1st - thx for posting that, but my main question is really just about figuring out when to group with an assassin/split pusher and trying to figure out how to read the map better. 

At least at the elo I'm at, I don't find "Mess up once?  Fall off forever" to be an accurate statement.  I think there are a ton of things for me to master and figure out, but for some reason, I have a very high level of comfort playing him - which is kind of odd, honestly.  I do contribute every game by putting out pressure via ganks, counter jungling as possible (shaco's actually really good at setting up ambushes for the enemy jungler - I'm just not good at that yet), and split pushing.  I'm still learning the best way to get into team fights, and am learning how to effectively take out the adc or ap. 

As a jungler though, I create a lot of pressure with the stealth ganks and can generally farm it up a bit via split pushing here and there mid/late.  I don't think its necessarily a good fit for most comps, but its working for me for the most part - so getting in reps when I'm already feeling comfortable in ranked isn't that big a stretch imo. 

Well the point of my post was that he's one of the most cerebral and hard to learn champions in the game, even if some of the quote was outdated. I think you're just gonna have to get some experience to know when to do what.  Having Uncle Karl sing you a song to the tune of The Gambler isn't gonna make you a Shaco master.

You got to... know when to split push, know when to Deceive away, know when to ulllllt...

Never count your boxes, while you're stealin the other team's red buff, never count your boxes, till the gankings done!

I actually like Shaco as a jungler, although he is a specialist champion for Shaco enthusiasts only (as an aside - he would be nerfed if his playrate ever got too high regardless of what his power level is).

With that being said, he requires very good decision making on split pushes.  As you say, you can sometimes get carried away with split pushing, so I'm not entirely sure that Shaco is the best choice for ranked games right now.  I've watched quite a few of your Shaco games, and there is a lot of really...interesting...stuff going on.

Let me give two examples from last night:

You had a game where your team was way ahead, but the other team had baron.  Their middle inhib is exposed.  You were kind of off on your own, but your team picked off the enemy Lee Sin, so its 5v4.  The rest of your team groups mid to take middle inhib, but you run away from your team to split push bot.

This was a ranked game that you almost straight up threw.  Your team was way ahead and your teammates made a big play that should have gotten you even further ahead, but because of a bizarre split push play on your part, you put your team in a position to straight up lose (it was late in game, so if they lose the 4v4 mid badly, timers are long enough to possibly lose game right there).

Or last game of the night:

In this game, Cow was generally doing well mid, and Brad had done well top.  Bot had gone meh (could have been better but I am not a good Morgana - its like my 4th game as her).  You had minimal kills/assists/stacks as Shaco.  Despite some requests for grouping, we had lots of splitting.

The point is: why?  When you split push, you essentially force the other 4 people to do nothing.  They are down a person, so they can't fight and risk a 4v5 (or rather, they probably shouldn't).  Unless the split pusher has tp of course.  So you are basically freezing out 4 people to get the benefit of a split pusher.

In some cases this is beneficial.  But in this case, you were freezing out 2 people who had done well in their lanes for a Shaco who wasn't that gold rich by any measure.  Just not a good idea and it was causing some frustration I think.  It would have been a much better idea to group up, let the two people who had big leads do their thing, and win the easy way in my opinion.

Now, the point here isn't to beat you over the head over a normal game.  It doesn't really matter since you are just learning Shaco.  I was just learning Morgana too, and certainly wasn't doing well.

But my point is that I would be careful about overestimating your ability with Shaco unless you can really do a good job judging the quality of split pushes.  Until you get there, I wouldn't be using Shaco to grind out ranked games.

well part of it is it that Karl and Cow tend to be on the "group early and often" side of the rubric, whereas pacov tends to be "split whenever possible". Obviously split pushing is not the incorrect thing to do always-and-forever, and split pushing is one of those things that Shaco is really good at.

