Shen Build Guide by Rajner

Thx for your comment :D

and i have to edit that comment because I made a little mistake with Shen's base stats ... had 58HP/lvl instead of 85 !(edited)!

just take into account (EVERY GAME) your build sequence should fit your team and your enemies. (I think you mentioned it somewhere in your guide)
so building BV is good when there is a little more Magical then Physical dmg
when its pure magical FoN with some HP on other items is better. BUT FoN does nothing if the enemy team deals less than 70% Magical dmg.

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Important!!
The more balanced the enemy team is damage wise the better HP gets because it negates both damage types.

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so an example enemy:
team is 50/50 P/M (in % and P=Physical/M=Magical)
get HoG get Aegis get Mercs
with Base stats+Masteries+Runes you have now (saying lvl 10-12)
around 2k HP
95 Armor
99 MR

so pretty balanced (lvl 11)

NOTE: Armor scales better with lvls because you get base armor every lvl Mres increase is only due to runes so with this items you get more armor then MR at 13 with 103/102 AR/MR

many formulas on many different threads did many things (beginning with armor of cloth armor divided by gold to get stats per/gold on any item and so on and some other ways.)
so i came up with different formulas:

(Armor+MR)*16 = 3299 best HP to gain most eHP
1200+12*(Armor+MR) = 3674 best HP to gain most eHP
BUT this is only true when you have balanced Armor and MR (+-10 maybe even 20)
AND enemy team is dealing 50/50 P/M dmg

I have an own pretty complicated thing that works this way:
take an item
to explain this i take Aegis of Legion
when finished u get an formula to calculate eHP gain from an item (can be divided by gold to get per gold values)

eHP gain= (max HP + item HP*1,03) / ((100 / (( Armor + item Armor ) * pDMG% modifier + ( MR + item MR ) * ( 1 - pDMG% modifier ) + 100 )) * ( 1 - dmg reduction )) - max HP / (( 100 / ( Armor * pDMG% modifier + MR * ( 1 - pDMG% modifier ) + 100)) * ( 1 - dmg reduction ))
(woh this is more then i thought :P maybe some one figures out what i have done here :D)
pDMG% = % of physical dmg you are suffering (so for a balenced team its 0.5 for a pure AD team its 1 (often 0.95 or 0.9 due to items, skills etc.))
dmg reduction is for example Honor Guard or full stacked Leviathan
it stacks multiplicatevly so when you have more then one source of dmg reduction you have to do:
1-(1-honrguardreduction)*(1-leviathanreduction)
=1-(1-0.015)*(1-0.15)=0.16=16% dmg reduction
if you have 100 armor on top of that you have 1-(1-0.015)*(1-0.15)*(1-0.5)= 58% physical damage reduction

so this is basically: eHP after item purchase - eHP you had before = eHP gain

do this with some items and you will get to this:

GET MORE HP (after core)
starting with Shen (with this masteries/runes) you have high base resistances from begin on (same for Aegis, HoG, mercs build (for me this is the whole core build, maybe add Giant's Belt))


Auster Delaurant's "Tank Items" Guide
its maybe a bit outdated but the formulas used and the basics of tanking are still the same so a usefull guide for everyone wanting to build a Tank

other good guides to this i found:
falconPAHHNCH's "How to Tank correctly in LOL" Guide
Auster Delaurant's "Purchasing Mathematics"




no time for madreds now but its not that good just one little mr item negates most of it

i ll do the maths for it later have to learn for an exam now :S

I understand these numbers Lenoil, but we can't just look at our survi and strenght of our passive. It's not all about survi.

Look - Aegis gives precious aura. Randuin has really strong late game passive and active. Sunfire helps you farm and push lane (late game it's hard to push with Shen, but you need to do your split-push tactic to be effective), FoN boosts your speed and regen.
Besides you need armor and mres to make your W shield durable - if not, shield will be useless.

