Part 1 - Her Identity and Lore

Every champion in league has an identity that they are trying to convey and a power fantasy that their kit is attempting to give to the player. Shyvana's is quite obvious. She is a half dragon and when angered enough transforms into a fearsome foe. In her lore, she is a powerful and skilled fighter who is fiercely loyal to Jarvan IV, the prince of Demacia and heir to the throne. Her lore has changed much over the years, however. Currently, she is the product of a sort of magical accident where a mage stole Shyvana while she was still in an egg and through some unexplained phenomenon, she hatched as a dragon-human hybrid before being raised by the mage that stole and attempted to sell her. 

Let me go on a bit of a rant here. I quite dislike the new direction that League has gone with Shyvana's lore. The current lore and the previous versions of the lore can be read in the links, but I will try to summarize them to the best of my abilities. To put it simply though, Shyvana went from the product of the union between a human and a shape-shifting dragon to the phenomenon explained above. She went from being raised by a dragon to being raised by humans. Many things are lost in the transition from the old versions of her lore to her current lore. For instance, the lore explanation for her in game mechanics, how she learned to use her powers, and her main motivations and agency. The original explanation for how her ultimate works and her transformation is that her father taught her how to harness and focus her rage in order to transform. In the current lore, this is something that she could just do without any teaching or guidance. In the original lore, her father was a dragon and he whisked her away, always on the run, due to the differences in ideology with other dragons. Half-dragons like Shyvana are hunted and killed and this was the impetus for her conflict. Her father was finally found and murdered leading to Shyvana searching for revenge. In all versions of her old lore, this is the set up. How she meets Jarvan IV changes, but the situation and the result is the same. They team up in order to hunt down the dragon that murdered her father and when they succeed, Jarvan offers her a place as a soldier of Demacia.

In the new lore, Shyvana's mother, Yvva (a dragon), somehow has some sort of connection that lets her track down Shyvana (this is not explained in anyway) and her mage father (a human) became toasted. Was the father running away? Was he trying to face Yvva and drive her off? None of this is known. Meanwhile, Shyvana was hiding in destroyed farmhouse as she watched this happen. Whether she ran on her own volition or her mage father told her to hide is not elaborated on. From the next lines where she rescues Jarvan who was injured without any later explanation as to how, it wouldn't make sense if it was done on her own volition but that is simply an assumption. This was weeks after the events where her father was burned to a crisp so the description of her decision seems to imply that she felt guilt during those weeks about the death of her father. Because of her actions, Jarvan saw it fit to invite her to a Demacian outpost and there she lived for a small while. There are remarks about soldiers being suspicious of her but ultimately welcoming her likely due to the prince vouching for her. However, when she was inevitably found by her mother due to their unexplained connection, she tries to escape from the stronghold which was being placed on lockdown due to the approaching threat. She does this to lead her mother away and prevent further deaths. The issue with this is that she must have known this was going to happen given that her was hiding in the woods to get away from her mother. It is implied that during this time, she was moving about to stay away as her mother can track her due to this connection. That would mean that she would have known that staying in the outpost would have endangered the lives of everyone in and around the outpost. Given her seemingly selfless action of trying to leave the outpost to save everyone and her thought process in saving Jarvan, this couldn't be intentional. So that would imply that she simply forgot about the giant flame breathing dragon chasing her.

Moving on, Jarvan refuses to let Shyvana leave, insisting that they should fight together and Shyvana is convinced by his sincerity based on what is written. Together, they fought and Shyvana transforming into a full dragon bested her mother. Triumphant, Jarvan invited Shyvana to a position by his side. It ends with Shyvana not knowing if she would be accepted by Demacia if her true nature was more widely known. This part of her story is elaborated further within The Mageseeker, a spin off game that explores Sylas and the prejudice that Demacia has with magic and magic wielders. This includes dragons as they are magical by nature. Now, this is one of the most incredulous parts of her new lore and is one of the most obvious tells that her lore was rewritten without taking the character into consideration. As seen in the image, Shyvana stands out to put it lightly. There is no world in which people, especially people as afraid of magic as those who reside in Demacia, don't ostracize her. She has purple skin and scales, large horns, and eyes like molten gold. Her League of Legends splash art is even worse with her massive dragon wings on prominent display. It is implied, though never explained, that she only is able to reside in Demacia due to Jarvan IV. This causes more issues though since how would a culture build around the fear of magic and actively persecute those who wield magic accept someone like Jarvan IV willingly have someone like Shyvana by his side? She is his bodyguard and if she is even seen in public questions will be raised and authority would be questioned. The only alternative is that the public does not know of her nature which is ridiculous on its own right. That would either mean the public is obscenely idiotic and see someone like Shyvana and chalk it up to, I don't know, let's say a skin condition, or Shyvana has never been seen in public which is quite a feat given that she is Jarvan's personal bodyguard. Given the story in The Mageseeker, it seems to be the first since Sylas calls out Jarvan's hypocrisy after Shyvana reveals herself as a dragon. Speaking of The Mageseeker, there seems to be an attempt to rectify this issue with the conclusion of the story being that Jarvan abolishes the Mageseekers in an attempt to start the process of ending the prejudice against magic. This doesn't explain the time that Shyvana was with him before this act and this story. 

