I go by Veralion and I’ve played Shyvana obsessively since she was released back in Season 2. I’ve played many thousands of games on her over the years and currently have over 6 million mastery points on her between my two accounts (Veralion and RAWRARAWRAWRRAWR). I pioneered Shyvana mid using Runic Echoes and Smite back in seasons 9 and 10, eventually peaking in Diamond 1, ladder rank ~4000. Not bad for a bit of off-meta homebrew. It worked, and it worked well, and so I first wrote this guide to spread the word.

Since then, it's been through quite a few renovations. After funnel nerfs killed Smite mid, I was forced to jungle until the AP ratio buffs in Season 12 put mid back on the menu with First Strike and Night Harvester. Things remained mostly stable throughout Season 13, and I reached Master in both seasons. Now, however, AP Shyvana requires a little bit of a pivot.

Full AP crutched super hard on Night Harvester. With Mythics gone and the spooky axe sent to join DFG and Gunblade, AP Shyvana lost its primary source of proc damage and abliity haste. With current AP itemization, you have to choose between damage and haste... unless you poach Spear of Shojin and run the brand new Legend: Haste. That's right, the best AP item in 2024 is AD. Strange world!

Shyvana mid has also recieved one hell of a buff this season in the form of void grubs. She can practically oneshot them with her ultimate without needing a jungle item, freeing up your jungler to clear, gank, or take drake instead. And now, they spawn right after you get level 6! How convenient! Being as overtuned as they are, this equates to an enormous amount of gold for your team from plates, first turret (which was just giga-buffed to stop laneswaps in competitive), and tier 2 sides.

With this setup, the terrifying burst potential that makes AD carries shiver in fear is back and better than ever! Since you're the midlaner, you'll need to build AP more often than not, and as such it's once again the focus of this guide. But every once in a blue moon, you'll have a ton of AP damage and find yourself against several easily chomped on melee champions. For such situations I reccommend my Thanos AD build, which remains strong and is also included. One of Shyvana's primary strengths is this flexibility!

I've also founded a Shyvana focused Discord server! I've got high rated players in every role ready to help, making it the best resource for climbing on our half-dragon. If you're the kind of person that would make the place better and not worse, we'd love to have you! Don't be shy, join up, and win, win, win!

So read on, fellow dragon, and learn how to roast and chomp your way to victory!

+ Can stat check several melee midlaners starting at level 3 + Manaless, can stay on the map indefinitely + High base health regen, can simply outlast several early mana pools + Early skirmish strength is well above the average midlaner + Great objective control, can shove mid and solo grubs/dragon very fast + Very strong roams, converts winning lanes into kills risk-free + Spikes nice and early, has insane synergy with Spear of Shojin + 3 item powerspike is capable of INSTANTLY deleting carries + Extremely threatening on full build, pentakills are relatively common + Snowballs LUDICROUSLY hard and is downright unfair if significantly ahead + Dark horse effect (Particularly regarding roams) + Is a kickass sexy dragon

- Pathetic levels 1-2, easily abused and zoned, cannot gap close until level 6 - Will not have early priority, farming under tower is a fact of life - Lack of CC makes it very difficult to solo bolo and create her own advantages - JG gap is VITAL for the above reason - VERY reliant on Dragon's Descent availability to contribute to fights - Almost useless if behind, feast or famine, ZERO utility - Lack of defensive steroid, cannot initiate head-on without getting exploded - Off-meta pick gives psychotic teammates an easy scapegoat and excuse to give up

Unless you are as obsessed with dragons as I am, you're probably not going to want to pull out the Shyvana mid in every single game. You're looking for 5 main things in the draft to set you up to burn villages and kidnap princes. If you check 3 or more of these boxes, I'd say you've got the green light.

1. You have a primary initiator. 2. Squishy, low-mobility enemy carries. 3. Mid matchup is playable. 4. You have an early game, gank-focused jungler. 5. You have a winning, high-pressure bot lane.

1. Your composition: strong front line, reliable initiation, AoE CC, reset mechanics

Since you hit harder than the Incredible Hulk, you really love anything on your team that can reliably initiate and lockdown priority targets to give you a strong setup. Stuff like Malphite, Sion, Amumu, Rakan, that sort of thing. The holy grail is a suction ultimate from Rell, Diana, or Nilah; Twin Bite will reset and instantly delete stacked targets. Later on, you'll be doing so much damage to so many enemies at once that you can set up a teammate with a reset like Tristana, Kha'Zix, Pyke, and Darius to go to town and clean house before they know what hit them.

I'm currently duoing all the time with my Warwick top buddy, and our winrate is about 60%. Warwick is perfect in so many ways. Initiation, AoE CC, strong early game, powerful roamer, loves to put the enemy jungler behind, it's just ideal. Plus, I can't even be mad with that loveable moron running around spamming Excited Kitten every 5 seconds. God bless him! I highly reccomend finding yourself a dog, making friends, and adopting him!

2. Enemy composition: Squishy, low CC, low mobility

Though Shyvana can chew through beefier targets, she would much rather just delete squishies. Meatballs typically have a lot of CC and peel, which is the real concern here. With no real defensive steroid on her kit, Shyvana will get exploded if locked down for any length of time. Resistances are fake; there's no real difference between dying in 1 second and dying in 1.3, and since she does such an insane amount of damage, it's far better to play to your strengths.

If you see Jinx, Kog'Maw, Aphelios, Jhin, or similar immobile carries, it's go time. You'll easily chunk them, catch them, and cut them in half with a single sweep of your talons. Frustrating champions include Samira, Nilah, Gwen, and Yasuo, who can invalidate your Flame Breath or Twin Bite.

3. A good lane matchup

For mid, your matchup is even more important than team comp. Burst mages are exceptionally good matchups. These champions were dumpstered on by the durability patch and you will have little difficulty outlasting their mana pools. Veigar, LeBlanc, and Syndra are free lanes. All-in opportunities are plentiful.

