Shen too hard to play in Normals

WitchQueen Annie··2 votes·979 views

I feel that Shen is too hard to win in Normals if your MMR is around mid Silver.

  1. If your team is competent, they don't need your Shen Ults to win the game (Shen will be a Plus but he's not essential, you could have picked anyone else)... if your team is absolute garbage, you can Shen Ult and turn a few fights but I promise you, later down the road, their consistent mistakes will catch up to them and you will lose regardless (meanwhile, you have zero capability to 100-0 anyone in the backline). The middle case scenario where you have an Okay team vs an Okay team and your Shen Ult snowballs your team is just too rare.

  2. You CAN get kills in top lane if you are better, but because you are a Shen (and not Renekton, Fiora, Jax etc) it generally doesn't amount to much in the long run

  3. Even if you Shen Ult (get a few assists) and TP back, you tend to fall behind in EXP/gold compared to the other laner; this means YOUR TEAM MATES BETTER BE GOOD because you are struggling to stay even in lane while making plays in their lanes

  4. Your build path is AWKWARD AS HELL. Titanic + Full Tank gives no CDR, if you try to fit CDR (either into Runes or the build) it messes you up one way or another. Unlike a more logical build (like BC into full tank for a Renekton or Darius) Shen's builds are awkward as all hell.

  5. You team fight is ENTIRELY, almost 100% dependent on whether you land your Es or not. Miss your E? Watch the rest of your team get slaughtered. There's ZERO middle ground. You can miss a Darius Q and still do a lot in a team fight, you can screw up a Renekton dash or miss your Q and still auto people to death. Shen? Nope.

  6. If you do the high elo, split push with the threat of Ulting back to your team when the fight starts... don't bother. I swear, when left as four your team has NO CLUE what to do. They won't factor in the Shen Ult factor and will just wander around and get caught. Smart enough not to fight 4 vs 5 sometimes but rarely ever smart enough to not get picked off while doing this. On the other hand, if you are ON THE GROUND with them to guide them in 5 vs 5s all of a sudden, one of your abilities (your Ult) isn't all that useful.

  7. Also, half the time you try to Shen Ult to join a fight late game... the person DIES before your Ult finishes channeling. The shield needs some SERIOUS buffs man.

2 Comments

Moooose31 votes

This post is seriously just a heap of incompetence. Having shen on your team forces enemies to play differently once you hit 6 since any fight could turn into a 2v3 with like a 600 damage shield. It's like playing with a twisted fate or an eveylnn. The games you play with shen vs without shen are honestly incomparable.

WitchQueen Annie1 votes

The theoretical benefits of Shen are obvious. He's theoretically a good top laner.

  1. He can survive any match up Top
  2. From level 6 onwards he presents a Global Threat
  3. 4:1 split with Shen is OP in terms of out-rotating the enemy
  4. A decent amount of peel and CC for the team to engage and disengage

However, all of this requires a baseline amount of game sense, competency, and communication with your team.

It just doesn't happen in low Silver.

Your team doesn't know how to play with a Shen. The 4:1 strat will blow up in your face because your team will get caught.

Your Ult plays bot side... will be unecessary if your team is good. If your team is bad it may lead to a few turnarounds but in the long run, the positional incompetence of your team will catch up to them regardless. And you don't have the ability to kill anyone by yourself. You can extend the game time by 10 minutes with a good Ult, but a bad team is just too hard to save.

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