Hello, Mobafire users!
I'm Rakley here, an Euw user who plays LoL like other millions of people.

"Why should I read your guide, you random guy who is probably virgin(NO) like me and I don't know at all?".

Well, after playing more than 300 games with him and testing many different builds/strategies, I consider myself a pretty experiencied Shaco player, who's playing level is a little bit above the Shaco players average.

After seeing many strange(BAD) Shaco usage since Season 3 started, and as I start being epicly insulted and blamed for picking him on ranked, I thought it would be a good idea to create my first Guide Ever on Mobafire to explain why shaco IS still viable and why, plus an in-depth guide of HOW he should be played to be efficient.

This is just a "beta" Guide, I'll keep improving it with updates, plus I'll add videos ASAP to make my statements easy to understand.

Who is this Guide For?

To be honest, I think this oriented to all half-experienced Shaco players who want to improve their game, and/or to give him a try again after failing with him so hard since s3 began.
Of course, if you just started with Shaco and you are confident enough with LoL Mechanics to read advanced tactics, feel free to read, comment and rate this guide too!

I will begin with the most graphic resources (skills, items, runes) to give you a few ideas of my gameplay. Afterwards You'll find more advanced tactics which are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT and will improve your gameplay a lot.

17/05/2013

Beta guide Up!

Yo all! I've wrote and finished the first Part of the guide, Skills, that think that may be useful for players by itself. As days goes by I'll keep updating it with more chapters, info, videos and stuff overall!

Please, don't downvote the guide for being unfinished since I'll be udpating it almost everyday. Since I want to go really in-depth with shaco, every single chapter steals me a lot of time and I can't add information Faster.

Feel free to give your opinions and feedbacks about the current info, and if you downvote, please tell on comments why.

Many people wonder which is the actual role of Shaco since S3 began. He got so nerfed to "balance" his "OP" earlygame, while they didn't give a single buff for him lategame.

So.. is Shaco still a strong choice? the answer is YES, he is an amazing choice, but he is a hard champion to play and to master, and you will need LOADS of practice while you feel da pawah. If you are looking for a Darius-like "OMG I HIT MY KEYBOARD WITH MY D**** AND I DO PENTAKIL HAHAHAHAHA", you took the wrong champ.

Shaco is a fun, worth, powerful Champion. Is he a carry? No. Is he an initiator? No. Is he a tank? No. Is he a support? No. Is he a burster like an AP mid? No. Is he an assassin like Kha'Zix? Kinda. Is he a bruiser that can help tank to initiate? No.

So.. What can this little funny guy do for my team? Is it there anything he can do better than anyone?
Shaco is an anti-meta, and you will be soooo busy when playing with him. He has many roles and objectives, whose can be sum up: Your job is to Deny and Demotivate your enemies and make your team rich.

Your more concrete jobs will be:

1. Feed your team early-game with abusively strong ganks.
2. Counterjungle is the strongest weapon of shaco. So fast clearing with the right runes, masteries, items and techniques, plus he can easily flee. You can easily Trap and Kill your enemy jungler, deny him. Killing a lvl2 Amumu and stealing his buffs can completely destroy him if you keep on the pressure.

1. Splitpush. You need a fast win, and games are won by killing turrets, not champs. In addition, everytime you kill a turret your whole team gets LOADS of money, which turns into more gold advantadge. We will talk about this in a later chapter.
2. Use your Wriggle's Lantern To have an enemy buff permawarded. Depending on the enemy jungler you have, ward the more desired buff: Blue buff if Amumu or if their mid is a mana user. Red buff if the mid lane uses energy or there is a jungler that needs it to be useful, like Shyvana.

1. Destroy turrets. You aren't a teamfighter, but with Hallucinate, Jack In The Box, Statikk Shiv and Blade of the Ruined King, turrets just melt down as they were made of Ice and you had Fire Knives. With your Deceive, the speed of the shiv and Mobility Boots you can just also disappear when you want, and if you do well you won't be there when the entire enemy team comes to catch you. Even if they do (which they shouldn't), your team will be able to destroy one or two turrets plus an inhibitor while you distract them.
   
   As Shaco, your role in lategame is to make your enemy choose:
   1. Stay bottom and get top destroyed by you
   2. Go top and get bottom distroyed by all others
   3. the best one for your team and the most common: Force them to split so 2 of them come after you. If your teammates engage in that moment, they will likely win the TF as they will be 4vs3.
   Nowadays, people rely on strong team setups that can do an amazing Teamfight. Without Amumu being there, that Miss Fortune will die one sec after she try to cast Bullet Time.