Then we get into the issue of the main driving force of Shyvana's backstory. Her mother has been changed in the new lore and now, devoid of any knowledge of previous iterations of her story, it is easy to interpret it as her mother simply trying to find her lost daughter. Why did she burn down the village Shyvana was in? Well, there were soldiers there already fighting each other due to a war and now a giant dragon has arrived. It's not hard to come to the conclusion that she was attacked given how dragons are treated in Runeterra. That just makes this whole story even more incredulous as now one could feasibly see it as a mother getting killed because people just see a dragon. A dragon approaching an outpost would of course lead to fighting and now we have Shyvana killing her mom because she wanted to protect these people and because Jarvan convinced her. There isn't any calls for vengeance on her end. Shyvana's mother was even provoked with Demacian soldiers being the ones to fire arrows are her first. From previous iterations, the intent and implication is obvious, but the current lore just utterly fails at conveying it.

Lastly, Shyvana's character is damaged dramatically. In previous lore, she was raised as a dragon by a loving father who rescued her from her violent mother. Her father then sacrifices himself to safe his daughter once more and she flees after failing to fight against her mother, her failure leading to the death of her only family. Thus, her fear and her insistence on running makes complete sense. She tried once and faced consequences that she doesn't wish to repeat. Now, she knows nothing about dragon culture as she was raised by and around humans. She never tried to fight her mother and knows nothing about her mothers motivations and so is simply running because she is scared. Not because she learned from her mistakes, but just plain scared. Now, there seems to be no inner conflict within her about being a half-dragon and instead the only societal conflict she has is that of Demacia and their prejudice against magic. Rather than an inner conflict and a story revolving around finding one's place and accepting themselves for who they are, we instead get a rehash of a outside conflict around Demacia and their persecution of magic. Now, there is zero mention of the fury and rage she has. These emotions are a part of her and it is what she uses when she fights, but in the current lore, it isn't even implied. There was no anger at her father being killed. There was no anger at getting attacked. None of it is present and that only detracts more from her character. Now, all Shyvana has become is this caricature of her previous self. Her only personality seems to be her loyalty to Jarvan and her righteousness which isn't even unique to her and seems to be almost a requirement for Demacian characters. Even her voicelines in Legends of Runeterra, the League card game, seems to follow this path. In all aspects, I find this direction to be a downgrade. Why Shyvana was changed in such a way, I do not know and do not wish to speculate as I do not enjoy disparaging other artists especially when I know nothing behind the scenes. 

I would much rather have the previous iteration of her lore. It was more fitting for Shyvana as a character and provided more depth to her character and her story. She was a being that understood both the way of dragons and humans. She was someone that knew her limits and suffered consequences due to her actions. With the fight against her mother, it was Shyvana's grief and fury over her father's death that drove her to victory. She saved Jarvan because that was in her nature, not simply out of some sort of regret like it is now. She chose to stay with Demacia and to a greater extent humans due to her appreciation for the comradery and community that she observed in the people around her. Even here the previous iteration fails to understand this. It claims that Jarvan showed her this unity. No. No, he did not. He was injured and the villagers that helped him recuperate were the ones responsible for this. It was them that made Shyvana long for such community. I don't understand this insistence on making it seem that Jarvan was the one responsible for all of this. That Jarvan some how showed her the light. It feels wrong. It feels like this civilized man was helping some savage. In the current lore, there isn't even any real explanation for why Shyvana takes Jarvan's offer, just that Jarvan somehow "moved her" and that was all she needed. In the version before makes this even worse with her somehow being "humbled". That was the exact term used. Humbled? Humbled by what? Was she somehow arrogant before? Thought herself to be superior to humans? What was there to be humbled? Given her nature, I even find it hard to believe that she would be fine staying in Demacia. Here is a nation that persecutes mages, people that can't change how they were born, and that would include her. In the previous iteration, she was impressed by the unity of the Demacian people and in the current iteration, she is impressed by just Jarvan. However, what stays consistent in both is that she cares for the innocent and does not wish for them to be harmed. Yet, we are to believe that she would either be completely fine with the persecution of innocents in Demacia or simply not act in anyway. According to later lore, the implication seems to be that her loyalty to Jarvan was why she stayed. 