But still thanks - now I'm absolutely sure that Warmog is a must on Shen - but only 1 Warmog. :)

I understand your doubt, BUT i consider Aegis as core too
Randuin's is survivability and gold wise one of the best tank items :P
Sunfire.... i just can say i havent got problems farming have ~100 cs at 20 mins last few games but i'll look at this further, last hitting is just easy when alone because of Q and passive and when their is an enemy Q is still nice and sunfire cape wont help
pushing power... that is true sunfire helps with that
so for not pushing unintentionally dont get it while laning, you may add this to your guide...
try this sequence:
Ruby -> HoG & boots1 -> Aegis & mercs -> Giant' Belt two options now: fighting most of the time but still need to push back your lane (aka. nice team) -> sunfire will help you with both fighting and pushing back fast AND its cheap!
option 2 nothing happens on the map you farm 100cs at 20mins and have ebough gold to just rush warmogs...

maybe change the descrition a little but you know what i mean... i hope so...

AND at 6 items sunfire is just too less of stats/slot so there would be your second warmogs


for most single target spells a 250hp shield is enough (blocks 658raw damage)

i ll post maths about FoN later
this item depends on both teams and own playstyle (running in tanking everything (only tank in your team) and enemy has balanced damage BV will do good

if there are more offtanks on your team you wont need to tank that much damage but you want to stay when the offtanks go regenerating at base or jungle or whatever.

Furthermore FoN is at eHP better then BV when enemy deals (... i dont know exactly but it should be about)70-80% magic damage so BV is useless since it hasnt' got HP5, MS, more eHP (the more magic dmg the enemy deals the better MR is compared to HP(HP shouldnt be forgot btw but isnt that important now)) AND FoN is cheaper :P

pls add the quote from Auster Delaurant it's sooooo import to know when you are building tanky items...

EDIT: i think i ll start with an "Shen in numbers" guide when i finished some things (still havent finished some runes(only flat armor, MR/lvl and flat HP), and masteries can't be changed yet and i dont get an effective item sequence working(just based on numbers and calculations) and i may implement some other items like abyssal and rylai's and therefor i need some dmg calculations (i leave this for another time...maybe the rason why i started theorycrafting a tank :P))and we can link each other

This is not a problem. My lane or lane of my enemy is destroyed by that time (but usually my turret is dead xD). It is because I'm helping my teammates with Stand United and then enemies often push top. This is not a problem, trust me.


Well, this is the exact sequence, which I use. :) But I'm always buying Sunfire, not Warmog. I know what you mean, but I'm aggressive turret diver mid-game. Sunfire helps with this a lot. :)



I swear, that next time I will be able to buy all 6 items and make a full build, I will sell sunfire and buy second warmog. If it will go well, I will add this possibility to the guide. :)





I removed BV from the main build. It's just optional now, in case of strong-AP teams.



I wish you good luck and see forward to this calculations.

About the Auster's tank guide - his reasoning is very good - that is why I got so many HP on Shen. Armor and MRES are below 200 (around 170).

Lenoil, I looked closely at stats and you're right about selling Sunfire late game. I will still have over 200 armor without it, so I can easily buy something else. Another Warmog looks good in that case.
Big thanks for your effort and tips.

I removed BV from the main build. It's just optional now, in case of strong-AP teams
Do'H

important! if dmg is mixed (maybe 40/60 P/M)and you are the only tank then go BV it s better

if you are Main tank but there are other tankies you wont need so much survivability you want to taunt as often as possible (and since you arent the only one to protect your squishies you can now go and chase enemies with other mates (FoN -> better MS so it helps here even more)



enemy team should be really Magic damage heavy if you get this for more survivability then BV,
but i need to do the maths to get an accurate number (70-80% magic damage) AND since no veigar will focus you unless you get low there is a good chance that you wont get a lot magic damage since they are saving cooldowns for your carry, while an AD carry just right clicks if nothing else is in range and he can still kill what he wants when he wants if you are dead so even if overall damage of the enemy team is 50/50 to your team you may receive only 70/30 due to some AE damage

