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Choose Champion Build:
-
Jungle
-
Solo-Top
Recommended Items
Spells:
Flash
Smite
Items
Ability Order
Fury of the Dragonborn (PASSIVE)
Shyvana Passive Ability
Introduction and about the author

Disclaimer! I, TheFanciestBard, am not a 2k elo jungler or solo-top player. I am in no ways a master of League of Legends, but I try my best every game and hope to improve with each match. I play on the NA servers and I'm a pretty friendly guy! With that being said let's get into the good stuff!


While




Runes




I use the same runes for both Jungling and Solo-Top because I feel they're the most effective way to play at her strengths.

































No build is set in stone and one should buy items based on the needs at the time to be especially effective!
Shyvana's core items consist of only two which is
Frozen Mallet and
Wit's End. These two items show off everything
Shyvana is about. Health, magic resist, staying power, and attack speed, none of these stats are wasted and there is almost no reason to avoid these items as your first two purchases.
Offensive choices
Zephyr - When I first saw this item I instantly thought of
Shyvana! Not a single stat is wasted and I honestly think this is one of the most effective items for a single slot you can buy for
Shyvana but there is one problem.. It's so expensive! If you're jungling this item could honestly gimp you because of the price tag. If you're solo-top, doing great with CS and even up a kill or two this item allows you to get offensive boots while still having tenacity intact.
Youmuu's Ghostblade - This items provides a ton of offensive abilities while the active can help you chase down a target or provide a sudden burst to your attacks if you combine it with the bonus damage of
Flame Breath. It's mostly a 'win harder' item.
Ravenous Hydra - This helps make a huge impact in teamfights and shouldn't be overlooked. A touch expensive but as a 4th item if you're ahead or a 5th item in longer games it's great!
Blade of the Ruined King - With a good chunk of attack speed this item can put out some serious numbers! It increases your sustained damage by a considerable margin and is a good replacement for
Wriggle's Lantern in longer games. The active is just the icing on the cake!
Bloodthirster - A safe, consistent replacement for
Wriggle's Lantern in longer games. I prefer getting
Blade of the Ruined King if I find myself replacing
Wriggle's Lantern though.
Defensive items
Maw of Malmortius - While it could be viewed as an offensive item it's really only used if you're facing a lot of AP on the opposite team. AD, a shield, MR, and a good passive make this a great item for AP heavy teams.
Mercurial Scimitar - At times I feel this item is almost mandatory on
Shyvana but not quite enough for it to be core. The price tag is a little steep but the active is out of this world vs CC heavy teams. If you find you're having trouble catching someone or you're being kited a lot this item is perfect.
Randuin's Omen - Health, armor, and an active that has good synergy with
Dragon's Descent's passive. If you're building tankier this item is amazing to have and every team should have at least one for the amazing active.
Warmog's Armor - The one stop shop for all your health needs. If your team seriously lacks a tank this with your core items and some other defensive items makes you extremely hard to kill. Slap on an
Atma's Impaler and you're going to be one hard to stop train of tankiness and damage.
Sunfire Aegis - Armor, health, and a good aura that goes with your
Burnout. I don't buy it often, but for AD heavy teams it's fantastic!




Offensive choices












Defensive items









This is the part you all are waiting for I'm sure.
Shyvana is considered by many to be one of if not the best counter-junglers in the entire game. Her blazing fast clear speed and amazing dueling ability make her one lady you do not want to meet in the jungle. This comes with a hefty price to pay.
Shyvana's ganking potential is possibly one of the worst of any jungler in the game! With no CC she relies heavily on her team to assist her in making ganks happen if they're having trouble. Do be aware that
Shyvana excels in map control and denying map awareness through
Oracle's Elixir. She can easily open up easy Dragon secures in the early/mid game which can get your team ahead very quickly. If you know the enemy team is warding heavily do everyone a favor and get an
Oracle's Elixir to deny them that gold and awareness.
The Jungle
Shyvana is considered a red buff jungler and as such she generally starts with wraiths > red > little golems > wraiths > wolves > blue buff > gank or continue farming. This is the safest route for her but a traditional wolves > blue > wraiths > golems > red > wraiths > wolves is perfectly fine as well as the reduced CD on her abilities helps her clear.
Ganking
Ganking is the act of ambushing a laner in an attempt to secure a kill or push them out of lane for a variety of reasons. It helps your laner become more fed through kills and creep score while hurting the enemy laner by shutting them out of gold and experience. Do keep in mind that a gank does NOT have to end in a kill, but that is the best possible scenario. Pushing them out of lane for a time, getting a summoner spell, or denying CS are all perfectly acceptable gank outcomes as any of them hurt the enemy team and help yours.
Shyvana as stated is a weak ganker but she can easily come to an overextended lane and deal a lot of damage quickly and push someone out of lane if not outright kill them. Having laners with CC helps tremendously.





The Jungle


Ganking
Ganking is the act of ambushing a laner in an attempt to secure a kill or push them out of lane for a variety of reasons. It helps your laner become more fed through kills and creep score while hurting the enemy laner by shutting them out of gold and experience. Do keep in mind that a gank does NOT have to end in a kill, but that is the best possible scenario. Pushing them out of lane for a time, getting a summoner spell, or denying CS are all perfectly acceptable gank outcomes as any of them hurt the enemy team and help yours.