However, split pushing usually requires a few things (not in any particular order):

1- the ability to 1v1 anyone who comes

2- the ability to escape 1v2s (or be really tanky to last long enough your team can do something while you die)

3- the ability to scout and ward so that your team actually has enough time to do something while you're being collapsed on

4- tower killing ability

5- the ability to get back to your team quickly

And from your team: some form of ranged wave clear and disengage and the ability to threaten the enemy team if they just run to baron.

Let's consider why top laners are so frequently used to split:

1- top laners get lotsa gold and EXP. In a typical game, they might be the highest level because they tend to use TP, have lots of sustain, and tend not to get ganked that much. This means they get to sit in lane getting lots of EXP. Plus, since bruisers are 1v1 machines, they are able to fulfill #1 very easily just due to the pacing of the game

2- most bruisers have some sort of gap-creator. even without one, they are generally super tanky. Think about how fast a Shyvana, TF-Irelia or Trundle walks and how damn hard it is to keep them still long enough to kill them.

3- bruisers and ADCs are usually the only two lanes who keep their warding trinkets end game (in high elo). The jungle almost always swaps out for a scanner.

4- Typical one-damage bruiser builds wreck towers plenty well. Feral Flare doesn't really do anything to towers...

5- Teleport.

Although Shaco always qualifies decently well for #2 (with Q), #3 (with W), #4 (with R) and #5 (with mobi boots) in order for him to meet requirement #1, he has to be super selfish. Farming and taking all the buffs is usually NOT what you want to be doing for a champion that is known for their strong early game pressure and frequently said to have a weak end game. Although i don't think Shaco has an "awful" end game (he is extremely difficult to 1v1 if he is keeping up with items), he doesn't teamfight well

I'm not completely against split pushing even though I don't care to do it much myself.  But it has to be done very carefully or you lose very quickly against a lot of teams.  VERY quickly.

If people go into the game with the attitude "I'm going to split push" and the game doesn't pan out in the right way to allow it, then really bad things can happen if they force it.  On the flip side, switching to a split push can be a nice way of breaking stalemates.

But yes, I agree that tops are generally better at split pushing.  Or jungle Yis with TP.  That was part of the reason that I mentioned TP in my previous post - having a TP on the split pusher is a really big deal since it means that you don't necessarily freeze out 80% of your team when you split push.

appreciate all the comments - read em and will reread them.

That said - holy crap did they shit on kha'zix.... like absolutely wrecked him... like minimum 5% loss rate increase I'd say.  He's currently at like a 51% win rate in plat ranked for the last 20 days.  This hammer makes no sense to me in the slightest.  I'd say riot has helping him find his unique personality as a champ you can't pick - as an assassin jungler anyway.

I got into Gold III today in the most shameful way possible.

Got destroyed first game out of three.  They banned all my supports so I played Morg and struggled and we lost badly.  Second game, banned all my supports again and so I played Zyra cause Morg didn't work out well the first game.  We lost horribly.  And then their fed Twitch DC'd.  "GG EZ" is what I said in post game chat. Nah nah, just kidding, but yeah undeserved win.  

Third game, get a Jinx Top All Caps troll in champ select.  Oh well, better luck next time.  I had made the mistake of saying "This is the type of thing that happens during my last promo game."  "YOUR IN PROMOS?  I AFK THEN!"

So Jinx is AFK.  And then buys shit right when minions spawn.  And then wrecks Teemo.  Then wrecks their team.  And then my internet goes out for 20 minutes.  

When I get back on "Congratulations On Your Promotion To Gold III."

Challenger Smurf > Bad Internet I guess!

Will re-read everything tomorrow (didnt get to read sexy's last post).

I'm back to gold.  Hopefully swan is next to hit gold in our group here.  I might take a 1-2 day break from ranked, but I'm very intent on climbing out of gold V quickly.  Thanks again to everyone that watched hoping I might make it after 27 games... still wonder if I had better or worse luck than karl in his silver to gold challenge.

