If you’ve played ten games over the course of the last week, you’ve probably seen Shen in nine of them. He’s one of the most popular toons in the game, and probably the best tank around. It seems timely to give some discussion to his strength and the path development around him will likely take.

First off, Shen’s a tank. Anyone who tells you otherwise is nuts. I played a game recently in which the Shen on my team got a malady. Malady for god’s sake. His passive gains more damage the higher your health pool, so you’re best off building for health. Building items like Sunfire Cape and Aegis can give you the health you need along with resistances to beef up your tanking.

Shen’s real strength a this point comes from his ability to avoid damage. His W skill can reduce huge amounts of incoming damage. Pop it when you’re about to take damage from multiple sources and you can laugh as your health goes nowhere. With the ability to both taunt with Shadow Dash and run from a fight, it’s pretty easy to escape death.

On top of his ability to avoid/mitigate damage, Shen has surprisingly high damage output. His Ki Strike hits hard, and the fact that you can dash to catch/taunt a running target gives you unparalleled chase.

From a development standpoint, Shen poses a unique problem. The shield design went from being a static shield to blocking damage from all incoming sources. It took his shield from being next to worthless to extremely overpowered. I could see Riot reducing the amount of damage blocked, or turning it into a percentage damage block. The percentage seems to be the best fix, but I’m guessing it will probably going back to a static shield. I think Shen’s biggest problem, though, is that he works on the energy system. With a passive heal and his incredible ability to mitigate damage he has virtually unlimited laning potential, giving him the farm required to become unkillable. He needs to lose one of those benefits – the infinite spell casting, the healing, the damage mitigation, the dash – in order to fall in line with other champions, or he’ll still be sitting head and shoulders above every other tank in the game.

A couple days before the latest patch went live I gave an overview of the ninja champ, Shen. At first glance he seemed as though he might suffer from confused design, and that his energy system wouldn’t scale well. I was reluctant to unlock him at first, but after seeing the way he changes a team fight, I decided to give him ago.

First, I think Shen is among the more balanced champions in the game, even though he dramatically changes the dynamic of any game he’s in. His ultimate gives him the ability to prevent ganks and sometimes turn them for a kill. It’s a unique skill, despite similar abilities in someone like Pantheon or TF because Shen shields his target, actually for quite a lot. At rank one, Shen’s ult is a 450 damage shield, more than enough to soak damage output of two heroes at level 6. Shen also shields himself for half that amount, giving you a serious advantage, particularly in what used to be an even fight.

Unfortunately that’s about it. Yes, his taunt can mess things up, but it’s short enough that it doesn’t drastically alter the course of a fight unless you’re near a tower. The rest of his skills are actually pretty boring, and that’s Shen’s biggest drawback. He’s boring. His ultimate has a fairly long cooldown – two minutes or more. The rest of the game seems to be a lot of running around waiting for a chance to use that ult.

Part of the problem is that his CC, the taunt, is so expensive. It takes most of your energy pool to cast, which is why I recommend building him with a Rylai’s. Vorpal Blade becomes a spammable slow, basically guaranteeing no one will get away from you. The chase is long because you do so little damage, but you’re durable enough that you should almost always get the kill.

I’ll be curious to see if he gets any changes in the next patch. The Ezreal buff surprised me, and though Shen hasn’t seen the same overwhleming negative outcry, I also haven’t seen many people singing his praises.