Thoughts on the Shen rework. (with poll)

On the champion as a whole, I'm glad they kept his ult and taunt. Turning around a fight is one of the best things you can do with Shen, and Riot kept that the same. Also, they kept his split-pushing ability the same, mostly (I'll get to that). I want to break down Shen into his roles.

Laning Shen will have a tougher time laning, as he doesn't have a way to farm from afar when shoved or a way to poke. But I'm more worried about something else - imagine two minions are at low health and both will die. You can only last hit one of them with an auto. Most champions have something to deal with this (barring say ), but now Shen doesn't. This is a huge nerf to laning phase, one that no one notices. As for beating the opponent in lane, I'm not as worried. As a Shen enthusiast (I don't play League enough to say I'm a main), I know the power of his all-ins, which is half of why rushing sunfire is so crucial. His new Q will increase this power substantially. While removing his poke will hurt him, I'm not sure it affects his laning power too much, just his playstyle. And I do note that it creates more counterplay by setting a timer on his damage capability, like Ryze.

Late Game Shen is a split-pusher, no doubt about it. However, unless they allow his Q to affect turrets, they nerfed his split-pushing threat slightly. Shen is also traditionally a tank/bruiser: he builds tanky and still has decent damage. By removing health scaling from his offense, they significantly reduced his threat to squishies. Why should this matter? Shen has a taunt. As any good or player tells you, the whole point of a taunt is to shut down the damage from a carry, usually an auto-attacking one. No, I didn't forget about , but his taunt is different as it's his ultimate. Anyway, both of those champions are supposed to be a threat to the enemy Marksmen (or , and the like). Rammus does this through his excellent W. Shen used to do this through his burst, which was sustained off of his tankiness by his passive. Now that he does %health damage, he's a bigger threat to tanks than marksmen. This does not fit into his role!

I think there's a simple solution to this. Change his Q to do damage based on health, and then the Q-through-the-enemy to add %health damage instead of buffing the current damage. Also, the initial Q activation could deal (maybe reduced) damage to turrets, but not the %health damage. This would keep his power, some of his flexibility, and generally stop him from turning into a wall with minimal peel. It would also help Shen continue to counter those he best counters because he can still gain offense while building defense (which hasn't been a problem for Shen in the past.)

His new W is much improved, as it can save allies even more strongly during ult ganks or cause Shen to take even less damage from the carries he threatens. For those that are confused, it does activate if only Shen is standing in it, so Shen wasn't shunted to bot lane like was for a while.

TL;DR Laning: Lost poke, stronger all-ins, just a different playstyle Late game: Less splitpush threat, less threat to carries, better defense but still bad peel

EDIT: I hadn't realized that Shen's E scales off Health, and that makes me happier. I still feel like his Q could use it too, but now that his passive does as well, he might be in a good place. Still, the poll must go on!