1st person to congratulate me on this forum when I hit gold IV receives a mystery skin.  Must occur within 12 hours of me hitting gold IV.  /end next contest

random thought- jungle shaco w/ tp?  Downside is that mid/late game ignite means you can solo most people if splitting - also, weaker ganks earlier.  TP just adds stronger split push options. 

Also - shaco - smite/ign, smite/exh, or smite/tp.  Thoughts?

Smite/flash is crap on shaco imo - But - could be used for added dmg on ganks honestly (you come in with q, follow flash them for added dmg + slow then.  Honestly, that might be a better idea.

ADDED RUI TO THE OP

hurm... it's my understanding that zen has been playing on swan's account.  Didn't really make sense to me... then I saw a bunch of mord games in ranked.  Swan plays a bunch of mord now? 

Moving off that topic...

Here's the site I've been using a bunch to keep track of my stats:  http://na.op.gg/summoner/matches/userName=pacov

Here are some recent win/loss played with stats.  That Barkoulos fella is a guy I met the other night in ranked and decided to duo a bit with.  Nothing super exciting - I just like seeing data and pondering here and there. 

hehe - well, congrats all the same, bro!  This game is such a crap shoot.  I was watching trick2g play a ranked game the other day in Diamond I/II.  He went phoenix udyr vs a top lane ww.  Trick just proxies because there's nothing a ww can do after a point without some strong ganks.  Anyway, this ww clearly had no idea how to top lane (constantly running back to try to stop udyr from proxing while losing a ton of XP at his tower, ulting the udyr at 100% hp with no one nearby to help.   You see crap like that at diamond I/II and it makes it kind of clear that there's random crap going on everywhere.  It gets less surprising to see you be dc'd for 20 min and get a win.  I just wish something like that happened to me on my 27 promo games to gold V.    Still grats on moving up all the same!

So again for everyone - thoughts on shaco with smite/tp vs smite/ign?  Worth trying out?

it's the quintessential debate between trying to augment your late game or your early game...

Ignite is clearly superior while ganking (it's not like Shaco has any problems ganking, unlike Master Yi).  It's pretty decent in a 1v1 (obviously better than TP!) but it's really not that great in teamfights. TP is going to be better (overall) end game because it lets you split push a lot safer. Ignite is going to be a lot better if you decide to start focusing more on counterjungling, as well. 

Part of the reason Master Yi brings TP is because he farms so well and TP allows him to powerfarm while being able to gank occasionally (esp if the enemy dives). Shaco isn't quite the same power farmer that Yi is. 

If your team looks like it's going to be really good laning phase, and you wanna get a lot of kills? Ignite.

If your team is not going to be able to teamfight (maybe you're against the legendary "Command: Cursing Cataclysm of the Sad Bullet Tidal Wave"), teleport is going to be better.

Quite a bit of work to be done on the shaco front.  So, I've been observing and watching replays of, AFAIK, the best shaco players out there (who are, of course, substantially better at it than me).  2 in particular:  Chinese Jester (challenger) and Good guy garry (plat on the account I was watching, but very clearly a high Diamond level player). I paid attention to build variations, rune/mastery setups, win/loss rate, team composition when they play shaco, mastery, and above all, playstyle including when/how they gank, etc.

Here's what I've learned.  The challenger player seems to actually be a less intelligent player than garry by comparison with one notable exception.  Chinese Jester focuses heavily on objective and has an extremely keen eye on when to group. 

Chinese Jester - 27/0/3 masteries.  MS quints and 100% dmg for remaining runes (ad/ap).  Smite/ign summoners.  He goes with a more standard jungle item most games -  SotEL.  Rushes that, then varied quite a bit on when he gets his boots... sometimes mobo, not always.  Typically build is SoTEL rush, boots 1, that item that does AD splash dmg (name eludes me), static shiv, then most often immediately rushes GA after that.  As you can see from his itemization, his goal is as much dmg as possible while ganking frequently.  He does a little counter jungling here and there when he can, but doesn't focus it.  Priority is ganking for kills and then pushing towers if possible after the gank.  He starts doing that (gank/tower push) about mid game.