TIP when dying look on death stats and you see who deals damage with what (think about ap kog with madreds (LOL): your hundred magic resistance gets down to 45 due to his q, boots, masteries, runes and then he deals 16% of your max HP per Hit with an AS of 1.4 or something like that... you get killed with Q then 6-7 autoattacks. At this point you should think of how to counter the fed enemy who kills you so fast
1. just kill him if he is fed :D
2. more HP -> more damage because its % based
3. more armor ehm AP kog...
4. more MR
4.1 BV
4.2 FoN
now big question you have aegis mercs randuins warmogs what to get: BV or FoN (assuming the rest of the team deals just no damage AND is ignoring you

(stupid question: why you get randuins before MR when AP Kog is fed? ... answer think of this build with HoG instead)

so just to say you receive 10/90 damage and most of this is %hp based damage
Tip: the item is not another warmogs

for most Tank item just look how the game is going and maybe have an eHP calculator on your second monitor(still in work...need to learn programming since excel is not enough) and feed it with some data(easy way) or think about some passive the items give and their overall stats

oh one more important tip:
early: stats per gold !!!
late (really late/60+mins) stats/slot
instead of aegis (if support
gets one) get another warmogs

ok just what i did the last 5 mins:

eHP: BV beats FoN

exception 100% magical damage and you have some HP (mercs, aegis, warmogs)

BV-> 2914 eHP
FoN->2907 eHP
2nd warmogs->2737

looks as BV wins but FoN is cheaper

BV-> 1.07 eHP/gold
FoN-> 1.11 eHP/gold

without warmogs(mercs, aegis)
warmogs-> 2737 eHP
BV-> 2260 eHP
FoN-> 1913 eHP

EDIT: forgot HoG

with warmogs-> FoN > BV in total eHP
without warmogs -> BV > FoN even in eHP/gold

EDIT2:
made more maths (now using your item sequence) and proved the above wrong just get a negatron cloak, it is in eHP/gold the best item to get for MR and finish it if needed (for more eHP or MS or HP/5) maybe even after randuins...

but i cant stress enough: build to conter the enemy, so an static item sequence won't do it, make some if-there-is-that-get-that-if-not-get-that-or-that thing

Edit3: Negatron Cloak is in almost every situation as double as gold effect as FoN and BV
(break even point for BV is at 78/22 P/M damage) but when there is such situation don't get more MR then aegis and Mercs, its just useless (with only those two you have 109 MR) maybe even get ninja tabis

after all this numbers one thing i really like at this guide:
you cover alot of things, espacially "Typical failures with Shen" helped me alot :P
i started shen in his free week and used the first guide on moba...dont liked it, failed
used yours, was nice

havent played him for a while till i got 3150 ip :P last week i bought him...
forgot quite alot about him so on mobafire again and just used this guide again ;) and after thinking of some alternatives for items (just my 5th game with shen but i got 3-3-18 and scores like that all day.
ended with 14 wins 4 looses after two days with shen and went on now i have: 20-11 with average stats of 3.1 - 4.6 - 13.9, best game 4-0-15

upvoted already and i like comprehensive guides telling why they are doing what (especially this one)

you helped me to get a new main having just 31 games with him being at 900 games in total
W/L overall: 0.53
only shen (even first game wasn't a bot game)
i have 0.65 almost twice as much wins as looses and i still learn a lot every game i play him
just keep this guide up to date, i'll be helping with theorycrafting as much as i can

one more thing before I leave for today:
thinking about conters at top
played two times against garen top... one game was:
after ~20mins had a poor cs and 0-5-0(maybe my fault too, but garen is hard to beat as shen) other parts of the map werent exiting at all, just saved 2 people in this 15mins i had ult but got no assists

But just as teamfights began I got up to 3-6-22
Garen was only ksing with ult and did poor in late game (maybe an overall problem of garen...)
I hate laning against garen (with shen)

Are there more easy/hard lanes? how to conter them tactical/with items?



EDIT: quadra post :D but it makes sense because each is about a different topic