Shen/Strategy

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 your teleport.
• 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.
• 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 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 energy.
    • If you have enough energy to cast Twilight Assault and need to restore energy, cast it and hit any enemies you find.
• 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.
• 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 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.
    • In the end, a great combo is: Q > W > E. This will grant you bonus magic damage on your next 3 basic attacks, a 100% dodge chance for 2 seconds, and a Template:Cctip enemy at your mercy.
• 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.

Mastery Usage

Item Usage

• Shen is mostly played as a tank or a 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 him a powerful shield.
  • Titanic Hydra and Sterak's Gage are great for a bruiser Shen, granting him some health and some attack damage.
  • Sunfire Cape grants him health, armor and some magic damage while at melee range.
  • 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. For boots enchantment, consider buying Alacrity or Furor if playing as a bruiser.
  • 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.
• 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 sadly the slow will only apply with Shadow Dash.
  • 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. Sadly the aura would 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