Shaco is one of the best early game junglers in League of Legends. His ability kit allows him to set up successful ganks as early as level 2 and put his enemies at a disadvantage.
But to new players, Shaco is often a tricky champion to figure out, especially when it comes to ganking. And truthfully, there are tons of small detail that can make or break a gank as Shaco.
For instance, Shaco’s Q is best used from behind walls (where there are no wards) so that you can appear out of invisibility behind your opponents.
But you have to know how far you can jump with Shaco’s Q as well as how long the invisibility effect lasts.
That said, I’ll walk you through a few different examples of how you should be ganking each lane as Shaco jungle in this post.
And hopefully, by the end of the guide, you’ll have a clear idea of how you should gank whenever you play Shaco in LoL!
Ganking as Shaco – Basic Understanding
The ideal gank as Shaco happens when he jumps in with his Q – Deceive from behind a wall (a spot without enemy vision) and appears behind his target.
Here Shaco can backstab them for extra damage and place his W – Jack in the Box so that the enemy steps on it, get feared, and Shaco secures the kill.
Even though this isn’t a realistic scenario in 100% of the games, ganking as Shaco in LoL is actually pretty easy.
Since Shaco can quickly clear jungle camps early on with his boxes, he has some of the fastest ganks in the whole game.
For example, he can immediately gank the enemy mid or top laner after getting the Red Buff (on level 2) and burn their Flash or simply slay them.
Jungle pathing plays a huge role in how you approach ganking as Shaco. Depending on where you want to gank and which allies you want to help out first, there are different jungle-related decisions you’ll need to make.
Also, the outcome of each gank always depends on multiple different factors such as the state of the lane you’re trying to gank, the enemy jungler’s position, and even your HP percentage.
But as Shaco, you always want to surprise your opponents when you come on a gank.
This means that you’ll sometimes need to take unique jungle routes and gank at different times than the average jungle champion/player.
If you’re interested to learn how Shaco’s invisibility works in LoL, read this post.
Read Also: How Jungle Pets Work in LoL – Complete Guide
Practical Tips for Successful Ganks as Shaco
Always Go for the Quickest Jungle Clear
As mentioned above, Shaco’s jungle clear speed is really decent early on. But you want to utilize his boxes as much as possible
For example, if you’re starting on the blue side, you can place up Shaco’s boxes on your Raptors to secure them for you while you’re taking down the Red Buff. From here, you can jump on the Krugs and take them too.
And then you can head over to the bot lane and surprise-gank them from behind the wall or the tri-bush.
But if you choose to go for a full clear instead and ganking your top or mid laner, make sure to find a way to abuse Shaco’s W as much as possible.
Read Also: How to Gank as Kayn? (Guide)
Hold Your Q as Much as Possible
Shaco’s Q is the most important ability when it comes to ganking. It is his only gap closer and without it, he can’t gank at all.
And so, it’s really important to use Shaco’s Q at the last possible second to make sure the invisibility effect lasts long enough so that you reach your target.
Many low-elo players often make the mistake of activating Deceive way too early and end up reappearing far away from their target. This allows the enemy to simply walk away from you or Flash if necessary.
But this tip is also crucial for when you’re running away. You want to trick your opponents with Shaco’s Q and use it in a way to make them run in one direction while you head to another.
You Can Show the Clone Before You Gank
Shaco’s R – Hallucinate allows him to spawn a clone of himself that acts almost identically to Shaco. And so there are tons of tricks you can do with it.
For ganking, you can send your clone to a lane you want to gank and pretend like you’re going away. After hiding your clone, you can jump in with your Q and catch your enemies off guard.
Of course, there are tons of ways you can do this but pulling a successful gank like this is totally possible on Shaco.
However, it’s also important to save your ultimate for sticky situations. For example, if the enemy jungler comes to gank, Shaco’s R can help you dodge a spell or two and confuse the enemies before you run away.
Read Also: How to Gank as Rengar? (Guide)
Play with Ignite Instead of Flash
Lastly, I really want to stress the importance of playing with Ignite instead of Flash on Shaco.
Even though most LoL players know that Shaco’s best combination of Summoner’s Spells is Ignite + Smite, there’s almost never a reason not to take Ignite.
Shaco’s Q does an even better job than Flash because it also gives you invisibility and it has a relatively low cooldown later on.
On the other hand, Ignite gives your ganks a much higher chance of success and allows you to secure more kills overall.
Read Also: 7 Best AD Junglers to Solo Carry
Conclusion
The key to mastering ganking as Shaco is practice. If you’re new to the champion, I heavily recommend you to spend some time in Practice Tool to figure out how his Q works around the map.
It will prepare you for almost any type of ganking you can imagine.
And that’s all the basics on how to gank as Shaco in League of Legends! Good luck!
