Shaco is a part of the old guard of champions, and he is still distinguished by his unique character and gameplay. He is primarily played in the jungle, however, he can be flexed in a few of the other roles. In this guide, we are gonna go over the best build for Shaco in season 14, the build used by the most highly ranked players.
Best Items for Shaco
Profane Hydra
The first item we should build for Shaco is the Profane Hydra. It’s perfect for improving your clear speed which will directly impact your snowball potential. The key component responsible for this is the Tiamat, which should be built early. Profane Hydra is also beneficial due to the amount of lethality it offers, which is great for securing early game kills.
Voltaic Cyclosword
This is another stock purchase for lethality Shaco. It will give us all the key stats such as damage, ability haste, and most importantly lethality. The item also gives us a passive which enhances our attack damage after using stealth.
Opportunity
Opportunity is another uninspired lethality item we should build. It’s definitely strong, however, its passives are quite basic and it’s not much of an interesting item. I do not know why Riot is not giving us more interesting items for our lethality loadout.
Infinity Edge
We will top off our build with two critical item picks, Infinity Edge and the LDR. Infinity Edge will serve to massively increase our damage, as well as to give us the opportunity to have critical strike and enhanced critical strike damage.
Lord Dominik’s Regards
The LDR is my favorite item in this loadout. It gives a massive increase in armor penetration which amounts to 45%.. The item will also sync really well with our Infinity Edge purchase due to stacking crit stats.
Boots
There are quite a few options for this build, however, Berserker Greaves come as the best choice. They will net us the highest damage output, as well as the best clearing capabilities. Some other considerable options are Plated Steelcaps and Mercury’s Treads.
Plated Steelcaps are great vs AD or auto-attack heavy compositions, while Mercury’s Treads are the best defense against heavy CC comps. I recommend just taking Berserker Greaves, as they will do the best job of teaching you to play safe.
Runes for Shaco
- Hail of Blades
- Sudden Impact
- Eyeball Collection
- Relentless Hunter
- Legend: Alacrity
- Coup de Grace
Our first pick will be the Hail of Blades keystone, it’s the most effective rune in terms of damage output. The second pick will be the Sudden Impact, which will increase our damage after using the Q ability.
The third pick will be Eyeball Collection, it’s the best rune from its branch for scaling and damage. Next up will be Relentless Hunter, a good choice for increasing our mobility and map presence.
Finally, we will take the Legend: Alacrity and Coupe de Grace as our final picks. Alacrity is great for buffing up our attack speed, while Coup de Grace will help us execute the enemies much more easily.
Final Thoughts
Shaco is a unique versatile champion that always finds his way in every meta. Currently, the best build for Shaco is a lethality/crit one. This kind of build will enable you to clear the jungle really fast, execute enemies, and farm objectives. Doing this methodically and consistently will enable you to win games with Shaco easily!