Abilities

So, I have been looking at other Shaco guides quite alot, for mainly inspiration and I have to admit I am quite shocked to see that the guides have left out a section about his abilities. Understanding Shaco's abilities are very important since they have many uses and due to the painful cooldown's it also must be conducted with utmost precision.







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


Reminder: I will keep updating this section, adding pictures.. basically polishing it off later on, it can be quite boring to update guides.

Runes



ArP runes, will greatly increase the DPS you deal, it is more efficient for Jungling too.

Attack speed yellows, for a faster jungle and also to deal more DPS when ganking.

MP5/s, Shaco is VERY mana hungry pretty much all game.. thus it has become a requirement that Shaco maintains his blue buff, however if you do not get the blue buff you don't want to be completely shut down. These runes will help you out in those situations, you can also place more boxes.

I choose to take 2 Health Quints to survive better and it also allows me to play a bit more aggressively. 1 ArP Quints to boost my already strong damage.





These runes are based more on the risky side, Seals and Glyphs being attack speed will speed up your jungle to ridiculous levels, not to mention boost your general DPS against enemies. Sadly you will have to be more careful with these runes.





Generally a great selection of runes for a jungler, its very safe and allows most junglers to jungle relatively fast, purchase these runes if you cannot afford the best and most optimum runes for Shaco.



Searz's Rune Page For Shaco

We all know who Searz is, and what runes mean to him... but for those of you who don't, Searz is a veteran on Mobafire who seeks to find the optimum runes and items for champions, he is never satisfied until he finds the right statistics, charts and evidence to prove that his rune selection is the best. It would be silly of me to ignore his recommendations which he proved are very powerful runes for Shaco.

10 ArP, 5% AS, 6.75 AD and 12.69 armor


x 6 x 3

Searz also states that you don't need the CDR, you can replace the blue glyphs with attack speed.

Building a "healthy" Shaco is very important, for Shaco to be "healthy" he must have a balance between Survival and Damage. Getting the right items to provide Shaco with this Healthy diet can be very expensive and that is why getting a strong early game is a requirement.



Wriggle's Lantern - Must have, it gives you a boost in armor, damage and lifesteal! But the most important part of this item is how cost-effective it is, for 1600g with a steady build-up makes this pure gold. Not to mention the ward, to help you always have eyes on baron or dragon.

Boots of Mobility - Personal preference I guess, it helps you really control the map by quickly getting to places and it also really helps quick escapes or catching up to enemies. Deceive will also allow you to loose aggro, thus making the boots more effective. The only other alternative could be Mercury's Treads, but I get that if there is ALOT of CC

Zeal - With the Aid of Red Buff, Zeal will make you very strong. It gives Shaco much needed mobility and also boosts the speed of auto-attacks which will help you deal damage faster. The critical strike will not show as much but when it does, it will be a very noticeable burst! If you are lucky enough to get a critical after Deceive, with the addition of the sheen effect. Lol gg damage.

Sheen - Sheen gives Mana, Ability Power and a strong Base Damage boost. This item is what will make you "burst"! Mana is very useful on Shaco because he is usually Mana-hungry, getting more Mana will make not having Blue-Buff less punishing. Ability Power scales with Two-Shiv and JiTB, so yes they will hit much harder. Q + The Sheen Effect + Auto-attack will give a huge burst, sadly Q doesn't stack with the effect.

Trinity Force - This item is amazing. What else can I say.. After you get this item, Red Buff and Blue Buff become less important and you can focus on what Shaco does best, Gank and make the enemies fear over-extending. The balance between power and survival is the definition of this item.

Wit's End - Calculations prove that this item does slightly less (but very similar) damage to a B. F. Sword, it also adds a wonderful magic resist which will stack up very fast with all the attack speed. Just take some time now and admire how well each of these item's sync with each other. Yes, Wit's End is a top tier item for Shaco. Another interesting fact is that it does magic damage, so now you deal both melee and magic damage with your auto-attacks, ahuehaueahuea armor stacking against shaco? PSSSHHHHHHHHHH.