Certain control mages that have spells jukeable with Burnout are also good. Lux, Anivia, and especially Malzahar are examples of these. They will also be easy to roast up.

Many popular fighters and assassins can be farmed into, but are too dangerous to challenge without help. They'll need to play badly to give you an opening. Yasuo, Yone, Akali, and Zed come to mind. You may consider these neutral matchups. Look to shove and roam, or ult in place and poke to keep them too low to risk a fight.

Don’t pick her into famously abusive champions. The very worst lanes include Ziggs, Neeko, Rumble, Fizz, and Ahri. These champions cannot easily be caught, do a stupid amount of harass, and will deny you more than you can afford to lose. Some of them are so obnoxious that the only winning move is not to play. Remember that dodging is an extremely powerful tool in your kit. Thankfully, many of these are not common.

I've got pages and pages of notes on how to handle every common matchup under the threats section above!

4. An aggressive, unfair jungler

You also really want a strong early-game ganker in the jungle. I’d advise duoing with one if possible. The more aggressive and unfair, the better. Stealth champions as well as those who move too fast to react to are great, like Nunu & Willump, Evelynn, Shaco, and Rammus. Many opponents will be baited deep trying to poke you down, leaving them wide open. Even if you can’t get a Flash or kill, just being able to coordinate a strong presence mid and strike paranoia into the heart of your lane opponent will force respect your way and give you some much needed breathing room to scale up.

Alternatively, powerful early game bruisers like Xin Zhao and Udyr, who can fend for themselves while you're weak will allow your team to hit the midgame on even footing, where you can start pulling your weight and deleting people.

Post 6, your gank assist with Dragon's Descent + Flame Breath is EXTREMELY powerful, and being able to set up ganks on demand with CC to guarantee your full combo will net you some free gold.

You do NOT want a powerfarmer like Karthus or Master Yi. A single invade while you're weak will ruin them and they'll blame you. They'll probably Smite your cannons over it. Kayn is also not great since he's not a champion until he transforms. Red ends up being great to play with, if he can get there, but they're all going blue again and inting nowadays.

5. A strong, winning bottom lane

Lastly, you want a winning bot lane to enable roam opportunities. High pressure poke lanes like Caitlyn Lux and Ashe Zyra that keep enemies perma-stuck at 200 hp under their own turret are ideal, as are early bullies such as Draven. Empowered Flame Breath will one hit a low health target stuck farming under their turret from well outside of its range. Carries and supports like to huddle together even more than usual while on low health, so there is a very real chance of killing them both with one shot if you arrive at the right moment. A well-timed bot roam converts into multiple turret plates and the drake for good measure. This is the absolute fastest and most efficient way to take over the whole game.

Roaming engage supports like Alistar and Blitzcrank are fantastic since they'll return the favor and scratch your back in the mid lane when they get the chance. You'll find no shortage of setup in teamfights later on, especially with Rell. Rell is the queen. Don't forget it.

Scaling ADC/enchanter pairings make these opportunities few and far between. Vayne or Zeri aren't going to be doing much of anything for a while.


Again, you only need 3 of the above in order to make the build work. If you've got all 5, Shyvana mid basically becomes Exodia.

You'll bait their weak, immobile mid too deep while trying to deny you, get fed and farmed by spam ganking them repeatedly, get all 5 plates in 2 pushes, roam down to slaughter their crippled bot lane under their own turret with no possible escape, and turn all of that gold into pressing two buttons and killing 3 or 4 squishy enemies instantaneously after your front line locks them down and sets them up.

Off-meta, indeed.

Passive: Dragonborn

Terrible passive in all honesty. While it does make solo drake from the midlane possible if you have bot push and there's a party in top lane, her Flame Breath proc is the majority of her damage and is hard capped to 150 per hit anyway. 5 Armor and MR per drake is nice, but negligible. If you have a bunch of drakes, chances are you're far enough ahead that you don't really need it. Silly win-more nonsense. I seriously wish Riot would make her passive double while in dragon form like it used to; then I might actually care about stacking it. That being said, it's your only source of resists aside from boots, so it's better than nothing.

Q: Twin Bite

Auto reset which hits twice and synergizes with the on-hit damage from her Flame Breath mark and Burnout. Every attack reduces it's cooldown by 0.5 seconds, including itself. Recently, it's been modernized to give a substantial amount of attack speed for two hits, unshackling Shyvana from being forced to build squishy AS items and greatly increasing her viability.

While in dragon form it cleaves every target in a full semicircle in front of you and generates fury for each target hit, which can add up to quite a bit. Proper positioning to cleave groups of creeps (and especially Raptor camps) extends dragon form far beyond its base duration. Note that the cleave works on towers and reaches further than her max auto range; if your target is just out of range but there's something between you, hit it instead.

The cleave will also reset on each and every hit. Fighting someone inside a creep wave will let you spam Q and turn into a weedwhacker, delivering an enormous amount of damage. Shyvana makes champions like Yorick and Naafiri very sad. This is also how you take void grubs faster than every other champion.

Hilariously, Sundered Sky treats Twin Bite as one attack, critting on BOTH HITS, practically one-shotting carries. That makes Shyvana the best Sundered Sky user in the game. More on exactly how the interaction works later!

W: Burnout

AoE damage and speed buff. Though nerfed to a shadow of its former self, early on it is indispensable for dodging skillshots and taking quick moments to dart forward, last hit a creep, and retreat. This is also how you prepare caster creeps to last hit under turret. Two ticks of the ability will do enough damage. Three or four ticks is risky. Five ticks is too much and will ruin the entire stack. Move in and out of range as necessary to get as much farm as possible. The first tick is also applied instantly, so this ability is your only option to kill 1 hp creeps before your minions finish them off.

