Hi everyone and welcome to my guide of how carry with shen, i had to rewrite almost everything from the last season guide, when shen was still a rare pick, lets begin

let's assume you already know how shen's abilities work, i will only tell you tips that will help you to improve your gameplay with Shen.

Passive: Ki Barrier
Your best weapon to trade, ki barrier gives you a decent shield that can save you from an ignite or a turret shoot, Ki barrier activates when:
You cast Twilight Assault and the sword touches you, so remember to KEEP THE SWORD AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE OF YOU , getting the shield in the exact moment can give you an advantage on a 1 v 1.
When Spirit's Refuge ends.
At the end of Shadow Dash animation, NOT DURING THE ANIMATION.
After use Stand United
IMPORTANT
This shield has a 10 seconds cooldown, but it is reduced by 4 - 7.5 seconds when:
1. an enemy champions is hitted by your Spirit blade when it comebacks to you, let me explain you, imagine you are in level 1 and you activate Twilight Assault, when the blade touches you, Ki Barrier will be activated and it will have a 10 seconds cooldown, now you activate again Twilight Assault but this time, you hit the enemy top laner with the Spirit Blade when is returning to you, now the cooldown will be reduced to 6 seconds, if the enemy jungler ganks you and you hit both with the spirit Blade, the cooldown will be reduced to 2 seconds.
2. When an enemy champion is hitted by Shadow Dash, same as point 1, for each enemy taunted, you will recover 4 - 7.5 seconds of cooldown on Ki Barrier.
3. When you ult an ally, this will only grant you 1 time the cooldown reduction (obvioulsy).

Q: Twilight Assault
I REPEAT, KEEP THE SWORD AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE OF YOU, thanks to Grasp of the Undying plus Twilight Assault you can trade against other fighters, but with the Empowered Twilight Assault you can outdamage almost every top laner, plus Legend:alacrity, you q is an amaizing ability with a lot of damage and low Cooldown, the key to use successfully this ability is to make your spirit Blade collide with enemies, this is the reason why keep the blade close to you is important, you just have to be correctly posicionate to keep the empowered Twilight Assault activated.
Note: The Spirit Blade can be block by Wind Wall

W: Spirit's Refuge
Maybe the most important ability of shen to avoid been burst. Spirit's Refuge creates a small area around your Spirit Blade that will make enemies aa miss, that includes empowered aa, like Siphoning Strike, Decisive Strike or Purge, this ability is EXTREMELY important in a team fight against ADC, you can arrive with Stand United and activate Spirit's Refuge to block all the damage incoming from an ADC, saving squishy important targets like Fizz or Brand that after their combos, they are useless. Or just use it to tilt a nasus who tries to farm the cannon minion.

E: Shadow Dash
Usually people underestimate the range of Shadow Dash, and yes, this ability has a short range, but you can surprise your enemies with an E + Flash, this combo is kind tricky, if you use Flash meanwhile the animation of Shadow Dash is happening, the ability will end, but the enemies on the Hitbox on the place you flashed will be affected by Shadow Dash, i recommend you to practice this before using it in a game because you can humillate yourself by falling this.

R: Stand United
THE TANK IS HERE!!! with this ability you can help others to win their lanes. some champions like draven, ezreal or jhin that only need 1 or 2 kill to snowball in lane and you can help them with Stand United

Pros

+ amaizing late game tank + CC on area with Shadow Dash + Can block a lot of damage with Spirit's Refuge + Don't require too much gold to tank + Stand United can win an early TF

Shen is an very underrated pick in SoloQ, his entire kit allows him to tank a lot of damage, be an excellent fighter against usuals top laners like riven, darius, nasus and Urgot, protect a squishy member of your team like the ADC or Mid and more important, catch High-mobility targets like Vayne or Draven.

Cons

- Hard to recover if behind - Bad at farming - Your R can be cancelled - Weak against CC - Useless if you dont correctly combine skills

Without Shadow Dash, Shen is pretty much a snail, so stuns, slows, silence and suppresion are very effective against Shen. if you are push away from your Spirit's Refuge, a fed ADC can erase you easily. You must be correctly possicionated to use Stand United and land your skills to keep Ki Barrier constantly activated.

shen has been my main almost since i started playing league at season 3, he has suffer a lot of changes, from tank to oneshot adc's on this season, but his true potential lay on his utility for the entire team, his skill set allows him to catch sneaky enemies like most adc on meta, mid-laners that are really hard to catch like Leblanc, fizz or zoe, stop initiators like Lee sin, Mega-Gnar or master yi on late-game, been an excellent tank capable of mitigate the damage from adc's like draven, lucian or kaisa and his most important funtion in the game, win early 2 v 2 on bot lane so your adc get the kills needed to carry the game.