Counter-jungling is an extremely high risk, high reward option that many people do not consider as often as they should. It consists of entering the enemy jungle to steal jungle creeps or ambush the enemy jungler for a kill or to force them out of the jungle for a short time. It is not for new or inexperienced junglers unless you have an extremely good and aware team backing you up.
There are three things to be aware of when attempting to counter-jungle. These are the position of the enemy laners, the location of the the enemy jungler, and the timers of the jungle camps. I would not attempt counter-jungling unless you have both jungle entrances warded and have decent map control through lane warding as well. Always bring a few sight ward when counter-jungling and if you feel the enemy team may be warding their jungle it's very smart to bring an
Oracle's Elixir with you.
One of the best ways to start as
Shyvana if you're feeling very aggressive is to take your team to the buff opposite the one the enemy jungler should be starting and steal it. If they start blue take their red, otherwise I hand out their blue to my allied mid laner to give them a huge advantage over their opponent.
Why counter-jungle?
Let me just say one thing, getting counter-jungled sucks. It's the worst thing you can do to a jungler and it hurts them so much, especially if they're someone like
Amumu or
Fiddlesticks who rely on farming the jungle to be effective. Even people like
Lee Sin or
Maokai who are excellent gankers feel the effects of counter-jungling. There are two types of counter-jungling that you can do.
The first type is minor denial which is when you steal most of the creeps from the camp and leave one there so the camp does not respawn until they clear it. The advantage of this is that there is no chance of you clearing the camp only for them to not notice by coming around to the camp when it respawns. The disadvantage is you do not know when the camp is cleared and therefore do not have the timer to take it again.
The second type is complete denial which is when you take a camp, note the timer, and prepare to steal it again as it respawns. Warding is key for complete denial of one or more camps and it also provides you vision and information which could lead to ganking a jungler as he comes to a camp. This is riskier and take more concentration and experience than simply taking some creeps and leaving. Timing camps is the entire reason why I never, ever leave buffs countered as completely denying them is so effective.
I cannot stress enough that counter-jungling is all about control and to have control you need wards. It doesn't hurt a jungler nearly as much if they discover their wolves or wraiths are gone only to wander on over to your jungle and steal yours. This is especially true about buffs. Extended periods of counter-jungling will elect responses from a good team and the more you counter-jungle the risker it becomes. Only attempt it if you're sure it is safe and you have your laners ready to help if things go wrong.
There are three things to be aware of when attempting to counter-jungle. These are the position of the enemy laners, the location of the the enemy jungler, and the timers of the jungle camps. I would not attempt counter-jungling unless you have both jungle entrances warded and have decent map control through lane warding as well. Always bring a few sight ward when counter-jungling and if you feel the enemy team may be warding their jungle it's very smart to bring an

One of the best ways to start as

Why counter-jungle?
Let me just say one thing, getting counter-jungled sucks. It's the worst thing you can do to a jungler and it hurts them so much, especially if they're someone like




The first type is minor denial which is when you steal most of the creeps from the camp and leave one there so the camp does not respawn until they clear it. The advantage of this is that there is no chance of you clearing the camp only for them to not notice by coming around to the camp when it respawns. The disadvantage is you do not know when the camp is cleared and therefore do not have the timer to take it again.
The second type is complete denial which is when you take a camp, note the timer, and prepare to steal it again as it respawns. Warding is key for complete denial of one or more camps and it also provides you vision and information which could lead to ganking a jungler as he comes to a camp. This is riskier and take more concentration and experience than simply taking some creeps and leaving. Timing camps is the entire reason why I never, ever leave buffs countered as completely denying them is so effective.
I cannot stress enough that counter-jungling is all about control and to have control you need wards. It doesn't hurt a jungler nearly as much if they discover their wolves or wraiths are gone only to wander on over to your jungle and steal yours. This is especially true about buffs. Extended periods of counter-jungling will elect responses from a good team and the more you counter-jungle the risker it becomes. Only attempt it if you're sure it is safe and you have your laners ready to help if things go wrong.
While
Shyvana is an extremely good jungler she is also a fantastic solo-top laner! Laning as
Shyvana allows you to have a good, consistent gold income and provide your team with a great, high damage, high survivability champion that scales well into every part of the game. Her great dueling abilities are very useful in the top lane but her lack of sustain seriously hurts against champions like
Yorick,
Cho'Gath, and
Vladimir because of their ability to just stay in lane for so much longer and recover from trades quicker than you can.
This does not mean
Shyvana is a weak solo-top, she just needs to play cautiously and very smart. Her dueling ability at early levels allows one to play extremely aggressive and force the enemy out of lane and let you free farm for awhile. Because of
Burnout she is a fantastic pusher and it's not uncommon for a solo-top
Shyvana to win a trade, push her lane, and go roam a bit. Sometimes I even go and steal jungle creeps after pushing my lane, I just can't stop counter-jungling with her!





This does not mean



Phew.. That was a lot of information! I hope you enjoyed reading through the guide and that it helped better your game with
Shyvana! This is just v.01 and I hope to make this guide better and better, but I need your help for that! See something that looks off? Perhaps you have some insight of your own to offer, don't hesitate to leave a comment! Next on my to-do list is match-ups for both top and jungle while also prettying up the guide with more pictures and colors. Until then, this is TheFanciestBard signing out. Happy hunting folks, for Demacia!

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