"I just don't get that Champ." Shen Edition.

-incoming wall of text-

There are some champions in the roster I just can't make work, at least not very well. I am a player with enough games played to know the game back to front (at least on paper), but I seem to lack the reflexes to take my game to the top level; that - and I tend to bounce around with my picks. Sometimes those picks cause me (and my team mates) some grief. There's a list of champions cause me that anxiety & I will be reaching out in a series of posts to, hopefully, figure out how to fix it. While I've had great runs with every champion, as has anyone does at least once; there are some where I just don't feel very strong when played.

To kick things off: F'ing Shen How Does he work?

Shen is that champion that I seem to pick by the cycles of the moon. The internal dialogue goes something like: "Wouldn't it be great to pick Shen and be an amazing ninja? several games with Shen played "...Note to self: stop picking Shen."

Shen can be a strong lane bully versus some standard top lane picks (and very much NOT a bully versus some other common picks). But no matter what, when it comes to winning the lane, I seem to fall behind against every opponent post 6. Opponents get ults that wreck face, Shen gets a teleport. Now - am I selling Shen's ultimate ability short? Maybe. Probably. But the usually a Shen ult in a solo queue match goes something like this:

1. See opportunity to swing a fight with Shen's ult.
2. Use Shen's ult
3. Opponents see Shen's ult and immediately stop chasing
4. Allies don't notice Shen's ult and continue running away
5. Shen appears next to oblivious team mates with nothing to do.
6. Rage.

This seems to happen more often then not and it's incredibly demoralizing. Maybe the animation and sound are not enough, perhaps giant block red letters need to appear on the screen of the intended saying, "SHEN ON THE WAY. FIGHT THE DUDES." But even then, the problems don't stop there. Shen's kit just feels awkward and underwhelming. The relevance of Shen's skill damage falls off very rapidly, pursuing tank items out of the gate tends to increase the feeling of weakness vs lane opponents & taking any of the more offensive "strong duelist items" tends to make Shen's team fight potential, what he is arguably intended to do, a losing prospect.

I suspect that champs who sacrifice damaging skills for global map presence are intentionally made less potent due to being many times more powerful in the hands of the career eSports players due to their superior team-coordination, and tend to under-powered in solo queue due to a mentality more akin to "wander around and duel things. be a badass. everyone support my awesome." But maybe I'm missing something more.

Your thoughts?