Champion Spotlight
Recommended Items
Tips
- Playing As
Shen
- Keep an eye on allies and be ready to File:Stand United Shield.png save them with Stand United.
- Leverage your Energy to get a long-term advantage over Mana users.
- Playing Against Shen
- Be ready to dodge Shen's taunt and punish him if he misses.
- Once Shen reaches level 6, watch out for his global-range ultimate, which can File:Stand United Shield.png turn fights quickly.
Tricks
- Ability Usage
- Ki Barrier grants Shen a shield that scales with bonus health for 2.5 seconds each time Shen cast an ability.
- This is greatly useful in small trades, where Shen can absorb some damage while dealing damage with his abilities to his opponent.
- Twillight Assault will only trigger Ki Barrier when the blade connects with Shen, not when the ability is activated.
- This is greatly useful in small trades, where
- Twilight Assault is an offensive ability that doesn't deal damage itself, but grants Shen bonus magic damage on his next 3 basic attacks within 8 seconds. If the ability hit an enemy champion, the ability grants even more bonus magic damage and also grants 50% bonus attack speed.
- Versus minions and monsters, this ability grants a flat bonus on top of the bonus magic damage that the ability already grants, capped up to a certain amount.
- This makes last-hitting very easy for Shen: activate this ability, and have between 30 – 175 free bonus magic damage for your next 3 basic attacks.
- This makes last-hitting very easy for
- This ability has a low cooldown and a low energy cost: if you have at least one point in Shadow Dash, each enhanced basic attack restores between Error: Parameter '3' is not accepted. energy.
- If you have enough energy to cast Twilight Assault and need to restore energy, cast it and hit any enemies you find.
- If you have enough energy to cast
- Versus minions and monsters, this ability grants a flat bonus on top of the bonus magic damage that the ability already grants, capped up to a certain amount.
- Spirit's Refuge is a defensive ability that creates a protective zone around the Spirit Blade for 2 seconds, granting 100% dodge chance to all allies in the zone.
- This ability is very effective against enemy champions that rely on basic attacks, such as Twitch, Vayne, or Olaf.
- This ability may be hard to master in the beginning, but the only thing you have to do to make it useful is to cast Twilight Assault just before Spirit's Refuge. By doing this you'll bring your Spirit Blade to you and activate the protective zone around you.
- This ability is very effective against enemy champions that rely on basic attacks, such as
- Shadow Dash is an offensive ability that makes Shen dashes in the target direction dealing physical damage that scales with bonus health to all enemy champions hit and Template:Cctip them for 1.5 seconds. Passively, this ability allow Twilight Assault's and Shadow Dash's damage to restore Error: Parameter '3' is not accepted. energy.
- This ability is a great engage tool if you manage to aim at the right direction and at the right moment.
- If you manage to Template:Cctip an enemy champion, you will be hit by his basic attack for 1.5 seconds. To avoid the potential damage, you can cast Spirit's Refuge on yourself to have the 100% dodge chance, if the Spirit Blade is not already on yourself, you must cast Twilight Assault just before.
- Stand United is a globally range defensive ability that shields the target allied champion for 5 seconds; after a 3-second channel, Shen blinks to the ally's location.
- The base values of this ability are really high. A well casted ultimate on an allied champion requiring help can dramatically change a team fight.
- This ability has one of the highest AP ratio in the game with (+ 130% AP). This makes AP Shen a game changing champion: Stand United on near-death carries grants them a 1300 health shield.
- The base values of this ability are really high. A well casted
- Mastery Usage
- Grasp of the Undying is a great keystone for Shen due to its health scaling, which synergises with his buildpath. The sustain it provides is also useful as Shen doesn't have innate sustain. To top if off, Shen's trading patterns naturally include autoattacks which will proc the mastery.
- Item Usage
- Shen is mostly played as a tank or an attack speed / attack damage bruiser. His kit has bonus health scaling for Ki Barrier's shield and Shadow Dash's damage, a dodging zone with Spirit's Refuge, and a global range ultimate that allow him to blink to an allied champion while giving them a powerful shield. Due to his ultimate, Shen is also a good splitpusher as he can easily join his team if a teamfight breaks out.
- Titanic Hydra and Sterak's Gage are great for a bruiser Shen. The former grants Shen much needed waveclear while significantly boosting his damage due to the item's health scaling. The latter provides yet another shield for Shen which combined with Ki Barrier, make him even tankier.
- Sunfire Cape grants him health, armor and some magic damage while at melee range. The passive is also excellent to solve Shen's innate lack of waveclear.
- Spirit Visage, Banshee's Veil, Dead Man's Plate and Warmog's Armor are great items for Shen.
- For boots, Ninja Tabi or Mercury's Treads are great choices, with Boots of Swiftness being a great alternative.
- An item classified as an offensive item is Guinsoo's Rageblade. It offers ability power, attack damage, and attack speed, all going well with Shen's kit.
- Another great item for Shen is Wit's End. It provides Attack Speed, Magic Resist, bonus on hit magic damage and MR shred and steal. This help Shen deal more damage without sacrificing too much tankiness.
- Shen can also be played as an ability power bruiser.
- Liandry's Torment is a great choice, granting health, AP and magic penetration.
- Rylai's Crystal Scepter seems like a good choice, it grants health, AP and a Template:Cctip, but although the slow applies on Twilight Assault's buffed autoattacks and his Shadow Dash, it would be useless on the latter as the target would be Template:Cctip and therefore unable to move anyway.
- An item that doesn't grant health but is still alright is the Zhonya's Hourglass, it grants armor, ability power and statis for 2.5 seconds.
- Abyssal Scepter grants ability power, magic resistance and aura reducing enemies' magic resistance. However, the aura is only be useful on Twilight Assault's bonus magic damage.
- A straightforward choice would be Rabadon's Deathcap or Luden's Echo.
- An unsual choice would be the Banner of Command, it grants health, health regen, ability power, magic resistance, cooldown reduction and a magic resistance aura.
- Another unsual choice would be Nashor's Tooth, granting attack speed, ability power, cooldown reduction and on-hit magic damage.
- Countering
- Landing Shadow Dash is crucial for Shen as he has no ranged abilities. Dodging the ability will leave him extremely vulnerable to kiting, render his Twilight Assault useless and cripple his energy pool.
- Likewise, a Mercurial Scimitar, Quicksilver Sash, Mikael's Crucible or Banshee's Veil can cleanse or block the Template:Cctip should you be unable to dodge it.
