Shyvana
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Poor (4/10)
High Investment Required
Epic Relics
Shyvana requires significant investment to overcome a slow early game and a high-cost base deck. While recent updates have improved her draft consistency, she still struggles in difficult encounters without her higher-tier constellation upgrades and specific Epic relics.
Spell Synergist
Creates copies of Shyvana in the deck and reduces the cost of her champion spell, which is the cornerstone of her defensive and offensive scaling.
Provides a crucial Overwhelm aura for all dragon units, ensuring that their accumulated stats translate into direct Nexus damage.
Doubles the stat buffs granted by her upgraded champion spell, allowing her to scale rapidly during combat.
Strategy
This build focuses on maximizing the value of Shyvana's champion spell, Confront. With constellation upgrades, this spell grants stats, Challenger, Barrier, and card draw.
Echoing Spirit ensures consistent access to this spell at a reduced cost, while Secret Technique doubles the stat gains. The Beast Within is essential to provide Overwhelm, preventing the opponent from stalling with small blockers.
Zoe's Bane
Zoe Specialized
- Ensures a steady supply of Shyvana's champion spell to facilitate healing and scaling.
Provides consistent healing and a Rally effect, allowing for multiple attack phases in a single round.
Grants crucial keywords like Lifesteal and Elusive as units die, providing immense survivability in long encounters.
Strategy
This build is highly optimized for the 10-star Zoe adventure. It leverages the Rally effect from Celestial Staff. Because Shyvana's strike spell heals her when targeting a dragon, she can consistently trigger the Rally effect to gain multiple attack tokens in a single round.
Voidborne Carapace is critical for absorbing keywords from fallen units, granting Shyvana the Lifesteal and Elusive necessary to survive Zoe's scaling threats. Echoing Spirit ensures you always have access to Confront to protect your units and trigger these interactions.
Titanic Ramp
Grants an extra starting mana gem if Shyvana is Titanic, significantly accelerating her deployment.
Provides necessary base stats to help Shyvana reach the Titanic threshold and refills mana upon leveling up.
Grants additional health and Formidable, pushing Shyvana's stats high enough to activate Starforged Gauntlets.
Strategy
Shyvana's primary weakness is her high mana cost and slow early game. This build forces her into Titanic status to activate Starforged Gauntlets, granting an extra mana gem at game start.
Jayce's Hextech Battery and Strength of Stone provide the necessary base stats to reach the Titanic threshold. This allows for a much faster deployment, enabling her to contest the board before the opponent can establish a dominant position.
Board Flood Consistency
- Grants Overwhelm and bonus stats to all dragons.
Buffs all units in the deck, ensuring dragons have the stats to survive their summon strikes.
Provides rerolls to help secure cost-reduction powers or additional dragon units in shops.
Strategy
This build focuses on going wide and ensuring your dragons are large enough to survive combat. Stacked Deck applies its buffs to units while they are still in the deck, meaning they enter the board with higher stats, which is vital for surviving the automatic strike from her 3-star power.
The Beast Within provides the necessary Overwhelm to close out games, while Loaded Dice offers the consistency needed to draft a pure dragon deck and find crucial cost-reduction powers.
Tactical Striker
Generates a fleeting copy of her champion spell every round, providing consistent access to buffs and Barrier.
Forces Shyvana to strike the weakest enemy upon summoning, providing immediate board control and a potential Fury trigger.
Rallies upon leveling up, allowing Shyvana to capitalize on her increased stats with an immediate extra attack.
Strategy
This build utilizes rare relics to maintain board control and apply pressure. Stalker's Blade offers immediate removal when Shyvana is played, helping her level up quickly.
The Grand General's Counterplan ensures a steady supply of her champion spell to protect her during combat. Crownguard Inheritance creates a powerful swing turn by rallying the moment she levels up.
Other Relic Options
Her signature relic provides a strong early attack boost and Overwhelm, making it easier to secure initial kills and trigger Fury. However, it does not activate Starforged Gauntlets due to timing mechanics.
Excellent for double-tapping her champion spell or mana gems, providing significant early-game tempo and stat scaling.
Provides excellent stats and survivability, allowing Shyvana to establish a dominant board presence over time.
Prevents Shyvana from taking damage while attacking, ensuring she can safely scale without relying entirely on her spell's Barrier.
Constellation
Shyvana's base deck features expensive units, making her early game vulnerable. She relies heavily on constellation upgrades to smooth out her mana curve, improve her champion spell, and provide necessary scaling to compete in higher-difficulty adventures. Recent updates have improved the appearance rate of dragons in drafts, making her synergies much more consistent.
Dragon Breath
When you summon a Dragon, it deals 3 to the weakest enemy.
Fury of the Brood
+1 Starting Mana. All allied dragons have Fury. Your Fury buffs are granted to all Dragon allies in play and in hand.Review
Grants Fury buffs to all Dragon allies in play and in hand. This is considered restrictive as it does not buff dragons in the deck, making her scaling conditional and vulnerable to removal.
Dragon Breath II
When you summon a Dragon, it strikes the weakest enemy.Review
Causes Dragons to strike an enemy upon summon. This provides essential early-game board control, though it requires dragons to have sufficient base stats to survive the strike.
Fortifications
Your Nexus is Tough.Review
Grants the Nexus Tough. While helpful for absorbing early chip damage, this is often viewed as a compensatory measure for her slow early game rather than a proactive advantage.
Manaflow
Game Start: Get a mana gem.Review
Grants +1 Starting Mana. This is a crucial upgrade for accelerating her deployment and smoothing out her expensive mana curve.
Call of the Brood
When allies attack, draw a unit, if it's a Dragon summon it attacking.Review
Summons a unit from the deck on attack. Players disagree about the effectiveness of this power. Some consider it a strong board-flooding tool, while others find it inconsistent because it can pull non-dragon units that do not benefit from her hand-buffing mechanics.
Gameplay Tips
- Prioritize Dragon Drafts
Shyvana's deck relies heavily on dragon synergy, but her starting deck contains several non-dragon units. Aggressively draft dragons at reward nodes and use healer nodes to cut non-dragon followers to improve the consistency of her abilities, especially her 6-star power.
- Maximize Champion Spell Value
Her champion spell, Confront, receives significant upgrades through her constellation, eventually granting Barrier and drawing a card. Hold spell mana to cast this during combat to protect your units from lethal damage and guarantee Fury triggers.
- Manage Early Game Tempo
Due to her 4-mana cost, it is often strategically correct to absorb damage on the first turn rather than playing weak blockers. Deploy Shyvana on the following turn with banked spell mana to immediately protect her with Confront.
- Avoid the Starforged Gauntlets Trap
Shyvana's signature relic, Draconic Runes, grants its Attack bonus after the game checks for the Titanic keyword. Therefore, it will not activate Starforged Gauntlets on its own. Use alternative stat-boosting relics if attempting a Titanic ramp strategy.
- Zoe Adventure Strategy
Shyvana performs exceptionally well in the 10-star Zoe adventure. Draft powers that kill, obliterate, frostbite, or stun the 90/90 unit, and rely on her Tough Nexus to absorb early chip damage while your dragons scale.