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Shen is by far the least durable and worst initiators of all tanks in the game in the later stages of a match. However, in the beginning he is by far the BEST tank. With tons of starting health and armor, the ability to heal himself and his ally while laning, and a sizable amount of burst damage he can start a team snowballing very quickly.

Shen is best played with a team of very strong early to mid game champions. A very succesful team would include atleast two of the following: Heimerdinger, Pantheon, Shaco, Warwick, Ezreal, Katarina. These champions are all very strong early and can benefit a lot from the snowball effect that Shen can help create and keep going. Probably the strongest combo is shen/pantheon because of the unbelievably strong map control you get from pantheon's jump with stand united. You can actually channel stand united as pantheon jumps, land before him and taunt everyone back into the AOE. It's actually kind of sickening.


I play Shen extremely agressive in the early game. Invest in some armor penetration marks, Dodge seals, Cooldown reduction per level glyphs and flat health quintessences. For masteries I would suggest 0/21/9 making sure to grab all of the mitigation talents but not improved cleanse (you dont even need to get that spell) and the improved regen, ghost, exp, and greed in the support tree. My first items are always Doran's Shield and a health pot. At level one this should give you roughly 791 hp (assuming there are no other ninjas on your team, if there are -1 hp for each other) a ton of armor, and a nice amount of auto attack damage because of the armor pen. I use ghost and ignite for summoner spells.

Skills:
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Maxing shadow dash first lowers the cooldown, initial energy cost, and increases the taunt duration so it makes it extremely easy to setup kills. Unfortunately Feint doesn't prevent nearly enough damage anymore to make it worthwhile. Vorpal blade not only does almost the same amount of damage as Feint would prevent but it also allows you to heal so the life swing is much larger even with the higher energy cost. Do not underestimate your ability to kill someone with auto attack and vorpal blade spam. The amount of healing you get from vorpal blade and amount of dps from Ki strike is huge and you can easily kill most carries this way.


Item build:
Start :Doran's shield Hp pot
First trip to base: basic boots, ruby crystal, 2-3 health pots and if you got firstblood then you can probably afford a fort elixir too.
2nd trip to base: Finish Leviathan, finish mercury treads if possible

From here you want to diversify your build depending on the other team.

1) If there are a lot of casters I would suggest getting an Aegis or a Phage next. Phage is usually what I would get because the aegis is just so expensive and you've already invested ~3kg at this point its hard to get it fast enough to matter.

2) If there is only 1 caster or two not so scarey ones I will usually say stack sunfire capes. If you pan on tower diving a lot focus on the chainmails first otherwise whenever you have time to go to base pick up a giant's belt.

End game item build:
Doran's shield
Mercury Treads
Leviathan

Sunfire Cape
Randuin's Omen
Sunfire Cape

OR

Frozen Mallet
Aegis
Sunfire Cape


If the game goes on so long you have 6 items then you probably lost but just incase that's usually what my item setup looks like.

Important tips:
- Get golem and lizard whenever your lanes are comfortable. It's a very good idea if your ult is up to do this because the buffs plus your teleport in can swing a battle in a huge way.
- Whenever possible let someone else initiate the fight and use your ult on them to bait as much CC and damage as possible. Shen doesn't have any damage preventing CC (stun, fear, etc) so the less damage you take early the better.
- Always lead a fight with shadow dash whenever possible. The amount of energy restored from hitting someone lets you follow up with almost any spell.
- When laning try to push your lane a little more than your opponents. When you shadow dash it will aggro the minions and provide a bit of extra damage as well as give you more opportunities to heal with Vorpal Blade.
- Vorpal blade is extremely good for last hitting if you're full on hp.
- Try to save Ki strike (when his swords glow purple) for champions whenever possible. Don't try too hard to hit champions and waste procs, its sometimes just as good to use it to get a last hit.
- Shen is a pretty efficient jungler so whenever there is no action in your lane feel free to go kill some neutrals. I do not recommend jungling all of the time because Shen is actually a very slow jungler.
- If you have a jungler Shen is a pretty strong 2v1 if you level vorpal blade first, push your creep waves, and harass at level 3.
- Don't be afraid but don't rambo either. Shen is pretty strong early and durable if you get enough items but don't try to solo tank towers for too long. Sometimes just shadow dashing in, getting a ki-strike'd auto attack and throwing a vorpal blade is obnoxious enough to force an enemy back.
- You can shadow dash through most walls, use that whenever you need to escape.
- Sunfire capes will aggro towers if there are nearby enemy champions so be careful when attacking towers or if you have a lot of armor use this to let your team tower dive. It is especially effective on Inhibiter turrets because the enemy team is usually pretty far behind at that point.
- Don't be afraid to take kills but don't be a dick either. A 20 stack leviathan can end a game extremely quickly regardless of what the rest of your team does or doesnt have but sometimes it's just better to let the carries get fed.