Hello, my name is Darvinex, and i'm pretty much addicted to Shyvana. I absolutely love dragons, so when they released a half dragon I pretty much knew I was gonna play her. It's been an experiance I've really enjoyed, I've been doing pretty well in dominion, and i'm constantly checking out her dominion builds for inspiration and to up my game. While i'm not calling any of the other builds for her bad, at the time I'm making this none of them have gotten over 60% so I thought I'd but up my own and see how it does. I'm not really expecting to do any better, but maybe this'll be well recieved or perhaps will contribute to better Shyvana builds. So, without further ado, here's not only my Shyvana build, but my very first one as well.

Pros
-Deals pretty decent damage
-crazy fast attack speed to take advantage of passive
-great early game
cons
-suseptable to CC
-tends to get focused.
-tends to start to fall apart late game

Marks
For marks I choose to grab the Alacrity ones. Shyvana is best when she's able to attack fast, and that's generally what this build is all about. The Marks give you the greatest attack speed boost, so i'd recommend keeping with these.

Acceptable replacements would be greater marks of might or strenght. Dominion gives you an armour pen boost, so u might as well lay on the attack damage. not to mention you'll give her abilities a nice bonus. I'd recommend the might over the strength. Shyvana's early game is pretty beast, but deteriorates at later levels. you might as well go for the runes that can help you compensate.

As far as the rest are concerned, i wouldn't get any of them. Crit is nice, but i prefer something a bit more consistant and reliable. Desolation is practically useless, but only because of the aura Dominion gives you.

Seals
I chose to go with the vitality seals. you level really fast in dominion, and with Shyvana's strong early but weaker late you may want the seals that can help with that. I chose health seals because this way I can take hits regardless of whether they're magic or physical.

If you're wanting to use different runes, i would recommend the fortitude since they still offer health, or at least a mixture of fort and vit. Armour or Mag Res are also acceptable, but i find this way you become too focused. Sure Armour can protect you from guys who get up close and personal, but you're gonna hurt when you meet a caster, and vise versa.

I would advise against getting anything that does not help you take more hits. My basic strategy in dominion is survival by killing my enemies first, but that doesn't mean that i just forget about being able to survive. With Shyvana's high attack speed, sometimes all you need is just one or two extra seconds to at least take one guy with you.

Glyphs
Again i go the way of attack speed. With Shyvana's passive, why wouldn't you? to keep this section short, buy your seals with the same intentions as picking out your marks. The only real change is that cooldown reduction is now a viable choice. Of course, a high enough attack speed makes twin bite's cooldown almost negligable, and increases burnout's run time to nearly that of its cooldown, so you might as well just get the attack speed and reap the rewards.

Quintessences
With the Hp regen my basic goal is to heal faster and survive longer. with regen I can recover faster and fight sooner. If you prefer per level stuff, go right ahead. I'd rather just get the flat Quints and have my regen even during the early game. And none of your items give you regen, so get it while when you can.

I would recommend getting any other Quint that would be defence orriented. If you got armour seals, get mag res Quints. the basic theory behind this is to balance out your offence with defence and gift you with a little more survivability. Other choices would be swiftness for the running. Getting away easier and capping towers sooner? Good deal.

The rest I would avoid. Some are just flat out useless, and the rest aren't particularly necessary. You could get something that increases damage or attack speed or ability power, but I'd say that using a balance of runes is more important.

You should have seen my masteries as you were comming down, and because i'm a noob at making guides, i'm just going to explain my choices. I dumped almost all my points in offence, aiming to increase attack speed, damage, and ability power. I also grabbed exhaustion and ignite, since those are the spells I use. In addition, i put my remaining six points into utility for the reduction on the time I spend dead and for increased health regen. You're gonna die, and this build does little to change that. These points are essentially ment to at least attempt to reduce the number of times that happens and the amount of time i spend.

Now, becuase i'm a noob at making guides,i don't have any alternative masteries to show you, but I will explain ways to decide where to put your points so you can alter what I've done.

First off, you could move the points from archmage's to deadliness. I think that a scaling bonus to ability damage is better for Shyvana than a two percent bonus to crit, but if you disagree then that's your call. You can also take points from preserverance to get deeper into the tree. I personally like the health regen, but the mana definately gets wasted so you might prefer an exp bonus instead. You could instead get the armour or mag res from defence, but you should only do so if you have runes that protect you from the other.

