Hi, this is my first guide on Mobafire :)
I’ve put a lot of time and effort into making this guide, so please read the entire guide before commenting/rating it.
This is the way I play Shen, and it works wonders for me.
I've had Shen for a long time now but he’s so far been too weak to play in ranked games. But now it seems like he'll once again appear on the competitive scene.
In the most recent patch Shen got a HUGE buff. Now he is not only able to tank, he can also destroy the enemy carries if they stick in the fight.
In this guide I will teach you how I play Shen and if you see a problem with the build please tell in the comments. I am happy to receive input on how I can improve my guide :)

Credits to jhoijhoi for the template, which you can find here.

Pros +AOE taunt +Good harass with his Q +Good sustain with his Q +Has a global ulti Stand United +Good farm with Vorpal Blade and Ki Strike +Has a shield with Feint +Uses energy = never Out of mana +He’s a ninja :)

Cons -If you miss taunt he has almost no energy -If target dies he won’t teleport with his ulti -You have to sacrifice yourself sometimes -Have to make good engages, a bad engage can mean the enemy ace you

My masteries are 0-21-9. You are a tank and you benefit most from the defensive tree


Defensive tree:

Resistance +6 magic resist is good to have in the lane phase. Many harassing abilities deal magic damage.
Hardiness Armor is always good. Helps you deal with ad champs like Tryndamere
Durability It gives you bonus health which scales well with you passive Ki Strike
Vigor Extra sustain is always good when laning.
Veteran's Scars +30 health is good to have early game. Helps you survive just that extra auto attack or tick of Ignite
Enlightenment I take this over Initiator because your ulti Stand United has a long cooldown. This mastery makes you able to help the team much more often.
Honor Guard This one is pretty obvious. You are the tank.
Juggernaut All tanks should grab this ability.

Utility tree:

Summoner's Insight 15 reduced cooldown for Flash is always nice to have.
Good Hands When you are dead you can't help the team.
Improved Recall That 1 second reduced recall has saved me many times.
Swiftness Since we went with CDR in the defensive tree we'll get the movement speed here instead.

• Greater Mark of Attack Speed: These runes synergizes well with Ki Strike, and i don't think Shen would benefit as much from armor/magic pen runes.
• Greater Seal of Armor: Armor is always good for a tank to have, and it help greatly when you are up against AD champions, and when you get ganked.
• Greater Glyph of Magic Resist: These runes gives you just that little tad of survivability you need when fighting AP characters.
• Greater Quintessence of Armor: Since there is no armor in my build this rune make you survive the meta-game.
• Greater Quintessence of Health: Bonus hp = bonus damage from Ki Strike+ added early game survivability.

Good summoner spells:

Flash: Flash is good on almost all champions. You can use it with Shadow Dash to escape any situation.

Heal: I find heal very useful on Shen. In the laning phase you can score a couple of cheese kills. In team fights I use this skill to heal my teammates. I used it many times to save the carry from long range ultimates such as Lux' Finales Funkeln

Teleport: This ensures you get back to lane without missing any creeps. I don't feel like it’s the best choice since you already have Stand United, but its definately viable.

Exhaust: If nobody on your team has grabbed this, go ahead and pick it. If you can exhaust their carry in a teamfigth it’s much easier to win it.

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Okay summoner spells:

Ghost: Good for chasing a running enemy. Also it's very easy to reach the carry in a team fight.

Ignite: If you are laning against a Dr.Mundo this spell will give you the lane superiority.

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Spells not to take:

Clarity: You don't have mana.

Clairvoyance: Let the support pick this.

Cleanse: This spell is for the squishy carries.

Smite: It's for junglers.

Surge: Only good on carries.

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Ki Strike: This skill is really good for last hitting creeps. It also becomes your main damaging ability in late game. At rank 18 with Warmog's Armor and Frozen Mallet this ability deals 300 magic damage.