But speaking of Jarvan, why does she even hold this level of loyalty to the prince? The prince's offer to fight with her was simply to repay her for saving his life and yet the story makes it out to be some sort of selfless offer that touches Shyvana. If anything, this offer is foolish since it could lead to the deaths of innocents simply because Jarvan basically said "Nah, we'd win". Shyvana, however, despite being shown to care about lives and was just about to try and lead Yvva away, is easily convinced by this because she was, I quote, "moved". Then when the actual fight occurs, she essentially does all of the work and kills Yvva. So essentially she rescues Jarvan, is convinced by Jarvan to follow a terrible plan, and is the one that does most of the work and at the end of the day ends up being the one subservient and loyal. In voicelines, it is specifically stated that she made an oath to Jarvan, not Demacia, but to Jarvan. This is all played off like Shyvana is thankful of Jarvan and that this offer from him to come to Demacia was so touching that she swears her life to this man. What is she even thankful for though? An invitation? This is made even worse in the new lore since she was likely already living among other humans. There was no mention of being an outcast among those she was raised with unlike previous version of the lore, so none of this should be shocking to her. That means it fundamentally comes down to her being so impressed with this man that she goes with him to the capital and swears her life to him. And this is what I mean when I say her character has been damaged. Her image as an actual person has been so stripped down that now she's just Jarvan's bodyguard at this point. Her agency has been removed and all sense of depth has disappeared. 

There's even more issues though and this is from a narrative standpoint in game. Shyvana in game fights by punching people with flaming fists, throwing fireballs, and creating swirling fields of flame around her feet. These are all inherently magical, and added with her own appearance it just begs the question of why and how is she allowed to fight for Demacia and how is there no outcry. In game, her ultimate in which she transforms into a dragon, can only be used when her fury is at maximum. Thus, thematically, that means she can only become a dragon when she is angered and channels that anger. Her resource, fury, is also tied to characters that have anger as integral parts of her character. Before her release, the characters with fury were Tryndamere who is a literal beserker and Renekton who is outright called hateful and is a very angry crocodile. Therefore, rage and fury are very important which is why they are parts of the characters' kits. Shyvana is a part of this group and yet in the current lore there is zero mention of this part of her making this incongruent with who she is in game. 

All together, Shyvana as a character is a mess, to put it simply. Her in game characterization is in disconcert with the direction her character lore has changed. Her character lore, however, is filled with plot threads that either haven't been finished or are outright problematic. There are problems in world building with how Demacia has been changed to become a land with a deep seated distrust of magic. There are problems in cause and effect that in turn reflect poorly on Shyvana as a character. And this is merely on the character side of this champion.

Part 2 - Her Kit

Let's get into the gameplay design of Shyvana. Before going into the nitty gritty, we have to look at her intended power fantasy is as a character. Every champion in league has a power fantasy that they are looking for and their kits are designed to give players their "moment" so to speak. This moment is essentially where you as a player feel like you are the main character. For example, Malphite's power fantasy is simple. He is a living mountain and so the idea is that he is absurdly tanky in the right situations. He does this by stacking armor since, again, as a living mountain it would make thematic sense that things like shooting him and whacking him with your fist would be less than optimal. Against a team made of primarily AD champions, he not only is incredibly hard to kill but also deals a considerable amount of damage. Fiora is another character who's power fantasy is quite well executed. She is the grand duelist. As such, she is built to excel at one on one engagements. She has a number of auto attack resets and her entire gimmick revolves around hitting enemy champions at certain angles to trigger "vitals" which deal bonus damage. Her ultimate represents a challenge and her goal is to hit all four vitals on a single target to deal immense damage and heal her in the process. Thus, she is a high skill champion that when played well can take on nearly any other champion in a one on one engagement. For both of these champions, their kits allow them to achieve their fantasies and encourage players toward that fantasy. We'll see this become more obvious in the breakdown of Shyvana's individual abilities.

What is Shyvana's power fantasy? This is going to be a bit speculative and opinionated as I have my own idea as to what her fantasy should be and was intended to be. However, to derive what this fantasy is, we will examine the very first iteration of her lore and more pop culture and community related sentiments. In terms of lore, Shyvana is quite old in terms of her release. It's been over ten years since her first appearance on the rift, and the lore at the time was not as well developed as it is now. Because of this, it is quite simple to understand and doesn't hide anything. She is described as a fierce warrior who is calm and collected, but when she transforms, she becomes a powerful and fearsome beast that strikes primal terror in the hearts of those who oppose her. This is paraphrasing the last lines and it is basically stating what the intended experience was meant to be. You play as a disciplined soldier until you use your ultimate and become a dragon. Now, becoming a dragon comes with a whole set of implications in terms of what a dragon is as well as the type of player a character like this will attract. Dragons are widely considered powerful and majestic in modern pop culture. There used to be a divide between western and eastern perceptions of dragons where the west had them in a more savage and evil monster role while the east considered them to be more god-like and intelligent. However, as the time went on and cultures began to mix, dragons as a whole have seem to become a mix of these two. They aren't quite gods, but they are often depicted as wise and powerful though their personalities can be quite varied. To put it simply, they have become more humanized. This isn't a new shift either. For example, Dragonriders of Pern is a 1960s series about humans and intelligent dragons that they bond with. Then in more contemporary times we have games like Final Fantasy XIV where dragons are shown to have their own ideals and fight one another based on their beliefs. Books and movies like How to Train Your Dragon which show dragons in a more friendly and pet-like manner. Even within League, we have the release of Smolder, a baby dragon champion who shows us a whole new side to dragons. Previous, all terrestrial dragons were considered raging beasts. This was changed in one version of Shyvana's lore before being removed in her current version where her father is no longer a dragon. However, Smolder and his mother show us that dragon's care deeply for their children and have no qualms existing with humans. They are shown to be wise and protective with Smolder's mother spending years waiting and searching for her lost son. Tangentially, this makes Shyvana's story even more problematic as it is entirely likely that her mother, Yvva, was simply looking for a lost daughter, but I digress.

