Hello I'm a plat 5 player on EUNE server. Frankly I am pretty bad and I know it. I am making this guide to deepen my knowledge with Shen. At the time I am writting this guide I only played Shen like 3 times. That doesn't matter anyways. I will be trying to climb elo from my miserable plat 5 0LP spot with Shen/Darius top, AP Ezreal mid, ADC tristana, Jungle Lee sin or some Alistar/Thresh/Soraka support. I will probably only play the first 3 champions I meantioned(Shen, Darius and Ezreal.) I hope I will get some RATIONAL feedback (trifroce STILL sucks Kappa). I won't make this guide fancy with amazing graphics because I see no reason in doing that.

Pros
Kinda good damage.
Realy really tanky.
Can splitpush and ult to teamfight if enemies force one.
Can jump over walls with E really frequent to escape/chase.
Can taunt entire enemy team and take all damage easily.
Can make some really good plays with his ultimate in laning.
REALLY high solo-q potential.
A lotta poke and sustain.
Enemies probably don't know Shen's TRUE potential

Cons
Gets killed by vayne
May be boring to play
May be really hard to fight/cs/poke enemy and watch all teamates if they need your ult or if it wouldn't be enought to save them.

I just realised that you should read this if you REALLY want to read this. This is pretty much my mad-scientist's ramblings. So you should be free to coppy matery page and skip this paragraph.

Skip this paragraph if you just want to know what masteries I use. Well. Since I am "troublesome" with my rebelish thinking I should be sent to play be sent to play 10 Matches Nasus vs Teemo Faker. That would show me how to stop thinking logically and rationally! Basicly I am saying that people that write stuff like this "butcher mastery helps you lasthit easier" or "some attack speed is always good!" just want(HAVE?) to write some useless stuff. If you are faced with double-edged sword, cdr, as and butcher you CHOOSE from them. You CHOOSE from them. You put each point into the mastery you think is best for the situation. The way other people are doing this is just making my head hurt. Okay. This rambling is done, time to see my masteries.

Basicly shen is melee. So double-edged sword makes you do 2% more damage in return of taking 1% more damage. For example shen does X damage and takes Y damage. Talking about damage done : damage taken ratio. It would be X/Y of course. Afte double-edged sword it's 1.02X/1.01Y~1.00990099~1.01 = 101%. 1% more damage done/taken ratio. This may seem ******ed as it does to me but nevermind. Continue reading son. You may become as great as your master one day!

Basicly then you can choose between 1.25% AS and 1.25% CDR. Basicly I LOVE CDR and I think that CDR is superior to AS in this example. So I get 4 points into CDR. Now I can choose between some 10ad@lvl18 + 4AD or 2.5% AS + 1% more damage done by your teamates when you do damage to enemy(really good when you taunt entire team on you) and after hitting enemy with aa increase on spell damage by 1% (stacks 3 times). Ofc I pick the 2nd choice because it's better. :O

In deff tree get regen and shieldy thingy because they are clearly best for laning. Pick unyelding because that shieldy thing is really bad and this mastery compensates for it. Veteran's scars and + max hp 3% is always how you should go on ALL lane roles(maybe some slowness reduction for some champs maybe). Since you are tank you will probably get CCed most when you are in enemies's faces. So pick tenacious. Now you got 10 points in deff, 11 points left. You will LATER pick "adaptive armor" (since it's so op) 1/1 "enforced armor" 3/4, "oppression" 1/1 and "legendary guardian" 1/1. 1+3+1+1=6. 11-6=5. You got 5 points to put into armor matery, mr mastery, anti crit(anti-christ) mastery and anti-aoe mastery. Do that depending on enemy team. Usually (or if you don't know enemy team) you just pick 3/3 armor 1/1 anti-crit and 1/3 mr.

So rune stuff is simple thing. Basicly I will write what I pick and what if viable(? I am no faker to tell what's viable).

I love cdr. I love scaling runes too. Did you know that scaling hp/armor seals, scaling mr glyphs are SAME at level 6 (SIX) compared to flat ones? So that means if you aren't some realy hardcore earlygame player with some hardcore earlygame champ (panth?) then you shouldn't take flat ones.

