Keep an eye on allies and be ready to save them with your teleport.
Leverage your Energy to get a long-term advantage over Mana users.
If you're able to match Zilean's speed, it can sometimes be beneficial to wait until his ultimate has faded before landing the killing blow.
Zilean is fragile if a team focuses on him, but otherwise he's very difficult to kill. Commit to killing him as a team.
The stat comparisons provided here show some valuable Shen versus Zilean counter stats that may help you understand the differences and similarities between the two. Shen’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Zilean’s KDA ratio of NaN, highlighting that Shen may be more central to his team's team fighting effectiveness than Zilean..
Shen usually has a slightly larger longest kill spree than his opponent does. On average, he takes more damage than Zilean. This typically indicates different amounts of tankyness, but it can also illustrate that the one champ has less mobility and thus is unable to kite away from further harm when engaged or poked.
Both League champions are great. Both have their pros and cons. In League's current meta, Shen usually fairs equally well when playing against Zilean, with a 49.0% win rate. Thus, Shen makes an ok counter for Zilean.
While Shen does have a lower win rate than Zilean, when on opposite teams, Shen also has a lower level of difficulty that makes him a less time consuming champ to develop with. You still need to be cautious when picking Shen into Zilean.
Furthermore, Shen has a lot of utility and CC, a similar amount to Zilean. This often makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when facing champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there isn't a single best champion in League of Legends, in Shen vs Zilean matchups, Zilean is the better champion with a similar win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your allied champions during team fights.
Shen is a somewhat poor counter for Zilean. Make sure you focus your gameplay on keeping up your CS and clearing objectives. If you are able to do that, you should hold your own as Shen against Zilean.
To learn all of the intricacies of Shen to counter Zilean during both the laning and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should keep reading to learn a few extra lessons on this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and tips presented above, you should increase your win rate significantly and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Shen most often gets more CS compared to Zilean. Champs who typically don't get many minion kills usualy don't have to have much CS to be effective, such as sup champs. These kinds of champions are capable of scaling well off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champs with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, typically need many items to be effective. In either case, try to surpass the values shown on this page to do well.
The most important items to prioritize in your Shen versus Zilean build include Frostfire Gauntlet, Thornmail, and Titanic Hydra. When Shen included at least these three items in his build, he did significantly better when facing Zilean than with many other typical item sets. In fact, Shen had an average win rate of 49.0% when countering Zilean with this counter build.
To have the greatest chance of crushing Zilean as Shen, you should equip the Grasp of the Undying, Shield Bash, Second Wind, Overgrowth, Cheap Shot, and Ultimate Hunter runes from the Resolve and Domination rune sets. Of all the rune combinations players picked for Shen vs Zilean clashes, this composite of runes yielded the greatest win rate. Moreover, these runes provided a 49.0% winrate overall.
If you want to view Shen versus Zilean tips and counter builds for a a specific division rank, please select one from the selection menu shown above. By default, the stats and strategies displayed are calculated using every match run with these champions.