SHACO BUILD GUIDE

 

Introduction

Before we start, every Shaco player should have a specific MINDSET. Having a mindset while playing League of Legends is very important, because - one - you want to be focused when playing ranked games in order to get the best results, and - two - you want to implement your own personality into your gameplay in order to create a comfort zone while playing a specific champion and its role. While playing Shaco your mindset should be as follows: “Aggressive assassin (not cocky but aggressive), that wants to outsmart his opponents fast, burst, and kill. Don’t be scared even if your play would let you die - big risk, big reward.” Everyone learns from their mistakes, and that’s what will improve you to be a better player.

Pros

+Dude i can go invisible :)

+Fast early game ganks
+Assassin early game to spoon feed every lane kills
+Great split push
+Jack in the box
+Able to dodge any skill with Hallucinate ( ult )


Cons

-Squishy
-Bad survivalbility
-Bad jungle clear
-Easy to fall behind
-A small poof when you deceive
-Hard to catch up if behind

Shaco is one of the most complicated champions to master, but at the same time really one of the easiest champions to play. Let’s start with why Shaco is easy to play. As you start at level 1 your Jack in the Boxes (JitB) do all the work for you and kill the first buff that you are aiming for (blue or red) smiteless. All you have to do is stacking boxed on the buff’s spawn location. JitB last for 60 seconds, so you could place one box at 0:40 or earlier at any of your jungle entrances to scout, and start stacking boxes at your buff at 0:56 to have 4 boxes on spawn. You can do with less if you are willing to take one or two hits when your boxes disappear and aggro switches to you, or simply have your teammates help you and take no damage at all. In the latter case you can move on to your second buff immediately, because your teammates’ damage can lower the buff’s HP and your boxes last hit and take the buff for you. Once you have cleared either red or blue buff you proceed to your second buff and clear it without losing much HP, since you still have smite up and your JitB tanks and damages the jungle creeps.


First gank determines your game flow

This is the first moment you decide which lane to gank or counter gank – the decision is up to you. DO NOT GO TO LANES THAT SAY “OMG HELP HELP HELP”. Read the map and look for the best option possible to succeed in your first gank. This is key to playing Shaco. You can’t clear your jungle as fast as most other junglers, so ganks are very crucial and it’s the only way you can keep up/compete with your opponent jungler in levels and map presence. Choose the lane that is being pushed up to your tower the most. Usually opponent players in such lanes play aggressively and overextend. This is the lane you should gank at lvl 3 with double buffs. Once you succeed in getting first blood, which most of the time will be top or mid, you will have gold, exp, and momentum for more actions.


Challenge

The CHALLENGING PART of this champion starts at level 1. Starting at either buffs - red or blue - the potential of you being invaded is 50%. Everyone knows Shaco has bad early game when your team does NOT defend you correctly. Having insight into your opponents’ movement is crucial. Your support should place wards at level 1 that would inform you whether you are being invaded or not. If you don’t have that insight and get invaded at level 1, happen to lose your buff, or even die, it would get very hard for you to catch up due to Shaco being a slow jungler. If situations like this occur, do not panic. Go and do your other buff that is still available and use smite to secure it – you will hit level 2. Clear wolves and wraiths to reach level 3, and then force a gank. Forcing the gank is very important, because as previously mentioned ganks are the key to Shaco’s victory. Once you spot an aggressive lane, rush to it, gank, and make sure you get the kill in order to catch up on experience and gold that you lost due to the early invade. Tada! – you caught up :)


Complex late game

Playing late game is also a big mess if you are new to Shaco. Do you split push or team fight? If you get fed early game, if you’re higher level than your opponent, if you have more items than anyone in the game, then go team fight and simply dominate everyone. However, if this isn’t the case and you aren’t fed, but rather have equivalent farm to everyone, then you should split push and take objectives while your teammates distract them in other lanes. So your team’s setup should be 1-3-1 or 0-4-1. (1 top 3 mid 1 bot, or 0 top 4 mid 1 bot) You as Shaco should be one of the solo pushers.

 

Skills

  Passive: Backstab

Backstab - Shaco deals 20% bonus damage when striking a unit from behind with his autoattacks or abilities.

Your passive very helpful for you because you are an assassin, deceive into a gank, going behind them and auto attack a few times with a poison shiv for maximum damage output.