The point is that dragons are seen as wise, powerful, and varied. Some are evil, some are kind, and others are ambivalent. However, they all possess immense strength and magic and are not to be trifled with. This is what people would expect when you have a champion whose entire identity is being able to turn into a dragon. This is what those who play Shyvana expect. From my experience, many people who consider themselves to be Shyvana mains also have a deep love for dragons in general. I, myself, am one of those, but I'll delve into this more later. For now, just understand that this love comes with certain expectations and these expectations are the core of what Shyvana's power fantasy is intended to be. When I press my ultimate, I am now a dragon. That is why I play her. I want to do dragon things. But what can you actually do as Shyvana?

Let's start with the easy part. Her passive is one of the simplest and most useless passives in the entire game. She does 20% more damage against dragons, has an additional 5 armor and magic resist, and for every dragon she slays, she gets 5 more armor and magic resist. On the surface, this sounds fantastic. She can take one of the strongest neutral objectives, the dragon, faster and benefits from it. However, though this allows her to take the drake on her first jungle clear she isn't particularly unique in this and unlike some other junglers that can do this such as Vi, she has no way to escape should something go wrong like a cognizant enemy jungler who understands that Shyvana can do this and decides to path toward bot lane. This extra damage to the drakes also is largely irrelevant as the game goes on as comparative power farming junglers can do similar or better damage to every neutral objective such as Void Grubs, Herald, and Baron. Against those neutral objectives, Shyvana drops immensely as her damage must be balanced around her drake damage. Additionally, the stats you gain from killing drakes are also largely irrelevant. The drake spawns 5 minutes into the game and every 5 minutes after a drake is killed until a team reaches 4 drakes in which an elder dragon will spawn every 6 minutes. If we look at this at the most optimal for Shyvana where she is essentially taking every drake as soon as it spawns, we are looking at, let's say, 23 minutes factoring in the time to actually kill the drakes to get to 20 armor and magic resist. That amounts to about 760 gold worth of stats for 20 minutes of absolute best case scenario gameplay. In league, you passively generate about 2 gold every second starting at 1:50 of in-game time. By the time you got all 4 drakes, you would have generated well over 2000 gold passively. Thus, you have accelerated your gold by less than 1 per minute doing this and this isn't even taking into account a number of other factors in the game that will delay your drake kills and the enemy team taking drakes. This also is only looking at jungle. Shyvana used to be able to flex top lane, but being in top lane effectively renders the damage part of her passive useless and the stacking part is left to the mercy of her team. Another failure of her passive is in regards to the aforementioned power fantasy. In what way does it lend itself to this feeling of being a cool and collected soldier or a raging dragon? Nothing because, quite frankly, it does nothing.

The next part of her kit is her Q, Twin Bite. This is probably my favorite ability she has and an ability that I hope stays with her in her next iteration in some manner. Her Q is also quite simple. It empowers her next auto attack so that it has bonus range and does bonus damage and attacks again soon after. After, she has increased attack speed for her next two auto attacks. Additionally, it serves as an auto attack reset meaning she can do an auto attack and use her Q to do another one immediately without needing to wait for her attack speed. What I like about this skill is that it is relatively skill based to use well and feeds into her fighter status. She is a collected soldier and to use the skill well requires a bit of patience. When she goes into her dragon form, the skill has the added effect of doing a cone of damage and area damage around the enemy target. In general, I have no issue with this ability in terms of its effects. The only personal nitpick would be the animation in dragonform is quite lacking and lessens the impact as it looks as if Shyvana is flailing about. 