• Use Ki Striketo harass opponent, but do not miss creeps because of harassing.
• By stacking health Ki Strike becomes very powerful.
• Ki Strikesynergizes very well with tanky attack speed items such as Wit's End
• Once you have gotten your Wit's End Ki Strike will replenish enough energy to let you spam Vorpal Blade and Feint in a teamfight.

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Vorpal Blade: Vorpal Blade has a very low cooldown which is great for farming. Vorpal Blade deals decent damage and also gives you great sustain. If you are on blue team, use this on the blue golem. The healing buff helps the jungler a lot, and could lead to a high hp gank afterwards.

You're going to want to max out Vorpal Blade before Feint and before Shadow Dash.

• Vorpal Blade is good at harrasing your opponent, but make sure you don’t miss any last hits.
• Use Vorpal Blade on blue golem to help out your jungler, it’s a free skill and you team will benefit from it.
• Vorpal Blade refreshes your auto attack timer.

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Feint: This is your shield. It absorbs decent damage, and will save your life more than one time each match. It’s great for absorbing harassment. This is a skill you should spam every time it’s available in fights.

You're going to want to max out Feint after Vorpal Blade and before Shadow Dash.

• Feint costs almost no energy so you can spam it in fights.
• Use Feint together with Shadow Dash under your turret to get some easy kills.
• Feint Makes your Ki Strike refresh faster. Use Feint even you are not being attacked to boost damage.

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Shadow Dash: Shadow Dashcan make or break a game. In the laning phase use Shadow Dashto escape ganks, and when ganking. In team fights Shadow Dashis essentially free, as you are almost bound to hit more than two enemies. Use Shadow Dash to either taunt their carry, or to save you own carry from attackers.
Also use Shadow Dash to jump walls. You can jump the thin river walls, the wall behind dragon, the wall behind baron, base walls, and most of the walls in the jungle.

You're going to want to max out Shadow Dash after Vorpal Blade and after Feint.

• Use Shadow Dash after having killed dragon to jump the dragon wall and be safe.
• If you can hit more than three champions with Shadow Dash you get more energy than you started out with.
• If you use Flash and Shadow Dash you can catch everyone off guard. This is also a good ganking tip. Works on even LeBlanc and Kassadin

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Stand United: This is my favorite part about Shen. Stand United is essentially a free teleport. A smart strategy is to initiate on the enemies, when they start focusing your carry use Stand United to shield them from harm. If timed correctly both you and the carry should be alive to take key objectives afterwards

You're going to want to max out Stand United before any of your other abilities since it is your ultimate.

• You can use Stand United to escape ganks.
• You can split push, and if a fight erupts use Stand United to enter the fight.
• Use Stand United on a teammate to scare away chasing enemies.

As you can see on the picture ive put some blue and some red markings on it.

Blue means you can dash over

Red means you can not dash over

Early game you can use Ki Strike to do a good level 1 combo. When your opponent is about to last hit a creep throw Vorpal Blade at him and auto attack once to proc Ki Strike.
If you started with a ruby crystal this combo deals 60+55+30= 145 damage without calculating armor and magic resist. Also you heal 12 hp from doing the combo. Once you get Feint you will take minimum damage from your opponent.
When doing this combo, save your Feint until the taunt from your Shadow Dash runs out. When taunted, enemies only deal 50%damage to Shen. You can follow this combo up with another basic attack to add more damage. Let’s do a calculation.
50+105+65+30+65=315 damage. This is a strong combo and when used a couple of times on your opponent, he becomes afraid of your damage, and then you can completely zone him out. Remember when zoning to always have enough energy for a Shadow Dashin case you get ganked.
In later levels you use the same combo, only stronger.

• : Mercury's Treads is one of the few defensive boots in the game. If the enemy has more than 2 strong auto attack champions feel free to grab a pair of Ninja Tabi instead.
  
• : Warmog's Armor synergizes good with Ki Strike. Also since you are the tank, and you’ll get the passive on Warmog's Armor stacked very quickly since you’ll get a lot of assists.
  
• : Wit's End synergizes extremely well with Ki Strike. The attack speed makes Ki Strike proc more often + it gives you a good amount of magic resist.
  
