This is my first guide, and I'm doing it on the champion Shen. I am a platinum (trash) Shen main and this is how I play him. Shen is a tank/fighter that can go top lane, jungle, and support.

I don't recommend going mid or ADC with Shen. You can hover over the notes icons to see my reasoning behind my play style.

With Shen, you mainly want to play safe, if you are looking for fame and glory, I recommend playing Draven. In my opinion, Shen has a weak laning phase and I strong midgame. You don't want to play like the dominant one often, and have patience. Patience is key. As Shen, you generally play under tower and wait for ganks during the laning phase, but once you get your ultimate you can help your team around.

When using ult as Shen, try to not only save your teammate, but gain gold from it. Once you teleport to a teammate, your laning opponent will either teleport to your destination or he/she/it will gain EXP and Gold as you are busy in some other location. Try to plan out what will happen before you ult. How much damage will the enemy deal? And make sure not to use your ultimate too early or too late. With this I mean, scaring the enemy off when you want to kill them, or not being able to teleport to your teammate because they died due to you using ult too late.

In the lategame split-push when your ultimate is up as long as you won't get picked when alone. Don't always split-push, grouping is fine. In fights because you aren't building too many damage items stick to your damage carries and protect them. Sometimes your "carries" get really far behind, but most of the time either your mid laner or bot lane is doing good. Shen's ult should have helped them sometime earlier in the game.

Pros

- Good Map Presence
- Good Peel Champion
- Percent Health Damage (Anti-Tank)
- Provides CC

Cons

- Boring Farmville Laning Phase
- Unfavorable Matchups
- Lane duels are weak at levels 6+ (unless the enemy donated to you)

For itemization, I usually take Sunfire Cape first unless they have a lot of AP on the enemy team. Against AP, I would recommend rushing Spirit Visage first instead of Sunfire Cape.

If you are even or ahead in gold & EXP, usually get Titanic Hydra second. Most of your damage will come from this item. If you are behind for some unfortunate reason, I recommend getting a more defensive item second rather than Titanic Hydra. Try to fit in the Titanic Hydra in your build at some point, the item is overall quite good.

I don't usually go Zz'rot Portal, instead preferring more tanky stats and teamfight strength. You can hover over the notes icon by the item to view another wall of text on items.

Shen farms real easily under tower, and tends to get shoved under it. Your taunt ability will scare away tower divers, but note that you are susceptible to tower dives still. Shen's Q allows farming to be quite simple.

You don't always have to farm under tower, just get creeps like you normally would on any champion. Always keep an eye on where the enemy jungler is because getting behind in top lane is extremely punishing. Don't push the wave unless you have a big wave and you are sure the enemy jungler won't gank. By doing this you let the enemy's tower kill the creeps. Freeze the wave if the enemy wave is pushing and they won't kill you for freezing.

You can play aggressive as long as you know the enemy jungler won't harm you. If your jungler is nearby to counter-gank, you can also play aggressive. When low and you have very little vision, back (the enemy jungler could tower dive, especially if you are low). It's always better to lose some minions rather than die and still then lose them. Farm and roams are Shen's main source of gold.

Dueling tanks is easy compared to those duelists who stack AD. As Shen you want to trade when you pull the spirit blade through the enemy, it makes trades a lot more stronger.