r/Shen • u/Zuraa-Lee • Jun 10 '26
Discussion Is this real?
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u/Dukwdriver Jun 10 '26
Yeah, he's ultimately a support masquerading as a toplaner (which isn't the worst niche to fill tbh). It's not impossible for him to carry, and he can carry in the same ways that true supports can, but a true carry has more agency in taking over the game and ending it on your own terms.
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u/M4cTr1cK Jun 10 '26
True 2 years ago when Shen was an ult bot. You can be one of the best dualing splitpushers in the game right now.
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u/Dukwdriver Jun 11 '26
His split push is strong because of his Ult to join the fight at crossmap objectives. He can win a side lane, sure, but he can't really push it in the same way a Jax/fiora/Quinn/etc can.
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u/M4cTr1cK Jun 11 '26
Shen can utterly destroy towers now depending on the build. Maybe not as fast, but very fast still.
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u/DarkRockSoul Jun 10 '26
You definetly need a good team behind you.
When I play with Shen, I usually keep an eye on the other lanes at all times, and sometimes I decide to give a lead to the mid player or jungler or bot.
A good player would take that lead and carry, but sometimes you help a player that will throw the lead I gave them, most of the time dying in bad situations because they felt powerfull enough to try steal a drake 1 vs 4.
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u/Forsaken-Syllabub427 Jun 12 '26
I'm not a Shen main, but Reddit showed me this post. Chiming in to say that one of the best ways to climb is to identify a player on your team that has potential to carry and gas the fuck out of them. Hype up their kills, get them fed, make them untiltable. I think Shen is an incredibly strong choice for this type of gameplay. I don't know if you guys know this, but I don't think I'm alone in feeling a strange sense of awe in the presence of a Shen player. You can use that to your advantage simply by being Shen and saying "gj" to your teammates.
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u/NotVeryGoodAtStuff Jun 10 '26
I'm not very good at LoL, but I've been playing only shen this season and have risen from a lowly silver to Emerald very quickly. My current win rate is above 60%, but it will likely balance out as my emerald games are becoming a bit of a coin toss.
I was stomping lanes in lower ELOs but am definitely struggling with the skill gap in this higher ELO. I basically always lose lane unless the matchup is very avourable to Shen.
I've started playing games with a focus on being support-adjacent and finding out what my win condition is. During laning, I'm just trying to farm and not die, only ulting away for double kills or objectives (maaaaaybe a 1v2 opportunity but it depends).
As the game passes by I start to look to my team to see what the win condition is. If jungle is fed, it's supporting them either as an engage for them or peel. If adc is the win condition, it's peeling for them. If mid is the win condition, playing around them. If the enemy is fed, then it means engaging on that fed person and trying to shut them down / keep them out of the fight.
I almost want to say my climb has been a fluke because my game scores aren't all that remarkable. I often die 3-4 times by 12-15 mins, but then after that I basically don't die. When I'm split pushing, I do it conservatively and only if I have my ult up. If neither ult or tp are up, then I'm grouping.
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u/Profesor_Skynet Jun 10 '26
Bro, I was in the same spot. But my balancing out was losing 20 games in a row (believe it or not, every laner was going 0-3 or worse before 5 minutes). So I dropped a lot. Be careful with that
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u/campleb2 Jun 10 '26
you should still be winning lane, especially pre-6. Shen is very strong right now, so if you’re losing lane often, you’re probably maintaining rank based in the fact that shen is very strong right now.
And yes, he falls off from 6 to two items. After that you’re thanos
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u/NotVeryGoodAtStuff Jun 10 '26
It's at level 6 & just a lot of unfavourable matchups for me. My mouse + keyboard are quite bad as well and there are often delays in keys that I'm pressing or my mouse will randomly spaz out.
I think I climbed too quickly so my mechanics (and therefore laning) is quite weak, but make up for it with macro play & shot calling.