• : I normally get Frozen Mallet when I play Shen, however Rylai's Crystal Scepter is just as good. The reason I get Frozen Mallet is for the extra 200 health, but you’ll get more damage from Rylai's Crystal Scepter
  
• : Its first in late-game I start having trouble with the AD carries. Thornmail is a cheap and efficient way of dealing with the Ad carries. I don’t buy it to take less damage from the AD carries; I buy it to negate items like Bloodthirster. When they can’t heal I’m able to straight out beat them in a fight.
  Atma's Impaler is also a viable choice at this point.
  Sunfire Aegis has been recommended to me if the enemy carries are not a big threat. It deals 40 AOE magic damage every second and provides 45 armor. However since I don’t feel like the 45 armor does enough for it to be good, I would instead recommend getting another Warmog's Armor. When the second Warmog's Armor is fully stacked, you will reach the 5000 hp Mark. Also Ki Strike will get an additional 100 damage from another Warmog's Armor.
  Also if you just want more damage, buy Zhonya's Hourglass. The Scaling on your abilities are quite decent, so it will boost your damage output by a lot.
  
• : I’ve only gotten to this point in one game. This item has good synergy with or Frozen Mallet/ Rylai's Crystal Scepter and or Warmog's Armor. When you get this item, you’ll have about 170hp regen/p5

Summary of Builds:

Full tank:
Tank with AP:

I will update this section when I meet new opponents in my games. I will also give some tips on how to beat them if possible. : I just recently played against an Olaf, and found out he was very tough. His Reckless Swing will melt through Feint, and his combo will deal more damage than your combos. He’s also very hard to gank once he reaches level 6 because of Ragnarok.
If the enemy team has an Olaf going top, I would not recommend you to pick Shen.

The goal of the game is to get gold to buy better items to eventually win. I’m going to give away a few tips to successful laning.

• Use Ki Strike to last hit.
• When Ki Strike is on cooldown, use Vorpal Blade to last hit instead.
• If you are good at using Vorpal Blade and Ki Strike to last hit, you’ll not miss a single creep.
• Even if you are right next to a minion, use Vorpal Blade to last hit it if possible. That way you’ll get some hp from it too.

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Your role in a teamfight is to engage and disrupt. Your job is to get to the carry, and preventing him/her from participating in the fight. When initiating save Shadow Dash until you can hit multiple enemies, and if possible try to hit the carries. When the fight has begun, you should attack high priority targets. If let’s say Ashe start running away from the team fight, DO NOT CHASE!!! Because while you are chasing Ashe your team has no tank, and the rest of the enemy team has free reign over your team.
It’s very important not to be careless when playing Shen. If you die you set your team in a difficult position. In a teamfight the team needs you to excel.
Also remember, YOU ARE THE TANK!!! You don’t need the kills, but your carries do. Do not try to steal kills, as it will not benefit the team as much.

Non.ranked

Ranked

As you can see from my match history, i have a huge amount of assists when playing Shen.
also the last game was really just a rapefest for everybody. therefore i have that many kills :)

Before the patch Shen was not a great champion. But now that Shen has been buffed, I think he’ll make a return to the competitive scene. His Ki Strike is very powerful now when you stack health. His Vorpal Blade now offers him great sustain and harass in the lane.
He got a big damage buff and got even tankier after the Nautilus patch. His combos are a good source of damage, and he can build very tanky with some AP/HP items.

I would like to thank all of you readers if you’ve come this far. I would be very happy if you’d try out my build. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but don’t just leave comments like: “This build sucks -1”. It’s okay if you downvote my guide, but please have a reason to do it.

Credits to jhoijhoi for the template, which you can find here.
Without jhoijhoi I wouldn’t have been able to make this guide. You should check him out if you want to make a guide as well :)

17-02-2012:

• Build was created.

18-02-2012:

• Added chapter: People to avoid.
• Improved my explanation on Ki Strike
• Added a second Warmog's Armor under Item Build: Thormail