Her W is alright. It's called Burnout and it gives her decaying movement speed and does area of effect damage around her. Auto attacks against enemies deal bonus magic damage and extend the duration of Burnout up to a max of 4 seconds. The concept behind the ability makes sense. The AoE damage helps her do her clear faster in the jungle which, as a character that is essentially useless before level 6 where she gets her ultimate, is quite logical. Shyvana also wants to auto attack people so giving her movement speed to chase after enemies allows her to do this more reliably. Movement speed is also quite underrated in its utility. It allows her to roam around the map faster, dodge skillshots easier, and assists her in disengaging. The issue, however, is that this ability is simply outdated. Movement speed, especially on a melee character, has decreased in value as the game has evolved. For champions like Lilia and marksmen who are all about spacing, movement speed is invaluable. For melees who need to get in the face of other champions, it can honestly be useless. There's a plethora of crowd control (CC) effects that melee champions tend to have to eat which means you can't move. Many champions nowadays also have dashes within their kits on regular abilities which tend to be able to bypass terrain. In many situations, especially for melee characters, having a dash is just more valuable. Closing gaps or creating space instantly is simply better than doing it slowly. In the long run, yes, her movement speed allows her to traverse further distances quicker, but during combat that tends to not really matter. Now, she does have a dash in her kit but it's tied to her ultimate which I will get into later.

Shyvana's next ability is her E, Flame Breath. I have mixed feelings on this one. This ability is the only reason why she is even relevant in current day league and why she is even performing well. When she uses E, she throws out a fireball that passes through enemies, but stops when it hits a champion. Every enemy and champion hit is marked and she does bonus damage to these marked enemies when she uses her basic attacks. This bonus damage is percent max health. This ability really comes online when she goes into her dragon form where it now explodes when it hits enemy champions or when it reaches its destination. The damage is increased significantly and leaves an area that deals damage over time and marks enemies. Note, when I say significant, I mean significant. It is, honestly, quite fun to build AP and throw out an E that damages enemies for half their health, but the issue is that this is essentially all she has become. Because of the strength of her E, her entire kit has been balanced around it. Her AD builds have become mostly irrelevant with only those who are particularly dedicated using her that way. Now, it's just use your ultimate to become a dragon and start throwing out fireballs at enemies. That's her entire gameplan. She can't go in since she has zero ways to survive without building tank items which in term hurt her damage. She can't be a AD bruiser because of the same exact reason except you now have even less damage. In a way, the evolution of the game is the reason why her playstyle has become what it has become. The concept behind the ability, however, is sound. As a dragon, you would expect to be able to throw out fireballs or breath flames. This issue though is that you want to also fly around and maul people with your claws, but the moment you try to do that, you get met with reality. So while I wouldn't want to remove this ability, I feel it needs changes if Shyvana is to become a better champion.

Now we come to the main topic of discussion and where we start to look at how her kit works as a whole. Shyvana's ultimate allows her to turn into a dragon which will empower all her abilities. She cannot use her ultimate unless she has 100 fury which generates at faster rates with more ultimate levels. When she uses her ultimate, she dashes forward and is unstoppable while also damaging, knocking up, and carrying enemies she hit with her. She also gains max health and increases in size. In theory, the idea is that when you get angry enough, you can become a big dragon and you start tearing things up. Reality is, if you use her ability to charge forward, you get CC'ed, you get blown up, you die. It's also you're only escape tool being her only dash. If you use this to get to safety, you are now out of an ultimate and also most of your damage since your empowered fireballs are all of your damage. It just doesn't feel powerful to use. You become a dragon and your reward is to just waddle around belching fireballs. None of your abilities really change, they just become empowered. You become slightly more bulky and easier to hit. Underwhelming is probably the most accurate term to describe Shyvana's ultimate and her dragon transformation gimmick. 

From a design standpoint, her ultimate tells you what her intended playstyle was. She wants to go in. She wants to use her Q to do auto resets and deal damage with her basic attacks. Her E will do range damage to mark enemies and can be used to clean up kills and those that try to get away. Her W is meant to let her chase in order to keep using her basic attacks. Her ultimate enables all this, letting her dash forward, giving her some bulk and increased attack range. The problem is that this is all a dream. The game has changed too much for this to be a viable playstyle. That was why her E became as strong as it was as it is the only way for her to contribute. However, this has created a clash in her kit. Her Q and W want her to be in melee range. Her mark wants her to be in melee range. But the strength of her E means she needs to stay alive for along as possible while in dragon form in order to continually use her empowered E. Her E also scales hardest off AP and AP items don't typically give much in the way of bulk or resists. By building AP, you also take damage away from your W which only scales from AD and your Q which has a relatively small AP ratio. You do get more movement speed from AP for your W which can help with running away and staying alive. Another part of her kit that benefits from AP is her ultimate damage, except, that's completely useless since she's going to be using that to gain access to her empowered E and not to use it for damage as that would require her to dive forward and probably die. 

