Taking Smite in Top as Shen for Cinderhulk?

Perfectly fine if you're okay with losing out on your other summoner spell.

Not really worth it. It is better to build . While it doesn't give the %health, it will allow you to take a more useful summoner spell like .

I don't take summoner spells for lane, I take them for late game - so I'm always tele / Flash.

Maybe not worth it for Shen, TOTALLY WORTH IT for Volibear, it is so much fun!

Just do Shen jungle if you want to build Cinderhulk. He can clear rather safely, but kinda slow at first. He has decent ganks, and his ultimate is the best countergank tool to have.

Or you can build Sunfire Cape.

I like lane smite. Let's me counter jungle after I push the wave. Doesn't always pay off though.

I think your point is that Shen doesn't really need teleport because if his global ult. Most Shen players take ignite for the lane presence but I could see smite work on him built into cinderhulk. The main issue to be honest is that most of the build into cinderhulk is not going to be cost-efficient, even when completed you really see it shine after your 2nd or 3rd item finish and that's after boots as well.

Can I see it happening? Sure.

Do I think you sacrifice too much lane presence in order to take advantage of it? I think so.

Only viable if you are in a matchup that you know you'll win for sure.... or at least you know you'll be able to safely farm. I wouldn't take it in a lane against a strong split pusher either. While Tele is probably the best top summoner, smite is still an excellent team-play choice to help your jungler (lv 1 leash ez) whenever he comes top and it makes killing dragon/baron counter-jgl that much easier. It can be a useful mid tool if you want to play defensive, and supp can use it decent in rare occassion too.

If your jungler is ok with it, taking smite and just killing Gromp/Golem will make up for the loss of summoner spell. A lot of junglers won't really mind since it'll give you lane dominance and free them up to focus the other two lanes, but definitely ask before the game starts. And IMO, Tele/Smite would be better than Flash/Smite for shen.

Actually I love taking smite tele on Shen with 9/21 masteries and I also have cdr in my runes. Standard other than that. I like it because even with my less early power I get big fast procing my passive for chunks and also challenging smite to reduce damage to me in lane never lets me down. I rarely need ganks because I have such a safe lane when I'm behind. Best feeling ever is playing super passive building up a wave of to of creeps then shadow dashing my enemy so they hit me and get agro and then smiting them for 6secs of vision and damage reduction. That vision is key though because it stops them from using bush to get out of agro on minions. Beyond that once I have cinderhulk the aoe wave clear gets nucking futs. Only issue there is for me is that I need. NEED at least an average jg who doesn't feed and either mid or adc to do the same. I cannot 1v5. But no shen can do that. I can initiate and I can tank for days, but if they have any kind of peel I cannot get any kills in that without the team. But my ults are the thing of gods. I've turned lanes around hella easy with those. Weather it's by denying enemy zed his squish kill or actually coming into the fight and landing 4 man taunt, popping q on everybody so my team can heal up while they work toward the backline. Th challenging smite in that scenario is also super helpful to reduce the ad carrys damage which is most likely focused on me now. Once e is back up I dash back through the frontline and my ten gets more free hits. Then PENTASSIST! Gg shen op