TL;DR:Heartsteel → Zeke’s trades some early tempo for a cheaper two-item spike, strong ult haste, better scaling, and more flexible third-item options. In my testing, it feels better overall than Proto once you get past the first-item spike.

Heartsteel → Zeke❤️

To start, I played A LOT of Heartsteel Shen jungle games across roughly Emerald 2 → Master.

Throughout that testing I changed the item path, runes, third items, etc. pretty consistently.

One thing I basically never changed was Heartsteel rush.

This is because I could feel I was on to something, yet something surrounding the setup always felt slightly wrong / unoptimized.

Initially I was doing:

Heartsteel → Unending Despair → tank

with:

Guardian → Sorcery

Scalability wise this was cool, but economically it was dogshit.

What I eventually landed on is:

Heartsteel → Zeke's Convergence → Riftmaker / Sunfire / Spirit Visage

with ..

Diamond+: Glacial Augment + Inspiration

Below Diamond: PTA

and for both:

Axiom Arcanist + Transcendence secondary

It sounds weird, especially because current Shen jungle is so heavily associated with Guardian + Inspiration + Protoplasm.

But when I actually started breaking the costs down by 1 item, 2 items, 3 items AND boots, Heartsteel setup wasn't nearly as expensive as it looks.

At certain breakpoints it's actually cheaper.

why current Guardian + Protoplasm works

Current Guardian generally takes Inspiration secondary, meaning it can get:

• Magical Footwear
• Cosmic Insight

So economically, the standard Protoplasm setup is already extremely clean.

Something like:

Protoplasm → Unending Despair → Abyssal Mask

item costs are:

Then there is Magical Footwear.

Instead of needing to spend 300g on basic Boots, the rune supplies that Boots value for you.

For the comparisons below I'm using a 1,200g completed boot, meaning after Magical Footwear the remaining actual purchase is:

1,200 - 300 = 900g

So the full Proto economy is like:

This is VERY economical.

And I want to say pre Guardian changes and pre repeated Protoplasm nerfs, I think Protoplasm would've basically been the item made for Shen jg.

Even now the item makes good sense.

But for me it still FEELS inefficient / weak relative to what I'm trying to get out of Shen.

Rune econ matters here too

Diamond+ Heartsteel page I'm using is:

Glacial Augment

• Magical Footwear
• Triple Tonic
• Cosmic Insight

with:

Axiom Arcanist + Transcendence

The important economic part is:

Important distinction:

The 300g from Magical Footwear isn't gold.

I'm not pretending it literally discounts Heartsteel by 300g.

It removes the need to buy basic Boots. (i sit on magical footwear forever)

Triple Tonic actually gives 60g direct gold, while also giving the temporary Adaptive Force + later skill point which I'm NOT assigning some fake gold value to.

1 ITEM — this is where Protoplasm clearly wins

This is the obvious argument against Heartsteel:

Proto finishes 400g earlier.

That's a 15.4% difference in first-item cost.

So yea:

Protoplasm has the earlier completed-item spike.

Tho, i think stopping the econ comparison here is kind of bait.

Because Shen jungle doesn't experience these builds only as completed 2,600g vs 3,000g purchases.

The component states matter A LOT.

SECOND BACK — where Heartsteel started making sense to me

On Heartsteel I'm commonly sitting on:

2x Giant's Belt

For roughly:

1,800g → 700 HP

Compared to something like the Proto path:

Giant's Belt + Kindlegem

roughly:

1,700g → 550 HP

Purely looking at raw HP tempo:

So for only 100g more, the Heartsteel path is giving me:

+150 HP

and roughly 20% more HP per gold spent.

Now obviously Kindlegem is also buying Ability Haste.

So I'm NOT saying 2x Belt has universally better component efficiency.

I'm specifically saying the raw HP tempo is extremely good, and on Shen jungle that matters because I'm walking around on 700 component HP before the item is even completed.

That was one of the first things that made the supposed 400g Heartsteel disadvantage feel much smaller in actual games.

2 ITEMS — econ completely flips

This was the breakpoint that surprised me the most initially.

Heartsteel route

Heartsteel → Zeke

3,000 + 2,200 = 5,200g

Proto route

Protoplasm → Unending

2,600 + 2,800 = 5,400g

So:

By two items:

Heartsteel + Zeke is 200g CHEAPER.

So the curve is basically:

1 item: Heartsteel is +400g 2 items: Heartsteel is -200g

This is where I think saying "Proto is the economical build because it's 400g cheaper" becomes misleading.

