Talk:Shen/@comment-5930958-20141231124243/@comment-25754362-20150121212108

Although there's little to judge yet, for what it's worth I think...changing him from an assassin to a "fighter" implies that they're going to change his passive and overall kit to have synergy that helps out a gradual fighting style as opposed to a burst style, which is what his kit currently goes towards. During team fights right now, it's not just about taunting as much as possible but finding juicy targets to do his Q>Passive+AA combo on which can do a surprising amount of damage. It is pretty satisfying to pull off, but as Shen is right now I have to admit it can be kind of problematic to synergize and makes him really an assassin by technicality really, since it's a bit difficult to fully boost up that burst damage without digging too much into his tanking ability, even if it is kind of fun to try to experiment with tanky hybrids that also give some small benefit to his burst.

It's just too situational though. Although I don't think Shen's -too- bad right now, I feel like a problem the devs have with him at the moment is that he's too difficult to balance properly in his current form. If they improve his burst damage they'll run the risk of Shen having too easy an access to that while being tanky as hell. There's all the changes they've made to his ult. Shen's kit as it is now is just either too strong like the old days, or it's kind of sitting in some uncomfortable position so really outright reworking his whole concept from the ground up may be the best idea.

And making him more of an overall fighter sounds like a good step in the right direction. When I think of Ninja tanks, I think of Ninja from FF11 back in the day who was (albeit unintentionally) one of the games major tanks, and rather than huge burst they kept agro with a slow but unrelenting offense which I think sort of fits with a defensive ninja idea a lot better.

I hope he's reworked well, but I'm pretty excited if they do. Seeing what they've done to older characters like Sion where they not only changed a few things, but practically rebuilt him into something a lot cooler, I'd love to see what they could do with a completely reworked Shen.