This passive also works with buffs and dragon. If you watch my video for starting the jungle as level one, i let my jitb tank my 2nd buff for me so that i cna smite and deal damage from its back.

(video of backstab - below )

Q: Deceive

 Deceive - Shaco instantly blinks to a target nearby location and enters stealth for up to 3.5 seconds.
His next auto-attack in the next 6 seconds will critically strike with modified critical damage (normal critical strikes are 200% damage), dealing physical damage and ending his stealth

Cost: 90 / 80 / 70 / 60 / 50 mana
Critical Strike Damage: 140 / 160 / 180 / 200 / 220 %

Notice how Deceive only increases crit damage, it is not worth leveling this up until late game where you have a ton of AD.

This skill is used to initiate your ganks, following up with a jitb. This skill can act as a flash spell except way shorter cd :) if you are in danger and you are about to die from an enemy gank, just use deceive to run away or go over a wall so that you can reach to safety. This skill also is very useful when you are want to juke someone with low hp, most likely the enemy will try to look for you even after you deceive away trying to guess which way to you. Say you were in a bush and an enemy came into the bush to kill you, run out pretending to go to a different direction BUT TURN BACK INTO THE BUSH* HE WILL NEVER KNOW! I do this trick in diamond elo all the time xD.

W: Jack In The Box

 Jack in the box - Shaco creates a Jack in the Box at the target location with 150 health. It will stealth after 2 seconds and trigger when an enemy comes near, fearing nearby enemies briefly and attacking them. It deals magic damage, and lasts 60 seconds stealthed or 5 seconds while firing.

Aslo to remember that casting Jack In The Box breaks stealth!

Your main use of jitb comes in as you gank, put the box down in the direction your enemy will go to so that they will get feared trying to run to safety (their tower).

E: Two-Shiv Poison

Two-shiv poison - (Passive): Shaco's attacks poison his targets, reducing their movement speed for 2 seconds. (Active): Shaco throws a dagger to target enemy dealing magic damage and applying his slowing poison to them for 3 seconds.

FOR PASSIVE - SLOW: 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30%
MISS CHANCE TO NON-CHAMPION UNITS: 20 / 22.5 / 25 / 27.5 / 30%

MAGIC DAMAGE: 50 / 90 / 130 / 170 / 210 (+ 100% AP) (+ 100% bonus AD)
MAGIC DAMAGE WITH BACKSTAB BONUS: 60 / 108 / 156 / 204 / 252 (+ 120% AP) (+ 120% bonus AD)

The passive is deactivated during the cooldown. The passive also gives affected non-champion units a chance to miss their attacks.

TWO-SHIV * Very IMPORTANT

The importance of this skill relies 100% on how you use it. The damage of this skill is combined with a ratio of your AD + AP, that means as you progress into the game, level up, and buy more AD items, your two shiv will be your maximum potential killing ability. Now during ganks, it is up to you to two-shiv FIRST or save it for the kill just in case he flashes away. If the person you are killing cannot run away and you know that their flash is down as well as any of their escape abilities, using two-shiv early as possible for the maximum damage output will be your best option. Vice versa, if they do have flash you can just wait until they flash out and use two-shiv for an easy kill pickup. My tip on using two-shiv is, first engage your opponent with deceive then when the slow debuff goes away, two-shiv to follow up on another slow debuff.  

R: Hallucinate

 Hallucinate - Shaco disappears, becoming untargetable for half a second and creates a clone of himself next to him that will last for up 18 seconds

MAGIC DAMAGE: 300 / 450 / 600 (+ 100% AP)

ACTIVE: The clone deals 75% of Shaco's damage and receives 50% extra damage. This clone deals 50% damage to towers and inhibitors. At the end of its duration or when dying the clone will explode, dealing magic damage to nearby enemies within 250 range.

This skill only scales with AP but it is still very useful to kill or even bait your enemies with. You can use Hallucinate and use your clone to run away while you stand still using it as a decoy then just deceive out of the fight.
Remeber at the end of its duration or when dying the clone will explode, dealing magic damage to nearby enemies. So tower diving is that much easier with shaco, just send in your clone to kill low hp enemys!

Your clone is controlled by (Alt+Right-Click)