Alrighty so this is my first guide to one of my favorite champs in league Shen. I've seen some guide on Shen and I personally felt that I could throw in my 2 cents and help out anyone new to the tank class or shen. Though my guide won't be as flashy as the others since im new to the site I will still give specifications to the best of my abilities and please give my guide a try before you downvote it thank you in advance c: . This guide is a work in progress and will always be updated whenever I can do so PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS your feedback helps me improve this guide and overall game play for it. And IF YOU DOWN VOTE GIVE ME A PROPER REASON none of this 'I lost my first match because of this guide' nonsense, also none of that 'meh i dont like it' give me a legitimate response because I cannot improve my guide with that response. So be considerate and give me a proper response so I can continue to improve this guide for everyone.

Pros

+Is tanky ninja
+Is turtley
+Has global ult
+Has Taunt
+Can withstand alot of punishment



Cons

-Is TANKY NINJA?!
-Long Cool Down on E, and on R
-No real harass
-No natural scaling magic resist
-Get's banned a lot :C

Time for magic rocks to be explained!Let's start out with what I feel are useful runes on Shen, and as a Tank you're going to needed the extra defense to help you take hits and allow you to be able to stay in the heat of battle as long as possible.
Flat armor helps early game by a marginal amount making early game harassers do a negligible amount of damage or only minor.
The whole point of these are that since mages don't truly shine or begin to do actual damage is mid to late game and to counter that we need these and at level 11 these scales beat out the flat magic resist runes.
These are just for early game farming, these are the only runes I feel can be changed for any other marks since most of the marks are not geared towards defense alternatives are , , or the popular approach , any of those marks are fine just avoid changing the glyphs or seals. Why not scaling armor runes? Because you need that early game boost as most junglers and top champs are AD based and not magic based so you're going to need that immediate boost of armor and because there are ALOT OF ARMOR ITEMS than there are magic resist items so thats the idea behind them. The Quints are meant to act as the natural scaling magic resist some champs possess and because we might not always get magic resist items right off the bat this will help protect you from mages early on.

SPELLS SPELLS THINGS THAT ARE SPLENDOROUS well actually no but hey they help.
Alrighty spells that i deem useful for the likes of the mighty Shen.
SPELLS YOU SHOULD TAKE or atleast consider since i like 'em c:
Basic solo top should pick up you will need this to allow you to travel back to your lane as quickly as possible and to other lanes if needed. I prefer this over flash because it allows you to travel from place to place and to also escape from enemies, with flash you can flash over stuff but your shadow dash does that already so there isn't much of a point of a double flash and because you cannot travel long distances with flash. Alternative I know some of you prefer this too ghost so it's just one of those things that are mostly based upon personal preference. Another spell is this fits more of the support tank scenario since you won't really rack up kills while you are up at top.(unless you steal it and if you do in on purpose than i have to say FOR SHAME FOR SHAME D:<)

Armor items:
Magic Resist items:
Shoes:
Enchantments for shoes: Anything but
Health (it's just here because health):

as pointed out by NewAthanatov I have yet to include the reasons of why I implemented this item and . For twin shadows the reason I think it fit's Shen is because it builds from kage's lucky pick which is the only gold per 5 item that won't build into something that Shen cannot use to it's fullest extent. IE philosopher's stone Since Shen does not use mana the mana regeneration on this item becomes a waste and it continues on with the mana regeneration regardless of what you build with it. Now back to this item is extremely cost effective at only 1900 gold you get an extremely good passive active a movement boost magic resist and ability power everything Shen can utilize.

Also pointed out by NewAthanatov is this item this item is only for the AP build since it provides AP, armor, and cool down reduction. Since it is rather expensive I do not include this item in any other build because there are much better armor items.

ARMOR ITEM EXPLANATION!
Why this item? Shouldn't the support have this item? Yeah you're right the support SHOULD get this item but nowadays I see many supports disregard this item so I pick up for Shen because it's cheap, provides you with both magic resist, armor, and CDR. It also helps your less squishier comrades.
I don't care what your excuse is this item is too good to pass up. The passive & passive active is what makes this item so great aside from the large health and armor boost. Not getting this is like slapping yourself with a fish and going WHY DID I DO THAT?! Or shooting your foot off and then trying to run a marathon.
Now normally I don't get this item since it provides no other benefit aside from the massive armor boost. Now this item isn't bad but it truly shines against AD oriented teams for example if the other team had a , , , ; then you'd be like yeah i need a massive ton of armor, but regular team composition doesn't call or permit the use of this item as much. UNLESS your BUT you are not rammus so no rush for this item.
The next item

Breakdown of the skills.
More health more damage (10% total bonus health is added as damage), regain energy when passive is consumed 10/20/30

Your farming tool and early game harass. 0.6 AP ratio. Max this out first to allow yourself the ability of farming since the only gold per 5 item you can actually use and will build into something useful is kage's lucky pick.

Your shield that allows you to take a few more hits or to negate the effect of or some random DoT effect.

The 2nd reason why Shen is banned,0.5 AP ratio, max this out last since the taunt duration does not increase as you continue to level it up, the only thing that increases damage and a decrease in cool down rate which isn't much considering you are not supposed to spam this anyways.

The real reason why Shen is banned, your life savior, the ability that can turn the tide of battle from anywhere. Let's not forget that shield lasts a considerable amount of time. 1.5 AP Ratio.

Easy Matchups
Akali won't hinder you much until she hit's level 6, during pre-6 you will be able to harass her, zone her out, and make trades without too much worry and with no real crowd control she can't set up ganks. With her low damage output your W will absorb most of the damage simply farm and make occasional trades to ensure she stays at a lower level than you.

Alistar makes it in this list because he doesn't really do much in terms of damage or farm or anything during pre-6 and after 6, his spells eat up alot of mana HINT HINT, harass him and he'll need to heal either by using his spell or going back to base. In other words harass trade blows do anything to ensure that he can't farm or gain exp. The only thing that you need to fear is his crowd control so keep an eye out and ward the man can leave you in a vulnerable position if you push too hard but if he tries to use those as his harass he'll have mana problems early on.

Thanks to friends and family and stuff and to this guide http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/making-a-guide-101506#chapter17 for teaching me to do the basics of guide making. Also to everyone that's supported me and that gave me feedback.

10/3/13 Thus my work has been birthed

10/4/13 Work has begun on solo top matchups