First And Foremost Shyvana is a A Dragon.

Shyvana is a massive Juggernaut, who, if played well, can tear anything she gets her talons on to shreds. Her biggest Weakness is that she is easily kite-able with only one dash on her ultimate and a speed boost and her complete lack of natural CC. She is Mechanically very simple.

Her legendary clear speeds, great dueling and amazing ability to get out of trouble with her ult and W, lend themselves naturally to counter-jungling. She is, however, a terrible ganker, only really finding kills on cocky and overextended lanes.

In short, play Shyvana if you want to...

• Be a dragon.
• Be hard to catch.
• Counter-jungle a lot.
• Be an off-tank carry.

If this sounds like the sort of character you would want to play, read on - I don't hoard my secrets.

Shyvna does better with exhaust. It helps make up for her nonexistent CC and greatly increases both her dueling and ganking power when it is up. Many people are more comfortable with flash, but if you are a dedicated Shyvana player, Exhaust is the way to go.

Shyvana has a 1000 unit dash and a speed boost. If that doesn't get you away, 450 extra units probably won't matter. The slow from Exhaust is probably enough to gain you that much extra distance, if not kill them in the first place.

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Abilities Dragonborn (P) Shyvana's passive gives her aditional Armor & Magic Resist. Thease count as bouns stats so they scale with masteries and items. Make sure you take Dragon as much as you can to take full advantage of your passive Twin Bite (Q) Level this skill at 4/8/10/12/13 Leveling this reduces the cooldown and increases the total AD ratio on the second attack. Max it second. The optimal time to use this skill is the moment after an auto attack deals damage; this increases your DPS the most. Use after W and E so that it applies their on-hit effects. Spam this skill whenever you are attacking anything. Twin Bite resets your auto attack timer so it can be used to burst wards when they are placed. Burnout (W) Level at 1/3/5/7/9 This has the most Utility and increases your clear speeds the most. Max it First What is most often forgotten about this skill is that it gives you additional On-hit damage equal to 5/8/11.25/14.25/17.5 (+5% bonus AD) This skill is good to use when chasing, escaping, fighting or just to get around faster. It is also the only way to keep up with the Rift Scuttler early on. Flame Breath (E) Level at 2/14/15/17/18 Leveling this up does not increase the damage from the Cinders debuff. This is your One Point Wonder. Max it last Use this skill at the beginning of a fight to apply Cinders to an enemy for the extra 2.5% Max Health Damage on hit. In Dragon's DecentDragon Form this spell becomes a powerful finisher for sniping fleeing enemies. Dragon's Descent (R) Level at 6/11/16 Its your ult. Always level it whenever you can. In addition to being a 1000 range dash it Gives you 150/250/350 Health & Increases your size and basic attack range. Don't forget that this skill is also a displacement, but it only carries enemies a portion of the distance to the dash's endpoint so be careful not to overshoot. This skill is very good for jumping over walls and getting in and out of range of things (why Shyvana doesn't need Flash) You can get creative with how you use the dash and don't forget that it makes your Q and E Area of Affect Spells

Summoners Exhaust Early game use Exhaust to slow enemies in a Gank and to make sure you win dules. Later in the game Exhaust should be saved for team fights. It is best used to Immobilize a carry and prevent them from killing you when you dive the back line. Smite What to Smite after your first clear[/h2] Champions. Once you have Skirmisher's Sabre, Smite high damage targets when you don't have Exhaust. If you have Stalker's Blade use it to catch up instead. Dragons. You want all of them, save you smite for it. Enemy Jungle Monsters. They get next smite priority seconds count that much more when counterjungling Buffs and Gromp. They do the most damage to you and therefore give the largest health from smite. What NOT to Smite after your first clear[/h2] Crimson Raptor. Shyvana clears it too easily; smite is a waste on raptors. Rift Scuttler. It doesn't do damage, so you don't get the maximum health from smite. Item Actives Blade of The Ruined King Use Blade of the Ruined King for extra burst and health. The active steals health so wait until you have taken some damage before you use it. It often works well as a follow-up for exhaust. Titanic Hydra Use Titanic Hydra for extra burst at the start of a fight. If posible you want to activate it on the same autoattack as a Dragon Form Q because then secondary targets take the damage twice.

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I take Precision because Shyvana needs to do damage to be useful and scales really well with Attack Speed. Because she has no CC if you can't do damage, you are USELESS! because its the Attack speed keystone and Shyvana scales super well with attack speed. Pretty self-explanatory because the extra health when you kill someone in a team fight can easily save your life. because Attackspeed!! same reason as Lethal Tempo because with lifesteal the extra damage at low health can mean a lot for survivability. You aren't a burst champ and have a lot of health, so the other options aren't particularly useful

I take resolve because as a melee champion, surviving is always important because you need the armor for the first clear. Conditioning would be better because Shyvana isn't an early game champ, but you can't finish the first clear easily without Iron Skin because more health is always good and none of the other options help very much in the jungle

Remember; this is a general item build. It should not be followed exactly in all scenarios and is not set is stone.