Burnout has an extremely high AP ratio, but on its speed, not its damage. An extra 12% per 100 AP, in fact. Give her two AP items and Rabadon's Deathcap, and she can run circles around pretty much everything. Movespeed is and always will be the most broken stat in the game.

But it does literally nothing special in dragon form.

God forbid it do something useful and exciting like the rest of her kit, like grant slow immunity, or at the very least not decay over the duration.

I miss my fire trail. Give me back my fire trail at least, Rito.

E: Flame Breath

Basic medium speed skillshot which passes through creeps and stops on the first champion hit. Though initially on a long cooldown, it enables Shyvana to farm, poke, and scale up in the mid lane ecosystem. A substantial amount of her early power is tied to the mark it leaves behind; until you have items, NEVER fight if you miss E if you can help it.

Flame Breath while transformed with some AP behind it is one of the most reliable, safe, and lethal basic abilities in the entire game. Not only is it an AoE nuke (and believe me, that IS the right word for it) with an absurd 1.0 ratio and massive range, which is nuts enough, the fire patch it leaves behind is also extremely threatening and is frequently disrespected.

Some key things to remember about dragon form Flame Breath. First, it’s very tricky to hit targets that are on top of you and inside your model (OwO). Since the ability has a short cast time and cannot be aimed directly below you, a moving target is very difficult to hit at point blank range. I say again: you cannot E directly below Shyvana. And since you must place Flame Breath below your snout, a quickly moving target can rotate around you and avoid the hit. Not only that, but if your mouse is too close to Shyvana, your Flame Breath will fire sideways or even backwards, missing even with its huge hitbox and completely screwing you.

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Practically speaking, this spaghetti creates a small dead zone. Never try to hit a target that’s directly under you unless you are in a do-or-die moment. Remember this when you go to tackle someone with Dragon's Descent for your full burst combo. In nearly all cases, you should take half a step away from your target after you land to be sure you don't misfire. Patience is key; with the unfair range and area that Flame Breath covers, landing it is entirely in your hands.

Second, do NOT press E at all while you are flying in Dragon's Descent. The ability will buffer based on the first location you cast at and will automatically fire there upon landing no matter what. A lot can happen between when you press R, when you land, and when your Flame Breath cast finishes. Don't do it.

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There's a bug that's been in the game since her release in 2011 which will reset the cooldown if you cast it at the very instant Dragon's Descent expires. It's not reliable or very reproducible, though; it used to be, but Riot "fixed" it a while back. They didn't do a very good job (imagine that) and just made it much harder. Details below.

Definitely don't intentionally go for it and risk not getting your empowered Flame Breath at all, but if you do incidentally cast it at the very last second, check the cooldown real quick. You might have gotten lucky.

R: Dragon's Descent

Objectively the coolest ult in the game. Unstoppable dash with a 1.3 ratio limited only by fury generation, having an extremely low effective cooldown. You are half a champion without it, so it's a damn good thing it's so accessible. Managing fury to make sure you always have it when you need it is crucial, as is properly extending it through frequent auto attacks and Twin Bite cleaves.

Never use Dragon's Descent if it's not necessary. If a simple human form combo is enough for the job, save the ult. Just because it has a very low "cooldown" doesn't mean you can't wind up needing it before then.

Though it hits like a truck, it is fairly slow and hard to land on someone with a working mouse. Get close before pressing R if you need a hit for lethal.

Dragon's Descent has a minimum range and cannot be cast in place. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with this distance in practice tool. If you are not cognizant of this fact, you can very easily go to land a Flame Breath on stack of targets only to put yourself in range of CC and die before you get the chance. You are much larger while transformed, and your hitbox reflects this, making you very tough to miss. Blitzcrank could hook into the next zip code and still hit you, so be careful. Remember, Flame Breath has a cast time and there is plenty of time for you to get nailed by a stun before getting it off.

DO NOT CAST Dragon's Descent ON A STACKED TEAM HEAD ON WITHOUT ANY SETUP. I don't care how fed you are. You will get KILLED INSTANTLY and contribute absolutely nothing. This champion has no defensive steroid and cannot survive getting 20 buttons pressed on her face.

If you want to dive facefirst into a teamfight, their team MUST be CCed and unable to retaliate, or you MUST ambush their backline from out of vision to kill them instantly before they can react. If these conditions aren't met, don't even think about it. Instead, look to poke with Flame Breath and adopt a hit-and-run playstyle until enough resources have been used and their carries are vulnerable.

After reverting to human form, gaining fury is your first, last, and only priority. If action is likely in the near future, go straight to the closest available minion wave or jungle camp and begin hitting it. Do not use Burnout or Flame Breath. Only auto attack and Twin Bite until that bar is full. If you will kill the camp before reaching 100 fury, reset it and keep hitting it for as long as you need to. Ping your team away from your fury batteries and ping them to not pick a fight while you're becoming relevant again. Your ult indicator is broken and is stuck on, since Dragon's Descent technically has no cooldown. People don't play Shyvana and don't know how she works. You can't even ping your R to show "not ready". The best you can do is spam ping your fury and hope people know that fury = ult.

The knockback effect behaves strangely; along most of its path it will knock targets back a short way as intended, but for whatever reason at the very end of her travel path it pulls back and clumps all enemies in front of her. It's basically a vortex effect like Moonfall tied to the end of her ult. This makes landing a multi target Flame Breath rather convenient. Aim to clip targets with your muzzle whenever possible. This is tough to take advantage of, so will take practice.

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Teleport is the solo lane meta for a reason. If they have it and you don't, you're automatically behind the curve of the game. Since Shyvana is such a sensitive champion, we cannot let that happen. Early, this spell will allow you to make a mistake and still play the game, or simply heal up without losing a thing. Later, it will let you be anywhere you need to be in a flash. It can prevent dives, snap up stacked waves, join fights across the map, the works.

