Chen Trait Change

Hero and Skin Suggestions
1

I have recently become reminded of Chen and how the game has changed to a point that there is literally no point in playing him. The amount of hard CCs like stuns and silences and the like of Quest talents E.G, Convection, that can easily take advantage of him as a stationary target when hes drinking. Sure hes taking no damage but in the long run heroes with stacking quests dont care all that much and see him as an easy Stack generator and can more easily and quickly stack up giving them a potentially major power spike relatively early in the game. Now on to the trait Change this is going to be about.

NEW TRAIT: Stagger
Has on use and passive components.
Passive: Chen staggers 35% of all damage he takes over 5s
On Use: 10s CoolDown: Activate to reduce your Current Stagger by 50%.
So basically the main mechanic of BrewMaster Monks in WoW. It will still allow chen to absorb damage but not make him vulnerable to the likes of hard CC and stacking quests as he currently does.

Basic Abilities
Q: Flying Kick: unchanged, exactly as is it right now
W: Keg Smash: Now reduces the Cooldown of Stagger per enemy Hero hit by 1s
E: Flame Breath: The Damage over Time, applied by using Flame Breath on enemies slowed by Keg Smash, now reduces the CoolDown of Stagger by 0.1s per Non-structural enemy hit per tick
R1: Wandering Barrel: Unchanged
R2: NEW HEROIC: Fortifying Brew: 70s CD, activate to gain 25 armor and Stagger incoming damage by an additional 25% for 5s
The CDR given by his W and E encourages him to be proactive. Sure he can take burst damage a lot better but the more he staggers the harder the resulting DoT will hit and if he cant clear it, it will be punishing. The new heroic, directly named after his old trait, lets him tank burst damage more efficiently but picking it also means giving up on the distruption of Wandering Keg.
This will mean a new talent rework to go along side the new Stagger Trait but can also mean changing his Brew resource for the generic Mana, which personally is a minor problem if it makes Chen more viable and fun to play again as right now as he currently can be a nightmare to play with the amount of hard CC sources in the game now compared to the first year of the game. I remember really enjoying Chen but now i dont want to go near him since since practically everything, from cc to stacking quests make him more of a detriment to play than actually fun.
numbers of course arent final. just a general ball park idea.

2 Likes
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I know some say “don’t drink and drive”, but what if Chen could do?. Also drinking while walking?

1 Like
3

Oh boy, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. For at least a year.

I also think the “drink to get shields and resources” was fine but it’s so outdated that now Chen is just plain unplayable.

I rolled for the first time ever a brewmaster panda a few months ago and discovered the stagger mechanic. At first, I was like “wow, this is actually pretty clever, why didn’t they give Chen this?” and after some thought I realized it’s just almost impossible to pull it off in HotS.

You are not actually doing tanking, you are just delaying damage, and if you have no healer taking care of you, you will eventually just die, just a little bit after than you were supposed to. I know some would say “well, just get a pocket healer”, but that’s not really a solution. Not everyone plays ranked/unranked, not all matches have a competent healer (or healer at all) and Blizzard has already stated several times that the game is supposed to be fun, no matter if its in a competitive scenario or not.

My point is: Chen’s Fortibrew is useless. Stagger would be a good replacement, but not in the way it’s implemented in WoW.

I would either give him a brand new stagger mechanic, or rework Fortibrew completely, like for example it’s the same ability but you can actually move around while channeling, or you get a 10 armor bonus while drinking, or even they can give it a talent-specific tier (like Kharazim with his trait) that Fortibrew has three optional effects like cleanse, aoe damage, aoe healing, whatever.

Hope Blizz adresses the Chen and Tassadar issue soon. It is sad to see two good old beloved heroes just sitting there, watching Chromie and Tyrande getting reworked over and over, while they are getting more useless with each patch and hero release.

1 Like
4

It is in the end an Idea. of course they will need to adapt it to make it viable. as for the time being im just throwing an idea out there that could help chen. potentially make him like Raynor and Tyrande, old characters that got an update to solidify their roles in the modern times of the game.

