League of Legends LII: Sin of the Blind Monk

[Godskook]

I assume the idea has been considered and rejected before, but why not give Shen's ult the TF treatment?

Reasons why they're different:

1.As a historic top laner, you're basically saying "Shen can't ult bottom lane during the laning phase". TF's ult didn't 'lose' ganking options in terms of his standard lane, he just lost shenanigans from longer ranged ults.

2.TF, Panth, and Nocturne all have ults that can be used proactively to force fights. Shen's ult requires reactive usage on his part to a fight other people start.

On top of this, I don't really think I've seen Shen do well at all in this tournament. I know his performance was laughable in the SKT T1's semifinal match, especially with Jax in a favorable position these days.

[Happy Gravity]

I think the point of playing Zed is being able to hop around and completely murder a SQUISHY target. Not being able to instantly murder ANY target.

Does Zed really want to ult tanks?

[Legoshrimp]

Reasons why they're different:

1.As a historic top laner, you're basically saying "Shen can't ult bottom lane during the laning phase". TF's ult didn't 'lose' ganking options in terms of his standard lane, he just lost shenanigans from longer ranged ults.

2.TF, Panth, and Nocturne all have ults that can be used proactively to force fights. Shen's ult requires reactive usage on his part to a fight other people start.

On top of this, I don't really think I've seen Shen do well at all in this tournament. I know his performance was laughable in the SKT T1's semifinal match, especially with Jax in a favorable position these days.

You can totally use shen's ult aggressively. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnGJtjENzoA

[Nadevoc]

Does Zed really want to ult tanks?

If he's split pushing and someone tanky comes, or if his teammate can get a pick to destroy the tank before a team fight, then yes

[Godskook]

You can totally use shen's ult aggressively. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnGJtjENzoA

I didn't say it couldn't be used 'aggressively', I said it couldn't be used 'proactively' by Shen to force fights. He's got to wait on someone else to set the fight up(In the video, that's Twitch making the proactive play). I avoided the word 'aggressive' in my original point for precisely this reason.

[toasty]

The issue with Zed isn't that he's the best 1v1, that's cool. Annoying, but cool. Singed is just as annoying as far as split goes, for instance.

The issue is that Zed has good split, good teamfight, good mid-game roam, and pretty safe laning, even in a 2v1 situation.

[Math_Mage]

If he's split pushing and someone tanky comes, or if his teammate can get a pick to destroy the tank before a team fight, then yes

Zed will straight-up lose to a lot of those tanky split-pushers, and getting a pick with his teammates isn't exactly destroying the tank 1v1, is it now? There's a reason Zed rarely lanes top. Contra what aether said, I don't think Zed is the best duelist, and I don't think there has to be a best duelist at all. Is rock a better duelist than scissors?

[Cogwheel]

Is rock a better duelist than scissors?

No, but let's face it, they can probably both duel better than paper.

By this reasoning we can deduce that Leona is paper.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

So, noob moment of horrific realization last night: now that I've started grokking the warding game, I feel horribly naked looking at all that fog of war WHY DIDN'T I BUY MORE WARDS???

I am now ward-paranoid. THEY COULD BE ANYWHERE.

Part of me misses the days of my naive laning, when my eyes were closed to the dark threats lurking in the bushes.

[Cogwheel]

So, noob moment of horrific realization last night: now that I've started grokking the warding game, I feel horribly naked looking at all that fog of war WHY DIDN'T I BUY MORE WARDS???

I am now ward-paranoid. THEY COULD BE ANYWHERE.

Part of me misses the days of my naive laning, when my eyes were closed to the dark threats lurking in the bushes.

This is why I do better on Twisted Treeline. I'm bad at warding, but somehow I always just know when someone is coming for a gank or just generally nearby. I have no idea how it works and there's probably a bit of witchcraft involved, but hey, it works!

[Godskook]

No, but let's face it, they can probably both duel better than paper.

By this reasoning we can deduce that Leona is paper.

Fun fact: Rock/Paper/Scissors is a story of friendship, murder and revenge.

Paper and Rock are friends(Paper 'defeats' him with kindness). Scissors murders Paper. Rock seeks vengence.

[Joran]

On top of this, I don't really think I've seen Shen do well at all in this tournament. I know his performance was laughable in the SKT T1's semifinal match, especially with Jax in a favorable position these days.

Shen has quite a few counterpicks in the top lane, because he lacks good lane clearing early game.

I've seen Renekton, Vlad, Singed, and Jax all used to good effect against him. If Shen's up against an AP top, he'll have to make the tough decision whether to buy the Spirit Visage (which allows him tankiness against AP + good sustain) or buy the standard Sunfire Cape (which gives him the ability to split push better by clearing creep waves).

He's got a win rate of about 57% which is higher than I thought it was because I remember him getting utterly abused in the SKT T1 games.

[brutii]

My favourite picks against Shen are Shyvana and Zac. They can typically beat him up and have ways of blocking his ult. Zac is weaker in terms of escaping if an enemy wants to make it a 1v2, but stronger if you group with your own team.

