Overview
Shaco is an extremely difficult champion to deal with and prepare for as he can build a wide array of items which all lend to different playstyles. One thing they all have in common, though, is deadly ganks from the start of the game, and he’s a champion that will reward creativity and patience. Click here for the latest data on his best builds, including Runes, Items, Summoner Spells, and more.
Keys to Remember About Shaco
Because you can control Shaco's clone, it can be used for all sorts of deception or information gathering -- this is helpful when you're running away and want to force opponents to guess which one is real, but it's also good at starting shenanigans as you can send the clone in first and then hit them from a different angle later.
Shaco needs to jump onto squishy enemies to find good value, which means he can be a risky pick if you draft him early -- into teams with a lot of beef, he'll become useless a lot sooner than you'd like.
Strengths
Depending on whether you want to build AD or AP on him, he can be effective as a pure assassin or lean more towards a split pushing oriented game. In general, you won’t be able to 1v1 a lot of the traditional split pushers, but you can create a second lane of pressure or you can appear from seemingly nowhere to turn a 1v1 into a 2v1. Shaco also makes it dangerous for enemy carries to wander alone anywhere as he can use Deceive [Q] to jump on them, and with enough items, one-shot them before they can even react. Hallucinate [R] and Jack-in-the-Box [W] are great tools at securing kills if you set them up properly, but they also help you with escapes. Shaco is a very slippery champion as long as he picks his timings well.
Weaknesses
Come late game, if the enemy team remains grouped and the carries don’t wander off by themselves, it can be really hard for Shaco to find pressure in fights. He can only delay so much with Hallucinate [R], and once he’s out of stealth, all it takes is one CC ability to land for him to die. And while he can build AP and find success with it, it’s a tricky build that requires a little bit of help from the enemy team to be truly effective --even more so than his regular build, it will feel like he’s not doing anything late game.
Game Plan
Early Game: If you’ve brought Ignite to the field, you have a lot of kill potential and should look for fights as often as possible. Shaco has great potential to snowball and should do so to avoid the late game, where he is relatively less effective.
Mid Game: You want to play as an assassin and wait for a good timing to jump on the enemy carries. Sometimes this will mean baiting out your teammates before going in, but as long as you clean up, there should be no issue.
Late Game: You have a lot of damage at this point in the game and should be able to one shot carries easily, but they know that as well, so it will become much harder for you to find the kills. Try to find flanks or generate split pressure to bait opponents into moving into dangerous space.