It's incredibly useful for outmacroing the enemy. Shyvana is an incredible splitpusher, and good macro will get you most of the way to Master tier all on its own. You would be shocked how many games are decided by a stubborn refusal to answer side waves.

Flash is mandatory as the best-in-class offensive and defensive tool, and when you have two basic abilities that can hit multiple targets for around a thousand damage each, not running it is a hard grief.

Press the Attack Old reliable is freshly buffed! Now, instead of amplifying all damage, it increases YOUR damage by 8% for the rest of combat. Since Twin Bite counts as two hits, proccing it is the easiest thing in the world, and all that extra damage is going to be applied to multiple targets instead of only one! Don't even look at Dark Harvest or First Strike. Scaling runes leave you defenseless for far too long. Being able to fight and snowball games as early as possible is a much better strategy. Flash proccing PtA catches a lot of people off-guard and can solo bolo squishy mages that disrespect you in lane, which happens quite a bit. They aren't exactly familiar with the matchup! It also makes early dives after spamming Flame Breath a few times much easier to pull off. Conqueror is seriously underrated for AD builds, however. I'd reccommend it over PtA if the situation calls for it.

Triumph Standard. Triumph frequently makes all the difference in nail-biter skirmishes, which you're looking to snowball off of with your Spear of Shojin rush. 5% missing health on takedown with 4k HP is quite a lot and is too big to pass up. Pentakills, anyone? Aside from the clutch factor, Triumph will give 300-500 gold in your typical solo queue clown fiesta. Don't ask me why it needs to do that. Matchups that are tough enough to make Absorb Life attractive are better dealt with by rushing Plated Steelcaps or Mercury's Treads.

Legend: haste Goodbye Tenacity, but I won't miss you! I bet you anything Riot was scared of pairing this rune with Ultimate Hunter, so they made it basic abilities only, and gave it a whopping 15 haste to compensate. Of course, that suits us just fine! Pair this baby up with the stat shard and Spear of Shojin and we're basically playing URF on one item. This is Night Harvester levels of haste, and I'm very happy with it! Don't look at Legend: Alacrity twice!

Cut Down For those of you who don't read patch notes, this rune has just been completely reworked. It's now 8% more damage on targets above 60% health. This is perfect for poke champions, and Shyvana is the ******* queen of poke champs. There is so much damage in the game that anyone under half life just gets oneshot by anything, anyway. Getting carries into too-afraid-to-fight range as fast as possible is the name of the game.

Go-to: Second wind/Overgrowth Second Wind is what truly enables Shyvana mid. 4% of your missing health back per poke combined with Doran's Shield doing something similar combined with her naturally high hp/5 turns you into an immovable object for most popular midlaners. They will quite literally run out of mana before you run out of life. This doesn't mean you can play recklessly and eat auto attacks all day long, but it does let you shrug off spells and maintain farm parity until level 6 against almost everyone. Take Bone Plating instead for level 3 all-in lanes. Every other early-aggression champ takes it, so you can't not. It's the strongest minor rune in the game in such early exchanges. Overgrowth with a health stacking build is good value and will feed into Riftmaker a little bit. It's about a free Giant's Belt with a full build, a 900G value. Not bad!

For stat shards, take haste. 8 haste is nearly a second off of your Flame Breath cooldown early on, a big help with safe farming. You can't all in without your E mark either, so it will let you fish for kills more often.

I'm currently back to taking double scaling health in most games. A force shard is very helpful for last hitting, and tenacity is a defensible choice VS heavy CC. Just don't take MS. Diminishing returns on movespeed will ruin its value for you.

Taking double Force and flat health with a Doran's Blade start just about oneshots anyone you can actually hit. If you mess up a trade, things get dire quick though. More risk, more reward. Try it into Diana, Sylas, Yasuo, etc. once you're comfortable.

Every dragon needs their stash of fancy, powerful artifacts. These items will be the wind beneath your wings, carrying you to greatness so that you may carry your team to victory.

AP: Core Build

Start: Doran's Shield + pot Health regeneration go brr. You're going to be trading health for gold in most matchups, so you're gonna need a lot of it. Doran's Shield gives more regen the lower you are, capping at 25%, so don't use your potions until you cross that threshold. Use them a bit earlier if they've got Ignite. Doran's Blade and two force runes gives enough power to instantly win many melee lanes at level 3. Nobody knows Shyvana's power curve with an aggressive setup, so they'll always try to fight you and you'll get first blood more often than not. Just make damn sure you dont miss your Flame Breath.

Spammy Spear: Shojin This item was quite literally made for Shyvana. It even says Dragonforce on it. I underestimated exactly how broken this item is on her for entirely too long. It's a whopping 35 haste behind her basic abilities, which is where the entire power budget of her kit is at, far more than any other item. She stacks it pretty much instantly on anything she can hit, including creeps and monsters, so it basically buffs her damage by 12% at all times. Disgusting item. Rush it as fast as possible, pausing only for Boots and Refillable Potion if you need it. Once completed, you'll oneshot just about anyone from very early in the game.

Situational Boots Boots are a game-by-game choice, and also up to personal preference. I suggest your default be Sorcerer's Shoes. 15 pen is an enormous amount of extra long-range damage on priority targets, and they're therefore likely to have the most impact. With Legend: Tenacity gone, Mercury's Treads is our only option to reduce CC. Grab them for nevermove compositions or rush them for the MR into abusive lanes like Brand, Hwei, and Azir. Especially if it's double AP mid/JG. Plated Steelcaps rush is necessary into especially annoying AD lanes like Yone and Tristana, and you definitely want them into full AD. I don't even hate Ionian Boots of Lucidity, since Twin Bite is physical damage and doesn't benefit from Sorc's. We're kind of good on haste, but hey, there's no denying they're still strong. Flash and Teleport both have enormous cooldowns and benefit greatly from these boots.

