Why don't Shen and Maokai...

I understand smashgizmo, but as you said yourself a lot of this is inconsistent. For example, a while back Cho'Gath was modernized. He too has anti-mage mechanics (silence), built in anti burst(bonus health from ult) and can be used as a CC tank or AP fighter.

When Cho was modernized, he received MR/per level has one of his modernizations. I saw the changes to Maokai on PBE, and I have to say that it's great that you're modernizing an old champion, but it sticks out like a sore thumb when 2 arguably per tanks lack what is considered a basic per tank stat.

To be honest, in at least Maokai's case, he isn't doing too well in solo queue or professional scene. Lacking MR/per level means he has to allocate more mastery points, more rune slots, and more item slots to receive the same tankiness as other tanks and fighters that, as you say, have similar tools to Maokai.

I see this update as an opportunity to do what you guys did to Cho a while back. Along with the changes you have already made, I don't see the harm in maybe adding it on Maokai while he is on PBE to see how he fairs. If it's overbearing, it can always be removed. Just like when Nidalee got MR/Armor added to her cougar form during her rework, but it was then removed. It's possible to do the same with Shen too. At the very least, I think it's worth a try.

Thanks for the detailed post. That really explained a lot to me.

Look, most of that would be valid if AD burst hadn't become a thing a LOOOOONG time ago.
Burst isn't exclusive to mages nowadays, and neither is sustained damage exclusive to AD, so saying it is is just uneducated and a copout.

One of the reasons Mao and Shen and some others don't fit the meta currently is because junglers tend to rush health (SotAG) and armor (Randuin/Sunfire) early and rely on base MR to carry them until they can get a Visage.
Mao and Shen cannot do that, lest they be rolled by any AP who even scratches them.

Add to that the fact that MR itemiziation is kinda sorta terrible right now, and you get very weak tanks.

Visage and Banshee are the only good ones right now and you can't rush them otherwise the top/jungler/jungle itself will roll you.
Locket is meh and niche vs AoE teams.
Wit's has a terrible build path. Abyssal is hardly a tank item.

That, and the fact that you pretty much NEED armor early, and you removed Locket's armor, means these characters are weaker because of it.
Kassadin works because passive and can build abyssal relatively early if vs AP.
Yasuo works because he's building glass cannon anyways.

The rest just DON'T. Period. Maokai will NEVER feel good to play vs any strong AP unless you give him MR/lvl, due to itemization for tanks/junglers being so limited.
They need to buy 2 MR items to reach decent level of MR vs a balanced Tank/Fighter/ADC/AP/Support team, while any other tank/fighter can be done with only one.

lol but yasuo gets double crit chance from his passive

ohright nevermind he has 2 passives :^)

I understand ur point, but for the sake of consistency, choose one path!
either give no champ scaleing mr and balance around with more active defensive mechanisems, or choose the much easier way wich i would prefer and give mr/lvl to all melees, or atleast all tanks.
Yasuo and Kassa both have high mobillity and a 'hit and run' playstyle, so they won't stay in a fight and facetank, they dive in and out and try to avoid getting hit, so they are closer to ranged champs in how they behave in a fight and therefor don't need mr(ot other tankstats) as much, but this would lead to the Question why YI or Fiora or any assasin/light-fighter have mr/lvl....

Simply giving all melees mr/lvl would make things much easier to understand for players, and it wouldn't be to hard to blanace around it as it's a rather minor powerboost for 4 champs, of which two actually could use a power-boost(i would consider kayle, nida, jayce and elise as ranged)

But as Nautilus does have MR per level and he also has an anti-burst mechanic (as another RIOT member pointed out for why Shen doesn't have MR per level). Naut's shield also gets stronger based on items he wants to buy. With the exception of mages and Riven, who also has MR per level even with a shield, most of the champions who have shields don't scale with things they want. The exception is Malphite, and he has to not get hit for 8 or so seconds.

If we're looking at just the damage reduction on Maokai, Master Yi gets a huge damage resistance buff, and it's selfish, but he still has MR per level.

Hell, even Blitz has MR per level, and he's bot lane where there is significantly less magic damage. Plus, he has the anti-burst in his mana barrier.

There's seriously no reason that Maokai or Shen shouldn't have MR per level.

But Maokai is a magic tree D:

Just sayin'

Maokai and Shen don't even deal that much damage. When champions like Shyvana or Renekton exist in the game, who are both naturally tanky and deal good damage, why do we need other tanks--who trade their damage for utility--to be...well, not as tanky?

Mao and Shen having the MR weakness seems excessive, considering they have quite a few other weaknesses. Also Banshee's Veil is bought by nearly everybody these days, particularly tanks/fighters.

shen has a low-cooldown AoE taunt that basically turns off a mage's ability to contribute to a fight for 1.5s.

We should keep in mind here that every form of hard cc turns off everyone's ability to contribute to a fight. The anti-mage functionality of Ruthless Predator, Solar Flare, Pulverize, and Curse of the Sad Mummy doesn't seem to preclude respectable base stats.

It's also not really reasonable to call Shen's taunt 'low cooldown'- it's 16 seconds at rank 1, and is certainly more of a one-point-wonder than Feint. Even if you max it second, Shen is an energy based champion - if he can't get off multi-man taunts (or a crap ton of Ki Strikes), the cooldown is largely irrelevant because the energy cost is so damn high.