Another thing you can do, if you're feeling a little too squishy, is to sink your points into defence instead of offence. If you do that, keep at least three points in good hands, and then spend the rest grabbing anything that will protect you from champions or increase attack speed and ability power. at least get deep enough to grab arbor. Remaining points should go into offence, keeping to how I built and at least trying to get alacrity.

Any other changes should be done after asking the following questions. Will this improve my basic attacks? Will this balance my offence with my defence? Do is it worth getting over another talent? Your abilities are great, but even increasing you attack speed a little can mean more then just simply adding ability power.

And now we finally reach items. I'm pretty sure this is going to be pretty long, but I'll try to be as quick as I can without leaving anything out.

In Diminion we start off with a pretty nice chunk of gold. I start off with getting berserker greaves. If you're paranoid about getting cc'd, I'd suggest mercury treads. In my opinion though, berserker greaves are a better start. Why? because they're cheap. I can grab these and have enough left over for a longsword. Generally speaking, this starting allows me to take down one or two champions at top, and if my team is good enough, and I don't make any huge mistakes, I may actually survive the skirmish. At the very least you should be to set up for a kill before getting taken down.

After that move on to getting frozen mallet. The longsword you just bought makes this an ideal follow up. I would suggest frozen mallet over entrophy simply because its a garanteed slow and offers health. You'll deal more damage with entrophy, but live longer with mallet. Not to mention damage doesn't matter as much when your target can only run at a crawl.

From there move on to Kitae's bloodrazor. It'll give you a nice attack speed boost, increased damage, and bite out 2.5% of their health in magic damage. I find this item works better late game, but get it early. I rarely complete all the items I want, so I try to get the important ones first.

Now is the ideal time to get Trinity Force. You've still got three open slots, so it'll be easy to collect its parts. Start with zeal and then get sheen, grabbing phage only if you feel like it. Your getting trinity force for pretty much the same reason as frozen mallet. It gives you a lot of stats and such that really help you, but the most important one is health. This item will help you survive without costing you too much dps in compensation.

The fifth item is phantom dancer. It gives one of the largest attack speed boost, while giveing crit and movement speed. This item is more to my own personal preferance. I'm focusing mainly on attack speed, and the movement can help out a lot in Dominion. The crit is certainly a nice bonus.

The last item is Guinsoo's rageblade. I don't think i've ever gotten this far before, but its a really nice item. attack and ability power, and increases your attack speed and ability per hit to a cap. If you want you can make this before phantom dancer, but i'd recommend getting all your attack speed first. Not to mention phantom dancer is easier to make while you have two open slots than just one.

Acceptable Alternatives
If you're feeling squishy, i'd suggest getting warmog's armour. I personally find it superior to force of nature since it gives more health, and nature's passive is better when you have a lot of health already. Both are viable choices however.

You can also sub in for an atma's impaler. Do not get this unless you're making another change, however. You don't have nearly enough health for anything major, so at least get either warmog's or nature. If you don't have any problem with duplicate items... maybe get a second trinity force to go with it. I've done some testing on leaguecraft.com, and one of the builds that got the most damage was berserker, frozen mallet, phantom, trinityx2, and atma. After much thought, I eventually decided against that. The damage is nice, but the second Trinity is almost a complete waste. Still, to each his own, so it might be something for you to consider.

To make this quick, any other item that give attack speed can also work. I'm not about to go leafing through them all and tell you why you should and shouldn't, so i'm just gonna give you peramiters to work with. First, make sure you're using everything that it gives you. If it can't do that, then there may be better out there. That, of course, doesn't mean don't use it. Nashor's tooth give mana regen, but everything else works great so its certainly worth a thought. Focus on items like wits end that gives a proc whenever you attack. You're already making her attack as if she were on crack, you might as well try to get as much out of it as possible. I'd recommend wits end over the others because its every attack. the others tend to be every forth and whatever.

I'm going to leave choosing which weapons to replace up to you. Try to consider what each one brings to the table, and which item you're wanting to use are similar to that. for example, replacing frozen mallet for warmogs would probably be better than replacing phantom dancer. Frozen mallet was chosen primarily for survivability, and you still have trinity force for the slow.

So for those of you not 100% on what Shyvana's skills are, i'll quickly run through them.