Shen is not exactly a carry, he is not like irelia or darius that can outmatch the entire opposite team if they are played correctly, so we will pick shen when the damage of our team is complete.
Good Compositions with Shen.
Jg: Graves, Volibear, Kha'Zix, MasterYi
Mid: Akali, Talon, Irelia
Bot: Morgana, Vayne, Draven
with this new season, shen has win an absurd amount of damage, so we can now point to catch and solo adc's with the decent damage we deal

with his empowered Twilight Assault only olaf or udyr could defeat you at level 1, the high attack speed plus the extra magic damage plus Grasp of the Undying deal a LOT OF DAMAGE, so our goal is going to be asure that empowered Twilight Assault, this will be impossible if your jungler starts in the camp next to your lane, what we are going to do is posicionate our spirit blade near the enemy tower, as close as possible obviously avoiding receiving a turret shoot, and CONGRATULATIONS, YOU JUST WIN THE TRADE.

Step 1: Obviously, in the moment you attack your opponent, he or she will respond attacking you too, we are going to play smart and wait for our Grasp of the Undying, it doesn't matter if your opponent attacks you first.

Step 2: Before building armor o getting life steal, one minion wave can deal an absurd amount of damage, more if you are in level 1, so we let or opponent strike first and activate the minion agrro.

Step 3: We activate Twilight Assault, the Ki Barrier plus the Grasp of the Undying will protect us from the damage of the minions and heal us a bit, another of the funtions of Twilight Assault is if an enemy champion is hitted by our spirit blade and tries to run away from us, an slow will be activated.

Step 4: KEEP YOUR DISTANCE, away from our Twilight Assault, shen deals 0 damage, we must wait wisely our Q to fight,the empowered Twilight Assault deals a lot of damage, so your opponent will retreat to the turret to recover, that will give some seconds to recover energy and our q.
Note: obviously we don't have enough damage to explore anyone, so this might take a bit, remember to always ward your lane to prevent ganks, a disadvantage of this way to play is that shen must be constantly pushing the lane, so it will be easier for the enemy jg to gank you.

Best combo dealing damage: Shadow Dash + AA and Grasp of the Undying + AA + Twilight Assault.
WHY THIS: we start with our taunt, this will activate Ki Barrier, shen lacks of attack speed, so the next 2 AA might take a second and half, afther that we use our Q, and our opponent MUST be hitted by our Spirit Blade, 8 secods of Passive reduction plus 2 AA will give us another Ki Barrier, remember our passive has a 10 seconds Cooldown.

Summary: Damage for Taunt + 2 AA + 2 Grasp of the Undying + 3 empowered Twilight Assault

As with every champion, we must play wisely, don't overextend or dive so early, without farm, shen hardly will recover, so a good advice is not to waste our Teleport, everyone use shen because of his ultimate Stand United, thanks to that skill, we can turn any 2 v 2 on bot lane, remember that beetween less hitpoints your target has, the shield will be bigger, so we will try to use it in the last second or after the opponent use flash or a dash so they won´t have a way to escape from your Shadow Dash, If you check the runes, my Agressive path don´t give us any CDR to be constantly using our ultimate, the agressive path will be used if you completely trust that you will win lane or it will only depend on your skill to win it, using your ultimate in the exact moment can make you win the game in a critical moment, if you want to be more focused on helping your team (this mean you will have less farm) i recommend you the Standard Path, if you coordinate correctly with your jungler to create a more effective gank or dive in a risky play on the mid lane, you must have your Ultimate available as soon as possible.

if you followed all the steps i recommended you, it may happen 3 things:
1. You obliterated your opponent: You have a large gold advantage over your opponent, so what we are going to do is abandon our lane, yes, abandon it, right now our global pressure with Stand United is absurd, if you use it correctly (after the enemy team wasted all their skills) the olny thing you will have to do is or focus the closest squishy target or protect your carry. Thanks to our Titanc hydra +sun fire cape, we only need a couple of seconds to take down a turret.
Pros: Your jungler can take your farm and have more gold, you help other lanes beacuse your lane opponent is useless now, you are a second jungler, taking objectives will be easier.
Cons: if your team don't take advantage of this, your laner might take down a lot of towers or take the Rift's Herald

2. Your opponent beat you: This might happend, no build is perfect, this will be harder beacuse shen hardly recover, but our ultimate still is a powerfull tool to turn around a match.

3. both are equal: this case is the hardest to deal with, if you abandon your lane, your opponent will have a free turret or rift's herald, so you MUST HAVE Teleport to come back to lane after use Stand United or you will have some severe problems