Leverage your Energy to get a long-term advantage over Mana users.
Keep an eye on allies and be ready to save them with your teleport.
Karthus can cast spells for a short duration after he is killed. Move away from his corpse to be safe.
Make sure you always have enough health to survive Requiem, even if you have to go back to the base more frequently to heal.
The stat comparisons shown on this page highlight some critical Shen versus Karthus counter stats that may help us figure out the differences and similarities between the pair. Shen’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is greater than Karthus’s ratio of NaN, indicating that Shen may be more central to his team's team fighting effectiveness than Karthus..
Shen normally has a slightly smaller longest killing spree than his matchup does. Commonly, he takes more damage than Karthus. This is usually reflective of differing health capacities, yet it can also indicate that the champ with more health has less mobility and thus is unable to flee from further damage when engaged or poked.
Both LoL champions are great champions. Both champs have their pros and cons. In League's current meta, Shen usually wins when taking on Karthus, with a 53.2% win rate. As a result, Shen makes a great counter to Karthus.
While Shen does have a higher winrate compared to Karthus, when they face off with one another, Shen also has a lower level of difficulty that makes him a less difficult champion to learn and master. You don't need to be too worried when picking Shen into Karthus.
Furthermore, Shen also has a lot of utility and CC, a similar amount to Karthus. This makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when fighting champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there isn't a single best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Shen vs Karthus matchups, Shen is the better champion with a noticably higher win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your team members during late stage team fights.
Shen is a great counter to Karthus. You will do well by focussing your gameplay on maximizing your gold and cs and clearing objectives. If you do that, you should do very well as Shen against Karthus.
If you would like to learn all of the intricacies of Shen to counter Karthus during both the early game and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to pick up a few extra tricks and insights into this matchup. If you listen to the build and tips shown here, you should grow your win rate significantly and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Shen on average picks up more CS relative to Karthus. Champions who typically don't acquire many minion kills usualy don't have to have much CS to be valuable teammates, such as sup champs. They are able to scale properly off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champs with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, usually have to have many items to be effective. In either situation, try to surpass the numbers reported on this page to do well.
The top items to have in your Shen versus Karthus build consist of Sunfire Aegis, Thornmail, and Heartsteel. When Shen used at least these three pieces in his build, he did a lot better when fighting Karthus than with many other typical builds. In fact, Shen had an average win rate of 53.2% when countering Karthus with this counter build.
To have the highest chance of annihilating Karthus as Shen, you should take the Grasp of the Undying, Shield Bash, Second Wind, Revitalize, Cheap Shot, and Ultimate Hunter runes from the Resolve and Domination rune sets. Out of all the rune combinations players picked for Shen vs Karthus counters, this combo of runes yielded the greatest win rate. Notably, these runes provided a 53.2% win rate overall.
If you need to see Shen vs Karthus tips and counter builds for a a specific rank, feel free to select one from the selection menu displayed above. By default, the statistics and build suggestions shown are computed using every round run with both champs.