[2023] Patch 13.1 notes

Hey there, this one was called out under "Passive - Eternity" as a note since the buff only applied to the passive shared between all items. But looking at it again I can understand the confusion that I caused here and i'll make it more clear in future notes going forward

Hey everyone, we're pushing out an update for the patch notes now including the removal of the Lunar Gods skins and Porcelain Prestige Lissandra from the notes as they will be coming out in patch 13.2 instead. I apologize for the confusion created here.

Also making a correction to Shaco's W ability name.

Oh come on! There are much more ban-worthy champs these days! (I'm a Shaco one-trick.)

Sorry, I can't really respond with a design take. I'm just a Shaco enjoyer who works on VALORANT!

Overall, I love the playstyle Shaco offers, especially as AP. No other champion plays quite like him.

I love how versatile his boxes and clone are — tanking, dodging, scouting, zoning, bamboozling, and more. His clone has this rare quality that I call an "induced silence" — the enemy is free to use their damaging abilities, but they will be punished if they do, so they are often effectively forced to silence themselves. He has so many ways to prevent an ability from landing, like dropping a box, dodging with R, positioning the clone, or buffering a Q (for tanking a hook).

Watching him use all of these toys and tricks is entertaining, and the enemy gets to participate in his comedic performance. Because of that, I actually think he fulfills the demon jester fantasy pretty well. No matter whether I'm doing well or poorly, I'll always be having a great time making funny plays — and probably laughing maniacally IRL.

Now, in my personal opinion, these are a couple of things I don't like about his current kit.

Let's start with his ult:

• On some skins and chromas, it can be hard for your team to tell you and the clone apart.
• There's a visual indicator at the base of the clone that indicates how long it will last, but I'd like there to be an audio cue, as well.
• The explosion damage radius is smaller than the fear radius and the clone's auto range. If you simply command the clone to chase a target, the clone will stop moving between attacks, giving the target some space — usually enough to avoid the explosion damage (but at least the target will probably get feared). You have to manually control the clone to hug the target to have a better chance of dealing explosion damage.
• When you die, you cannot issue more commands to the clone, so it will just continue to chase the nearest target. If the target breaks vision, it just goes to your corpse instead of continuing to move in the same direction. (In fact, this also reveals to the enemy that you don't have vision of the area.)
• When you tell the clone to stay in a specific position, it will eventually time out and just start going toward what you're attacking instead. You can't position the clone somewhere and have it stay there (unless you keep issuing commands for it to stay), which can make it harder to execute a clone-leash.
• Shaco uses a different walking animation while stealthed, but there's a bug where if you press R while stealthed, the clone will continue to use that animation, and therefore revealing that it's the clone.

I wouldn't mind a new passive tbh:

• Jungling optimally requires a lot more micro than most other junglers because you have to move between each auto, making it hard to keep track of the map.
• It also just doesn't feel particularly satisfying to use.

And finally, a couple things about boxes:

• Zeri can one-shot them at all points of the game, even at level 1.
• Boxes get stunned when an ally teleports to it, preventing the fear from going off until the teleport is complete.
• It would be great if a springy BOING! sound played as soon as a box is triggered.

But most of these things are quite minor, and I'm very happy with him as he is! I look forward to my next performance!