Can chen be played as main tank?

General Discussion
1

I mean, people say he isn’t one because he doesn’t have reliable cc.

But look at stitches, tyrael, diablo, none of them have reliable cc and they are all considered main tanks.

So is it doable in ranked games?

2

I wouldn’t recommend it beyond a heavy dive comp. Wandering Keg can split a team up if used well, but if you don’t have the burst to kill an isolated target, Chen won’t be able to keep them split long enough for you to win the fight that way.

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3

Honestly? No. You need the ability to peel enemies off your allies and a lot of hp to soak with to be a reliable main tank. He doesn’t really have either. He can drink to gain a shield, but during that time he literally is just standing there and is either not protecting his team or getting wailed on and will die faster than he can gain shields.

Chen is also considered one of the absolute worst characters in the game, pretty much tied for it with Tassadar(personally I think Chen is worse). I don’t think you should take him for any reason at all in ranked.

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4

Technically, almost any hero can function as a main tank if the team builds around them and the person playing them is very skilled. If you ever watch some of the HGC matches, you will see teams running even heroes like Uther or Xul as a main tank. However, this doesn’t work as well for teams that do not have that high a level of coordination.

So, with that said, Chen can work as a main tank, but he needs to have a team built around him, usually with a heavy dive comp against a double mage comp, or something similar. Unlike the current meta tanks, he isn’t very flexible when it comes to comps, and he is much more easily countered than a tank like Muradin. If the enemy team has any way of interrupting his drinking, he will die quickly.

5

Chen’s kit is functionally similar to Illidan’s kit on a basic level, so as such fits into team comps in a similar way. He is more about chasing and abusing low peel teams and not actually providing any frontline for the team.

6

Some people can definitely make Chen or Illidan work. But average players are just handicapping themselves by picking these heroes when Diablo or Genji are not banned and are selectable.

7

Chen used to be main tank material, then they “reworked” him (read: nerfed into the ground) about a year and a half ago, maybe two years. In that rework, they removed his ability to get Amplified Healing, Brewmaster’s Balance, and Bolder Flavor (which actually doubled his shield generation at 16 back in the day, rather than giving a paltry amount up front) all together, and now they’re all on the same tier.

After that rework, he wasn’t even bruiser material. He was like a badly-designed assassin with a high health pool, but couldn’t do any damage or make use of his health pool. Since his ability to get massive regeneration from Brewmaster’s Balance, Amplified Healing, and infinite Regeneration Master was removed, he had nothing to pad his HP.

He has infinite regen again now, but it isn’t like it was before due to lacking AH. He also became more irrelevant over time because of how heavy the CC meta is these days.

I used to main him, and ran a 70%+ winrate on him (it’s currently 67%, but now I rarely pick him).

TL;DR: He can’t do much of anything anymore.

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8

Chen can’t be played as anything right now in his state except as fodder. Sure there are like 5 Chen players out there that can pull it off every now and again but even they won’t lie and say he’s in any kind of decent spot.

It just makes everything way harder than it needs to be running him. Also people comparing Chen to Tassadar for worst hero award, Tassadar is vastly better than Chen and I honestly think Tassadar isn’t even that bad of a hero he just gets picked in the wrong situations so often and could use a bit of looking into still.

Do you ever see Chen in legit pro matches these days? Nope, but you sure will see Tassadar here and there doing well enough for himself.

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9

He’s fun to play as an offtank. Also he does get CC’d to the ground, so I play with him cautiously until I burst strike a target, and cause chaos in the backline. He’s fun but I don’t know how viable he is in HL.

10

Well, you did see some maintank Chen at HGC for a strat that was called “McDonald’s” based on FNATIC running it in order to finish scrimming in time to get food while playing internationally.

Besides that, yes, there are three ways to use Chen as main tank based on his 4 talents. As well, if you are the main tank, you have to build your 1 and 7 based on your realistic opportunities to stack any of the quests/proc the mitigation/hit AA safely, and whether you can commit to a position with BFlavor/PB or if you have to go all in on mobility with BmB. If you choose right, Chen is able to hold the frontline by himself as long as the team doesnt overstep his capability to control the fight. Wandering Keg, btw, goes without saying.

  • Keg Toss against an immobile frontline. This is a lategame-style build and you need ranged autoattacks and or mostly-reliable combo/burst damage. Keg Toss sets up the enemy team to get kited, your AA shred them, and if you have Alarak/KT etc. they can counterengage the attempt to force past the Keg Toss slow. Gets a lot stronger as quest completed>13>16 is the biggest powerspike. IMO this is Chen’s best build as maintank and as bruiser, he is best when this build ks best

  • Ring of Fire is the stand-your-ground build, you pair it with talents at 1/7 that let you facetank the best in the situation (Acc. Flame/EB usually and BF) and his job is to literally just stand in front, survive the engage, apply his slow and be AoE damage against their engage and use Wandering Keg to counterengage. This style works against teams that want to win sustain fights close to melee or within kick range. I like to run it with reset/burst because the AoE helps soften people up for resets and the reset/burst heroes themselves bring enough threat that getting close enough to Chen means his slow/kick will set you up to get killed by his team. Lunara Artanis Rehgar was a team I picksd Chen into as maintank, they followed it with Diablo Alarak and we had Ming Genji Lucio Tass to finish off our team. We steamrolled them and this is the build I took. Bolder Flavor to survive the Diablo/Alarak engage, EB to easily outtrade the other 3 heroes, Ring to put kill pressure on everyone I was near and Keg to consistently isolate Alarak/Rehgar/remove Diablo from fights (pushed into a far corner where i bodyblock and duel him). Keg Toss could have worked but I had to go in aggressively with Genji and Keg Toss would have been a negligible benefit with doublereset burst.