Dark Seal Dark Seal is still busted. In a good game, it's basically a Needlessly Large Rod for the price of an Amplifying Tome. That's called value city, my friends. Every Shyvana build, including full AD, should buy one after their first item. Her ratios are just too insane to not do so. Try to stack in every game, even when things already look bad. Why not? Games can flip on a dime and it's a small investment for a potentially huge payoff. Stacks only go up. Diamond hands, my friends.

Burn. baby, burn: Liandry's Similar to Spear of Shojin, I didn't see how strong new Liandry's was until far too late. The burn is hard to appreciate, but I promise you, it does some serious work behind the scenes with your fire patch, especially now that Riot has injected a ton of extra health into the game with new items and rune reworks. The most recent case in point: Warmog's Armor supports. Even on a squishy carry, you can expect the burn do do around 60 extra damage per application, equavalent to about 50 AP. The extra percent damage is a nice little cherry on top. By the way, Haunting Guise is one of the best components in the game, so you get to curve pretty smoothly too!

Riftmaker Bad As I'm sure you've noticed by now, Riftmaker is now a very serious item. It's no longer bad! In Season 14, omnivamp is no longer nerfed on AoE. Since Shyvana's entire kit in dragon form is AoE, this is a MASSIVE buff for her. This item has serious clutch potential. 10% extra damage is insane for a champion with such high base damage and ratios too. Seeing a pattern here? Percent damage good! To top it off, the health conversion will give you a free Blasting Wand. It's simply too solid of an item to pass up on!

These three items currently comprise the Holy Trinity for Shyvana, making her incredibly dangerous in melee and at range, giving her enough mobility to catch targets and escape, and allowing her to tank a hit or two. If you can get them while most champions in the game are still on two, carrying should be an absolute breeze.

For Inflection Points

Maximum power: Blue Elixir If the game hasn't ended already, chances are that it's about to. Elixirs should now be purchased with any leftover money before Baron/Soul/Elder/Nexus fights. 50 AP adds a lot of value across your entire kit, and it adds 25 true damage on a small per-target cooldown. A cooldown that lines up almost exactly with your Flame Breath. Funny how that works out!

AP: Situational

Unlimited Power: Deathcap Your default 5th choice should obviously be the hat. Even with only 2 AP items, the multiplier will net an extra ~110 AP and fire up your Flame Breaths from merely threatening to crippling. All that extra AP translates into mobility through the completely nuts ratio on Burnout, so you'll always be where you need to be. You'll be nearly impossible to catch in a sidelane and impossible to escape in a teamfight.

Int Prevention: Zhonya's Stasis can still decide entire games. Remember that Seeker's Armguard is potentially the strongest component in the shop. 2.5 seconds is an eternity with how much damage is in the game right now. If you're super fed and you're against Cease and Desist, Grand Challenge, Death Mark, or other extremely threatening spells, you're gonna need to pick up an hourglass, probably before Rabadon's Deathcap. Access to stasis also allows using Dragon's Descent for damage. While normally a terrible idea, sacrificing your positioning doesn't matter when you can mash Hourglass upon landing. Remember that its AP ratio is a whopping 1.3. R-E-Zhonya's on a stacked team will explode them, and your team will clean up before your invuln wears off.

Cryptbloom Since Shyvana absolutely adores haste, I prefer this over Void Staff to deal with MR stacking. Since your job is to chunk carries and carries in League of Legends are famously stubborn, you won't have to itemize pen very often, if at all. Besides, the below item is just a much more fun way to deal with this problem.

Big Funny Numbers: Sundered Sky This item is completely absurd. I have no idea what they were thinking. The crit is good enough, the heal is good enough, but BOTH on a single item is NOT OKAY. Shyvana abuses it CRAZY hard. Twin Bite crits twice. Twice. Both hits. And in dragon form, the cleave will crit EVERYTHING in range. This includes other champions. But, it won't proc on them. This means if Rell ults 4 or 5 people together, you can crit the stack, reset Q, pick someone else, and crit the entire stack AGAIN. With this item, Q can instantly demolish an entire team. Flame Breath Twin Bite with this item WILL kill ANYTHING. Like, actual oneshot. The AP ratio on Twin Bite is 0.75 and all that extra damage DOES go into the crit, giving Shyvana a truly horrifying amount of burst. You'll have no issues closing to melee range and delivering the crit with all your AP. This is my default 6th item right now. Games don't go that late very much, but oh man, when they do, it's FUN.

AD: Core Build

My AD Thanos build opens in exactly the same way, except that defensive boots are highly preferred. Rush Spear of Shojin and pick up a Dark Seal. Your second item, however, is a new one:

Cleaves on Cleaves: Titanic Hydra Titanic is still busted. Considering Twin Bite procs it twice and also hits behind your primary target, clumped targets get absolutely obliterated. Retreating carries will frequently get finished off by Titanic waves which were sent from your Q's maximum range. It basically turns Shyvana into a ranged champion. At full build, the on-hit approaches 70 damage, with the wave doing even more. You can think of this item as being 120 AD with 550 health. Pretty nutty. You can pair the active with your Q for a gigachunk, but unlike Sundered Sky, you don't get twice the benefit. It's best used as an auto reset. When hitting tanks, hit hydra after your 2 follow-up hits from Q for maximum value. A quick Tiamat drastically increases your pushing speed too, letting you threaten those side turrets that much faster. It also makes taking away jungle camps feasible without the jungle pet. You'd lose too much health and tempo without it.

Next, pick up Sundered Sky. Then, Riftmaker. You won't be catching anything without AP in the build somewhere, and this one item will end up giving you about 130 on its own. Stacking the omnivamp with Conqueror and Triumph makes a very hard to kill dragon... as long as you're able to keep hitting.

