Shen, most annoying tank out there. with a life saving ulti and an AOE taunt. The enemy team is bound to hate you. But how do you play Shen right? How do you time your ulti right? all shall be explained :D

Pros
- Global teleport + shield!
- Build in health pot for lane surviving!
- 2 great last hitting tools!
- Manly voice!
- AOE taunt!
- Strong solo laner!

Cons
- Energy based(cannot expend energy pool)
- Early/mid game energy hungry and nothing you can do about it
- ulti has a very long cooldown
- sometimes banned for ranked

I recommend using Giving you magic pen. so you can easily last hit creeps with and .

The extra 175 health late game from your is always nice to have, however, is also a good option, but if your playing against spell heavy enemies, they won't save you.

There isn't really a big store with Glyphs saying : "BUY ME SHEN" I've only found 2 good Glyphs, , Because I've managed to save so many people just because I get 12 seconds off of my ulti. The other option is for the extra 24 MR late game.

The extra 78 Health from are a great help early game. But is a good option too, because Shen moves at the speed of a crippled snail

Masteries are pretty straight Forward, Take improved Exhaust(Will be explained at Summoner spell section) 21 in defense for even moar tankier Shen and awareness in utility, for Power lvling :D

RECOMMENDED

Exhaust : if your being foccused by one of those annoying AD melee chars. Or worse, your laning partner, this will be your best friend. Take improved Exhaust along :D
Ghost :Seeing as Shen has the movement speed of a crippled snail. Ghost will save your *** way to many times.

SLIGHTLY LESS RECOMMENDED BUT STILL PRETTY NEAT
Fortify Is actaully a pretty neat spell if you look at Shens Shadow Dash : Basicly you and your laning partner tower hugg. when an enemy melee comes to close to your tower, you Shadow Dash him--> let him hit you once and run back-> click on forify causing your tower to get a crazy attack speed boost--> dead or very very very low HP left = win
Flash always handy on any champion, is rlly good for suprising enemies by flashing, and Shadow dashing!
Heal Don't get me wrong, Heal isn't that a good pick at all. But it's to good to put in the "there is something really;..."category because this skill might have a small use.

THERE IS SOMETHING REALLY WRONG WITH YOU IF YOU TAKE THESE AS SHEN
Smite This ain't Jungle Shen damnit!
Revive This ain't Dying Shen damnit!
Rally This ain't AD Shen damnit!
ClarityCongrats, you've become a troll

Now most people will be like :" NOOOOOOO your supposed to take one point in early game!!!"
I say :"yeah, because that 50 damage is really gonna save you...."
My point being, you'll waste 45 energy for a shield that might stop 1 auto attack. Seeing how Energy hungry Shen is early game.. I think you rather use your energy on something that can actaully save you, like Dashing out with .

, one of your 2 last hitting tools. I'm often amazed how much damage vorpal blade and ki strike sometimes do on an enemy champion, try it out if you get a chance!

Anyway, I max out out first, because it's your last hitting tool, and also a build in health pot. When I'm low on health I tend to throw a vorpal blade at a creep, and hit him a couple of times to regain health faster

, Like I said before, this is the skill I max out last but please, see Guide to solo lane for slighly more information on the use of feint

AOE taunt, it has over 9000 ways of using it. Like stopping that enemy Karthus, Warwick, Katarina, Malzahar, Nunu,... from using their damned team slaying ulti. Or you can use it to jump over small walls. Or you can simply Taunt an enemy to keep him in place for a well timed Gank. But use it wisely, if you miss you just lost half your energy for nothing, if you hit, you just regained half the skill cost! yay!

Shens most annoying ulti. It's fairly hard to use, seeing as you need to have a good map awerness, constantly be looking for allies that are about to die so you can jump in and save them! Anyway it's all about timing, making 1 vs 1 fights become 2 vs 1.

So I start off with for extra health, health regen and armor, if you are sure you can handle, you can actaully start off with a Ruby Cristal.
Doran's Shield will you keep in lane for a long time, I always try to stay in lane untill I can buy and . We want to get the money for these items as fast as possible, Shen is slow and needs his boots, he also needs a good income seeing as you'll be teleporting from lane to lane when you reach lvl 6. So we get Heart Of Gold.
Next, I'll try to stay in lane untill i have the money to buy in one go, this is a great item seeing as you buy it to help your complete team.
If your having trouble in lane and you can't buy Aegis of the Legion in one go, buy your when you have to recall instead.
Starting from here, you'll have to decide yourself when you have to recall. depending on how much health you have left, and in what kind of positioning you are in(if you and your team are about to start a team fight, you just dont recall ^^).

So to make it simple, this is how you roll early game as Shen :
GAME START : buy
FIRST RECALL : need 1175gold : Buy and
SECOND RECALL : need 1925gold : Buy
THIRD RECALL : need 750G or more : Buy and anyother item in the sequence you can afford.

Now ofcourse, depending on what we are fighting , we might want to change the items and the sequences a bit :

If your team is fighting an AD heavy team, consider buying before Negatron Cloack

If your team is fighting an Ap heavy team, without stuns, consider changing by giving you a better magic resistance, and more movement speed.


