Let's talk Shen

Okay, so Shen's rework has been out for a few patches now, he's got a decent winrate (Which I'll talk about in a moment), and people more or less have a feel for what his strengths and weaknesses are. There is one big issues with Shen that I haven't seen brought up before, and I believe it's the biggest thing holding him back.

Shen has some of the worst base stats in the entire game.

I mean seriously, have you ever LOOKED at Shen's stats? Cause if you did and Compared and Contrasted them with other similar champions (Or even not so similar ones) you'd be scratching your head and going wtf.

Let's take a look. (Numbers may be SLIGHTLY off as I write this, but are generally withing 10 units, I'll correct any outstanding errors)

Shen's base HP: 530 +73/lv, which gives him 1781 HP at level 18.

For reference, Sion has 1783 HP and Riot has stated numerous times has terrible base HP to compensate for his infinite Scaling. Even Sona is in the ballpark of 1790 HP.

Shen's Armor: 26 +2.6/lv, which gives him 69.2 Armor at level 18.

The level 1 value is fine in this case, but his scaling is so terrible that it puts him at the 3rd lowest armor in the entire GAME. You know who he beats?

Thresh, who has 16 base armor forever. And Orianna, who clocks in at 68 Armor. (But has passive Armor and MR whenever holding the ball)

This runs contrary to Shen's entire goal of becoming a tanky splitpushing Duelist. Even if Shen has a gold lead on his opponent as they get more levels it becomes less and less relevant due to the huge disparity in base stats. This is similar to the issue Mordekaiser had/has where his poor base stats meant he relied on outleveling his opponent to function.

Now, this is the part where people will say "But Shen has a 51% winrate he's fine!" This is true, he does. But it's not the only factor. Shen's winrate is at its highest pre 20 minutes, when he can snowball his lane and others through ult and TP, after that it practically nosedives, this is when people start equalizing in levels and gold, and suddenly Shen finds himself outstatted and outmatched by his peers, as his base damages and Q stops cutting the mustard to go toe to toe with some of the other duelists. It only starts to pick up again after 40 minutes, where Shen can start abusing his global pressure as teams group up, since shen doesn't need to outduel you super late game if he can drag you away and port back to his team.

So what we're left with is a tanky ninja duelist who fails at all 3 aspects of his kit. His base stats are pure garbage so he can't rely on levels, his kit has very little natural scaling (Q scales on AP, W doesn't scale, E does physical damage and scales with his HP), so he spikes early by relying on what little scaling he has with Q ranks and an early Sunfire + Titanic, then either snowballs the game while his opponent catches up, or falls off the face of the planet.

And all this flies in the face of his old Identity and what the rework was meant to accomplish. They visually updated Shen to emphasize his role as a tanky brawler, but didn't make him tanky or a brawler. Old Shen was a far better duelist and splitpusher due to not being 100% reliant on Auto Attacks to do damage. I'd link the rework changelogs just to show what they did to his stats, but the summary is: (Assuming level 18 Shen)

-Lost 234 HP -Gained 5.5 HP Regen -Lost 6.4 AD -Lost 24% Attack Speed -Lost 24 Armor -Gained 5 Movespeed -Gained 200 Max Energy

I'll end this rant by saying that I know Shen is a functional champion, but he feels unrewarding to play and doesn't succeed at the very thing that is core to his identity.

TL;DR Shen is a Tanky Ninja that just happens to be squishier than Sona. Nuff' Said.