Talk:Shaco/@comment-26815373-20151026174526/@comment-5955640-20151027172342

There are three standard types of supports. Poke, initation, and sustain.

In theory there is a rock, paper, scissors dynamic with the supports on what their role is supposed to do for the lane.

Poke is defeated by sustain (by healing off the damage and forcing low mana champs to recall), Initiation beats sustain (once the marksman has the appropriate damage the single instance of the grab counter acts any attempt at survival by simply having it healed off), Poke beats initiation (exploiting long range spells and sometimes even the safety of minions to focus on the target who isn't grabbing or harassing the grabber before he initiates will cripple the power of actually landing the grab in the first place).

On that note, there are marksman that prefer certain types of supports.

Early game bullies want poke and grabber to add to their offense and secure kills for them.

Late game hyper carries often want sustain champs so they can get properly peeled and taken care off until late game happens.

Average damage caster marksman can have any of the three but their personal play style has to be in tune with the support for good results.

Early game bullies, Caster marksmen, and Late game hyper carries have to match up with their support well and then they have to counter the enemy support and marksman.

Early game bullies beat hyper carries (crushing their farming potential and rendering the support useless as well), Hyper carries beat casters (by late game being able to auto attack and deal massive damage far outweighs casting a spell to deal damage), and casters beat bullies (Casters tend to have better trading potential in lane than bullies and bullies are extremely dependant on whose supporting them to successfully win these trades).

Do you see the little net of data that's created for bottom lane? The options change a bit when the meta makes a specific demand of the player. That's not even to talk about what sort of play experience you'll have when you and your opponent are the same type. It becomes a skill matchup and if it's grabber's it really pure chance.

SO where would a Shaco fit in this dynamic? Well. Shaco makes boxes. That can be wards and good zone protection but supports always buy wards and honestly the marksman should still have a ward in early game so warding is not a support job and thus you can't get support credit for making a ward or having bonus vision or map control powers.

Shaco slows targets with two shiv poison. At a range of 625. Lulu can Whimsy and Help Pix you at 650 and can go even further with glitterance. Nami's Aqua prison out ranges that as well as water bounce being capable of hitting anyone when carefully positioned and spaced out and Tide caller's blessing can be cast onto someone else within a very safe distance for bonus damage. Janna's W is 25 less range than Two Shiv but it slows for a lot more in every rank.

These are just a few supports who can slow at a safer range, have stronger CC than slows period, and have a stronger scaling slow as well.

Shaco lacks proper crowd control for supporting.

You aren't out on a lurch though. Shaco does infact synergize well with one marksman. That would be Twitch. Twitch and Shaco can play a lot of mind games on the opposing players and can surround and flank them with their lengthy stealth and their variety of spells to put a lot of damage pressure on a single target.

That's Shaco's main strength. dissapearing and reappearing but Shaco generally isn't safe or the marksman isn't safe when shaco stealths but with Twitch they both stealth so the enemy is completely at your mercy.