Other nice Items a Shen might want to buy

As you can see, the item list isn't finished, from here, you have to decide what you'll buy depending on what enemies are fed/ dealing all the damage

If AD is slaying your team, your best off buying : or a

If AP is slaying your team :
and Now Abyssal might seem weird, but all of Shens skills are AP scaling, so in the long run, it actaully isn't all that a bad item on Shen


And ofcourse, once you have a full item build : Elixer Spam!

DO NOT WANT :
I hate it when I see tanks pick the next items seeing as it gives the enemy team yet another reason to not focus the tank :

don't get me wrong, great armor item but the part that sais " enemies that attack you are damaged" means that enemies will not want to attack you. As tank, we do want them to attack us so that is why we do not buy Thornmail.

After some thinking, I realised enemies won't want to kill you if they see you have this item. seeing as they'll waste they skills killing you and not even getting a kill due to it's passive they'll rather start hitting your squishy allies.

Now I did say buying is a good pick for Shen, because of the AP and MR it gives. Zhonya's isn't. Not only does it cost alot more then Abyssal it's active is also useless seeing as you become untargetable...as tank.

I dislike snowball items, however, if you do the math in the section"doin' it right!" you'll notice I could easily have gotten 20 stacks, it's still to risky. That and health stackers can easily be countered with .
Madred's Bloodrazor

Not enough MR, you do not have spell vamp or lifesteal. 10% cooldown is nice but if you want Cooldown reduction get .

Gives you a ****load of health. Altough by the time you get it with Shen, you'll be saving people, tanking and ganking. Meaning you won't have the time to kill creeps and up it's passive, if you ask me, it costs to much money so by the time you get it you won't have the armor or MR to survive.

Shen is a strong solo laner, but if someone else can solo lane, let him do so. If Shen solo lanes he won't be able to use his to save people.

Anyway, aslong as your not up against strong early game Ranged enemies, there won't be alot of problems. Keep on tower hugging and last hitting and don't forget to taunt enemy champions under the tower when you have the chance!
If you are up against Heavy ranged enemies, take a point in feint on lvl 2.. this is because they will make it very hard for you and you'll need all the defense you can get.

If your jungler comes, You should always taunt to initiate, your a tank you can take the damage!

Suppose your laning against a damned twitch or evelynn
it's the beginning of the game, you don't have oracle and you do not wanna towerhug this lane phase out

The stealth charachters won't have the damage to finish you off, that is why they rely on their laning partner to deal most of the damage, so if their laning partner suddenly goes crazy and comes running towards you, you just know that the stealth champion is close enough to attack you, this is how you have to play against those stealth charachter, and once you get the chance, buy a if your really having trouble with this tactic... It isn't waterproof, but it has saved me alot of times

Also, if they just went into stealth, and you know where they are, you can get them out of there Stealth by Shadow dashing and taunting them!

This is something I see alot of tanks forget..Their a tank! and their job is to Take the damage and save their allies

To often I see tanks taking kills they should actaully give to their carries and with Shen, this is actaully very simple : once they are below 15% health, you simply stop hitting them, at this point they'll already be running away, so you run along with them, Taunt them whenever you can, but do not attack, if you see that they are under their tower, and your carry hasen't backed off yet, Dive in the tower, so it focusses you and not your carry, you can take a couple of tower hits!

If however your carry has backed off, you can go in for the kill with and , you can also kill them if you know that they will kill your carry, before your carry can kill them!

As I have mentioned: Ki strike+ Vorpal blade can do massive damage..so lets do the math!
Ki strike damage = 10+5*lvl+8% Bonus hp(Ki Strike description hasen't been updated on Mobafire yet)

lvl 1 + Doran's shield : Ki strike = 10+5*1+16,6= 31,6 + Vorpal Blade = 81,6 + Shens AD = 135.4 damage

lvl 9 +Doran's Shield + Heart Of Gold+Aegis Of The Legion : Ki strike = 10+5*9+64,4 = 119,4 + Vorpal Blade = 329,4 + Shens AD = 410,9 damage

lvl 18 + full build(Randruims Omen+ Aegis Of the Legion + Banshee's Veil + Elixer of Fortitude+ Sunfire Cape) : Ki Strike : 10+5*18+126,7 = 226,7 + Vorpal Blade = 436,7 + Shens AD = 545,85

It's pretty obvious that a tank won't be scoring the epic ace or pentakill.. but you should be stacking assists like crazy. So here are some of my own Shen ranked game outcomes(will add more soon) :

Item build with Shen :

I will be adding more when I get around to play some more ranked with Shen

Play Video
Listen and Enjoy!

04/06/11 - added "Shen, love his voice!" category
- added "Updates" category
- corrected some spelling errors

08/06/11 - Yet moar spelling errors corrected.

13/06/11 - added the super sexy icons for abilities/runes and Items
- added some stuff to Item category
- added "Ki strike : Fact!" category

27/06/11 - added "Doin' it right!" category

29/06/11 - added "DO NOT WANT" section to the Item category

*Stuff to come*
-More ranked game results
-one day, far far away, a video showing some of the tactics
-adding the super sexy masteries Icons
-...

Well, this is my first build for my Best champion and favorite tank Shen!
I would like some constructive critisism, also if you find any spelling errors or such, let me know!

and then something about lame trollvoters...

Now go out there! and show them what a Shen can do!!!