League of Legends XXXII: Cupcakes and Kittens and Squirrels. Oh my!

[Eldariel]

Shen is, however, the only global moving ult in the game so he's by default better than all junglers without global ults. Really, the fact that you don't have to leave the jungle to maintain presence makes up for his poor clear speed since unlike every other jungler in the game, he can afford to sit in the jungle all game. In other words, he jungles slower than fast clearers but he has extra jungle time to make up for it and obviously the best kit out of all junglers.

It's no coincidence that when CLG got Shen in Hannover they jungled him instead of toplaning him (though part of that is of course Hotshot being a worse Shen than SV). And yeah, you can run TP and that's fine (I personally run Heal/Ignite on solotop Shen; Flash feels eminently unnecessary on him and Heal makes the ult that much bigger a swing in a fight) but that doesn't really allow you to hold the tower since you're still fighting for a long time while enemy is free to do whatever they want on your lane. In general, lane Shen will lose his tower unless he wins his lane hard and that's by design and something you sign up for when you run lane Shen. Jungle Shen sidesteps this issue.

The real question is whether Shen is better or worse than the alternative junglers/tops and IMHO he's extremely high on both trees. I don't think there's a single jungler or toplaner I'd pick over Shen given the option; there's simply no other such game-changing champion currently. Like, pre-buff Shen was strong but now that they made him a Skarner-level duelist with no need for blue, he's suddenly both omnipresent and super-high impact after ulting.


Jarvan isn't being picked 'cause people don't happen to be picking him. Every good jungler acknowledges that he's strong, they just don't happen to prefer him right now. He has more than enough CC and he's a bruiser; he's like a physical Amumu with stronger early 1v1 and mobility (but slower clears).

Rammus is kinda eclipsed by Lee and Riven though his early ganks are obviously better; the fact that both can start red into CC-heavy ganks, and don't really have trouble without blue gives them a significant edge Rammus lacks. That said Rammus is still a fine pick and obviously has a niché and the lack of Rammus-picks is more of a factor of many top teams currently favoring aggressive counterjungle strategies.

And I'll still say that you people are wrong about Amumu but whatever, we won't come to an agreement on that. Give it 6 months tops and Amumu will be played again without any buffs. Right now the arguments against him remind me of the (in retrospect) ridiculous arguments against Alistar in the year when he wasn't played at all with his 1.0 AP ratios, 75% ult and all that.