On the topic of scalings, lets talk about flexible or versatile champions. Typically, when a character has split scalings like Shyvana does, that implies that they can build for either of those scalings, but the playstyle changes depending on what you build. Shyvana is supposed to be like that with AD builds leaning towards a more melee ranged, basic attack focused style and AP being in a more mage like role, throwing out fireballs. However, all of her AD builds are essentially dead in the water due to her lack of survival and her AP build is essentially one button with the only other ability that has meaningful AP scalings will kill you if you try to use it for damage. I mentioned Malphite before, so let's get back to everyone's favorite living mountain. Malphite, like Shyvana, has 2 builds. He can go full AP or he can go full tank. Unlike Shyvana, both of these builds are considered viable and let's look at why. The first reason that immediately comes to mind is that for both playstyles, Malphite's kit synergizes together well. For his tank playstyle, his ultimate is used as an engage tool for your team and gets you into melee range. His W gives him additional armor, laning tools for farming and trading, and lets him deal damage that scales off his armor. His E has a cripple effect that lowers the attack speed of enemies hit which benefits not just the team, but also himself as he is built to counter AD and basic attack champions. His Q gives him movement speed and slows enemies, letting him chase or get away and can be used as a laning tool to harass or secure minions. When played full AP, his kit allows him to become essentially an assassin. His ultimate deals considerable damage with AP and the knock up allows him to use his other abilities to do a combo that will typically one shot squishy targets. His W and Q retain their laning capabilities and scale very good with AP with Q now becoming a threat that can poke down an enemy into combo range for his ultimate. His E becomes a combo tool given it's good AP scaling and also is still a waveclear tool. Thus, his kit functions well in both roles. When building tank, using his ultimate which sends him flying into the enemy team won't kill him since he is going to be able to tank a lot of the damage. He initiates the fights and provides a lot of utility for the team. When building AP, he is now squishy, but his goal is now to eliminate a target, multiple if they group up at a fortunate time, and his entire kit lets him do this. 

Let's compare this to Shyvana. Shyvana, when building AD, has a gameplan that I have described before. It's a good gameplan for the time she was released and her kit enabled that. However, her AP builds sack a lot of the auto attacking parts of her as a champion. Because of how strong her E is, she needs to live to cast that as often as possible so she won't be looking to auto attack unless she is sure that she can kill the target. So, her Q and the mark on her E are working against her in this playstyle. You also lose a lot of damage on your ultimate as you won't being using that as a damage tool. This has lead to Shyvana going into more hybrid builds where there are a mix of AP and AD items. This is so that she can use both parts of her kit to some degree. The problem is that this is extremely item dependent and so relies on there being strong items and the correct items to allow her to achieve this as well as being a balancing nightmare. When Shyvana can build hybrid to a good degree of success, chances are, either she is too strong or the items that are enabling this are too strong. This is because of the anti-synergy her current kit has. If she can use all parts of her kit to an effective degree, that means, to put is simply, that her empowered E is doing too much damage. This is where the nightmare comes from. If you nerf her E, then you have now touched the only part of her kit that is always useful. She then needs to compensate for the damage, either building more AP and in the process giving up bulk which turns her even more into the E spam builds, or she tries to go more into AD which has proven time and again to not be particularly successful. The times where she is doing well because of items means the items are too strong and other champions that are better than her are abusing them even more leading to the items being nerfed and her falling hard. Her power is so dependent on items that when items get changed, her winrate can drop dramatically. We can look at the statistics on this. In 2021, the season that brought about mythic items to League, Shyvana's winrate dropped down to 45% which is absolutely abysmal. Why? Because of the compounded effects of her having no good items with many items getting reworked and a lot of other champions getting very good items. Her winrate goes back up over time as she gets small buff after small buff. Then 2022 comes around and her winrate spikes, reaching 55% at one point. Why? Because items were once again changed and the biggest change for Shyvana was Demonic Embrace gaining a passive that gave her additional AP for having more HP. Combine this with Frostfire Gauntlet, a mythic that gave additional health for every legendary item and slowed enemies, and Shyvana suddenly was able to build very tanky and deal damage. This led to her having an above average winrate, comfortably hovering above 50% for the entire season. Then 2023 rolls around, items are changed again, and now her winrate drops like a truck. The correlation here is obvious. No champion should be that tied to item power. 

These are all of the issues I find with Shyvana in terms of her kit. To summarize: she fails to achieve her power fantasy, her kit is outdated, her kit clashes with itself when building AP and her AD builds are useless, her hybrid builds are a balancing nightmare, and she is too tied to items and item power as a champion. So when trying to rework her, these pain points need to be addressed.

Part 3 - Rework

This is likely going to be the most subjective parts of this entire analysis and rant of Shyvana. The ideas I have here are going to have some form of bias as I want her to be good. Nonetheless, I hope that some of the ideas I have here are insightful or intriguing enough. Let me layout what the goals of the changes I am going to explore are. First, she needs to be updated for modern league. That means she needs ways to keep up with the mobility of the game. Second, she needs to be flexible. This is a defining part of who Shyvana is as a champion and what many of her players expect. Allowing AD and AP to both be viable with jungle and top being viable roles is something that I wish to keep/re-add to her. Third, she needs to fulfill that promise of being a raging dragon. That means feeling powerful when you transform. That means being able to fly, claw, and breath fire. Lastly, I hope to remove some of her item dependency. She is a powerfarmer at heart, so she should remain one. That means good scalings and good clear. However, some utility would go a long way, especially utility of the skillful kind in order to try and shift her away from her low elo skew. With that in mind, let's begin.

