Talk:Shaco/@comment-24458677-20140428171902/@comment-9771997-20140513052642

Honestly, I think AP Shaco is just plain better if you can pull it off. His Shiv is broken, you don't need Mejai's for it to be either, it scales incredibly well with both AD and AP. His Jack in the boxes, while squishy early to end game, are extremely potent with AP, and his ult is just ridiculous. He actually has a surprising amount of burst with AP, DFG, and his Shiv. I mean, a DFG + Backstab Shiv will literally almost one shot squishy people (seriously, try it), and his ult chunks really hard too.

Shaco is a character about mind games, that's his thing. He's viable, and a surprsingly effective AP burst assassin, and a tricky (and horribly frustrating) one at that. He has the kit and the damage to do very well, and he can pull off more burst damage than AD Shaco can with less danger; with a skilled hand and a tricky mindset he can dominate and irritate to no end. I went the way of Shaclone when I decided to try AP Shaco and went mid with him in a norm to try it out, and if I remember correctly I faced off against a Fizz. If you can manage to consistently land your E on their back your pokes just wreck their health, and the lane is a breeze since you can just hit Q to escape deadly situations. Creative use of your W can net you some of the easiest kills in the game, and if you don't manage to get a kill in your lane you can roam and get fed elsewhere.

I don't remember if I ever killed that Fizz early game, but what I DO remember is going bot to the enemy adc who was on our turret, sending my clone at him (with some other movements thrown in to make it less obvious), stealthing, dropping a Jack in the bushes, and then throwing my Shiv and engaging when my clone was low. Shiv hit, clone exploded, Varus flashed past me into the bushes as I ran at him to try and escape, got destroyed and I made it back to my tower before it took any damage.

Because of his scaling, AP Shaco never really falls off so long as you can remain tricky and find the right times to do what you do. A single Jack in the Box in a bush can save a fleeing teammate, or destroy an enemy (Seriously, these things are underrated. They may die in one hit, but in the small window of that fear they can still chunk somebody pretty hard with AP, and they usually set you up for a backstab E. Look at that AP ratio. Look at it.), and a well-placed clone can just decimate the enemy team's back line. In addition to all this, he is just so much fun to play as AP. Want to say I ended 7/1 my first time as AP Shaco.