Shaco *sigh*

Important things to note for playing against Shaco:

Hide your start - Often times Shaco will start bottom side to match his opponent for the invade on their buff. You can throw him off by starting on another side of the map (you will likely lose your buff) OR you can start the buff he wants to invade OR you can start a small camp then wait for Shaco to start the buff, he will likely assume if you're not doing it and that you started elsewhere and he might try to take it. Ward after finishing your first camp and just sit tight, after he places his box to tank the buff he will be completely defenseless having used his Q to get over the wall. This tactic is risky because there is no guarantee Shaco will invade and you will delay yourself precious seconds waiting around for something that may never happen, however, when it does you get FB easily.

From safest to least safe - Starting your buff - starting top side - starting normal with delay - starting normal

If Shaco does not invade your first buff, he will likely have warded your second and will wait for you to take it. Clear camps around the second buff, ward it yourself and shop before you commit to taking it. He may jump you when you go to ward it, but Kindred has the tools to kite Shaco around, so a smart Shaco will wait for you to engage the buff before jumping in, opting to leave vision as he sees you approach. Shaco clears very slowly at this point(if he attempts to take it while you b) and you will likely have time to counter his attempt at stealing it by way of teammates or if he started it late. Just be sure not to b somewhere he could have vision of because if he starts it immediately after he can take it.

Once you past this first full clear hurdle, dealing with Shaco becomes infinitely easier because 1) Your buff timers are unusual 2) You have far more mobility than Shaco if he decides to Q in onto you and 3) You can easily get an XP advantage by clearing faster than he does. Pick up Trackers and ward pivotal bushes within your jungle or Shaco's jungle, not the entrances because his invisibility allows him to avoid many common wards.

Counter-gank : Once you don't lose to Shaco in the early game, it becomes a lot easier to continue not losing. Now you have to make sure your teammates don't lose. Luckily the easiest way to do this is to counter-gank. There is no specific way for me to tell you how to do this, just put your trackers to good use for keeping tabs of Shaco. If you show up during one of Shaco's ganks, you can easily turn the tide of the fight because his Q will be on cooldown and he has no other easy escapes (most people won't even try to R over walls with Shaco). Shaco is very vulnerable to counter-ganks and succeeds when he has both the numbers advantage and the element of surprise.

Alright, you've made it past early game without you or your teammates managing to feed. What now?

Make it a point to have a buddy system. You don't even have to share this with your team, just stay in the general vicinity of your other teammates and don't deviate to split push something too far. Should Shaco attack the farming ADC bot lane while you're clearing gromp you could almost immediately hop on over to ruin his parade.

Encourage your whole team to employ pink wards over key entrances and exits so that he cannot easily traverse the map without being seen. As long as you know which quarter of the map Shaco is in at any given point you will generate a lot of relief for yourself and the rest of the team.

As for itemization, if Shaco picks up IE I strongly advise a Randuins because max rank Q with IE increases his crit multiplier by a huge amount and the attack speed slow also helps but it's not always feasible, there ARE other champions in the game after all even though Shaco may be your worst nightmare for awhile.

So in short: Early game you want to prioritize MINIMIZING the damage Shaco does on your team by not allowing yourself to die in the first clear and then subsequently keeping tabs of Shaco for your allies and counterganks.

After that, work your advantage that you gained in NUMBERS to take objectives while staying near your carries for your precious ultimate.

I basically only play Shaco and Kindred with a spritz of Rengar here and there. Sorry if this post wasn't concise and I'll answer any further questions you might have. I know this post is a couple days old but I didn't see any strong posts on here so I thought I'd add my two cents in case you were still having trouble shaming the ol' clown.

/r/Kindred Thread