you will have too much att speed that you will clear waves in literally 2 secs. With your split pushing power you will gain your team more map control and that will lead to the game changing Baron.

When doing Baron move your clone as close to Baron and it will gain aggro and tank for you. It is reccomended you switch aggro between you and your clone so it doesn't die in 4 hits.

I personally only push to win when my team absolutely sucks and we're losing horribly OR when the enemy team comp straight up ***** ours. Otherwise, I will stay with them pushing towers. I usually will plant boxes behind my teammates so we can retreat or plant boxes into the jungle to prevent my team from getting flanked doing this will win you the team fight and will save those idiot allies who stay after you get the tower or inhib and die because everybody b'd except for them.

I don't have much to say, I play a pretty team fight heavy Shaco so I will cover up most of that in the next chapter. The golden rule is to not give away easy deaths and keep following the tips up above.

Most people think that Shaco is horrible in team fights. I actually think he does his job as an assassin well and his jungle ganks and pushing are much more superior than other assassins.

Team fighting you will basically want to do the same thing throughout the game which is to kill the enemy AD, AP and Support in that order. When your team is pushing as 4 or 5 mid you want to stay hidden in the back just planting boxes behind your teammates for safe retreats or counter initiation and boxes in bushes to prevent flanks.

When someone initiates you want to stay back for about 2-3s wait til people blow CC's and CD then deceive in to the enemy AD. Usually you do not want to deceive over the tanks to the AD but deceive in a slant passing the tank who most likely has an oracles. If the support has the oracles then this will make your job a little bit harder. You will have to walk around and flank the enemy AD, you can't just deceive in a slant.

So you have deceived over and behind the AD and are pounding him, when the enemy support notices you, say he will try to throw a stun in when it's off CD. This is usually where you will want to ult dodge it and continue pounding on the AD. Do not throw shivs immediately after deceive, wait to see if he blows flash or escapes. If the enemy AD has an escape and he used it to run from you then you have two choices.
•If the AD turns around to fight you then you will need to chase him down with shiv and maybe exhaust to scare him off until your deceive is almost on CD then repeat steps above.
•If the AD withdraws from the fight then go after the AP carry or Support.

After I have killed the AD I move onto the AP carry or I will run away and find a safe time to deceive back in again and repeat until we have scored an ace.