@SacredMesa: So either you are lucky with her or have some kind of trick we others dont know yet. If you could be a little more specific pls. What games, which position, runes, skills, items, general playstile....

To be honest, she feels better in 3vs3 and then in Rift, there I skill her 9/21/0 (no anti cc skills) and try to start with either a big armor for a sunfire, or boots + something else. Building her all tank works rather well on her there. Maybe its because the enemy doesnt have so much space to evade her like in RIFT? Or because she can better adapt to only 3 then 5 enemys.
In this scenario she can actually do really well. At best against squishy assasins and adc, which are picked a lot in 3vs3. So far, most games are over with: sunfire + wits or mallet.

Sadly the latest repricing on the sunfire hit this tactic again...

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Lets have a quick look over items for her:
Wriggles, Wits, Mallet are very usual picks.
note: None has ap, only rather low AD, but she gets sustain, ats and cc.

now after we have this (around Lv12-15 maybe) we can starts building other stuff.
Hydra is great on her, the Health regen is very strange though.
Bloodthirster ? Not a must, but good anyway
Blade of the ruined king ? The old bloodrazor was better, as it gave ats.
All of those only push Q and W

What would an ideal Shyvana item have to look like ?
Trinity force ?, Hextech ? Rageblade would be interesting too, if she could use the AP better now.

Copperpoint... there IS no item that is built soley for her other than Venemous Hydra which works very well. The problem I see with her is that she has no defined roll or build.

Counter-Jungler?
- She can't clear as well and takes too much damage for an invade.
- Sightstones and new easy wards and reduced Oracals(sp?) make Invades even more dangerous.
*So her old strength is gone. Many junglers these days have stuns/slows and can out duel her if they just kite her instead of engage her.

Top-Lane?
- She has no sustain and her base regen is low.
- Many Tops have stuns/escapes that make keeping Shyvana at range very easy.
*So she can't really top as most champions who top currently counter her especially Malphite and Nidalee.

Mid-Lane?
- Don't make me laugh. A no CC, no ranged damage in mid with no gap-closer beyond running blithly into a stun that most mages have?

Bot-Lane?
- Shyvana as an ADC? When half her kit is AP and weak ratios to begin with?
- As a Tank? With no CC or force-targets to aid the ADC?
- As a Support? -_-

Regular Jungle?
- She can't gank without the lanes to stun or stupid positioning by the enemy.
- The new Jungle leaves her with far more damage than previous and she can't even get a Vamp anymore

In all WHAT roll does Shyvana fill now that there aren't at least 3 others who do it better.
- Dr. Mundo
- Jax
- Lee Sin

They all have better duel capacity and some clear faster than her (Dr. Mundo) and are tankier (Mundo) with better debuffs (Lee Sin) or have a stun/Gap Closer (Lee Sin and Jax). Shyvana has been reduced to not having a niche for such a unique combat style. She is extremely fun to play, she needs to be redesigned to fit the new game though as she was an S2 Bruiser... not S3.

My thoughts exactly.

Lets say we redesign her. What are her big points she had in S2:
1) hight stats, good scaling into lategame, more tanky then regular bruisers with the same dmg, but lacks the CC and gapcloser
She is NOT a regular CC tank like Sejuani, Malph or Amumu
2) mobility and speed
3) fastest jungler, dangerous counterjungler
4) aoe dmg in dragon form.

Lets say her role in the game is not the lane, but the jungle + counterjungle. And lategame an aoe dealer in teamfights. Taking a lot of dmg and dealing a lot of dmg.

What would a character usually have for that ?
Aoe jungling - check
speed bonus - check
maybe some kind of bonus dmg/gold vs monsters
Either a scout ability or a good escape in case you are getting caught in the enemy jungle (Or you actually have the power to kill them/ run away /cc)
Limited ganking potential: In my eyes an evadeable melee stun, simmilar to Udyr or Jax, which becomes a nice (short ranged) aoe stun in dragon form for teamfight use.

With that design in mind:
Passive: A hard nut.Some of those effects could be weakened and added to her skills. (Reduced cd on Q, loner run on W....)
Meanwhile she could have a different passive. I wrote some ideas a few posts earlier I think.
Q - Doublehit is ok. - if hit by flamebreath before its a 1sec stun. (still weak for ganks and evadeable in lane, but great teamfight interrupt, would help her in in the enemy jungle too) - I thought about an extra speedbuff too while activated but "not used up".
W - Removes CC and a shorter cooldown/Lv. For escape it could actually run longer/faster based on your health missing.
E- some thoughts: (no animation time)
Hits through targets (like in dragon form) + reduces the armor of monsters by 15 ? OR Deals double damage against minions and monsters ? OR grants gold when the target is killed while debuffed.
R- Imune to some form of cc (not the dmg) while jumping. Jumping and getting kicked back by lee sin, tristana or wukong just looks and feels ridiculous.