I use:
Marks - 9 x 1.7% AS = 15.3 % AS
Seals - 4 x 24hp@lvl8 + 5 x 3arm@lvl18 = 96hp@lvl18 + 15arm@lvl18
Glyphs - 9 x 1.66%cdr@lvl18 = 15.03%cdr@lvl18.
Quints(big ones) - 3 x 4.5% AS = 13.5% AS

You can also pick:
Marks - Hybrid pen(pros pick those (you aren't one)), Armor is pretty good and efficent. Flat ad suck, scaling ad suck. Get over it.
Seals - Nothing else. Scaling armor and hp RULE. Flat armor and flat hp SUCK (put them in if you don't have anything else tho).
Glyphs - You can pick scaling MR. Flat mr sucks...
Quints - Hybrid per, armor, mr, hp. Any scaling quint sucks. You can pick your MS quints if you love them so much.

Pick Q > W > E
Max R > Q > E > W
Max R > Q > W > E If you hardly need more than one taunt/escape(especially if you are splitpushing!) and enemies cooperativelly focus you, Shen the Tank.

Picking E first may be good for invade.

Well. I find myself in a weird situation. Usually people say "Flash da best summoner pick it ALWAYS" but I find myself thinking that flash ain't "all that" on shen in top lane. If you are new with shen pick FLASH/TELEPORT. I will just write a list of usefull summoners and you can pick 2 of them:

Flash - Life saver, may give kills, May use E+FLASH(YES E + FLASH. Flash extends your E) to taunt enemies
Teleport - Really good if enemy top laner / jungle love splitpushing. You can teleport to stop them. Shen can't really "backdoor" because not enouht damage and if he was to backdoor he would let teamate go in and ult teamate. Pick this against harsh lane.
Ignite - More kill potential, grievious wounds (makes healing on enemy affected by this debuff HALVED! Basicly instead of healing up 200HP that Nasus would heal up for 100HP). Really good against swain, nasus or some high-lifesteal enemy. Also against soraka(ignite enemy soraka is healing ofc).
Exhaust - Helps against attack speed orriented enemies or ***aisans. Also I think really strong with your ultimate (R) ganks.

Passive - Shen's basic attacks periodically deal「 4 + (4 × Shen's level) 」(+ 10% bonus health) bonus magic damage and restore 10 / 20 / 30 energy.
Every basic attack reduces Ki Strike's cooldown by 1 second, doubled to 2 seconds while Feint holds.
When you got it you are stronger in trades. Basicly this. That's all you need to know.

Q - ACTIVE: Shen throws a blade at the target enemy, dealing them magic damage and marking them for 5 seconds.
MAGIC DAMAGE: 60 / 100 / 140 / 180 / 220 (+ 60% AP)
Shen and allied champions heal over 3 seconds upon damaging a marked enemy, with the duration refreshing with subsequent damage.
HEAL PER SECOND: 2 / 3.3 / 4.7 / 6 / 7.3 (+ 0.5% maximum health)
If Vorpal Blade kills its target, Shen instantly benefits from a second's worth of its healing.
Use this to poke enemies, or put this on siege minion, smack it every 2 seconds and heal up a lot. You can get heal up max from 8 seconds. You can smack it before it goes away to get full 8 seconds (ofc hit it before). If you lasthti with Q you get heal of 3 seconds instantly. Your teamates can also heal up from this mark if they hit enemies that have it.

W - ACTIVE: Shen shields himself for up to 3 seconds.
SHIELD: 60 / 100 / 140 / 180 / 220 (+ 60% AP)

Basicly shield. Use it to defend from poke and use it when fighting. You get 2 seconds of passive when you AA with w on (instead of 1).

E - ACTIVE: Shen dashes in the target direction, dealing magic damage to all enemy champions he hits, Taunt icon taunting them for 1.5 seconds and restoring 40 energy per target hit.
MAGIC DAMAGE: 50 / 85 / 120 / 155 / 190 (+ 50% AP)
Taunted opponents deal half damage to Shen.

Basicly you use it when fighting in lane (don't get minions aggro early because that HURTS!), use it to engage in teamfights, use it when chasing someone, use it to jump over walls, use it when running from enemies, use it right before enemy would turn on some next-aa ability(nasus Q, rengar Q, wukong Q), or would cast spells (taunted enemies can't use spells OFC). Amazing spell. Do you know what my 15%cdr@lvl18 is for?

