This is a short and sweet test guide. Hopefully you'd get some idea as to what exactly Shyvana is. Shyvana is super confusing. She's got Attack Damage(AD) and Ability Power(AP) skills, but relies on constantly hitting enemies with her auto-attacks so she needs Attack Speed(AS) and AD. But her highest damaging skills are AP. Very confusing.

Don't be afraid of using Dragon Form. Seriously. If you think about it right, Shyvana has one of the easiest to attain ultimates in the game; auto attack a few minions and "bam", you have Dragon. It has no cooldown, and only relies on your Fury Bar. A good Shyvana player can prolly go dragon twice within a 5 minute period(though this is reliant on whether or not you've got the minions to Auto-Farm for Fury.

Here are some examples how/when to use Dragon Form.

1) The Moment You're Level 6.
-A great thing about Shyvana is that the instant she's level 6 she's got a maxed Fury Bar. This means that the moment you clikc that Upgrade Skill icon you've got a Dragon roaring to go.

2) Dashing Over Walls.
-Yeah, this seems like a waste, but losing your ult vs dying doesn't seem so bad huh? The moment you land you can also Burnout immediately to hightail it outta there.

3) Channeling Enemies
-Although it's not much, Dragon's Descent does count as hard CC. A channeling Karthus or Katarina can and will be interrupted mid cast.

4) Cutting Someone Off
-The main problem about Dragon's Descent is that while the hard CC is awesome, sometimes it works against you. If you're directly chasing someone in a line Dragon's Descent will just push them a bit further away, giving them even the slightest chance of survival. The best way to chase someone is to travel parallel to them this Dragon them at an angle hopefully into a wall.

5) *RISKY* Pincering Enemies in Team Fights
-This is a move that really only has succeeded twice for me. In a confrontational 4v5 where your team is at the turret and the enemies is trying to push it, a risky maneuver is to kite around the opponent, Flash right behind them, then Dragon's Descent them all towards the turret. If you can catch at least 2-3 Champions it's enough. Dragon's Descent seems to pull enemies you hit towards the single point you cast it on rather than just pushing the opponent so with a well timed maneuver your teammates could probably CC them to death almost instantly.

Why a starting Amplifying tome? Why a Sheen without the immediate Trinity Force? Why a Starks Fervor? Why a Level 1 Flame Breath?

Skill Choice:

Level 1 Flame Breath
-Picking either of the other abilities is nice. It is. But Shyvana has a rough early game range issue. Choosing Q is risky as you have to dive in to attack a minion and neither Q or W almost has no damage at early levels. Picking the Flame Breath at level 1 still allows you to have a decent early farm, no matter the range of the enemy.

Level 2-3 Twin Bite
-As mentioned before, while Twin Bite is nice the damage output is rather low. By getting 2 levels as quickly as possible her moves hurt way more.

Level 4 Burnout
-I get this for the move speed at level 4 and max it last.

First Maxed Twin Bite
-Her Q is the bread and butter of her damage; you'd do well to level this up.

Second Maxed Flame Breath
-The main trick behind Flame Breath is the Auto-Attack passive. After hitting E, the enemy has lower Armor and each hit deals additional damage by 20% of the damage your E did initially. This is good.


Item Choices:

Amplifying Tome + Pot
-As, with my build, you grab your E first, a bit of additional damage doesn't hurt anyone(but the opponent).

Early Sheen
-You are an Auto-Attacking based Champion. The Sheen Proc + Twin Bite essentially does the damage of 3 Auto-Attacks in the time frame of 1. Plus Q resets your attack timer so technically in 1 second you did 4 auto Auto-Attacks.

Youmuu's Ghostblade
-This is helpful for so many reasons it's not funny. Cooldown Reduction, Armor Penetration, Critical Strike Chance, Move Speed and Attack Speed. All -very- applicable to Shyvana. Pop Burnout+Youmuu's and almost no one can catch you.

Black Cleaver
-An Auto-Attack + Twin Bite essentially means -45 Armor from the opponent almost instantaneously. If you can get that Armor reducing E in there first then you'll be reducing their Armor practically to shreds. Do it right and you might even get them to -negative armor rating. It's happened. For like a second before they died.

Stark's Fervor
-Common question is why I get the Starks. As I mentioned before in 1 second you can technically do 4 Auto-Attacks in 1 second. Even thought 1 is technically a Sheen Proc the damage dealt is still gained from the lifesteal so yes. 4 Auto-Attacks. In a single second you gain the lifesteal from 4 Auto-Attacks worth of damage. Stark's also gives the nice benefit of 40% AS bonus + 30 health per 5 second health regen. Your teammates would be pretty happy with the AS and lifesteal bonuses too so hey! Now you're also supporting your team!

E --> Auto --> Q --> Auto
Flame Breath --> Auto-Attack --> Twin Bite --> Auto-Attack

Let's Call this the ARC. The Armor Reduction Combo.

This is your main bread and butter technique. Dive in while launching out an E to shred their Armor by 15%, Auto Attack for a -15Armor debuff. This will also proc the E passive for 15% of the damage + the Sheen Proc. Now Q for -30Armor debuff, a Sheen Proc and 2 E passive procs. Now Auto attack them for just another hit of broken armor pain.

For a bit more detail on the ARC combo, please refer to the next section.


R --> W --> ARC
Dragon's Descent --> Burnout --> ARC

Essentially when you're ready to dive someone or need to jump in Dragon Style. You're going to want to definitely use the ARC here as now all your moves get ranged/cone bonuses. Essentially instead of 1 person at -Armor now the whole lot of them will have it.


-More Later-

Essentially a bit more detail on the Armor Reduction factor of the ARC combo.

At a minimum of 74.75 Armor, after all the reductions and debuffs the target should have 0 Armor. Essentially nothing. Anything less will have them in the negatives. Here's the great part. Remember that Youmuu's you have? If you don't know the Armor Modifiers go in this order:

% Armor Reduction -> Flat Armor Reduction -> Flat Armor Penetration -> % Armor Penetration

So any additional attack with Youmuu's will deal damage to the opponent as if they have -20 Armor. The most important part about this combo is landing the initial E. The 15% armor reduction does wonders. With the full combo, even including the Youmuu's penetration, even someone at 100 Armor will be reduced to 0.

Here's a small table of average armor ratings:

To be honest you really shouldn't be fighting armor tanks head on but as you can see even a might 200 armor is reduced by nearly half of it's mightiness with 1 ARC. Just remember that their actual armor will be the number listed under "Black Cleaver Reduction." You'll just be hitting them for the Youmuu's Penetration number instead. This is still helpful when you're dealing with a really annoying Singed. Even if you can't kill him I'm sure your teammates could.

Note: The Rune Penetration is only an additive if you actually followed the suggested runes of the guide. Otherwise you don't have to worry about it.

Also: Technically the Rune Penetration value is -24.93. I just rounded it to -25 for convenience sakes.

Whaddya think? Want more? Or this enough?