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General Tips

• If you are facing a champion with a knock back don't use your ult to get to them. Save it to get back in after they knock you back.
• Be careful of CC heavy champions. If you can stay on top of people you can 1v2 with and . If they can kite yout, you will deal no damage to anyone.
• Don't be a fried to jump in on the enemy back line. As long as you are not behind you are tanky enough to survive to take at least one of them with you. It's always better to play proactively then fall into the famous midlane stall fests of soloque.

Early Game

Quick Tip:
When you have the Iron Skin Rune, Hunter's Potion gives you 5% more armor (3 early) when active. Activate Hunter's Potion when you start a camp for the extra armor, never let it auto activate when you finish.

Priorities:

• Ganking: if you have Exhaust, and a lane is over-extended GANK them. If your laner has hard CC, you don't need Exhaust to gank for them.
• Counter Jungling: If you see a good opportunity go for it. You want to make the Enemy Jungler's life a living H*ll. You can't gank well often so putting them behind, possibly tilting them, so they take bad ganks and feed your laners, is sometimes your best shot. Make sure to take all you buffs and don't let them take your camps if you counter jungle. Wards! Your jungle and theirs, Keeps everyone safe.
• Farming: Get you buffs on time as much as you can and just farm jungle if you have nothing better to do. Counter Jungling is always better if you can. Shyvana's clear speeds are so fast that if you only farm your jungle, you will run out of camps.

It is often a good idea to take the Dragon when you buy your Enchantment: Bloodrazor because you can easily solo it in about 30 seconds and its buff is extremly valuble.

Mid Game

Mid Game is where Shyvana is strongest. Flaunt your superiority and crush them as long as your team is not behind. Teamfighting is often a better way to go if you can win them because split pushing requires coordination, which is severely lacking in Solo Que.

Teamfighting Shyvana is very good at flanking and can take an entire teamfight by herself if done successfully by killing or nearly so the entire back line with her AOE damage. When fighting for a Dragon or Barron, getting an enemy to recall is as good as the kill. If you can take an enemy to low enough health that they can't come back, It's often better to rejoin your team to guarantee the outcome than spend the extra 5-10 seconds to kill your quarry. Target selection and knowing who you can kill and who can kill you are important. I've had situations where it was better to let the bruiser on 400 health escape to exhaust and chase the ADC instead so they wouldn't get the chance to kill me. Know who to attack and NEVER chase kills if there is something else useful you could be doing. Overchasing looses games!

Splitpushing Split push if: Your Team can't win a direct engage You can duel anyone on the enemy team and win a 1v2 Your Team Isn't Making a move If you Split Push ensure that you have: An offensive build ( / ) A Stealth Ward to ward the enemy jungle, so you don't get caught. If you get caught and your team didn't get an inhibitor out of it, the death was pointless and shouldn't have happened. Split Push Carefully and only take calculated risks! Vission is KEY! The best ward locations for splitpushing are the 5 path (bush next to blue buff) on the blue jungle side, and the tribush (near the middle of the lane) on red jungle side.

Late Game

After you get your fifth item, you enter your late game and at this point you want to be keeping up an Elixir ( / ) while you work towards your last Item.

As Shyvana, with proper play and plenty of farming, you will be one of the first get five items. This point is when Shyvana is strongest, and her power declines from there as enemy carries get their fifth and sixth items. Once the enemy carries have five or six items you can no longer tank their damage enough to kill them in teamfights and splitpushing becomes your best option because you have heavy AOE damage and the ability to, easily, escape sticky situations.

Read these guides by Tap0bu, they have helped me a lot with strategy and understanding how other people will react to it. Learning how to destroy the enemy jungler mentally is an extraordinary asset for a counter jungler like Shyvana with no ganking power.
Psycology of Jungling
The Psychology of League of Legends



The Trintiy Force Podcast is an excellent resource for keeping up with the patch updates and the state of the game. They are also on iTunes.

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I began to play Shyvana when I started jungling some time in Season 4, and I haven't played anyone else in the jungle since. I've stuck with Shyvana for so long a lot because she doesn't require the mechanics I don't have to do really well. I think that everyone could benefit from this. Not having to worry about mechanics has pushed my to develope good map awareness and an incredible game sense. It also lets you focus on the rest of the players and understand what people do and when. My time playing Shyvana has made me an overall better player and much more capable as a team player in any role. I hope she can do the same for you.

I am currently bronze 2 (finished last season Silver 4) and do a lot of theory crafting. I have friends in higher leagues that I know more about the game and build Optimization, than. I'm not higher ranked partly because I don't play as much as they do so I haven't ranked up.

I almost exclusively play Shyvana in the jungle regardless of the patch or game state.
I also play Mid as Aurelian Sol (Another Dragon!) and Quinn.

This guide is a continuous work in progress. I will add a "(WIP)" tag to any sections that I am currently working and an "(Incomplete)" tag to any recently added sections. I will also add an "(Old)" tag to any outdated sections.

I'm Watching You I will try to add any match histories or games using this build that are posted in the comments when I see them

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