Playing Chen in 2019: Talents and Tips

[worldpeace-11271]

Hi, I’m worldpeace, that’s my name, I’m an old man. I have some important things to tell you.

Chen is free to play! For about 12 more hours! He’s a lot of fun!

He is easy against some compositions, where your D key is a giver of infinite life. He is tough against more composotions than he is easy, unfortunately. If you want to play Chen, but you want to have a great time playing Chen, it is very helpful to know when to pick him and how to build him.

If you’re just playing quick match by yourself, try using some of these talent ideas to your game. If you have some people you’re playing with, try to get situated with either a high-healing support and strong ranged sustained damage, or with an Uther and a deletion team (huge burst on one target, like Li Ming/Alarak etc). Try to get someone to play main tank, and someone else with lots of waveclear.

If you’re in a draft, favor picking Chen into two situations:

• On solo-lane dominant maps like Braxis or Dragon Shire into good matchups
• On teamfight maps into good matchups

On solo lane-dominant maps, pick him into anyone but I would say Sonya/Dehaka/Alarak/Samuro (and probably imperius). He beats Yrel, Blaze, Thrall, Zag, Leo, and all the tanks/nazeebos gold players think are solo laners

On teamfight-dominant maps (Shrines, Cursed Hollow, Volskaya, BoE is kind of both, etc) , pick Chen into winning teamfight matchups. Look for these conditions:

• Your team features a lot of ranged damage
• AND Your level 1/4 talents get lots of value-
  • Enemy team features only one ability damage dealer, rest are AA (Elusive Brawler)
  • OR your team features a lot of healing throughput, their team features a lot of damage but not very many interrupts, then you can out-duel their frontline and kill their backline (Accumulating Flame + Ring of Fire/Kick 4)
  • OR the enemy team’s damage dealers are easily mitigated by drinking and enemy team lacks significant CC (enemy team counterpicked your Uther with Gul’dan/Nazeebo, now you get to go globes build, purposefully walk into every skillshot and be unkillable)
  • OR if enemy team features counters to aggressively-played Chen (Garrosh), but is susceptible to being kited by ranged slows (Garrosh) and your team has enough ranged damage, take Keg Toss.

I’ll list some considerations for each talent.

Elusive Brawler: Useful if you are able to block upwards of 1-2,000 AA damage (lategame) every time you cast it, and can get AA’s fairly reliably to reset most of the time
Accumulating Flame : The standard talent. Works perfectly with Keg Toss, and with the aggressive Q/E talents if your support is strong (Morales/Alex/Ana strong) and the enemy team can’t counter you hard enough to keep you from playing aggressively (else, Keg Toss)
Globes : Useful if you’re versus a team that doesn’t feature a lot of kill pressure vs. you AND you lack a strong support (otherwise take AF). Regen Chen build can free up an Uther team to make aggro plays without the Chen needing much support at all if you’re against the right teams (teams designed to choke out supports with gul’dan/lunara et cetera)

Kick : Useful vs. high-mobility or squishy targets
Ring of Fire : like Kick but way better waveclear and not good vs. high-mobility targets (does more damage but ticks over 3s so you need to be able to commit/waveclear a lot to get value)
Keg Toss : If your team can kite one or both of the enemy team’s front/backlines, and your team has enough damage to carry you while you enable them with permanent ranged slows, this talent is far and away the best: ranged bush check, dismount, slow for kiting/catching. Still decent damage, only pair with EB if every talent condition is met, else pair with AF (usually not good with globes unless enemy comp really sucks). If enemy team has enough mobility to engage despite ranged slow then do not pick this talent

BmB : If team can’t catch you/burst you very well then this is the pick (or if you have Uther/globes quest)
BF : If team can catch you even with MS, but you can tank almost all of the damage they can get on you, this is the pick
Purifying Brew : I frankly still don’t take this talent. It’s great vs. Wrath Sonya if she’s the only one with an interrupt. And if Genji is the only AA hero… yeah. Maybe it’s good. Possible synergy with globes perma-shield

Wandering Keg 95% of the time

Pressure Point : I take ToH now
Touch of Honey : 40% slow now. For 3s. If you can bodyblock it’s basically the same as Pressure Point! but for 3x as long. also aoe 3s 40% slow is good
Withering Flame : When you’ve taken RoF/Kick build against teams whose damage is mostly spells/abilities, -25% damage/healing means you can trade a lot harder. Most of the time the 40% slow is the best, but sometimes your team has plenty of kill pressure/“catch” without it and vs. those spellpower teams this talent is a significant debuff

Flying Leap : for aggro builds (Q/E lvl4) if you want to catch people even better
Another Round : Final, potentially game-ending Keg Build talent depending on how your team synergizes with it/how it counters enemy team. Or if you’re just going ham with lots of E talents this gives you W+E+E.
Enough to Share : Those times when you’re vs. DoT teams and you’re lucky enough to have gone Q/E level 4, and they aren’t mobile, and hey, maybe you’ve even taken the globes/BmB talents and you have 110 HPS, now your team can be invincible too. gg

Some tips:

• Only use Q for escaping the aftermath of displacement abilities, or for taking trades you know you win. That means getting a kill, or walking away with more HP than the hero you just kicked. If you kick in, and then get thrown by Garrosh, that’s on you.
• Q has three biggest strengths:
  #1 Bodyblocking
  #2 Escaping
  #3 Finishing a kill
• Bodyblocking is your #1 priority on every aggressive Q you ever cast. Not damage, not anything, it is putting your body in their way. The better you do this, the more games you win. Period. More blocking = more time they’re vulnerable = more damage they take, from you and everyone. When you press Q aggressively, you should already be moving your cursor around and adjusting your movement before you even land. You want to be a wall and completely stop any further movement after you press Q, like a root.
• W+E+D is your bread and butter. You don’t have to press Q, it’s much safer to just press W+E and drink. Sometimes, you don’t even have to press E. E has a longer cast animation than W, and just the slow from W enables you and your team to do more damage as it extends your enemy’s period of vulnerability. They’re caught out of position for longer when slowed, and if they become vulnerable enough, you can Q behind them to finish the job.
• Wandernig Keg is for more than isolating squishies. Put people into zerg waves, into the Towers in Towers of Doom, save someone from Stitches Gorge, keep the enemy support away from casting a heal on a kill target, remove the enemy frontline from intervening in a teamfight, interrupt mosh, isolate and kill Garrosh…

[DJPea-1843]