Zilean vs Shaco Counter Pick

Shaco begins with 63 base attack damage, the larger of the two champions’ level-one figures, and Backstab pushes that higher whenever he attacks from behind. Zilean sits at 52. Paired with 630 health against 574, that gap accounts for most of why Shaco wins 45.8% of his 227 games on patch 16.13.1, a matchup rated Hard.

Deceive is where the trouble starts. Shaco vanishes, teleports to a spot of his choosing, and the first hit he lands out of stealth is empowered and can crit. A support with no dash, 24 base armour and 335 move speed against his 345, has little way to answer that opening. Jack In The Box makes it worse by planting fear in the brush he intends to move through, and because his damage is mixed, no single defensive item shuts him down. Counterplay has to be predictive: drop Time Bomb on the ground he must cross rather than on a champion, since it latches onto whoever steps in, and hold Time Warp for the moment he reappears. Chronoshift remains the most dependable answer, because Hallucinate and the damage around it are built to secure a kill outright. A complexity score of 9 for Shaco against 6 for Zilean suggests the result depends heavily on how skilled the assassin player is. Two-Shiv Poison also slows on hit, narrowing the small 335-to-345 move speed difference before he can use it to escape.