Views: 787 Re-worked Shen
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Spent some time spamming Shen jungle and Top. I haven't really played him since his re-work so I wanted to get a handle on what made him tick and get a feel for how strong he is.
Jungle
His clear is slow, but healthy if you use your skills properly. Slow means you are vulnerable to bully champions like
Graves, Kindred, and Nidalee that can clear faster than you. However, if left unmolested you can easily hit level 3 with Blue and Red Buff and gank a lane.
Ganking - If your target is low and your laner has decent damage you can
Shadow Dash + Flash to ensure that they can't react and juke you. Even by himself, Shen's damage is nothing to sneeze at especially if you are able to pull your spirit blade through your target(s) and get 3 consecutive autoattacks on them.
If they are healthier you need to hold onto your taunt and wait for them to use any escape abilities that way you can follow them with Shadow Dash and possibly Flash if you need to in order to secure the kill. Also if you have some time you can wait and if they use one of their mobility spells offensively that is a good time to pounce on them.
Caution: Shadow Dash has a huge energy cost of if you don't damage something with it. So, if you miss it you may find yourself running out of energy very quickly.
Shadow Dash can be hard to hit verses champions with speed ups or dashes. E.g. Gangplank packing a Zeal who has just gotten a movement speed boost via Trial By Fire. If you are chasing them with a friend with a slow in tow, let them use the slow first making it easier to hit Shadow Dash.
Spirit Blade: That damn thing will give you away if it is sitting out in the middle of the lane. You need to remember to re-position it with you if are going to hide in a bush and you need to account for the energy cost associated with bringing it to you, which may in turn put your shield, Ki Barrier, on cooldown.
Your spirit blade takes some time to travel to you from its last position, so you need to be a little proactive about summoning it. For instance as you Shadow Dash, activate Q, Twilight Assault to pull your blade to you so it will arrive as quickly as possible. Once it reaches your current position (but not before!) then you can activate W, Spirit's Refuge, to mitigate some of the damage your are going to take from the basic attacks that Shadow Dash will force your targets to perform on you.
Spirit's Refuge will activate wherever your spirit blade is currently located. So if your spirit blade happens to be where your carries are standing and they are getting mauled by a bruiser you can activate Spirit's Refuge to help protect them from basic attacks. Tough note that many of the players at least at my level of play (high Bronze - Silver) don't know about its protective qualities so they will sometimes walk out of its radius at a crucial moment. If this happens some quick education is probably in order.
Stand United the ability that either makes Shen a hero or a zero.
This thing is great in a professional environment, in soloqueue it is also great, but it is much more difficult to use proactively.
It has an extremely long cooldown. So use it wisely.
If the flight response has kicked in your target may not notice that you are coming in to save the day/turn a bad situation into a positive one for your team, in which case they will continue to run away when the right action is for them to get into to position so that you can make a play.
On the opposite side if their bloodlust has gotten the better of them, your shield and impending arrival may cause them to do something stupid like turret dive with no minions around, which can potentially get you both killed (Fyou Mid Nasus).
And finally if your target is squishy and they are about to die and they have 3 people targeting them you are probably better off letting them die, because your shield is probably not going to be enough to save them, except when it is (remember hero or zero).
Lane:
You trade pretty well against melee champions at level 1 since you get a shield and 3 empowered autoattacks. Your trades are even better if you can manage to pass your spirit blade through them, but you have to be thinking ahead to make this happen like running into lane a bit early and dropping off your spirit blade say roughly around where the enemy ranged minions will take up position once the minion waves form battle lines.
Against ranged champions your are going to want to focus on farming and using your Ki Barrier to protect you while you are grabbing minions that are getting low on health.
You are going to need a Sunfire Aegis to keep up in terms of pushing power with most of your opponents. That said with your empowered autos Shen has a relatively easy time last hitting under turret, so if you do get pushed in, don't worry about it too much.
Your ability to set up ganks is pretty damn good, so make sure to mention that to your jungler. Hey, I have hard CC that is pretty easy to hit why don't you come camp my lane so we can both get big and win the game. If it makes the idea any juicer I have Teleport and Stand United. Pretty please?
Again low level play but I did fine against a Gangplank and a Rengar.
Maokai gave me some trouble, but I believe I could have won that match-up with some help from my jungler. I was also derping a bit in the Maokai match-up, which didn't help matters. Derping in Shen's case is being slow to bring your spirit blade to you and activating Spirit's Refuge where your sword is currently located rather than activating it where you want to trade. If I cleaned up my play, I probably could have fared better than I did.
Verdict
I think if you take the time to really get a handle on the re-worked Shen he can be quite good.
As far as jungle vs lane goes, my feeling is that he fares better in lane than in the jungle due to the fact that his clears are somewhat slow so he will usually have more gold income in lane than he will be able to eke out from the jungle, especially because you should have no trouble last hitting with your empowered auto attacks to some extent even verses ranged champions because your shield will mitigate quite a bit of harassment.