I agree with some of coppers idea. Though I liked my idea of Flamebreath working like Sonic-wave/punch on Lee Sin this would let her duel much better but still is tied to an avoidable skillshot by laners leaving her ganks weaker still.

That or leave her kit as is mostly speaking and up her defense ratio's and only buff her offense scalings while in Dragonform. This would lend her Human form to duels and her Dragonform to AE-Teamfighting when your hitbox is that big you need to have a sizable chunk of Dragonhide type protection to take that damage. Maybe not as well as a tank but she needs to take more as right now the common meta is to "kill the dragon" fast as possible when she initiates.

Burnout is a far better escape than initiation as its MS boost wears off over time starting out high and falling. Meaning the largest boost is in the first 1-2 seconds lending it to an escape not an initiation. Burnout could be made a constant speed boost for its duration at half it's current value 25% movespeed increased for duration instead of starting at 50% and falling off.

Shyvana to me is built for counter-jungling and teamfight presence. She needs the tank/damage of a bruiser only slightly better for the lack of CC making her a damage-bruiser instead of normal bruiser. Many bruisers have sustain or stuns. I would offer in bumping up her innate health regen to compensate for how the jungle changes have hurt her. She is supposed to counterjungle well then her early jungle needs to be strong. As for teamfights she needs a large boost in armor or a moderate boost in both armor and damage to make up for the damage she is going to take in that fight. She is all about map presence, you don't want to be caught alone by her and right now I don't fear shyvana just kite her anyone with a slow or targeted stun can easily get away. Not to say that she should be inescapeable but she doesn't have the map presence she was designed for.

Well I could give a lot of facts about shyvana I gotten from my spreadsheets, but I'll just give a few interesting ones.



Shyvana scales better than jax with stat combinations as ad+haste ad+crit. She also scales better with CDR (she scales incredible with cdr) and her Q scales amazingly with dps stats.

Shyvana won't ever deal more damage than jax with same items. If through given enough attack speed to reach 2.5 as and a bit of ad and cdr she'd do more.

Her aoe dps is around 50% of single target roughly.

Crit% normally is better for damage than haste unless you build on-hit items (cost wise). Crit% is also better for aoe'ing than haste.

CDR is the most gold efficient damage incresse by far.



Cons: she doesn't scale well per levels only beyond W maxed (even w isn't that amazing regarding duelling due to it doesn't get a "cooldown" reduction per level like many other popular tops sample), and ult isn't really a duelling tool. (which is kinda okay, leaves it more available for chasing / initiating)

The only high base damage/stat she has is W. You can't be tanky enough to relay on W for damage in team fights late game.


In my oppinion if we were to bring shyvana back into the game she'd need to be better at what she's good at. Duelling or Aoe'ing. Could Shyvana get the "jax" treatment becoming the bruiser hyper carry from the jungle?

Personally I think she's fine 1-6 power level wise. Beyond that without items she goes in decline around 7+. Which in itself might be fine. But I don't think it catches back up late game. She doesn't have any CC or immunities/partly immunities to utilize her aoe alone and therefore dependent on teamcomp to do it for her. So I think either she needs free damage stats or something more on her lvl 11 and 16 ult.

1 idea is to give her lvl 11 dragon form give something like up to 50% haste depending on remaining fury (maybe even full effect doing dragon form) and 100% at 16. That would make her lvl 11 and 16 ult more impactful.

This wouldn't through solve the "full tank shyvana jungle" but perhaps open up bruiser shyvana more.


Regarding AP scaling:
I don't really see why shyvana needs to scale well on AP through it would open some new build paths. But spell vamp wouldn't be that good on her I'd think. All but 1 ability is aoe that scales with spell vamp which becomes aoe in dragon form. Which only leaves Nashor's tooth and triforce left as good options that also sync with melee'ing.

Triforce is already really good on shyvana. There's just a lot of better damage items to get earlier. Nashor's tooth is in general unpopular so I don't see it happening. Don't ask about malady.

my 2 cents

@Estred: You are mistaken on the firespin I think.
It only runs for 3 sec, but with full speedbuff. After that you can increase the duration by AAs up to a max. And between sec4-end is the time where it starts to fade off, not right from the beginning. In which case it would be utterly useless.

@Paaske: It might be true that she scales better with items, but in the end Jax will still win in most cases. He can dodge your damage and stun you. Then he can run away, jump you and do it again.