Let's begin with some general things. The dragon transformation mechanic must remain, thus her human form must be weaker than her dragon form. I know that many Shyvana players wish for her to be somewhat useful outside of her ultimate, but I feel such a request is going to be at odds with the notion of making her dragon form feel impactful and her powerfarming playstyle. There are a few ways to go about this from my point of view. The first way is to have the human form have all of the damage and the dragon form add all the utility. That means the damage will be the same between the two forms but in her dragon form, she has bulkiness and CC of some form. The second way would be to make her human form some what of a lesser version of her dragon form. Her human form can for instance slow instead of stun and has movement speed rather than a dash. Her damage will be decent but not quite as strong as when in dragon form. I personally would go towards the second option as it gives Shyvana outplay potential early and prevents her from feeling like purely a statstick in human form. This would also make her dragon form feel very impactful as now damage can be increased (likely base damage) and her playstyle remains somewhat the same. 

Additionally, I would like the make a distinction between Shyvana and every other transformation based character in League. Champions like Elise, Nidalee, and Jayce, they can freely swap between their two forms with a relatively short CD that decreases with levels. They have a form that is focused on ranged damage, typically to set up for their second form. Their second forms are melee and are meant to finish off kills. Gnar doesn't have direct control over his transformation so he's in a bit of a different category, but he falls into the same pattern of ranged form and melee form. Shyvana is not like this and should not be homogenized to become like this. She should retain her melee fighter identity, something that has disappeared overtime due to the power of her E and lack of survivability. This is why I believe having her human form be more of a scaled down and slow version of her dragon form would do well for her. 

With that in mind, let's begin.

Human Form:

Q: Like I mentioned before, I would keep Q the same. I believe it's a great ability rewarding more skillful gameplay and has a heavy emphasis on melee combat. 

W: For the human form, I find this ability to be fine. It does it's job well, serving as a survival tool and helping with clearing waves or the jungle. The main issue with it is in the context of her whole kit as she has nothing else besides this and her ultimate as a tool for survival combined with her frailty in her human form. Thus, changes to other parts of her kit must be made to address this issue.

E: To get this out of the way, her dragon form E is going to be changed. In human form, her E will become more akin to Karma Q, passing through enemies until it hits an enemy champion, upon which it will explode. It applies it's mark as it does now, but an additional effect will be to slow champions hit. This will give her outplay potential and ganking potential outside of dragon form. Slows are, in my opinion, very underrated. For her safety, it combined with W allows her to make distance very quickly should she land this skill shot. For engage, it does the exact same thing just towards enemies. For jungle, it can set up ganks especially if you have a laner that can follow up as a slow makes it easier to land skill shots. The same applies for top lane. Landing this would help the jungler immensely in following up. 

R: Her passive will be the same, though instead of just attacks granting fury, kills give additional fury with champion takedowns restoring a considerable amount. She retains her dash in its entirety, letting her dash in a direction and damaging, knocking up, and carrying all enemies hit with her. However, her health and size increase will be moved to her passive. The idea is to have a pseudo-reset upon takedowns in order to extend her dragon form. However, to give her some scaling options, the stats given will be handed to her passive.

Dragon Form:

Q: In dragon form, this should stay the same. The same arguments apply as to the human form staying the same as well. It will retain the added cleave and damage. 

W: This is the first big change. Instead of just being a bigger version of her human version, she now flies. For a period of time, she gains increased movement speed and ignores terrain, but cannot cast Q. Recasting W allows her to target an area to crash down on, stunning enemies in the area and ending her flight. The radius increases with champion size. The reason behind this is that first, she's a dragon. Dragons fly and Smolder and Aurelion Sol both fly so it seems to be a set theme that I would be more than happy keeping. Second, this gives her a strong case option and engage option outside of her ultimate which is important. It brings utility to her as well (this will be relevant when looking at what kind of builds I wish for her to use).

E: This was a difficult one to think about. Many people who play Shyvana enjoy the power of her dragon form E, but I believe that it is inherently unhealthy for her and clashes with her melee fighting identity. A skill shot for her human form feels fine as she is more frail and thus should have some sort of range as well as introducing some more difficulty into her kit. However, in her dragon form, I believe that going all in on the bruiser identity (AD or AP) is the route that I would go. Thus, I would change dragon form E to become like Ornn W and Rumble Q. Shyvana will breath flames in a cone that increases in size with champion size for a period of time that deals magic damage. Enemies within this cone are slowed. This ability can be used while W is active.

R: Add additional passive where any magic damage delt will mark enemies hit. Marked enemies will receive bonus magic damage from basic attacks. This is intended to smooth her kit over and make her dragon form feel more fluid in its use. 

