Should You Main Shen? Tier F
Shen is tier F for maining. Only 5 of its mains are Challenger or Grandmaster across the three major regions, against 496,302 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Shen scores 1.00 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, against a median of 2.26.
The numbers
Score 1.00 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 2 Challenger · 3 Grandmaster · 114 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 496,302 games played worldwide · 5.39% pick rate · 0.80% ban rate
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
Shen, it's going to be I think around Fier as well. There is two Shen challengers in NA or I mean in the major three regions. So there's X2 and there's man what was that other guy?
Why am I lagging? I feel like yeah there's that other guy right like I main top lane guy medal clarity. So he changes his name sometimes but he's now medal clarity.
So he mains Shen and X2 main chain Shen in higher MMR. So, I don't know if they're challenger or GM right now, but yeah, two challengers across three major divisions and three GMs. Very high I guess pick rate comparatively.
So, like 6% pick. It's not the best. Siobhan is going to be D here to use as a main champion just because it's very high pick band.
How this was measured
Two numbers, one division. First, how many players are currently in Challenger or Grandmaster maining this champion in Korea, Europe West and North America, from onetricks.gg. Second, how many ranked games the entire playerbase plays of this champion worldwide across every rank, from op.gg. The result is high elo mains per 100,000 games played, then reduced by the champion's ban rate, because a champion you cannot pick is a champion you cannot main.
This is not a win rate list and it is not a patch strength list. It measures availability-adjusted high-elo main density: how much Challenger and Grandmaster main representation a champion has relative to how often it is played. It is not the probability that maining this champion will get you to high elo. The score counts Challenger and Grandmaster mains only, drawn from a tracked pool that starts at Master; it does not include the Chinese server, and it counts accounts rather than people, so one dedicated player with several high elo accounts shows up more than once. Patch 16.15. The full plain English explanation, including everything this list cannot tell you, is on the main list page.
Popularity is not the signal. What matters here is how densely high elo mains appear relative to how often the champion is played.