Jester's openings were a bit strange to me, but successful in the games I watched.  Step 1 - determine where the enemy jungler is likely starting if possible (usually using someone else to take care of that).  He drops a box at his jungle entrance around 1:30 (strange timing to me with a 16 sec cd on boxes), he sets up boxes and then takes whatever buff is furtherest away from the enemy jungler (eg jungler is at his team's red, jester starts at his team's red.  He does not smite.  He starts with machette, 4 reds 1 blue.  He also uses boxes to finish clearing camps.  When his red spawns (in this example), he doesn't smite, kills it off quick.  He casts 1 final box to kill the last small golum thing while is away. He immediately levels his jump and hops over the wall and heads to the enemy blue.  As his clear is so fast, he likely has about 10-20 seconds before the enemy jungler will appear at his blue.  Jester hops over the wall, drops a box (pops his blue potion and red potion), does the damage and then smites to secure leaving the camp uncleared (goal is get in get out AND gank).  He then does a lower success rate gank and immediately goes to the closest lane (in this example its bot lane).  Now, he's only level 2 - he has ignite, his hop, lowish mana, and a box.  But the gank comes at an unexpected time, so he goes in and initiates.   If your teammates back the play (as they will at a challenger level), the gank might be successful (keep in mind its so early that all summoners will be up on the support/adc for both teams) - also factor in that you can't follow up outside of autos after you hop in, backstab for added dmg, then quickly drop a box.  Anyway, a move that aggressive probably doesn't work at many elos, but in challenger that added damage is enough to coax a solid play out of your bot lane.  Nothing I should be doing imo.

I'll write about ggg later

Soo... Good guy garry.  He's quite a bit different.  He said himself on stream that he hasn't played much shaco in a bit, but it quickly became very clear that he's an extremely calculating fellow with regards to the jungle.  In the game I watched, he was very actively ganking lanes (after level 3, though - he'd start at either blue or red, kill 3 of the little wraiths, then get the remaining buff and gank anywhere that seemed productive. mid/late game, he started settling into more of a split push.  Good guy garry did not share his buffs while chinese jester handed off his blue pretty frequently in the games I watched. 

He did not run move speed and went with a more jungle centric setup with AS, amr, and mr (I think he had some ad in there, but not sure).  He ran 21/0/9 with smite/ign.   His jungle awareness and patience were what really impressed me the most.  He would literally setup traps and wait about for the enemy jungler or patiently wait for a ganking opportunity.  He'd consistently ward the enemy jungle and counter jungler it. 

He build feral flare in all instances I watched.  This gives shaco a nice dmg bump when its farmed, but you don't get it all that quickly ofc being a heavy gank jungler (again, I'm not as good as these guys, so I'm still not ganking as much as I should).  A bigger weakness for this build is that you really need to carry alot of pots with you frequently.  You don't get life steal until late, which means that anything you hit in the jungler hurts you.  Any major damage taken on a gank means you often need to recall if you aren't potted up (again, you have no amr/mr from masteries at least).

Build is machette/red/blue pots.  Rush mobo boots and wriggles at roughly the same time (eg make a decision one way or the other on the fly if not enough for both).  Those are you 1st 2 complete items, though.  Next is static shiv.  After that, you go one of 2 routes - either go for tiamat for the added burst/clearing power or go BotRK.  The latter gives you some added flexibility with going for an earlier baron.  Once that is done, its either a IE or TF and so on.  You could go for a ga, but I typically find this build lends itself to heavy split pushing - also one of its downsides if team fighting is needed.

Anyway, of the 2 play styles, I'm still trying to think through what is best.  I'm doing better with the SS build, but I don't like its sustain.  idk

got into heroes of the storm beta or alpha or something - played it an hour or so - actually found it enjoyable.