Is shen a viable option for climbing in ranked?
Is shen good in low elo for climbing in ranked? Trying to get to Gold as a support/top main thanks in advance
7 Comments
Disclaimer: silver 2 last season, started in bronze 4 this season. Bronze 3 now.
I would recommend Darius, garen , Orn, or Jax and taking ignite instead of tp because of strength in the landing phase and team fights. They are also not too difficult to learn. However, Shen top is fine but you will notice some matchups are nearly impossible (flora, hermidinger, and Darius). Climbing with shen is like with Zac yes you are very team reliant but that is not a bad thing. You have to decide which fights to take and know which ones you can win. You can also snowball your teammates. Not a bad champ at all for climbing. Jungle shen and support when are really good as well. I say stick to easy champs and improve macro and you should be fine up to a point but knowing at least 2 top laners would be preferable. I am also on my way to gold as well won 5/5 with Jax jg. Good luck and hope my advice was somewhat useful.
If you are playing in a duo Q or a party of 5 - YES
If you are alone in solo Q it's much, much harder.
He is one of the better tops + utility champions but he's heavily reliant on his team to be effective. 
these champions are pretty similar(Obviously not his ult) but are easy to learn and climb -
This is my own personal NA Silver a$$ opinion.
I don't play alot of ranked. Last season I played just to get gold for the aatrox skin and I had a good winrate. Just a disclaimer.
My thoughts are viable, but not close to ideal. Shen is strong early. You can, if you know him properly, get an early lead and early kills. He's fun to play early and very strong versus melee matchups. Less against ranged but he isn't the worst champion to have against ranged by any means.
You can look to make tp plays bot and help them get a lead but you are relying on them playing well the whole game.
The thing with Shen is, even if you get an early game lead your strength falls off hard once people start getting levels and catching up to you and the game continues on. Your damage will become paltry later even with the Titanic hydra build. You have to try and close earlier in my opinion playing shen but the issue is you can't press the issue yourself.
Youre very reliant on your team, even if you go righteous glory initiation mode. And that is not a good thing for solo queue.
Top Lane as a whole in my opinion is just about the worst or second worst role for climbing. I moved from top to playing jhin and ADC and my winrate improved around 10 percent if memory serves.
If you really like Shen you CAN do it but it's not ideal. And I like shen.
Can't say I played much shen sup though, maybe you'd have better luck there.
Yes. People assume Shen does nothing in lane only because they never encounter true Shen players. Shen can very well generate solokills if he's disrespected and he can exert pressure. If you're interested in his playstyle but think he's too team dependant, just roll with Pantheon.
yes is the answer because you can go supp or top as him, how ever when i go supp as him i either take guardian or after shock , to explain is i build the ap supp tank item because you do do damage a decent amount in fact and taking guardian stacks the ap and when u ult the person you ult gains double shields becuase of it.