AD: Defensive Options

Default: Sterak's The best defense is a good offense. Dead carries can't kill you. You see, there's just too much damage in the game to tank it for long no matter what you build. So, we're not going to try. Steraks gives another 59 AD at level 18 behind your Twin Bite, which will now atomize carries. The shield will proc right when you get full Last Stand value, and we've scaled it up to be comparable in durability to a real tank item. Not only that, it gives the actual best tank stat in the game, 20% tenacity.

Kaenic Rookern Another 200 year special coming straight from Riot Games. At this point in your build, the shield is at about 850 points. And it refreshes itself every 15 seconds. Like, call me crazy, but it should probably have 40 MR, not freaking EIGHTY. There's almost no reason to ever consider any other MR item. It's just too good. Buy it. This item makes Karthus very sad. Same with artillery mages.

Anti-Crit The classic F-you to Yasuo and Yone. If one of them's doing well and they've got a fed crit ADC, snap this item up. It will negate over a third of their damage. The active slow is SUBSTANTIAL now, a nice little bonus. Don't talk to me about Iceborn Gauntlet. This item slows too, and isn't trash. Nobody should build Iceborn that doesn't need it to hit confirm their full combo. Build this instead.

Healcut Ideally, you shouldn't have to build this. It's substantially less tanky than our preferred options, and it relies on the enemy applying it to themselves, so it's completely useless against Swain or a Singed with Soraka behind him. Someone else (looking at you, toxic greedy flaming ADC player) really should buy Mortal Reminder or Oblivion Orb. If they refuse and you've got no choice, or you're stuck matching Aatrox, you'll just have to bite the bullet. Every other healcut option is too squishy to get away with.

For Egirls Sometimes you get a pair of sexy Egirls in your botlane. Any combination of Sona, Soraka, Seraphine, Taric. If they have hands and don't int, this item will make you actually immortal in a teamfight. If you only have one such champion down there, however, Kaenic Rookern is probably still better. That item is just that busted.

Level 1 fiestas

Invades happen more often than not in solo queue, and they happen because they frequently work. Hook and snare champions in particular love to invade. If you have one, go fishing. If your level 1 is strong, I suggest invading topside, since botside invades are more common and I've noticed people are much lazier about watching their screens up there, yielding a higher success rate. If they have a hooker and your level 1 is stronger, you can wait for them as 5 in a botside bush instead.

Shyvana has an incredibly weak level 1, however. Your team may not know this. If you compare comps and don't think you can win the fiesta, say so. If a 5v5 breaks out, stand in front, hit the focus target as many times as you can, then Flash away before dying. The best contribution you can make to a fiesta is to soak damage for your more useful teammates.

Wait to skill your first ability. You really want Flame Breath for lane, but sometimes you need the MS from Burnout to chase down a kill or get out of a sticky situation. Never pick Twin Bite.

If neither team has a particularly strong invade, keep watch of a jungle entrance that your team doesn't have covered and provide vision until at least 1:10. It seriously triggers me to watch people just AFK at their turret being useless while creeps run to lane. Don't be one of those idiots.

Try to ward the enemy chicken bush at 1:30. Throw Flame Breath into that one bush on the way to make sure you don't get punished for it. This will let your team know which side is their strong side and let you hug the correct half of the lane to be as safe as possible.

Level 1-2: be patient and defensive

Your goal for the first few waves is just to farm up and soak experience. The biggest thing about early laning is learning what farm you can get away with walking up for and when you should concede CS to preserve health. This varies greatly depending on matchup. Here's a good rule of thumb: if you will take more than 100 damage to get that creep, concede it. Your real mission is to hit 6 smoothly, not necessarily to get there with a full purse. Don’t be afraid to go 10, 20, even 30 CS behind if it means you can safely stay in lane. You can always make up a CSD later on in the game once you're more powerful and start scaling into a true dragoness, but if you get chunked for no reason, are forced to back, and miss a big wave, that experience is gone forever and you are now unavoidably behind the curve of the game.

Always prioritize farming with Flame Breath over trying to hit your lane opponent. Its cooldown is simply too long to apply meaningful pressure at this point, so don't even try. Ideally you want to line up high value shots which kill a few creeps and also hit your enemy, but this is not always possible.

Use potions once your health drops under 25% in order to get maximum value from Doran's Shield or in preparation for a gank or skirmish. If the enemy has Ignite, this is risky, so use it earlier. Don't leave any opportunity to die to an all in or mistake. If you smell a dive coming, just back and Teleport between waves. Melee creeps are worth much more XP than ranged, so pay special attention to not miss any of them.

In level 3 all in lanes, TAKE ZERO DAMAGE UNTIL LEVEL 3. Without Second Wind and Doran's Shield, any damage you take will stick, and if you're down even 100 life, you'll lose the fight.

Wave management and last hitting

Ideally, you want the wave to push into you just past the river and freeze it there with precise last hitting. Don’t shove at all in the early game and be very careful how you Flame Breath waves. Even if Flame Breath kills 2-3 creeps and smacks Zed for 130, that is NOT worth it if you had to hit the entire wave to do it and everything pushes forward into the danger zone. Alternatively, a misplaced Flame Breath can seriously mess up your last hitting under tower if you're being shoved in. Be precise with Flame Breath and only hit what you need to.

Your opponent will not like being stuck this far forward, however, and will likely shove you in. You're too weak to do anything about it early, so you'll need to get very proficient at last hitting under tower. To last hit full health melee creeps, hit them after 2 tower shots. Caster creeps die in 2 shots, so you’ll need to tickle them a little bit before they get hit. 2 ticks of Burnout will do it. Move Burnout in and out accordingly so as to not over-damage the casters and ruin your farm.

