Shen "A Demonstration of Superior Judgement"

50649086DEL1·Apr 12, 2015·6 votes·1,312 views

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**_

11 Comments

Worst Mid EverApr 12, 20153 votes

Shen and Rammus taunts should be in a 450 range AoE around them so they can actually fill the role of a tank during a fight, instead of being gimmicky champions built around map mobility that can just be ignored during fights. Don't understand why fighters like Vi are given more CC than real tanks.

50649086DEL1Apr 12, 20152 votes

I honestly have no problems with his taunt. Decision-making is an important part of playing Shen. With an AOE taunt that decision-making kinda takes a hit. I like the way he operates, not every tank needs to walk in and CC the whole enemy team. He would undoubtedly have to suffer in his other tools if he was given an AoE taunt and that isn't something I want.

Worst Mid EverApr 12, 20152 votes

even if he hits a 5 man taunt its only 1.5 seconds and then he can be completely ignored because he does no damage and the taunt CD is too long, meanwhile someone like Sion has a 2s stun that has an aoe 10x the size of shens taunt then another huge aoe knockup on his Q while being much tankier and doing more damage, enough to kill a carry with no damage items if he gets his full combo off on them + a few autos, and there have been 10+ heavy CC fighters released since Shen was popular during the renekton era of top lane

DarthSpectrumApr 13, 20153 votes

Don't forget movement speed.

Shen needs a serious MS buff.

50649086DEL1Apr 13, 20151 votes

I like the MS buff you get from ZZ'Rots near towers, but the build path is crappy for him on the magic side. If they made the magic item that builds into it Spectre's Cowl I would rush it every game. Only time I would build sunfire first is if I'm getting hella pushed into tower. I'm going to actually make a thread requesting this change. Keep an eye out for it if you like the idea.

SIaytonApr 12, 20152 votes

I like the visual ideas for Shen, he needs to be more shadowy and have more style. I think more people would play him if he weren't so flat out boring.

50649086DEL1Apr 13, 20151 votes

I agree with you completely. I actually think Riot is kinda feeling us on this one so I wanted to get these ideas out as soon as possible in case they were working on something for him. I would hate for them to do a full rework, because I think he is really cool with his current kit. Out of all the ninjas though he gets the least love. Players should be more rewarded for outplaying people with him, but the risk/reward is unbalanced most of the time unless you have someone on your team backing you up.

I put most of my time into the Q changes and the Ki Strike is a buff that to me is a no-brainer, but the visuals just kinda came to me after I started typing. Shen's lore is kinda limited so I worked with what they gave me as best I could.

TomA3XApr 12, 20152 votes

About the whole shadow thing, it doesn't fit that well with his lore. Zed is a ninja who opened the box of shadows, learned the secret art and then killed Shen's dad, (their master at the time). Shen probably wouldn't be going down that same route. Other than that it looks pretty cool

50649086DEL1Apr 12, 20152 votes

His lore says he is a shadow warrior. The shadow isn't like Zed's where it is a clone, it is his actual shadow. It would be jet black with no wispy effects and he wouldn't drop into his shadow, but literally fall backwards into it. He would keep his current twilight auras when casting. (with a little touching up for vanity)

I'm glad people are interested in the visuals, but I am moreso concerned with opinions on the Q and Ki Strike changes.

RenailleApr 13, 20151 votes

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.

I got to gold with him just spamming his spells off cooldown so idk.

50649086DEL1Apr 13, 20151 votes

Shen's Q doesn't have the greatest range, there are a lot of champs that can easily retaliate with their pokes. These champs can easily get stats that affect the damage of their pokes, while this is not the case for Shen. His Q damage spikes at about mid game, but then heavily falls off. I want the ability to throw more Qs so that he can build at least a Sheen and have a little more staying power when split-pushing and cracking down on the enemy carry.

His abilities aren't really spammable as you only have 200 energy, and if you do spam them only your Q and Ki Strike do damage.

Nobody wins by just spamming spells. That is like saying Jordan won games by just shooting the ball. Please if you are going to comment make it something productive to the discussion. I would really like players to see this and give their honest thoughts so that Riot will be persuaded to take a serious look at Shen's current kit/visuals.