[Ashen Lilies]

If you're running a Teleport toplaner with an interrupt (say Malphite), are you usually better off stopping Shen's ult, or teleporting in behind him to join the fight?

[Artanis]

Regarding Shen:

The way I see it, all the theorycraft in the world is trumped by the fact that he had a 97% pick/ban rate among so many of the best teams in the world. That tells me that something should be done. I'll leave the decision of what that "something" should be to people who know the game better than I do.


Regarding Zed:

He not only had a 100% pick/ban rate, but he had as many bans as Ahri and Corki combined. That is ridiculously overpowered, plain and simple.

[Legoshrimp]

I didn't say it couldn't be used 'aggressively', I said it couldn't be used 'proactively' by Shen to force fights. He's got to wait on someone else to set the fight up(In the video, that's Twitch making the proactive play). I avoided the word 'aggressive' in my original point for precisely this reason.

It can be used proactively if you have any communication with your team. You can say twitch/ahri/ez I am going to ult you go in. I don't think that it not being able to be used to pick off enemies like tf/panth means it can't be used proactively.

[Math_Mage]

My favourite picks against Shen are Shyvana and Zac. They can typically beat him up and have ways of blocking his ult. Zac is weaker in terms of escaping if an enemy wants to make it a 1v2, but stronger if you group with your own team.

I'm skeptical of the claim that Shyvana is better at escaping a 1v2. Her leap is an ult, and Zac's slow matches her ghost, and Zac has better ranged farming.

Regarding Shen:

The way I see it, all the theorycraft in the world is trumped by the fact that he had a 97% pick/ban rate among so many of the best teams in the world. That tells me that something should be done. I'll leave the decision of what that "something" should be to people who know the game better than I do.

People have been saying that for as long as Shen has been around. But you know, by now the perception that Shen is OP is so overpowering that if Shen were balanced, he would still be overplayed. That's what happened last time Riot nerfed Shen into the ground; after several nerfs he was mediocre and still permabanned, until finally the community realized he was worthless and completely stopped playing him. You aren't going to reach a solid conclusion about his power level by analyzing his popularity.

Also, that previous sequence of nerfs shows that it's irresponsible to simply handwave away the question of what to do about Shen, because in three years they haven't found a way to resolve the popularity question (which, per the above, is different from the balance question).

[ex cathedra]

Regarding Shen:

The way I see it, all the theorycraft in the world is trumped by the fact that he had a 97% pick/ban rate among so many of the best teams in the world. That tells me that something should be done. I'll leave the decision of what that "something" should be to people who know the game better than I do.

pick/ban rate doesn't directly correlate to champion power, if that's the only basis for your analysis then you have very questionable assumptions.

[Cogwheel]

Fun fact: Rock/Paper/Scissors is a story of friendship, murder and revenge.

Paper and Rock are friends(Paper 'defeats' him with kindness). Scissors murders Paper. Rock seeks vengence.

Can we have film noir RPS now?

[Godskook]

It can be used proactively if you have any communication with your team. You can say twitch/ahri/ez I am going to ult you go in. I don't think that it not being able to be used to pick off enemies like tf/panth means it can't be used proactively.

That's not using Shen's ult proactively, that's you as a player getting your team-mates to use their stuff proactively because you're promising to react to it with your ult.

[Legoshrimp]

That's not using Shen's ult proactively, that's you as a player getting your team-mates to use their stuff proactively because you're promising to react to it with your ult.

So twitch reacting to shen ulting him is proactive?

It seems like you are saying that because you have to communicate in a team game, it makes shen ult reactive(not-proactive) which it can be, but you can also communicate with your team and use it to engage.
In a team game having to rely on an ally to do something, doesn't make what you are doing a reaction to what that ally is doing.

[Math_Mage]

I think it's quibbling to argue over whether Shen's ult can be used proactively. It's important to note that Shen's ult isn't truly global the way old TF and Pantheon ults were, because it's tied to teammates.

[brutii]

I'm skeptical of the claim that Shyvana is better at escaping a 1v2. Her leap is an ult, and Zac's slow matches her ghost, and Zac has better ranged farming.

Shyvana ult does not have a charge time, so is much harder in interrupt compared to Zac E.

Zac slow requires you to be in range of an enemy (so possibly within their effective engagement/CC range) and requires both enemies to be on top of each other to escape both.

Shyvana speed can be used preemptively without any obvious telegraphing ("Oh crap he's coming if I don't run now I'll be in hook range" vs. "Aha! I can slow the enemy/leap away! Oh wait, I'm in hook range anyway/Shen taunt interrupted leap"). I mean, obviously with strong coordination and good vision clearing, both can easily be stopped by a Shen taunt or similar CC when the gank starts, but only one requires either a charge up or having enemies in range.

Zac does have a speed boost/short CC in his ult, but Shyvana is also naturally tankier in a panic situation (much of Zac's tankiness is EHP increases from blobs).

Overall, I think it's probably harder to catch Shyvana.

[Artanis]

pick/ban rate doesn't directly correlate to champion power, if that's the only basis for your analysis then you have very questionable assumptions.