Your tower's damage will naturally make your wave push back into the enemy. This is the most dangerous time of lane phase. You need to get that wave all the way into the enemy tower to ping-pong it back if at all possible. A frozen wave out in Narnia is how you get perma-ganked and die. Ward up and prioritize shoving over CS whenever it's safe, then keep the bouncing wave trimmed so that it settles in the ideal freeze position.

Wave control is an ESSENTIAL skill. People don't start to understand this until Master tier, and I get triggered all the time by supposedly skilled opponents ruining their wave positioning for no reason whatsoever. I promise you that good creep management is the number one thing holding you back as a player. Learn it, love it, live it.

The tower will always target cannons first, then melees, then casters, and go from closest to furthest away. You've got the tools to get nearly everything, so make the effort. Missing a few is unavoidable, especially if you're also taking harass while doing so. Make sure to always last hit cannons with Flame Breath or a follow up Twin Bite to give yourself the best chance of getting them. If feasible, tank the incoming wave for a few seconds in front of your turret while your next wave arrives. This will freeze it in the ideal position and stop the turret from gobbling up your farm, well worth a little bit of life.

Levels 3-5: Stat checking

Shyvana’s abilities strongly synergize together, so until you have access to all of them you're not a champion. Once you do though, you're surprisingly dangerous. Since this is an uncommon setup, everyone will underestimate you.

Common champions that you should look to stat check at level 3 are Diana, Sylas, Irelia, and Katarina. You will easily win, even through Ignite. Akali, Yone, Yasuo, and Zed will require a mistake to become viable all-ins. Mages will typically keep their distance, but be ready to blow summs and all-in after a few successful pokes the next time they waste their CC on the wave. Trading Flashes is extremely beneficial in melee VS ranged matchups, since the lack of an escape will make your opponent play cautiously and allow you to farm.

Some champions with low range might take turret shots while trying to harass you. Twisted Fate is the prime example. Stay aware and be ready to kill him if he takes one too many.

Similarly, champions with dashes will end up behind you. Placing yourself at the edge of your turret's range can sometime bait them into taking a shot. Flame Breath is very slow, so always wait for the dash before pressing it. You can't afford to miss.

Ult Priority

Since you're half a champion without it, frequent and effective usages of your ult are vital. Here's a general priority list to help you quickly identify where to take it:

Kill lane opponent > Roam bot > Roam top and Grub > Shove mid and Grub > Shadow jungler > Cheater Recall

The second you hit 6, look to dive onto your lane opponent and vore them. You should only need to land one or two pokes against most champions to have serious all in potential. Put your wards down and once you have proof that their jungler isn’t waiting around the corner, wait for them to cast on the creep wave and GO RAWR.

If they escape and back off, cleave the wave with your empowered Twin Bite to shove in and extend dragon form. Once pushed in, you can zone them out of experience range under their own turret for as long as Dragon's Descent lasts. If you know that their jungler is not in a position to assist, you force that midlaner back as far as you can.

Don't forget to put all of your wards down first. There’s nothing more tilting than seeing an opportunity only to int because their jungler just happened to be right there and you didn’t check first. If your opponent has been playing passive then suddenly starts to toe into range, you should think to yourself that it's too good to be true. Watch for sudden changes in playstyle; bad players frequently telegraph their jungler's proximity. Don't get baited into a 1v2 situation that you cannot win.

If your jungler is nearby and coming in to gank, wait and go in together. A stunned champ that has to eat a Shyvana combo WILL die. If you went in alone and left them low, ping them to dive.

Once you climb high enough and start facing decent players, opportunities for solo kills become rare. Being a mechanically simple champion, it's very hard for Shyvana to generate her own advantages if her opponent plays properly and respects her damage potential. You may have to get creative to finish kills. A classic trick is to dip back into fog of war after chunking your lane opponent down to near death and shoving in. Thinking you've recalled, they'll walk back up to eat the wave while you're still transformed. From there, it's an easy Flash for the kill. Here's a good example.

Play Video

Skilled players won't let themselves fall into all-in range and some champions are just a very bad idea to ult into out of the blue (Azir, Zed, etc.). So look at bot lane instead. If you see a pair of 300 life champions stuck farming under turret, hard shove your wave and run over. Drop a ward behind you to watch for their jungler and ult over the wall to cut off their escape. Then just spam Flame Breath and wait for the next crashed wave to dive. This is the fastest way to catapult yourself into an insurmountable lead. ADC in 2024, just play safe!

If that's not on the table, we're thinking about objectives. If you can't all in or roam, Dragon's Descent, eat your wave, and go do them yourself as soon as they spawn. Land Flame Breath on all 3 and drag them out of the pit so that they group up and spawn mites outside of your fire patch so that you can cleave them. Twin Bite will reset like 3 times and you'll straight one shot the first one, with enough AoE to kill the other two shortly afterward. Done properly, murdering grubs only takes about 13 seconds and leaves no time to react. And, the spam cleaves will give you more than enough fury to walk back to mid, evaporate the next wave, and cheater recall. No other champion can do this; this is a unique strength of Shyvana mid. The on-hit healing from Cull will nullify any health loss.

Play Video

Roaming top isn't nearly as a good of a use of time as bot. First, top champions take Teleport, so they may not miss much. Second, they usually have some form of shield or sustain to survive Flame Breath poke. Still, it's the most volatile lane by a mile, and putting your top laner ahead can snowball them out of control very easily. If nothing else is available and they're vulnerable, go for it. Transitioning a top gank into eating grubs is an extremely valuable play; if the gank doesn't work, you'll still get great use out of it.

Drake can be done in a similar manner thanks to your 20% damage amp, but this is almost never the right call. Supports typically have it warded, it will start a fight, and you run the risk of it being stolen. Only consider this if you have full bot priority, both junglers are confirmed occupied, you aren't in a position to just run over and help them instead, and if grubs are already dead.