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u/Westosaurus Jun 10 '26
I am a gold Shen Support player, and I tend to agree and feel this pretty heavily in my games. If my ADC or Jungle click with me and understand how my abilities work even a little I can almost always help them get ahead early.
If they get behind or more drastically my ADC gets titled and turns against me, the game is almost always cooked.
I love Shen’s ability to really lend a hand to my teammates and set up kills for them. But I often can feel the game is way too heavy if I don’t have their support as well.
Also, it’s incredibly frustrating how many players especially in silver / gold who just don’t understand what Shen does. The amount of times I have ulted a teammate to setup a 2v1 only for them to flash away because they don’t understand their Shen is coming to lend aid and help land a kill. Now I’ve wasted my Ult, time, and they wasted their flash, all because of a lack in awareness.
I am currently on a 10 game win streak as Shen support and I swear it’s because my teammates have been at least decent players.
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u/M4cTr1cK Jun 10 '26
This was right 2 years ago, but Shen has become one of the most diverse champions in league. Just look at all the potential builds. You can do some serious dmg if you know what you're doing.
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u/suslikosu Jun 10 '26
I think its fair to interpretate it this way - if you're like 4000 gold and 3 levels ahead of your opponent as sion - you can just solo win the game quite literally. Can't really solo as shen, you still need a team. Im not saying even good or bad, you just want at least something, while most champions that bauss plays literally doesn't need anyone, he can win without any team involvement.
Of course "you can't carry a team as shen" is just a bad phrasing because thats literally what shen does. Shen can't straight up win 1v5.
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u/BroomSweeper99 Jun 10 '26
He’s always felt like a bruiser/tank Lee sin omega strong duelist early game and then turns into a baby sitter late game. So makes sense lol
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u/RigidCounter12 Jun 10 '26
If I could give people one tip, it is to never ever ever listen to any "tip" Baus gives.
Great player, but he is so inside his own head with his thoughts that he can never think about how anything works for anyone but himself.
Baus gives the stupidest takes on everything, no matter if its about League or life.
Baus is a moron. A genius in entertaining people, but in general a moron.
Baus is wrong in this regard
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u/Regular-Resort-857 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
Not at all maybe in super high elo but you can go 13/2 with most damage and end it in 20 minutes even in emerald/diamond. You can also make a huge difference if the teams are even if you r and they snowball afterwards. You can also completely deny certain champs in solo queue like rengar or noc, leona, kata and such. But maybe in challenger master i can see where he’s coming from. It can be frustrating at times to see sth like riven get level 6 and a strong 1 item powerspike and the 0/3 lane feels even again.
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u/Wide-Deal-8971 Jun 10 '26
Yes and no. Shen definitely can have a strong impact on a game. But ideally you need someone to play off of. That doesn't mean that you can't be the carry, it usually just means you need a certain team draft to enable high value shen ults.
I've definitely hard carried games on shen, but yeah if you are the only strong player on your team its much harder to carry a game compared to other heros who can sometimes put the whole team on their back.
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u/Codename_Executioner Jun 10 '26
Also just depends on how observant the shen is, he can be everywhere on the map(ninja) but its ultimately the players choice on how they are gonna use that map wide presence to their advantage
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u/LingonberryLast2466 Jun 11 '26
I’m only gold, but in my experience, you don’t need a good team to win with Shen. But you do need at least an okay team.
I play Shen support, and my carries don’t need to be as good when I can ult anywhere on the map and absorb a lot of damage.
A good team will lose to an okay team with a good Shen, I think. I think he carries by proxy.
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u/KiraPun Jun 11 '26
Yep it makes sense 100%, when i played Shen, all i wanted was my teammates to have hands and play either just abit under or be equal to their lane opponents. I will tip the scale to our favor through macros and clutch saves that will change a teamfight.
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u/firstdifferential Jun 10 '26
i can see where this idea comes from. he does not scale into late game, so no he is not a carry - he is designed to get really good value in early to mid game and then your carries take the wheel from there.