I use a standard 9/21 build (use to run 15/15 or was it 14/16 build in s2 getting 10% cdr from masteries) picking attack speed and arp in offense.

Her design might be flawed but that's okay, as long as you get rewarded in her strengths. (obv I don't use the build against ap tops, generally rush wits end and work from there not sure how to build against double AP teams.)

The design is clear through, Q is for fast buff kills with wiggles or burst damage, W is for aoe clear / moveability, E is for teamfight urtility or burst damage, R is for long dash for getting to something and teamfighting (generally aoe damage is better in teamfights). Passive is for rewarding longer engages.

Passive says you should keep fighting. Q and E is about small trades, rewarded by the passive to keep fighting. Which means she kinda should want to keep trading -> Duelist? W is about moving and clear aoe. Which means either it's about getting to fight (duelist again due to extra time on speed buff if auto attacks) or killing a lot of creeps (pushing or clearing jungle) and/or moving fast around the map.

R says basically that you're tanky and you want to stay in the middle of everything if posible, to utilize your aoe.

So in short:
A tanky duelist which wants to stay in the middle of everything and aoe?

Yes, that is a concept too, but as you sayd - very flawed. I wouldnt even consider her a duelist, as those usually have some kind of edge, sustain or cc to make use of their enemys mistakes.
Minions are actually a big problem for her in top lane, even when I COULD punsih and enemy, I often get stuck to a bunch of minions and have to run around first, while JAX would just jump over it. Same for her E.

Jaxs passive encourages to non stop fight too, but he still does a better overall job, sticking to a target and escaping. And with a littke kiting he can easily kill a Shyvana, although thats not the point.

Another simmilar champ to Shyvana: Renekton ! He has a buff up ulti, a mobility effect and does good aoe dmg. But compared to her he actually has a flexible and effective mobility, isnt dependant on a skillshot and way easier to equip. + Great sustain.
THAT is a duelist, she doesnt have any of that.

Basically you try a) not to get killed b) somehow getting lucky and grab a kill
As LUCK is pretty much the only thing that can really help you, your kit wont.

Shyvana really excels at 2 things:
Killing stuff that neither runs away nor has any form of cc or sustain (monsters and really bad players) And Aoe damage in teamfights, unless she gets focussed and dies before landing 2 hits.

That last line of Copperpoints... yeah I can't agree more right now. I may have made or said a few slightly inaccurate things and I will admit that but she is not a...

- Duelist: Doesn't take advantate of enemy mistakes other than horrid positioning
- Tank: No CC or Taunt and cannot take the punishment
- Counter Jungle: To weak in her own jungle now to even go into the other.
- Top: No Gap-Closer or Harass so loses most tradeoffs.
- Mid: Do I have to explain?
- ADC: Half of her kit is AP.
- APC: Half of her kit is AD.
- AP Bruiser: Doesn't have the high damage of an APB.
- AD Bruiser: Scales too much on AP to be an ADB.

She doesn't fit any of those tags because she is not defined. She what punished horrid players? She was designed as a nubstomper? Na I won't agree with that she had design in S2 and lost that in S3 she needs a fix and there are some very well said points here.

@Estred Shantile
She's really a high scaling AD bruiser, problem is her base stats / base damage. The AP scaling isn't the problem.

If you compare to jax's damage output only, it's basically his free attack speed steriod that makes him do so much damage.

(Considered max stacks on his passive for 100% of the time)
Sample jax lvl 18 build 9/21/0 (+10 ad runes) without taking in account armor / magic resist: trinity gunblade wits end does around 1074 dps 673 physical and 401 magic dps (not taking in account the use)
(with frozen heart instead also: 1156,35 dps, 432 magic 724 physical)


Sample shyvana lvl 18 9/21/0 (+10 ad for the sake of simplicity) without taking in account armor / magic resist: Bloodthirster trinity force frozen heart warmog wits end: 985 dps 717 physical dps and 268 magic dps.

If we for the test added jax's passive on top of shyvana (74% as) we'd get following numbers:
1202 dps 897 physical 305 magic. (and without the cdr; 1097 dps 836 physical 260 magic dps)

Obviously jax's numbers would be a bit higher if we built a bloodthirster instead on him.


I mean if you accept these numbers (cause I'd had to release my "not finished" spreadsheets to really get people to accept them) these numbers should kinda prove my point.


If you're really don't think I'm right you can check the dps difference between a lvl 18 shyvana (through she only gets 2.4% as per level insted of 3.4% last I checked) with no items and full standard ad carry + frozen heart with jax with same items, on www.lol,askmrrobot.com.


She just need a little help getting the high scaling rolling as I suggested earlier.


Duelist is about going in the face and fighting 1v1 all ins, she's actually good against most champions at that.

Killing people in horrible positioning is an assassins job.

Renekton is a poke duelist, unload cd'es and get back out, take no damage. Same with Riven. Not the same as a duelist.

Regarding the jax vs. shyvana matchup. It's shyvana who wants to kite jax, not the other way around. Shyvana has more burst than jax, so in 1-2 sec engages she wins. Also you have to kite away from his stun obv. If jax wants to kite shyvana you just take an advantage else where.

Her numbers are alright. If you want to make her a hypercarry she would still need some kind of changes. My problem with her arent her numbers, but her kit.


What would be your ideas to actually make her more flexible then?