Passive: This is the going to be the most dramatic of changes as it will affect her greatly. For reference, Smolder and Aurelion Sol both have infinite stacking passives that give them infinite scaling. This has become a theme with dragons that actually started with Shyvana as Shyvana technically has a passive that stacks infinitely. Thus, it's only fair that she gets a similar passive. However, Smolder and Aurelion Sol both have mostly damage passives. Shyvana, I want to shift to a more bruiser/tank passive. Thus: Increase effects gained from drakes. For enemies killed, gain a stack of Dragonborn, increased stacks for killing drakes. For every stack, gain armor, magic resistance, and maximum health, the effectiveness increases while in dragon form. For every stack, while in dragon form, increase her size. With this, as the game goes on, she becomes more and more unkillable. With her dragon form abilities, she becomes a juggernaut, able to take hits and deal damage. Her abilities have components that increase in effectiveness the larger she is. While in human form, her frailness and vulnerability decreases as stacks accumulate.

The goal with all of these things is to have 3 main builds that can be possible: AP bruiser, AD bruiser, and tank. With her melee identity, letting her have a full AP build where she can just attack from far would just cause issues with a clashing kit. That is why sticking with her melee bruiser identity would be better. Letting her build both AP and AD is important so that is why abilities like Q and W will remain as physical damage while her E and R will remain as magic damage. With careful tuning to the scalings and numbers of her abilities, her passive will allow for either a bruiser build or a tank build. A tank build will forgo most damage (not all as she will have some max health damage) in exchange to enhance her bulk and use her CC abilities in dragon form to be an engage tank. Bruiser builds will want to build some health to better use her resists and her dragon form abilities as her abilities in that form require the player to be closer. Those are the thoughts and overall reasoning for the ideas laid out here.

Some other ideas that I wasn't so certain on were scrapping the fury mechanic. While this isn't necessarily a never, it is an integral part of who she is and removing it would require a complete rethink of how her transformation mechanic would work. Currently, as the game goes on, she can transform more and more. If she can transform easily from the start like Nidalee and Elise can, then her dragon abilities have to be tuned down considerably in power and utility to not make her too strong. If it's tied to an ultimate, similar to how Renekton is, then her human kit needs to be somewhat strong to offset the downtime. However, I think taking the emphasis away from her dragon form would be moving away from the intended experience. That is why I think the fury mechanic can stay.

For her passive, I toyed with the idea of her gaining different effects for killing different types of drakes or when she obtains the dragon soul. This certainly can be added, but my worry is the variance it can add in her power as a strong effect for one dragon may lead to her being balanced around that one dragon. Having a bad soul if you were building in such a way that it wouldn't really benefit you would also feel terrible. Therefore, something of this nature would need to be general. But if that was the case, then simply just making it double the effectiveness of the existing drake effects seemed to be a better solution to give her dragon orientated buff and give her team incentives to kill the drakes. Now, the number doesn't need to be double which is why I stated it as just increase as it can quickly get out of hand given an infinite passive.

Lastly, her drake specific damage buff. This is entirely dependent on the numbers in her kit and how safe and fast her clear is relative to the champions on the roster. If it's competitive, then I don't think giving the her 20% damage against drakes would be necessary. Other characters can rush drake fine such as Diana, Kha'zix, and Amumu and Diana is considered a powerfarmer as well. If she falls within the same category, then I believe she'll be fine. Tank junglers like Maokai, Sejuani, and Poppy aren't going to be rushing drake any time soon on their own so I don't see a reason why a tank Shyvana should be allowed to do the same.

That's in for the kit. However, for lore, I have many things to say that I don't think need to be rehashed. All my thoughts have been stated and my preferences can be gleaned from there. I will summarize my thoughts though. I don't believe Riot wants to revert her lore though I strongly wish they did. They should at least keep parts of the old lore related to her father and mother and the villagers helping Jarvan. These things will help frame her decisions and give better justification than what we have now. On a more personal and deeply biased level, I really do not want to see Shyvana and Jarvan form a romantic relationship. There's a couple reasons for that. The first is that I think Shyvana would be more suited to either have no romantic inclinations whatsoever or have another outcast or magic user to be her partner. The way Jarvan is written now, I can't see how Shyvana would be able to relate to him. A close friendship I can see, but romance seems questionable. Additionally, we already have a form of "forbidden love" in Demacia in the shape of Garen and Katarina. Doing it again would be less than inspiring. If it was done to drive the conflict between mages and Demacia, I would say that it would be unnecessary as this conflict is more than justified already and a close friendship would more than suffice to achieve this. 

That is all. This has been very long and probably way too verbose, but Shyvana is a champion that I love dearly. I hope that her rework in the future keeps to her current visual design and that her kit becomes the dragon fantasy that many people like me wish to have. As a concept, she is wonderful, but her lore and kit have done her such a disservice. Though I doubt it, I hope my ramblings can help in reshaping her as a champion. Cheers.