R - ACTIVE: Shen channels for 3 seconds, granting the target allied champion a Stand United Minimap shield that lasts up to 5 seconds.
SHIELD: 250 / 550 / 850 (+ 135% AP)
If the channel completes successfully, Shen blinks to his target, placing himself between them and the nearest visible enemy champion.

Basicly you get a shield and teammate you targeted get shield, you start chanelling teleport on your teamate. After 3 seconds you appear near teammate you chose. Do this if you think you could save teammate, turn around the fight or whatever. Also use this on your carry when you are splitpushing and enemies engaged on your team. In teamfight if someone goes in on your carry you can use E on enemy and after q and aa you CAN ult your carry to give them a REAL shield. You can't use this spell on teamate if you can't see them (nocturne ult or graves W). This is channel and can be stopped by stun, taunt, fear, silence, root(I guess), polymorph, pull, knockup, knockback, knockside( :D Vi Q, R and draven e).

You need pratice, logica thinking and time to learn how to farm. "Practise, practise, practise" - Gbay99 2012,2013,2014,2015. @gbay99 stop using this saying. Stop.

Starting items:
Doran's shield + 1 health potion. // Casual start. good vs a lot of aa poke.
Doran't blade + 1 health potion. // This is a rare one. Use it if you can AA a lot to heal up.
Cloth armor(15armor) + 5 healh potions. // vs gnar, riven, pantheon, yasuo, zed, kha'zix, rengar. Just all super physical damage enemies.
Null-magic mantle(25 mr). // This one seems to be okay.

Good items to get(basicly you know what they do, so I will just list them out and maybe explain something)
Sunfire cape - Take this 1st vs physical damage. You should probably have this item in your full build
Spirit visage - Take this 1st vs magical damage. You should probably have this item in your full build
Pick ninja tabi or mercury's treads.
Randuins/dead man's plate: Pick randuins vs crit, dead man's plate against non-crit. May pick both in the end.
Thornmail's armor - good item
Banshee's veil - good item
GA - I died then I got saved by some angel and I was k.
ZZ'rot - never built this item. I just don't like the concept (like triforce). You can build this if you want.

Now. You may be wondering why did I get AS marks and AS quints. Well. Botrk and wit's end scale with Attack speed (ofc because they are on-hit).
Botrk - Good item if you want to get back more hp while fighting, against high hp enemies, good for pushing turrets.
Wit's end - Gives 55mr after 5 AAs on enemies. Good if you have a lot of magical damage in your team.
Triforce - Botrk is better. Face it. Maybe it's my hate to triforce that is talking here.


New items:

Titanic hydra - really strong item. You should build it if you need more damage. It gives waveclear, but your waveclear is fine without this item. Scales really hard with hp and AS (my as runes :3, botrk, wit's end).

I haven't checked out other new items yet, but they are bad acording to saintvicious.

Don't build botrk, wit's end, triforce and titanic hydra ffs. You need to be tank. AT LEAST 3 tank items (excluding boots).

Use Q to farm only if you are zoned. Use Q on big minion to heal up a lot, or enemy to do some poke damage. Use Q + E + W on enemy to trade if you think that this will be to your advantage.
Don't forget to use R to save teamates IF you think that that would save them (use e right after end of channel if enemies are attacking you (and you have teamates to do damage while you taunt enemies).

This is what makes diffirence from silver and gold player. Gold players know what "freezing lane" and "zoning" means. If you are stronger than enemy you can just lasthit minions(if minion count about equal), kill a few minions if enemies have more minions than you and just stand near your minions so if enemy was to try to kill a minion you could poke/trade/all-in enemy.

You can either:

Splitpush

You splitpush and look at minimap a lot. If there is more than 1-3 enemies missing(depending on your strenght :3) you should probably run back because they are probably comming for you. When you push you can ult your teammate. It's the point of splitpushing with shen. You are making enemies do one of those choices: go kill shen(2-5 people)-> you notice missing enemies and retreat -> enemies lose advantage, go in 5v4 -> you ult team and TA-DA! 5v5! -> you win b/c you're op, send teamate to splitpush same lane you are pushing -> you win 1v1 because you are shen -_-.
Win-win-win situation here.

Go with your team

- You go with team, taunt enemies, do damage, maybe ult some teammate.

That's all I can think of. This guide was written 1hour 29 minutes. This guide was mainly made for myself analyse everything about Shen. Shen is raelly good. Bye.