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A shen-tle suggestion for a tank without a home.

Molotuv·11/19/2015, 10:05:39 AM·2 votes·366 views

Let me preface this with a question: other than Bonus Health and the appropriate resistance for your current match, what are Shen's other relevant stats? That is to say, the stats that synergize best with his abilities?

AP and Attack Speed... what? Well, okay, that's fine, caster tanks are a thing now, and we've just gotten tons of nice items for tanking! But there are only four completed items that give Bonus Health and AP:

  • Banner of Command (Which is a valid and legitimate item for Shen {especially on Crystal Scar})
  • Liandry's Torment (Which is an item for AP casters to get a nice passive and a little bit of health)
  • Rylai's Crystal Scepter (Which was re-statted to be more of an AP caster item than a survivability item)
  • and finally Rod of Ages, which we will be speaking of at length.

AP tanks that want some Bonus Health have very few choices for items that give them the health they want and the ability to be a threat. Usually, they are threatening by simply getting in the way, or having otherwise powerful abilities that don't need scaling to have huge effects on a teamfight. Even then, a Rod of Ages is the holy grail of stats that gives everything an AP tank needs, Health, Mana, Mana Regen (when you level), and AP. They also stack, and the synergy with Archangel's Staff that means you can become a threat without wanting for Health, running out of Mana, and doing a respectable amount of damage to boot.

Shen, however, doesn't get that item synergy, and has a choice of building up health and failing to be a reasonable threat (outside of picks with his taunt, and auto-attacks with his passive and an Attackspeed item {heh}) and having an ult that is a glorified teleport; and building more AP heavy which leaves him easily killed (his nerfed self-shield isn't sufficient to help his survivability any more) and makes his ultimate capable of saving teammates.

The quickest fix is to switch Shen to using mana, but that will have unintended consequences and his cooldowns and the strength of his abilities will have to be re-balanced. The other options are a light-rework to get Shen out of his AP hell, or a heavy rework to bring Shen back up to the sunlight of our meta filled with bruisers and tanks with reasonable tools and damage output.

Also: Attackspeed and AP? Who do you think Shen is, Teemo?

1 Comments

TeCoolMage11/19/2015, 10:45:35 AM1 votes

You're meant to take pure AP items, or a slightly Maokai no mana build if you want AP. Take pure HP and pure AP items instead of some hybrid AP-HP item because he, by far, is extremely powerful with activateables.

AP Shen is, however, in a less favourable state right now for reasons other than less HP-AP items.

  • His main AP item, Twin Shadows, was removed (but put in FQC so support Shen specifically is still pretty great, if you decide not to take the much better early on relic shield)
  • AP items are more expensive than HP items now so it's kinda a risk
  • Armour is usually better because of the taunts and stuff, along with the fact his shield scales with resistances by making it harder to take HP off it. Currently Thornmail encourages a heavy armour builds which leaves less for AP.
  • Mages aren't played as much anymore, assassins don't need shields most of the time, and ADCs now have enough defense to say "I don't need your 1.4k shield" more, and instead want a champ that can bait and take hits.
  • ADCs stomp all over shields.

Though I'm betting the down votes are for the horrible pun, not because of anything actually wrong with your post