5

The simplest solution is to just give him unstoppable in some capacity. Just integrated in a way that requires skill to take advantage of it.

Idea 1 - Unstoppable for the 1st second of drinking. Its like a preemptive cleanse. Guarantees that at least some brew is gained. And is a skillful way to block some CC.

Idea 2 - Chen is unstoppable while at exactly 50 Brew. This is a powerful effect, but the player has to be very mindful of their abilities to fully utilize it. Very fitting on a hero themed around balance.

Idea 3 - Has an alternate brew ability with the 1 key. Works the same as his trait but grants unstoppable for its duration. Can only be used every 20 seconds.

1 Like
6

I have also thought quite a bit about this, and thought about his current state in the game.

As other have said, it’s nearly impossible to play him due to the fact that he NEEDS to stand still to get value, unless the enemy team has no focus fire, in which case you can just dive their backline and remove damage by scaring them (I mean, who wouldn’t be scared by a flying panda?).

That being said, in my opinion, Chen’s ability to dive a backline hero and cause absolute mayhem is the best part about him. This causes a ton of issues with how the game is now, because tons of heroes can just turn around and help their team to stun lock him, guaranteeing a free tank kill just as the fight starts. It makes it difficult to play him how he is intended to play.

The alternative now is you have to stand in the frontline and not use your q for fear of getting stunlocked. This means you have your w and your e, essentially making you a discount arthas that can be shut down easily.

After all that, I think in order to preserve the playstyle Chen’s kit is geared towards (a true dive tank), they need to only rework his trait, as his other abilities work great for him.

My solution is that they do something similar to what they did to roadhog in Overwatch. Let his channel his trait over time while he retains the ability to move. Obviously, for the sake of balance, the devs will either need to tweak how long it lasts (so there is downtime between casts), or lower the shield amount so he can’t tank everything in the known universe.

As a person who loves playing Chen (he was one of the first heroes I played quite a bit), I think this would be a nice easy fix that would preserve who Chen is, while allowing him a place in the game today.

1 Like
7

Trait: Fortyfing brew (D)
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Activate to gain 300 shields and remove 20% of Starggered damage. Chanel to remove 5% of Staggered damage, reduce cooldown of the ability by 2 seconds and gain 150 shield every second. Chen can move at 10% movement speed while channeling. Chen is unstoppable for the first second.

Passive: Chen staggers 20% of all damage he takes over 5s.

This would alow Chen to tank damage more effectively and make him less vulnerable to CC and deposition abilities.

1 Like
8

It doesn’t matters what traits it gets when the skillset is what is wrong. My idea for reworking Chen is to either make it a tank, rework its D (Fortifying Brew) so it can evade attacks and basically allow Chen to build shields before going back into the fight (but still can be interrupted by CC and take damage from skills), or either make it a bruiser by buffing his E (Breath of Fire) into an “area of effect debuff” that makes the enemies burn themselves and stack the damage if they get close to each other while ignited. At least that would make the character a direct counter to heroes like Alexstraza, turning it into a low-budget tanky version of Kael’thas. It would turn it into a disruptive character with decent damage and force the enemy to use a different playstyle for countering it.

I have been playing Chen almost since it was released, and after 3 years of enduring a hero this badly designed, I concluded that the problem with Chen is that it’s not a tank, neither a bruiser, it’s just a walking abomination that can’t tank, kill nor support its team. The closest it gets to being useful is by shoving an enemy in the base with Wandering Keg, and certainly it doesn’t works vs mages because they have Ice Block, and doesn’t works vs assassins or warriors because they have leaps/jumps so it basically can be avoided by any player with a working brain. And about the Storm, Earth, Fire ult, it can be easily countered by any blinding/zoning hero (Johanna, Lili, Malfurion, Stukov, Artanis, Arthas). Seriously, it has been 3 YEARS and yet the devs haven’t figured out that MAYBE the skillset that makes the hero unique also makes it beyond unplayable and impossible to balance by just changing the traits.