Fury of the Dragon Born: Shyvana's melee attacks enhance her abilities. Twin bite- reduces the cooldown by .5 seconds. burnout- extends the duration by 1 second to a maximum of 6 seconds. flame breath- deals 15% of the damage to debuffed targets. dragon's decent- attacks generate 2 fury and Shyvana passively gains fury every second while in human form.

Twin Bite: Shyvana attacks twice on her next attack. dragon form- twin bite cleaves all enemies in front of Shyvana

Burnout: Shyvana surrounds herself in fire, dealing magic damage per second to enemies and moving faster for three seconds. the movement speed reduces over the duration of the spell. Dragon form- burnout scorches the ground beneath it, enemies on the burnt ground continue to take damage.

Flame Breath: Shyvana unleashes a fireball that deals damage to the first enemy it encounters and leaves cinders on the target that reduces their armour for 4 seconds. Dragon Form- flame breath engulfs all units in a cone in front of her.

Dragon's Descent: Shyvana transforms into a dragon and takes flight to a target location. Enemies along her path take damage and are knocked toward her target location. Shyvana passively gains Armour and Magic Resistance. Defensive bonuses are doubled in Dragon Form.

Now as far as sequences go, I'm really more of a free stylist. If it's off cooldown then I'll cast it. What I do have, however, is something of an opening sequence.

First lead with burnout. This spell really is Shyvana's bread and butter, so be sure to max it out as quickly as possible. Once that's up, get in close and follow through with flame breath. While flame breath does have range and can be used from a distance, it would be better to get in so you can take advantage of the debuff and lower your chances of missing. Now you cast twin bite. This will add two whole seconds onto your burnout, in addition to the third that should have come when you cast flame breath. It'll also deal 30% of your flame breath in one shot. You should max out twin strike second, but if you want to do flame breath first or at the same time that should work too.

After this, just spam. Keep a close eye on twin bite. Every attack takes time off, so it may start at say ten seconds but only take about three. Don't be shy about using burnout, and don't hesitate with flame breath, but remember that you can use burnout to escape if things get hairy. Dragon's Descent should be saved and used with timing. You can jump over wall with it, gain on you enemies, group them together for your spells, or even flee. Lets also not forget that your defensive bonuses double while its active, so it might be ideal in dangerous scenarios when you just need to live a little longer.

The two spells I chose to use are Ignite and Exhaustion. Both have talents in the offencive tree, making them not only ideal, but containing a nice little bonus. A talented Exhaustion will further cripple your enemies, and Ingite will give you bonus ability damage while on cooldown.

Ghost and flash are also viable options, as both allow you to escape easier and are quite useful in Dominion. If you're more 'live to fight another day' to my 'KAMAKAZI!', then take one of them, by all means. Only take both if you're in desperate need of some mobility. Heal, I suppose is an option, if your looking to give yourself a little bit of survivability every couple minutes. The rest of the spells I'm not too crazy about, but if they rock your boat then take them. You should at the very least always use exhaustion, since you need four points to get lower into the tree and there's not much point in anything besides. The only spell that i'd say is a definate no would be clarity. You don't use mana, so why're you carrying it?

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that. To quickly summorize, this build is designed with a focus on dishing out damage and upping your attack speed, without completely forgetting about offering a little bit of survivability. I'd like to make a few quick shout-outs. The first would be to Phreak, or at least I believe that's his name. I used the champion spotlight he made for Shyvana as a base for this, and I would never have managed this much without it. I'd also like to thank Zedera. I played Riven before starting on Shyvana, and still do as an alt. I used Zedera's guide on Riven when working on her, and a lot of that influence continues on to Shyvana. It's harder to play with a primarily offencive build, but I feel that it can be far more rewarding than creating builds designed to save your own skin. At least in Diminion, anyway.

Speaking of, I'd appreciate it if nobody downvotes this guide simply because I set aside defence. This build is meant solely for Dominion, and would most likely fail in Summoner's Rift. I'll try to check up on this daily, so if there's anything you don't like or wanting to be changed, please let me know. I've never made a build before, so I really just ran through it as quickly as possible. If there's anywhere you're wanting me to go more indepth, or changes that should be made, let me know so I can try to accomadate. The main idea behind me making this is to offer out my own theories that have been working for me, and to take in new ones that could help me make better decisions in the future. Thanks for reading up to here, and I hope you enjoy playing Shyvana as much as I do.