CDR is nice on her, especially with the Q/ firespin which start around 12 seconds.
The problem with cdr is that it increases her repeat dmg, but not the initial one. But if feels rather good having the W off Cd almost all the time.

Zephyr(10%), CDR boots (20%), zekes (10%) would make it complete.
Adding dmg items like Hydra, Bloodthirster and maybe 1 tank item: Warmog or Mallet I guess.

Another build would be crit as you suggested, but usually thats even more expensive.

A very expensive taste, If I might say so. A trinity wouldnt make it better

Not quite. It falls off multiplicatively each second it is active starting at the first. However, refreshing it by hitting something also refreshes the speed boost to maximum.


EDIT: Ran some numbers after reading the "flat speed" idea. A flat 25% boost over its duration is actually FAR slower than a 50% that falls of 15% per second:

Flat 25% * 3 seconds = 75% total boost
Multiplicative 50% * 3 = 50 + 42.5 + 36.125 = 128.625% total boost

So as you can see, a flat 25% movement speed on her W would actually be a huge nerf, because at present Shyvana's boost will never drop to that point even at the end of its duration.

@Copperpoint it isn't about outduelling jax (used him since he's considered the highest scaling bruiser), it's about outputting enough in teamfights. Since she bring to the teamfight single target damage and aoe damage a minor armor debuff and a small knockback. Also the jungle doesn't have a hyper scaling bruiser who can't really gank well. (jax ganks better than shyvana)

Counterjungling is harder. So wouldn't the niche of being an aoe hyper bruiser sound nice?

Regarding CDR it both incresses the up time on the armor debuff from up to 4 sec out of 8 50% to 4 sec out of 4,8 = 83%


It doesn't increase burst damage which I can't really see the problem with being a bruiser not AD caster.

Lastly regarding CDR build. Atm I build a bruiser build with cdr (top lane or 3v3) going blade of the ruined king -> brutilizer/black cleaver / warmog (depending on how it goes, generally build warmog before glacial) -> glacial shroud -> finish any of the previous -> frozen heart -> trinity force ( if I ever get that far) build phage when you feel the need for it after blade of the ruined king. I plan to get the last 10% from the pot or occasionally stolen blue buff.

Also regarding Zephyr, it's generally always inferior to black cleaver as a solo perspective and helps your team as well increase no one else is buying it, unless you're buying it for movement speed / tenacity. Black cleaver is strong on shyvana if you're building a bit of damage.


Notes about my build above:
I know it doesn't contain magic resist nor attack speed. Attack speed on shyvana isn't as strong as people thought (through wits end is the best damaging magic resist item.). And I don't suggest building crit (outside the trinity force which is a weak duelling item compared to building either building blade or tri first, following blade buying tri or black (even without factoring gold)) cause you won't get enough ad without sacrificing to much tankyness and CDR much easier to get while getting tanky.

This build on the other hand does a lot of damage through and medicore tanky. Tanks can't ignore you atleast, and your just a bit to tanky for the ap to burst you down generally.

Sounds interesting. Do you go for a 21/9 or 9/21 build ?
I will test the itembuild, but it really shows how wonky her design is. ^^

I dont know if Riot actually looks at this and maybe thinks about some changes.
As Shyvana is free to play again, I saw some of them already. Coming from the jungle, they are really not scary at all. She does a better job at top, as she really needs the gold.

Rephrasing her problem: She is unflexible and has a very unclear design! Compare her to other champs, Jax you can use the jump tactical, as well as the stun and the shield. Scarner, Sejuani and other cc tanks give you huge amounts of things you can come up with. Not mentioning Lee or Jayce.

The idea behind the "flat speed" idea was an alternative. I prefer it to have the falloff and act as such. To agree with Copperpoint he hit it right "She is unflexible and has unclear design." What was Shyvana's point?

Was she meant to be a counter jungler? If so then she needs a buff to her early survival and damage to clear faster to then counter-jungle with more hp.

Was she meant as a top lane bruiser? Then she needs a gap closer maybe like Lee Sin's dash tied to Fireball. That or better sustain.

I like the idea of her being a jungling HyperCarry based on counter jungling. That would give her presence on the map and make her a late-game threat if left alone. Map Awareness would be her weakness as would being kited as per her original design. Riot billed her as a top; which she isn't much of back when I played her I had roughly a 50/50 on her and I usually ended up jungling because Top was just easially lost either due to being harassed to no end (no trade opps for me) or being harassed by the enemy jungle because mine was busy.

That may have been bad team comp's but it stands that Shyvana is weak at her roles, none of which are easially apparent.