Shen "A Demonstration of Superior Judgement"
I think that Shen actually embodies this quote quite well. You have a lot of decisions to make when playing him. Do you poke with your Q? Do you use it on minions and heal with your melee? Do you keep your distance and use it to last hit? You have to make intelligent decisions on when to use his W to negate or reduce damage from enemy pokes. With your E you have to weigh the risk/reward every time you use it, because of its high cost. And of course if you are going to use your Ult you want to make sure it is worthwhile as you could lose out on a lot of gold/exp and in some cases die.
Shen is a ninja that wants to have a heavy impact on the map while simultaneously turning the tides of battle in his team's favor with superior decision making. I actually feel that Shen is in a really good place right now, but could use a few little tweaks to keep up with the other ninjas on the Rift; and look awesome doing it of course.
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Ki Strike: The only change I would suggest for this is that the cooldown be lowered by AAing towers. This would make his split push a tad bit more worry-some for the enemy team. Not having this capability really slows down his tower damage making it a little difficult for Shen to take advantage of enemy absence.
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Q::Dusk Blade: So before I get into the technical stuff I want to discuss my opinion of this ability. As every Shen player knows, building AP can be hard to justify sometimes, so without that scaling damage his Q eventually becomes rather weak. There is nothing wrong with this, Shen still benefits from the mark it provides. However I believe it would be healthy to make this tool a little more dynamic while also giving him a little more power to intervene and create that balance his order so strongly believes in. This is one of Shen's two main tools for damage dealing, so I believe giving him a little more to work with would help players to capitalize on his play style. This should also be a slight buff to his split pushing. I would also like to press the fact that he is a ninja and work around the shadow theme.
Q will now have two charges, similar to Vi's "Excessive Force". Shen will now be able to either throw a Q to mark two separate targets, or double-mark a single target. Marking a target will cause Shen's shadow to tether to them. A single mark will cause any damage that the target sustains to trigger Qs healing passive effectively passing heals to him through the shadow tether. A double mark will cause a percentage of the enemy's damage to be passed to Shen instead of the enemy's target.
Cooldown: 1 Recharge time for first Q: 6/5.5/5/4.5/4 Recharge time for second Q: 10/9.5/9/8.5/8 Mark Time: 5s Heal amount stays the same. Percentage of damage output directed to Shen.
Ki Striking a marked target will instantly return a Dusk Blade restoring the cooldown of a single charge. (So Ki Striking after two Dusk Blades is optimal.)
The healing component stays the same, the only change being that his allies are no longer healed. This is the trade-off for Shen being able to direct a portion of a target's damage to himself. (This damage can be blocked by his W and will proc Thornmail.) This may seem like a lot of Qs that he can throw out, but keep in mind that Shen's energy is quite limited. I know programming the mechanics of this might be difficult, but I'm just making suggestions here.
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W::Feint: Shen falls into his shadow allowing it to temporarily take his place. Once the shadow is either destroyed or its active time ends, it retreats back into the ground and Shen pops back out. This is only visual and the shield remains as it is now.
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E::Shadow Sprint: Shen falls into his shadow and sends it running forward. For every tether/mark that the Shadow Sprint runs through 40 energy is restored. (Giving him the potential to restore more energy off of one opponent.) At the end of the taunt Shen pops back out and his shadow retreats. (This is visual, no invincibility is given to Shen during the sprint. If his shadow is CC'd or he takes fatal damage, the shadow immediately retreats popping him back up.)
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R::Twilight Intervention: Shen begins channeling his ult and a shadow is slowly cast over target ally. He falls into his shadow and pops out of the shadow cast over his ally. (Once again this is visual with all of the mechanics remaining the same.)
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_**There you have it people. I know that this was mostly just a change to his Q and Ki Strike as far as balance changes, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to throw in my ideas for his visuals as well as some tweaks to his ability names. (Honestly a little inspired by Noob Saibot and a Russian book called "Twilight Watch" that I read when I was younger.) Like I said before I think Shen is in a pretty good place right now, but with all of the dynamic champs that are being released and reworked into the game, giving him just a tad bit more to work with seems a mite justified.
I'm interested to hear what you guys think about Shen in his current form, and the changes I have suggested. Please refrain from focusing on numbers though as those are things that Riot would of course tweak for balance. I only included numbers to give a better idea of how the abilities would operate. I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys have to say! =D**_