If you’re getting destroyed and slow pushed on in lane, don’t be afraid to expend Dragon's Descent to secure a stacked wave or break a freeze from a safe distance. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than getting starved out. In this way, there is only so much you can be denied after 6.

And if none of that looks good, just hold your ult, keep an eye on your jungler, and be ready to back him up. If no skirmish ends up happening, use it to insta-kill a wave and cheater recall when you need a back, can complete an item, or about 1:00 before the next big objective.

One random note that I don't know where else to put: dragons are natural predators of chickens, and the raptor camp will be your best friend for extending dragon form. Twin Bite the henhouse whenever you get the chance. It will instantly reset, so do it again. And again. This will literally cap your fury.

Punish roams

Sometimes, your opponent may leave lane to roam while your ult is down, or they're a particularly dangerous champion that can turn on and murder you if you follow them into fog. You may have thought that they went back, only to see them walk over a ward running to bot lane, making it too late to follow. Remember that you're useless without an ult, that a turret plate is worth half a kill, and that turrets HATE attack speed steroids like the one found on Twin Bite.

In this situation, spam DANGER ping on the targeted side lane (NOT enemy missing, DANGER is MUCH louder and harder to ignore) and take the chance to obliterate their turret. You can easily take 2 plates per crashed wave. Even if your counterpart got a kill, you'll make it an even trade. You seriously annihilate structures with a few grubs; very few champions can kill them faster than you. Two good shoves, and that turret is dead and you've got yourself over a thousand gold for free.

You’ll probably regain Dragon's Descent while you’re hitting it, so just wail away until you pull their jungler mid. You’re pretty safe while you have that unstoppable dash. If they refuse to cover mid, there is a very real chance of you taking two turrets alone before the 15 minute mark.

Splitpushing

When bot resolves one way or the other, they'll go mid and you'll be on sidelane duty. Sidelaning is crucial to gain levels, and as a bruiser Shyvana gains a ton of value from them. Tier 2 turrets give an enormous amount of money and are your sworn enemy.

With room to run, a solo kill becomes more realistic. Shove up, create pressure, ward tribushes and deep jungle. Even though we don't have a jungle mod (WTF Riot), your kit is well-suited to poach away jungle while your wave is crashed. Try to fake a back and ult over a wall to fish for kills. A successful combo onto most midlaners will allow for an easy follow-up dive. Force 2 or more to respond and back off before the jaws snap shut. Wasting the enemy's time is an objective all on its own and will let your team find plays across the map.

Try to catch people facechecking. You're not quite Garen, but you're on the next level down. Sneaking into the side bush next to the tier 2 turret has a pretty high success rate. With the ability to use your ult to follow an escape instead of to initiate, they're probably doomed.

By this point Shyvana does enough turret damage to kill the thing from full in a single wave. Dying for it to accelerate your 3 item powerspike is a defensible choice if you don't have a shutdown and it won't concede an objective. 675=300. If the enemy ignores you and fights 4v5, you should have enough time to knock over an inhib. Ideally, you want to split until 3 items or until an inhib falls over.

Going forward, remember that if you don't have your ult, the best thing you can do for your team is to grab a side wave and shove it up. Do not even think about hovering around grouped teams with low fury. You'll be next to useless and will bait your team to die.

Teamfighting

The first rule of teamfighting is DO NOT JUMP IN ALONE. No matter what you build, this champion cannot survive 20 buttons getting pressed on her. She's got no defensive steroid and no CC. She is NOT a tank. She will die before your team can follow up. If you have to be the initiator in your composition, you shouldn't have picked her to begin with.

As AP, your job is to chunk those carries. Ignore their frontline and the second those squishies step forward, huck a Flame Breath at them. A single hit will make them too nervous to contribute, and a hit onto multiple targets will instantly win the fight. If they get just a little bit closer than that, Flash Twin Bite will tear away the second half of their lifebar, with Burnout providing more than enough speed to secure the kill. Seriously, this champion just deletes carries if she's not kept under perfect control.

As you might expect, fighting in jungle is terrific. Ulting over a wall or otherwise flanking the backline will let you oneshot them with little to no counterplay possible. Their frontline will not be able to cover the necessary distance to peel in time.

If the target survives and blows summoners to escape, you may not be able to follow. You're fast, but you won't catch a Ghosted Twitch who's being speed buffed by Lulu. You'll just die for nothing and throw the fight. Knowiing when to chase for the kill and when to disengage and return to killing frontline isn't easy and takes a lot of experience. I'm still getting the hang of it. It's really easy to feel yourself and overchase; by the time you realize you're actually in danger, it's usually too late. If you aren't sure, err on the side of caution and rejoin your team. Making carries too nervous to step forward and do damage is enough to secure objectives off of.

AD builds, by contrast, are more suited to cleaving frontline and providing peel since no AP makes for a very slow dragon. They'll probably need to hop a wall or flank to hit the backline.

With good execution, these builds farm pentakills like you would not believe. I'm not even that excited for them anymore. It's like I'm a real champion! Almost. Here's a compilation of those most successful moments.

Play Video

And I think that about covers it!

I hope you enjoyed the read and learned a thing or two! This guide is my pride and joy and you can bet I'll be keeping it up to date and improving/reiterating upon it constantly. I want to add a lot more clips, teamfight examples, videos of entire lane phases for each common mid laner, all sorts of stuff. It's still a long way from perfect. I'm sure I'll be making improvements for quite a while. If ya liked what I've got so far, throw me a rating and gimme feedback in the comments. Ask questions, let me know what worked well for you vs x champion, point out typos and inconsistencies, critique wording or formatting, just meme, whatever. Pick those nits, man. I really appreciate it all and i'll be reading, promise. Or drop by my stream and do the same (https://www.twitch.tv/veralion/)! Keep checking back every so often; I promise this guide will look better and be more comprehensive every time!

May you be blessed!