I'm not talking about overall pick/ban rate, I'm talking about the pick/ban rate in the world championships. The basis for my analysis is the assumption that the players at that level are generally very good at planning out a strategy and knowing which champions work best in that strategy and which champions would counter it when used against them by a skilled opposing team.

If that assumption is true, then a 97% pick/ban rate means that one of two things is true for virtually every single plan that the highest-level teams come up with:
A) Shen is the best champion in that slot for that plan, or,
B) Shen can wreck that plan badly enough to merit one-third of the team's bans.


Like I said, I don't know what to do to fix it. I don't know if it can be fixed. Maybe it can be fixed not by nerfing Shen, but by buffing other Tanks to Shen's level. I don't know, so I'm not going to speculate further on that front.

[Nadevoc]

Zed will straight-up lose to a lot of those tanky split-pushers, and getting a pick with his teammates isn't exactly destroying the tank 1v1, is it now? There's a reason Zed rarely lanes top. Contra what aether said, I don't think Zed is the best duelist, and I don't think there has to be a best duelist at all. Is rock a better duelist than scissors?

Zed can obliterate the bruiser duelists like Jax, Udyr, etc once he has a few items. And I'm saying his teammate gets a pick as in the teammate stuns the tank so Zed can destroy him.

He doesn't usually lane top because his early couple levels aren't great and I think more than that, he can roam better from mid.

The issue is that unless you're straight stacking armor, Zed's huge burst with his ult will kill you. And if you're straight stacking armor, his teammate taps you with magic damage.

This ISN'T a case of X counters Y but is countered by Z. It turns out incredible burst damage is just straight up good.

[brutii]

More specifically, top tier burst on an AD caster is problematic, as they can follow up with high damage autoattacks.

[Math_Mage]

Zed can obliterate the bruiser duelists like Jax, Udyr, etc once he has a few items.

Hang on, there. Zed with BotRK, LW, GA against Jax with Trinity, BotRK, and a Randuin's piece--or QSS? You sure you want to call that fight for the Zed before it starts? If there's an unevenness in the MU, it's that Zed can run from it more easily than Jax can.

[MCerberus]

You know you've had a bad game when you're the support and you dealt twice as much damage as anyone else on your team. I happened to be a Zyra, but still.

edit- actually this one deserves a rant because I was being a good boy, holding my tongue at the stupid and making plays.

Spoiler

Show

Trouble starts in champ select. The silent guy first pick insta-locks malph top lane. Our called top laner panics and pulls trynd at the last second. Then he panics again because he can't jungle him. If our carry made any mention of what champs they wanted to play it would have been great... ended up Zyra/Trist.

First thing I hear from Malph: "WTF". Unassisted first blood giveaway against Irelia. Mind you he instalocked this first. That's fine, considering I land everything to pick up both laners on a gank (kills one each to carry/jungle). Trist comes back to lane with... crit cloak... ... yay. Some other lanes feeding later and it's already snowballed.

I facilitate a shutdown on mid and cancel my AA animation to let Ryze secure it too. Trist, turns out, can't trade and can't CS against a Quinn. I can't back either. She's died twice while I was (and no amount of chat or pinging could get her to recall) she has never bought a potion.

Fast forward I'm 0/3/6 and it's a lost cause. This goes down to 0/8/9 with a 90% kill participation rate (hey, I'm not worth gold anyway, might as well eat the damage). Not one person complained at me because all the wards on the map were mine and they knew where the damage came from.

At the end of the game. The only one who dealt more damage to champions was Quinn by 200 points. I had 2x Ryze/Malph's damage and 2.5x Trist and Trynd's. Oh, and I drug Trist kicking and screaming to our only positive K/D on the team.

[Nadevoc]

Hang on, there. Zed with BotRK, LW, GA against Jax with Trinity, BotRK, and a Randuin's piece--or QSS? You sure you want to call that fight for the Zed before it starts? If there's an unevenness in the MU, it's that Zed can run from it more easily than Jax can.

Based on experience (yeah, yeah, anecdotal evidence): yeah, I'm calling it in Zed's favor.

I mean, I'll admit I'm biased against assassins. Personally, I think champions that push a few buttons and then remove a player from the map in under two seconds aren't good for game health. Especially when they also get good wave clear and mobility.

[brutii]

Hang on, there. Zed with BotRK, LW, GA against Jax with Trinity, BotRK, and a Randuin's piece--or QSS? You sure you want to call that fight for the Zed before it starts? If there's an unevenness in the MU, it's that Zed can run from it more easily than Jax can.

I feel like Zed's ability to duel bruisers increases significantly with gold until a QSS is purchased, at which point it becomes significantly more difficult. A level 6 Zed with Doran's/Brut loses pretty handily to a level Shyvana with Vamp/Double Cloth, for example, but a 6 item Zed (LW, Bork, Black Cleaver, Hydra, GA) can convincingly kill a 6 item Shyvana (Tabi, Sunfire, Randuin's, Bork, Spirit Visage, Frozen Mallet).