If you’ve played ten games over the course of the last week, you’ve probably seen Shen in nine of them. He’s one of the most popular toons in the game, and probably the best tank around. It seems timely to give some discussion to his strength and the path development around him will likely take.
First off, Shen’s a tank. Anyone who tells you otherwise is nuts. I played a game recently in which the Shen on my team got a malady. Malady for god’s sake. His passive gains more damage the higher your health pool, so you’re best off building for health. Building items like Sunfire Cape and Aegis can give you the health you need along with resistances to beef up your tanking.
Shen’s real strength a this point comes from his ability to avoid damage. His W skill can reduce huge amounts of incoming damage. Pop it when you’re about to take damage from multiple sources and you can laugh as your health goes nowhere. With the ability to both taunt with Shadow Dash and run from a fight, it’s pretty easy to escape death.
On top of his ability to avoid/mitigate damage, Shen has surprisingly high damage output. His Ki Strike hits hard, and the fact that you can dash to catch/taunt a running target gives you unparalleled chase.
From a development standpoint, Shen poses a unique problem. The shield design went from being a static shield to blocking damage from all incoming sources. It took his shield from being next to worthless to extremely overpowered. I could see Riot reducing the amount of damage blocked, or turning it into a percentage damage block. The percentage seems to be the best fix, but I’m guessing it will probably going back to a static shield. I think Shen’s biggest problem, though, is that he works on the energy system. With a passive heal and his incredible ability to mitigate damage he has virtually unlimited laning potential, giving him the farm required to become unkillable. He needs to lose one of those benefits – the infinite spell casting, the healing, the damage mitigation, the dash – in order to fall in line with other champions, or he’ll still be sitting head and shoulders above every other tank in the game.