You can always build a team around sorting the hard engage. We don't need everyone to have 2 gap closer and a slow. They just need to make up for it else where. I don't want shyvana to turn into yet another generic bruiser/melee ad carry.

If her kit doesn't allow her to become a tank, why don't we make her a better bruiser sample?

I'm saying that her numbers are not good enough for what she's doing best. If her numbers was high enough to offset her lack of proper initiate, ganks and CC, wouldn't that "fix" her while staying the same mechanically.

All she needs is some free stats on her lvl 11/16 ult in my oppinion. Either that or buff her base damage (which I really only can see happening on q, W already does enough E won't really do much difference damage wise within reasonable levels, and q would maybe just put her scaling to high.)

Also fixing weaknesses doesn't promote counterplay.

Do you want shyvana to be good, or be someone else?


I should had added the numbers for no item shyvana vs. no item jax 18. 455 dps vs. 290. which is 36% more.

As a tank:

Well in the current meta you can't really play her as a tank late game, and you for certain can't initiate well without support (orianna lulu sample). This won't be changed unless they change R in some way. R sample already has some good mechanics like good for grouping up people. You just don't got anything to follow up after your ult except frozen mallet.

As a bruiser / offtank:
Currently you got 2 options.

Either you stand at the front holding the tanks/bruisers away with your tank on your team.

You do hurt them so they kinda have to be careful. Wait for a teamfight to breakout and use your ult to either follow up aoe CC or chase / kill a key target out of the fight.

If we agree on that giving free tank stats won't really help (due to lack of threat if built full tank anyway, make more abusive stack AD for higher aoe, and teamfight damage is to high without any CC or defensive ability)

The free attack speed would instead help more I believe (Hydra more useful for full tanks, less aoe damage (2nd worst stat tied at flame breath's ap ratio cost wise pretty much) more controllable damage output by changing numbers)



TLDR: There's to many bruisers with CC gap closer good ganks etc, she doesn't really have the sion / trynd problem as much, but doesn't bring enough damage to the table.

Why can't shyvana just bring more damage for the lack of other qualities.

I definately dont want her do be a different champ. I love her flair.

She simply isnt really effective.
Either the dmg/tank ratio isnt high enough for the lack of skills. Like you sayd, if you manage to get to an enemy, although you have no gapcloser or cc you should be able to punish the enemy really hard. Right now she doesnt.
or her skills had to be imroved, without making a totally different champ out of her.

Depending on what Riot wants her to be better at.

Rigth now (at least in 3vs3)
I build her: Sunfire/Boots/ Wits/ Mallet/Trinity/ Hydra or another high dps weapon
Sadly there isnt any cooldown in there.
If the enemy team lacks cc I like to buy CDR boots (~2sec less on firespin)
Maybe selling the sunfire lategame and buying another dmg item. Hydra + BT? Or better an infinity edge ?

Making her stronger in the lategame, e.g by reducing cooldowns or a better ulti on 11/16 would be a nice idea. Therefore she still would have a hard time early, but becomes stronger and stronger the longer it goes. Then she would have to be like a hammer in teamfights, I guess.

I dont want her to have a gapcloser or an easy to use cc. But her W and her E feel like they are not on par with the current meta. There are so many ideas what could be done with those. Her E is obviously her teamfight skill (besides her aoe dmg) but just some armor shred isnt really that much for a teamfight - at least for me it feels rather weak.
How about a Q followed on an E results in a 1sec stun? In lane it would be easy to evade but for a teamdive it would be great. (Which only occur in the mid to lategame)

Her skills all look kinda flawed to me:
Q: - ok ^^
W: - why exactly does the speed fade off ? With that she not only has a bad cg/esc, but a handicap. Even if only used as an escape... it still makes no sense to me.
E: - remove casting time and fly through targets. Like the ulti does already but in just one line.
R: - Increased melee/range (chogath's range increases too when he grows) That she is effected by cc during her fly is really annoying too - but in some regard understandable, she still has her buff effect afterwards.

regarding W I guess it's for not having an insane chase potiential. If you don't get slowed, you'd move at 525 move speed or something only using T2 boots for up to 7 secs. Potientially with a 0,4 sec down time with full cdr.

And don't forget E gives approximate 39 magic damage on hit at rank 5 for 4 secs on the targets effected.

Regarding build, I never really felt in love with sunfire on shyvana. Trinity is only really strong for the urtility. Blade of the ruined king and Black cleaver is really strong dueling combination. (BotRK when brought makes aa + q HURT). In 3v3 you don't need to be as tanky as in 5s.Which helps back to the point I made earlier with relying on W for damage output (sunfire as well). Through sunfire wits trinity/frozen mallet hydra should be plenty of damage, you can properly make a build doing similar damage and tankier. But it's okay I guess for aoe and all bruiser meta in 3v3. Infinity edge is obv the strongest end game damage item. Trinity is also really strong first item damage wise only. I don't build hydra anymore cause personally I think BorTK is ridicules strong first item on shyvana. But regardless of enemy I wouldn't forgo sunfire for a offensive item. Pehabs swap it for a more defensive oriented item like randuin's omen or Frozen heart (cdr). hydra + dragon form q + black cleaver could also help your team shred armor. Shyvana might deal a lot of magic damage but Black Cleaver is still amazing on her, better than last whisper.

I don't think you should reduce the cd'es of shyvana would break her if you stacked cdr I think.

IMO just needs some small buffs, since the new jungle kicked her in the butt.

Its more than just the jungle kit her butt.