  • Kick is my least favorite style, but it’s the best against squishy teams. Like, hypercarry Tracer is dominated by kick Chen. In fact, every squishy overwatch hero is. Kick forces you to hard-engage to get value, so I like ot better for followup than for maintanking. But if you ever find that a pure-dive-focus is going to win you the game over builds that play more slowly, this is the build. I typically only take it when I’m against both Junkrat AND Genji or tracer or some combination. Or if a team is so bad, they can’t punish you for kicking in. When you can press Q on cd on Tracer and crit, she is no longer a threat in teamfights.

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11

I’ve tanked with him before the few times I’ve been forced to tank in HL where I’m last pick and people ignore my pleas that I don’t really tank. He can work, but he’s easily countered if there’s even a moderate level of CC stacking. There are certainly better tanks, but I just don’t play any of them. (I give people the option of Zarya, Rexaar, or Chen lol)

That can work, but I’d be hesitant to limit yourself to that kind of thinking if the team needs a tank to actually tank. In those situations, you’re sort of doubling down on his strengths, and resigning your backline to be open to whatever attack. Chen still has a surprising amount of peel power, especially against melee heroes. His dive, body block, and slow can seriously hinder attacks against your backline if they need it.

12

Stitches has his hook and both his R abilities as CC and Diablo has his charge and his suplex and both his R abilities as CC (+ another stun he can talent into at 20).

13

can chen be played oh at all?

14

Not really. He can tank structures and such with his alcoholism but in a team fight he can’t really offer what other main tanks offer and if the stars align and you’re able to tank for your team it only means that your opponents are playing wrong rather than you playing it right. Best part is that I tend to play Chen against AI when I grind daily quests casually and more than enough players expect me to be a main tank. I have been literally raged at for not being the main tank in the team and told that “IT EVEN SAYS THAT CHEN IS A TANK IN HIS DESCRIPTION” when it clearly states that he’s a bruiser. Too bad I didn’t see that players face when they went to check it after raging for a whole match to me :joy:

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15

If your team can beat their team in fights just by just shooting their tanks down or having someone to stand in front and absorb damage while the dps pop off (like Alarak who is a capable initiator with a Chen standing in front absorbing the incoming damage), the Chen maintank can be good, but only when Chen actually trades up (which sometimes means playing more passive until chen is done stacking so he can trade better). Teams where their ability to punish you off of an interrupt or where they can force you into drinking or running just with sustain are bad times for a Chen tank, which is a lot of teams. But if you’re able to cast W+E without trading negatively, he can be a good pick.

If you don’t take EB at level 1 because either they don’t have AA or you can’t safely AA, I find AF is usually better as a maintank talent than globe quest more often than not, but again if you can’t safely cast the combo Chen doesn’t work. Caviat being if you’re taking Keg Toss and your team is capable of taking fights without you engaging very heavily (meaning as far as the chen player is concerned, he is able to make space by drinking/pressing W without putting himself in too much danger), you can stack AF kind of slow, focus on keg toss, and then use the increased range to setup much easier stacks later.

When your team can engage on a dime (Alarak or Tychus or Valla etc.) and if you have someone with good siege damage, you can snowball games really hard by just pushing down a lane. If Chen can drink, his team can fight under towers for really threatening sieges, he can even still perform tank activities like jumping into a favorable engagement and slowing/blocking while tanking the tower sometimes. Wandering Keg helps keep the snowball going where anyone who tries to zone you off of the fort/keep can get kegged into your team which can sometimes lead to early cores.

Source: ~900 chen games

16

Hold on… Zoom, enhance.

He has a lot of lockdown, by the way. You can absolutely make someone your plaything with Diablo.

17

Chen can only tank if your team doesn’t need a tank. Which is doable if you draft sustain/bruiser/escape heavy, but is never really optimal.

18

Stitches has a hook, and aoe Slow. Tyrael doesnt need to drink to channel a shield. Diablo has wall stun and flip. That is pretty reliable CC.

I feel like your question is a troll question. Chen gets countered so ez, he has to channel drink to gain the shield, how hard is it for enemy players to counter that???

What peel does chen offer besides his lvl 10 ULT???

19

besides chen being arguably the worst warrior in the game (and possibly the worst hero period) and a hero that you shouldn’t really be picking outside of QM or AI games:

  • stitches’ hook can swing games (especially when combined with gorge) and he can talent into slam build, allowing him a huge AoE slow on the entire enemy team every few seconds.

  • tyrael can talent into a buff for his Q that creates unpassable AoE denial. he can also constantly provide shields for his team and one of his ults makes his team immortal for a few seconds. he can also speed his team up.

  • Diablo can flip people constantly at later levels, smash them into walls, drag them towards their team, etc.

Chen can’t really do much of anything nowadays.

20

Chen is a fat Illidan. Don’t try to compare him to other tanks :smiley:

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