Why is the new champion called Shen, and where did Shen go?

I understand that the league character developers like to keep their creations updated. However, much like the Karma "update", the Shen "update" was a replacement of the character. Here are my arguments for this viewpoint.

1. Scaling: Shen used to scale on a mixture of health and AP, either build would add something to his archtype of tank. These would also each allow him to build damage, allowing him to scale nicely into the late game. Now, he loses significant power if he would chose to build tank. His q scales AP, along with his ult, however he gains no bonuses to his tanking aspect from either. His Q is purely for adding damage and making him harder to escape from, making him feel like a bruiser/assassin. Shen was never about being either of those things. The mixed scaling means that his kit feels confused, and turns him into a specialist pick to counter a specific set of champions, but quite underwhelming compared to most top laners. (Also, encouraging a stronger AD shen exacerbates the issue of his already powerful split pushing potential with his ult/tele combo to never miss those teamfights)

2. Style: Shen used to have a great touch of range to his damage, with his Q being ranged, allowing for ranged farming and some poke against typically difficult lane opponents that kept him at a distance while kiting or zoning him. While he is currently enjoying an arguable power spike, his potential compared to other common bruisers such as Riven, or Assassins such as Rengar, is weak, dismally so. His dash is a slow animation, and has quite a cooldown, which makes it hard for him to stick to enemies for very long, and very hard to engage on ranged enemies. Not only that, but he now needs to pop off 3 full auto attacks to land full trade damage and he is forced to shield as soon as he uses his abilities, making him painfully (or in the case of his opponent, hilariously) predictable. His old kit could dash in, land an auto attack and q on the way out. His fights were mostly quick trades with only one or two strikes before backing out and going on the defensive to farm again. This represented his characters old style of Iaido fighting (drawing, attacking, cleaning, and sheathing a blade in one motion) his new kit has taken this away and effectively landed a crushing blow to his character and the old emotional response.

3. Change: Three of Shen's five signature moves where completely removed and changed on a fundamental level. His passive, Q, and W are so different from his old kit that any parallel drawn would be a wild stretch of the imagination. While I have no issue with any of these abilities, it seems they would have been better served on a new character, instead of implanted into Shen's frame. Shen's percentile damage now scales against the targets max health, instead of his own. Making him less interesting as a tank, less powerful as a tank, and less dangerous to low-health champions who still sport the damage to melt his defenses, particularly casters (AD and AP) who need not rely on auto attacks, making his W utterly useless against most meaningful damage sources, this also makes him uncharacteristically burst-like against high-health opponents. The exact opposite of his old kit. Shen used to be an effective dive-machine. He provided a significant threat to ADC's and Mages who got too close, and he only needed to spend a few moments to get his full burst on an opponent. Now he plays more like a bruiser, slower damage, and even with a tank build he is overall less tanky. The loss of the regen from his Q and the chosen damage mitigation of the W makes him less sustainable, and easier to poke out of lane, especially given his higher cooldowns for both W and E. Shen's dash is almost the same as his old kit. Champions should not be an amorphous blob of potential in each game, they should have a typical role, and style. Shen's ultimate is essentially the same, and is considered his trademark ability I am glad it stayed the same. (That said if I made a teemo that dealt AD damage, was melee, had a heal, and gained speed instead of stealth, but still had mushrooms, it's not really teemo.) And the ability to teleport to champions and minions is not unique (cause, you know, teleport), nor is the ability to shield enemies unique, meaning that even this purpose could have been implemented into a new character with a little imagination. To sum up reason three, the amount of change made to Shen, is nearly the same as the amount of new creation that would go into a new character (sans the artwork/animation).

4. Softly Tanking: I made up this term to describe new Shen. He feels like a soft tank, a bruiser that cant pick a damage type, or an assassin that falls short of the mark. He has lost his characteristics to the update. He feels hollow, and uninspired. When building tank he is always "Softly Tanking" he has one shot with his E to make a meaningful play as a Tank. After which he is no longer playing as a tank, and falls into a support/bruiser role attempting to use his E to mitigate damage his Q to deal damage and his ult to save someone taking concentrated burst. Old Shen worked as a Tank/support, the whole time, his W allowed him to stay in the fight longer along with his Q, which also helped his teammates and worked as a focus point, his E had the same utility, and his ult had the same utility. His passive allowed him to deal a bit of surprise damage from time to time, but was only truly effective on low-health targets. His focus was always on being a tank, all of his abilities reflected that, and his passive gave him some incentive and a way to be aggressive without breaking build. Now he is activating abilities instead of managing his passive. In order for him to initiate a fight he is forced to use that passive. Imagine if Riven, Janna, Lee Sin, etc. had to use their shields (with the same cooldown, in Shen's case longer) as soon as they activated another ability, a shield is very often wasted when it can be easily predicted. (Some may say, "look at Vi" but Vi was designed to be a bruiser, not a tank, and her build is based around dealing steady damage and providing AoE damage to the fight, and she was originally designed for the Jungle, where such shielding is most useful. She has a longer, faster, higher-damage dash with a less compromising form of CC, and a single-target dash that makes her untargetable and is connected to a decent Stun, she has an animation reset on her E, and all of her abilities scale from AD, her purpose, playstyle, and postilion meta are all different from Shen's, and her shield was meant for jungle sustain, not lane sustain or team-fight sustain).

In summary, Shen is no longer the champion he once was. The changes have fundamental changed his role, play style, build, and feel, along with his look. He lost his sustainability, range, and trade speed. I wish I could convince someone, anyone, who makes decisions on character design to hear me out on this issue. I like the old champions, and I hate to have them ripped out from under me in the name of a "rework" that functions more as a recall. A small change here and there is not a big issue, addressing a problem of balance and style is not an issue. If point-and-click attacking was what you wanted to avoid, make Shen's q a skillshot, with appropriate change to its damage/cost/cooldown to match other skillshot abilities. If the shield felt too powerful, add some cooldown time, if it felt too weak add some health. If his passive seemed too powerful, nerf damage/scaling, if it seemed too weak, add damage/scaling. If you felt he no longer had a place in the current game, take a look at his play-time and win/ban rates. He was a good champion with clearly defined strengths and weaknesses. This new Shen has as much in common with Jax as it does with old Shen (both have activated auto-attack magic damage modifiers, both have the ability to block auto attacks, (though shen's can help the whole team)). In closing, the new Shen should have been a new champion, and in its current state is a confused mess of contradicting roles and builds, none of which live up to their specialized kin. Shen has been changed so much that no vestige of his old playstyle can be efficiently implemented into his new kit, and he has lost his character. I disagree with this style of change and wish that it would have been better implemented, and I hope for it to be better in the future.

Thanks for reading.