@Souss

-I love Merc Treds in their proper place. I don't disagree that they are not a great item, but most games I find that I have good enough control to land my taunt before the enemy even has a chance to throw their abilities on me. if that is not the case, I definitely pick up the appropriate boots to counter.

-I am just going to agree to disagree on the AP point. I find that many times, especially late game, my squishes either die or are so close to dead they are combat ineffective when I ult to them. I think that an extra 100-200 health on my shield is huge. Sometimes just the sight of that huge gray mark on a health bar makes the enemy think twice before charging my target. And for the slow, I use it with my vorpal blade a lot, but that could just be my play style.

-As for Armor and Magic Res, I build both in their good order. It is my opinion (take it as such), that with this build their is enough early game MR and Armor from runes/masteries to get into mid/late game before needing more. At this point I can prioritize based on the enemies who are doing the most damage form the enemy team. I extensively use my Shadow Dash to control enemies, it is basically a mini exhaust with the damage reduction AND it takes away an enemies chance to use abilities. I get away with CDR boots because I am very conservative with my skills and plan out when and how to use them for 1 big burst of damage from my entire team being coordinated.

Really appreciate the criticism though! If I couldn't defend my build then I would not be fit to post it, and would definitely need to go back to the drawing board. I hope I have not insulted you in any way, and that we can just accept there are many ways to play Shen. Thanks again for getting me thinking even more about the choices I made so I can respond.

Cheers,
Vertuk

First of all, great job ! You bring here an innovative way to play Shen, with lots of explanation, you deserve an upvote for sure. :)

I myself play Shen very often (he's my main champion). Regarding your suggested build, I would like to have some clarification on some points :

- First of all, the choice of the Ionian boots might seem legitimate in the fact that it decreases his ulti's cooldown, but as for the rest of his skills, it's pretty much "useless" because Shen uses energy and can find himself short on energy pretty often; in such cases, cooldown reduction doesn't help much.

I think "mercury threads" or "ninja tabi" are just fine and they provide a nice boost in survavibility.

- Second, building AP on Shen is not efficient in any way. His main skills' AP ratio aren't high enough and the shield lasts for only 2.5 seconds (as opposed to Sion's which lasts for 10 seconds, hence being more viable to upgrade). His ulti provides enough protection at level 2 and 3, so more is just luxury.
As for the slow which Rylai provides, I think that it's not needed, but would have its place in late game, maybe.

In my opinion, Shen is best with a bit of everything : health for his passive and his vorpal blade, armor and magic resist for tanking (without those he's an "empty" tank) and attack speed in order to use this passive more and regain energy faster.


As a conclusion, I'd say your build is really viable, although it makes you very relying on your teammates; if they fail (in other words if they're not able to dish out damage by themselves), there's no way you could thrive.

My best regards.

@Dragon20217 - Thanks for the tip, my thoughts on the "core build" are it is my every game starter. After that I draw from the other items I listed as "game dependent." Maybe I should make that a bit more clear

@SpartaDeathAngel - W is a great option, I honestly go either way. I'll try to work that into the abilities part.

Thanks for the positive feedback guys!

Very good guide. Consider getting Shen's w at level 2. It saves you a lot . +1

Looks like a great build, but you might want to expand on your core items a little bit, just add an extra items to make it 6, rather then only having 4, in my opinion Shen does not require a lot of items to be truly tanky, however with the new champions release such as Darius and his brother Draven and a bunch of other champions that can hurt a lot i'd would definitely be adding 2 more health items to shen and i Know you'll be expanding your guide so far so good +1