Shaco Skills are a little bit hard to understand. You may know the range, the Cooldown and the damage of each one, but the important point is knowing HOW and WHEN you must use them.

---

BACKSTAB: You do MOAR damage when attacking from behind, cool. Many people say that the use of this skill is what makes a Shaco good or bad.



This skill is more complex than having in mind just an "always attack from behind". Yeah, it helps you to increase the damage of Deceive if you proc it behind your enemy, but remember your autoattacks proc it too, and you must exploit it:
In short terms, the best way to exploit Backstab is when your enemy flees.

You must induce FEAR into your enemy. and the best way of doing this is to surprise them. It may sound simple, but it isn't. I'll explain it better on the chapter "Efficient Ganks".

Detail: If you didn't know, neutral monsters are kinda "buggy", and you can attack them from behind if you are close enough to them without them turning their faces on you.

---

DECEIVE: Aaaah... Deceive. This is probably Shaco's signature. It is basicly a Flash that turns you invisible for 3.5 secs and lets you Crit on the next hit you do.

We will grab this Amazing heaven gift at lvl 2 and max it second.



People underestimate this skill. Not for damage, but for letting you becoming Stealthed for almost 4 seconds, which is A LOT. I've seen dozens of Shacos fail on their ganks because they attack too soon, being afraid of Q going off and just standing near their enemies without Q crit ready. To play Shaco you must keep your mind cold, so when using this Skill: KEEP CALM, you have plenty of time to move while invisible.
I know it isn't Twitch's one, but 3'5 seconds its more than a Rammus puncturing Taunt at max level! And when a Rammus taunt you, don't you feel that it's just an overpowered eternity taunt?

This skin also lets you ignore wards if you jump from the right place, as we will see in the chapter Efficient Ganks.

Another important point if this skill is the use of Behind Enemy Lines, the technique that gives the name to this guide.

Behind Enemy Lines

Exploiting Behind Enemy Lines (BEL) is what will make you a good shaco, what will make your enemy team cry. This technique is pretty simple: Fake your jumps. Take a path that would make you jump into an obvious safety (probably at the direction of your closer turret) while you jump at the opposite way, which usually is in the face of the champ is following you. However don't attack him, but keep running to enemy base.
Your enemy will think you jumped the wall you faked or took that bushes path that would let you hide, and will make him go there (or in the best cases, Flash over the wall to catch you).

• Don't always do BEL. Keep switching between forward jump and fake one to confuse.
• Always try to crit from behind to proc Backstab
• Dont use Deceive immediatly when you see danger. Keep calm and wait for the right moment.
• If you are confident, say your joke before Deceiving (now you see me, now you don't, *poof*). It's more likely that your enemy will rage and waste his Flash to catch you. I know, i know. It's a so eeeeeeeeeeeevil technique.

---

Jack In The Box: SURPRISE! This is Jack In The Box, an invisible machine-gun that will appear to the first champ that approach it, will make it flee and will shoot him. Early-game it works nice to tank early buffs and make them being cleared in 2-3 seconds at lvl 1. Late-game you will want it mostly for the fear and to help killing turrets.

We're going to want to take one point of Jack In The Box at lvl 1 and max it last.

You probably know what is coming now: Epicly faster clean buff! aw yeah!. At lvl one, 3 boxes of Jitb will make blue buff disappear in few seconds without even using smite. Why 3 and not 4 or 5? Easy, you need to put the first box at 0:45 on your wolves first, which will help you clear them with your team help.

This allows you to take your blue buff for early mana and CDs, get Deceive as you will raise to level 2 and head fast to enemy red buff jumping through Dragon or Baron wall with your Deceive. Of course, this works only if the enemy jungler started at blue! If you have a Lee Sin in enemy team as a jungler, start at YOUR red so you can cover and avoid being counterjungled yourself, and head the easiest lane to gank for a First Blood.

Jack In The Box must be used in ganks too. Placing a jack in the box in the path between the campion being ganked and his turret will make him doubt, fear (in real life) and RUN and it will give you an easier kill. Sometimes (specially if you have red buff), its even more useful to place a fast Jack In The Box than hitting with your Deceive.