Jungle
His clear is slow, but healthy if you use your skills properly. Slow means you are vulnerable to bully champions like
Graves, Kindred, and Nidalee that can clear faster than you. However, if left unmolested you can easily hit level 3 with Blue and Red Buff and gank a lane.Ganking - If your target is low and your laner has decent damage you can
Shadow Dash + Flash to ensure that they can't react and juke you. Even by himself, Shen's damage is nothing to sneeze at especially if you are able to pull your spirit blade through your target(s) and get 3 consecutive autoattacks on them.If they are healthier you need to hold onto your taunt and wait for them to use any escape abilities that way you can follow them with
Shadow Dash and possibly Flash if you need to in order to secure the kill. Also if you have some time you can wait and if they use one of their mobility spells offensively that is a good time to pounce on them.Caution:
Shadow Dash has a huge energy cost of if you don't damage something with it. So, if you miss it you may find yourself running out of energy very quickly.Shadow Dash can be hard to hit verses champions with speed ups or dashes. E.g. Gangplank packing a
Zeal who has just gotten a movement speed boost via Trial By Fire. If you are chasing them with a friend with a slow in tow, let them use the slow first making it easier to hit Shadow Dash.Spirit Blade: That damn thing will give you away if it is sitting out in the middle of the lane. You need to remember to re-position it with you if are going to hide in a bush and you need to account for the energy cost associated with bringing it to you, which may in turn put your shield,
Ki Barrier, on cooldown.Your spirit blade takes some time to travel to you from its last position, so you need to be a little proactive about summoning it. For instance as you
Shadow Dash, activate Q, Twilight Assault to pull your blade to you so it will arrive as quickly as possible. Once it reaches your current position (but not before!) then you can activate W, Spirit's Refuge, to mitigate some of the damage your are going to take from the basic attacks that Shadow Dash will force your targets to perform on you.Spirit's Refuge will activate wherever your spirit blade is currently located. So if your spirit blade happens to be where your carries are standing and they are getting mauled by a bruiser you can activate
Spirit's Refuge to help protect them from basic attacks. Tough note that many of the players at least at my level of play (high Bronze - Silver) don't know about its protective qualities so they will sometimes walk out of its radius at a crucial moment. If this happens some quick education is probably in order. Stand United the ability that either makes Shen a hero or a zero.This thing is great in a professional environment, in soloqueue it is also great, but it is much more difficult to use proactively.
It has an extremely long cooldown. So use it wisely.
If the flight response has kicked in your target may not notice that you are coming in to save the day/turn a bad situation into a positive one for your team, in which case they will continue to run away when the right action is for them to get into to position so that you can make a play.
On the opposite side if their bloodlust has gotten the better of them, your shield and impending arrival may cause them to do something stupid like turret dive with no minions around, which can potentially get you both killed (Fyou Mid
Nasus).And finally if your target is squishy and they are about to die and they have 3 people targeting them you are probably better off letting them die, because your shield is probably not going to be enough to save them, except when it is (remember hero or zero).
Lane:
You trade pretty well against melee champions at level 1 since you get a shield and 3 empowered autoattacks. Your trades are even better if you can manage to pass your spirit blade through them, but you have to be thinking ahead to make this happen like running into lane a bit early and dropping off your spirit blade say roughly around where the enemy ranged minions will take up position once the minion waves form battle lines.
Against ranged champions your are going to want to focus on farming and using your
Ki Barrier to protect you while you are grabbing minions that are getting low on health.You are going to need a
Sunfire Aegis to keep up in terms of pushing power with most of your opponents. That said with your empowered autos Shen has a relatively easy time last hitting under turret, so if you do get pushed in, don't worry about it too much.Your ability to set up ganks is pretty damn good, so make sure to mention that to your jungler. Hey, I have hard CC that is pretty easy to hit why don't you come camp my lane so we can both get big and win the game. If it makes the idea any juicer I have
Teleport and Stand United. Pretty please?Again low level play but I did fine against a
Gangplank and a Rengar. Maokai gave me some trouble, but I believe I could have won that match-up with some help from my jungler. I was also derping a bit in the Maokai match-up, which didn't help matters. Derping in Shen's case is being slow to bring your spirit blade to you and activating Spirit's Refuge where your sword is currently located rather than activating it where you want to trade. If I cleaned up my play, I probably could have fared better than I did.Verdict
I think if you take the time to really get a handle on the re-worked
Shen he can be quite good.As far as jungle vs lane goes, my feeling is that he fares better in lane than in the jungle due to the fact that his clears are somewhat slow so he will usually have more gold income in lane than he will be able to eke out from the jungle, especially because you should have no trouble last hitting with your empowered auto attacks to some extent even verses ranged champions because your shield will mitigate quite a bit of harassment.
So I had the impression that you got bonus damage to all targets that you pull
Rito if you want to make Shen more viable in the jungle, give him the bonus damage vs monsters as it will help his clear speed and give him a little edge on objective control, while most likely not being too overpowered. Or remove the damage cap that applied to non-champions. K Thx.
If you want to kick it up another notch, reward Shen players who are good with dragging their spirit blade through champions by making the slow apply no matter which direction they happen to move after being tagged by the blade.
Seriously if you compare power budgets look at
Match History
Dodge both halves of Timewinder. Taunt him with
Trundle came Top to gank my lane a couple of times, but he wouldn’t wait a couple of seconds for Shadow Dash to be off cool down so it made it hard to pin Ekko down, especially after he got