Guardian Angel - With the addition of Wit's End you have leaned way too far in the path of damage, and now it must be balanced with an item that will help you escape and live through Team-fights, ganks and all those other forms of combat. This item will give you more Armor and some nice Magic resist (although it isn't fully focused on those stats it is a much welcomed addition), the passive is great on shaco because once you revive 90% of the time your Q is back up to make a quick flash-out escape. Don't think your god with this item because the 5 minute cooldown is pretty damn long. If you are facing more CC oriented enemies or you just don't like guardian angel Banshee's Veil is an alternative.

The Bloodthirster - If you ever get this far, Welcome to Late Game. Shaco is probably the weakest champion Late game, because he dies way too fast, on the other hand... He is one of the best 1v1 champions at this stage of the game. At this point you will want to maximize the damage he deals and the Lifesteal he receives. Backdooring is the best part of late game Shaco, and your main aim will be to die less, so farming up B.T is relatively easy. Since so far you haven't been building raw damage, you will need this item to properly and effectively drop down turrets.

http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/2821/box1.png Now we get to the stuff that actually matters.

My jungle route, is probably the fastest it is also the safest and allows you to gank at level 2. Some people may call this the "stonewall" route, to be honest I never heard of the guy and this was the route I have always used.

Occasionally to switch it up and force a team fight or counter-jungle aggressively, I start at Blue.

Early Notice: Use pots where you feel is the best time, Usually shaco can jungle with just 3 pots fine. However it is a must that he take 5, since 2 are for back-up. If kiting fails however you can end up using all 5 pots. Just try and stay over half life, and always use a pot when attacking Golem (blue) or Lizard (red).

I start by placing 2 JiTB's at the Wraith camp and 2 at the Lizard camp (if for some reason you can't manage to get 2 boxes at red, don't worry, just place 1 box), Notice how I place them in the center. You want your boxes to be placed in a position where it can fear the little "Wraithlings" and focus the Blue Wraith. After you kill the Blue wraith, proceed to kill the little ones (Cruel world, I know). DO NOT USE SMITE HERE!
After you finish with the Wraith camp, hop over to the Lizard camp, now you will already have 1 or 2 boxes placed there. Note that the Lizard camp has big range and you can place the boxes in alot of different places, however I feel the optimum placement would be at the BLUE FLOWER on the ground. Make sure you have 3 boxes at Lizard before you start attacking, also make sure that the cooldown on your JiTB is halfway before attacking. Focus on the big Lizard, and lure him into your boxes. A common mistake many shaco players make is they don't know how to "kite". Use smite on the Lizard when he is around 500 health, (take a glance at the damage smite does and make sure you use it accurately or buffs can be stolen by smarter counter junglers)!

Kiting is a key trade of shaco, and so to kite the Lizard, place a JiTB right behind him, this will make you take minimal damage. (In the screenshot I am taking damage, which can happen sometimes, but that was because I was taking screenshots and not focusing, anyways here is an idea how to kite).
After you get Red Buff, you can go in for an early gank, try and make someone blow a summoner spell, or try and get an easy kill. However, DO NOT DIE, this is so stupid important because if you die, you will loose your red buff and make the enemy stronger and more able to harass the allied laner. Please, if you know you can't gank, don't gank at this point.

After that you can go back on track and get your blue buff, place 2 boxes in the bush just above the tip of the tree. If the boxes are too close it will aggro the little...things. Which will take up a lot of potential box damage to the Blue Golem, and if its too far, the Golem will just loose interest and get back to where he was. Before you attack the golem, make sure (again) that the cooldown on JiTB is at halfway. Then attack the Golem and proceed to Kite him. Use Smite, same rules as the red buff smite.
Finish the first jungle route at Wolves, place the box all the way in the back (inbetween the 2 sunflowers). Wait for half the cooldown on JiTB to be complete, pull the big brown wolf with Two-shiv and kite him by placing a box behind.
If you are going to Recall, Grab either a Madred's + 1 Health potion, OR if you feel that you lack mobility grab boots and 2 Health potions.

Ganking should be consistent during Early and Mid game, so whatever the you choose remember to gank. If shaco has a **** early game, he's gonna be **** all game. When ganking look for easy targets first. Your aim is to get a kill, support or make them waste a summoner's. After you make the easy gank, ALWAYS HELP THE SOLO LANER AT TOP. I cannot stress how important this is, and even at times, I get so greedy for easy ganks that I completely ignore the top lane, what then usually happens is we lose an early tower or the top solo laner dies/fears recalling.