Shen top is dead, hate to say

(Link related, look at all the scooting I can do now while a ranged champion permafarms my lane)

This is a bit of a long one, so strap in.

This comes from someone with 327,000 Mastery points on Shen mostly coming from the top lane, I've quit the game multiple times and have only come back to play him more. Thematically the idea of a Tank/Ninja/Medic in general is really cool in my opinion, and the rework they're doing doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me or give him a discernable identity.

1: Let's start with his q as a damage tool. Great Harassing tool, and great for farming minions especially against ranged champions. His Q is now a walking up autoattack. That wouldn't be as big of a deal if you didn't already have to come to terms with the fact that he's 3rd for the worst gold acquisition on the toplane (Minus and .)

2: His ability to trade. Without any form of ranged attack to go in (As far as I know not even a range increase from A SPIRIT SWORD THAT FOLLOWS YOU AROUND, you literally stand there and autoattack, or have the chance to all in with his taunt. problem with that is almost every engage you'll have in the top lane now is going to be an all in taunt, using all your cooldowns. What happens when you're Shen and you go in with your E and a jungler's around? You die. That's it. What happens to new Shen when you don't use your taunt to engage? You get harassed out of lane by things that aren't autoattacks.

3: His sustain. There's a lot of talk about him being more viable as a support now, but is that really true? I personally used Q supporting a lot just to hit minions for my ADC to keep them healthy all the time. For me it made for an incredible sustain lane, and clearly the pro's weren't too upset about the idea either. Level 3 or 4 dragons are an easy take when you have 3 people all restoring health. I just don't see how that's going to be matched by his passive shield.

4: The 400 energy. His energy costs are ludicrous now. For escaping you'll be able to dash at most twice before exhausting it all and hoping a full out sprint can get you out of your situation. In a world with Riven's and Lee Sin's I'm really not sure why they'd hurt his mobility that much.

5: His taunt dealing Physical damage and scaling off MAX HEALTH!?!?!?! Alright, that's pretty cool. Though I do wish it was still magic damage that it dealt, for those rare situations that buying arguably the worst item in the game was more worth it. Or at least keep the AP scaling, since it was mostly useless 95% of the time anyway?

6: His W. What? Like, what? 20% of his kit is using a thornmail to hurt your enemies through the taunt with 50% reduced damage. Autoattacks being dodged = no thornmail damage. Honestly just stupid for his kit, and makes no sense with him.

His new kit obviously does bring a lot new to the table and hopefully the ratios they're giving him balance out a lot of my concerns, but it just plainly doesn't look or feel like Shen. I'd almost rather go out on a limb and say this rework is worth just being a separate champion, and if you just change his E and R you're already there. But on the bright side, now that they're reworking my favorite champion I can finally stop playing League of Legends! Maybe I'll pick up horticulture.

        _TL:DR - Lack of sustain for objectives/leashing, no ranged damage whatsoever, constant bullying out of lane/bad trading capabilities, a W that makes no sense, his damage split being all over the place, thornmail partially useless, bad energy costs, much less mobility, no extra AA range with A SPIRIT SWORD._