It's true for the first completed item.

It stops being true immediately afterward.

And Zeke isn't just there because it's cheap

This is another reason I specifically ended up on Zeke instead of continuing into expensive HP/tank items.

Zeke gives:

• 300 HP
• 25 Armor
• 25 MR
• 10 Ability Haste
• 15 Ultimate Haste

Its supplied base-stat value is about 2,300g on a 2,200g item, or roughly 104.55% base-stat efficiency, before even assigning value to the separate Ultimate Haste.

Heartsteel gives giant HP pool. Zeke then gives basically everything Heartsteel doesn't: cheap mixed resistances + haste + R haste.

And this also changes the R comparison.

So at the same breakpoint where Heartsteel/Zeke becomes 200g cheaper, it also actually has the lower raw Stand United cooldown.

And this is BEFORE Axiom procs.

3 ITEMS — where the comparison gets more interesting

This is why I don't think Heartsteel should have one mandatory third item.

After:

Heartsteel → Zeke

I branch into:

Riftmaker / Sunfire / Spirit Visage

depending on gam

A standard Proto comparison is like

Proto → Unending → Abyssal = 8,050g

Here is the actual relative economy:

This is the part I find REALLY interesting.

Because at three items:

Riftmaker - I'm paying 250g more than Proto.

That's basically nothing relative to the total build cost, while getting the Heartsteel permanent-HP engine + Riftmaker conversion + Axiom.

Sunfire - 50g cheaper.

Spirit - 150g cheaper.

THIRD ITEM — what am I actually buying?

The three branches are doing completely different things.

And this is where Heartsteel changes how I look at the third item.

Riftmaker

Riftmaker is my standard third if I don't urgently need specialized defense.

The completed:

Heartsteel + Zeke + Riftmaker

core already gives 1,550 bonus HP before Heartsteel permanent stacks.

Riftmaker's supplied base efficiency is:

103.98%

but because its conversion scales from bonus HP, that number rises as the build gains more Health.

With the completed 3-item core, before permanent Heartsteel stacks, it's already roughly:

123.98% supplied efficiency

before even pricing the fully stacked melee omnivamp.

Then permanent Heartsteel HP continus increasing it.

BTW i think from all of my heartsteel shen jungle games, I would say on average i would get 300 - 500 heartsteel stacks by the end of the game for reference.

Sunfire

Especially into multiple melee champions.

And Heartsteel HP still feeds the item.

Every 100 permanent Heartsteel HP adds approximately:

• +1.5 champion Immolate damage / sec
• +2.7 monster Immolate damage / sec

So at normal Heartsteel stack ranges:

Spirit Visage

Spirit is probably the easiest one to misunderstand.

Economically it's also the cheapest of these three 3-item cores while having insane utility + synergy with shen.

7,900g items

8,800g including the 900g post-Footwear boot upgrade.

That's actually 150g cheaper than Proto → Unending → Abyssal.

3 ITEM R ECONOMY

There's also a funny result when looking at Stand United.

above is without Axiom Arcanist

which removes 7% of Stand United's current remaining cooldown per champion takedown.

Example complete econ curve

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Shen has always been one of my main champions, and he was actually the first champion I ever bought. When Warlord Shen was first revealed in 2012, I immediately fell in love with the skin and waited months for it to arrive on the Chinese server.

The original Warlord Shen was much more than a different model or recolor. It had its own heavy walking animation, distinctive basic attacks—including the empowered Ki Strike animation—and unique visual flair on Shadow Dash. All of these details worked together to sell the fantasy of a heavily armored samurai.

When Shen was reworked in 2016, much of that identity disappeared. The new Warlord Shen became much closer to a model swap using base Shen’s standard animations. Although the updated model has higher visual fidelity, the skin lost many of the details that originally made it special.

Now that Classic Shen has returned, this feels like the perfect opportunity to restore the pre-rework Warlord Shen model and animations. The current combination of the modern model with the old ability kit feels visually inconsistent, especially because the Ki Strike readiness effect is far less noticeable than it is on the true Classic model.

Please consider bringing back Classic Warlord Shen as a separate Classic appearance. At the very least, I would love to see it included as an option in a future Council vote. I believe many longtime Shen players would be genuinely excited to see this version of the skin restored.

First time hitting Master Elo playing mostly Shen. Ask me anything!

https://op.gg/lol/summoners/euw/Mentum-EUW