When Mid/late game starts and your job as Splitpusher starts, your Jack In The Box will work both as temporal sight ward to prevent ambushes, plus the point that it will fear the champion that comes after you, giving you an additional second to run to safety... until you come back!
If you know enemies won't come til ~10 secs and there are no enemy minions, you can place a Jitb near enemy turret for extra damage to it and giving few more seconds of life to your dear minions.

• Placing a Jack In The Box in the feet of an enemy during a 1vs1 can make you win the fight. Never forget it.
• It not only grants vision to you, but your teammates. Gift the lane you ganked with a Box in that bush without a ward. If you are low and the ganked one died, their jungler may be coming. Put a box, save a life.
• Always take care of your mana. If you are in middle of a fight and you have less than 150MP, dont be a suicidal machine and use that mana to place a box that will probably die in secs. You'll may need that MP to Deceive to safety.

---

TWO SHIV POISON: An amazing ability that will work both as a finishing nuke and as a perma-redbuff. It also makes your jungling easier and safer, as it partially blinds the minions you hit and give them a chance to miss.

Since the slow power, the damage and the miss % increases with the skill level, you're going to want to max out Two-Shiv Poison first. Maxing Deceive will only increase your burst damage a bit, while maxing this little friend will grant you MOAR damage, a nice finishing blow plus that slow that works wonders in addition to your Red buff.

I've seen many Shaco players fail with this skill too. They gank using the combo Deceive+ Two-Shiv Poison to max burst damage on ganks, as they think that will produce an easier kill. Many of them forget that you lose the passive slow at hitting when you throw a knife, so if the enemy outruns you or cleanse the slow somehow (garen, irelia) you won't be able to stick to him. In addition, if the enemy jumps after you appear or Flashes away, you won't be able to make him stop.

Another point people don't get is that Two-Shiv Poison range is the same than Flash. And when people do use Flash? Exactly: When they are epicly low and don't have any other choice to (try to) survive.

So you didn't throw the knife at the beginning, and when the enemy see that he's losing the 2vs1 and tries to run away and flash... YES. You have an enemy below 100hp who just wasted Flash, that is in the range of your E that has been maxed so is the skill that does max damage, plus he is showing his back to you (yo, Backstab). So lets cast E on him after he flash and...

...Yep dude, you just scored a kill.

What if you didn't kill him even with this? There's another point people don't remember: Slow duration increase with the active. When autohitting, the passive of your E slows your target for 2 seconds, while the active of your E slows him for 3 seconds! This means you will be easily able to catch the guy you just threw the knife, at least for hitting him once or twice (which should be enough if you ganked well).

• Don't use your Two-Shiv Poison to initiate.
• You can use your Deceive+ Two-Shiv Poison combo, but just to finish a carry who is low. NEVER to initiate a full gank/fight.
• Remember this skill also procs Backstab. If you can, shoot an enemy with E when he turns back.

---

HALLUCINATE: What is worse than a ****ing annoying Shaco...? Yes, TWO ****ING ANNOYING Shacos! This little guy will duplicate yourself, and will help you to kill people, bait people, melt turrets, check bushes and solo Dragon at lvl 6.

Just take Hallucinate wheanever possible (6,11,16) like most ulties in any champ. Pretty straightforward.



People mostly uses Shaco's Hallucinatefor exploding someone, what is nice. However your twin brother has many other functionalities that people often ignore and can make you win games.

1. Shaco's have 75% of your AD, but procs all on-hit sources of damage such as Blade of the Ruined King and Statikk Shiv.
2. Controlling your Clone (alt+click) is an art to be mastered. Think as if you were using two champs at once, don't use your main shaco and clone shaco by turns.
3. It's ****ing easy to bait with Hallucinate. If someone is chasing you and your Deceive is on cooldown, enter a bush, use Hallucinate and make the Clone go out to the path you would normally take if you were fleeing. If they chase him it will explode and damage your follower, while letting you deceiving out to safety (if you are low and he high on hp) or deceiving in (if you think you can kill it) for the WOMBOCOMOBO of Hallucinate explode + Deceive + Two-Shiv Poison.
4. If you are 1vs1ing and someone fights you back (and is facing you), position your clone at his back and make him attack from there, so he procs Backstab. If clone usually does 75% of your AD and Backstab does extra 20% damage, you will find your clone doing the 90%.

In Progress..

In Progress..

In Progress..

In Progress...

In progress...