Is Dota Ready For Chen?
Let’s face it: no one plays Chen. In the past 12 months, he’s picked at a 1.06% rate across all pub games. Compare this to the most popular hero Pudge, who you’re more likely to see on a factor of 33 times more in your game. Chen’s unpopularity is historic, even during ages when he was actually good in the meta.
Dedication from Snith, the player with the most Chen games played in the top 100 Player Rankings
While pub trends tend to follow the latest pro tends, Chen is one of the few heroes that’s quite stubborn to meta trends. His pick rate has remained stable, even after being the 4th most contested hero at PGL Bucharest and the 4th most banned hero at ESL One Katowice.
A History Of Buffs
Chen has been receiving buffs ever since patch 6.79, which then nerfed his Hand of Gold cooldown. Some of the most stark changes include three sub patches, from 7.06d-7.06f, that tweaked his Hand of Gold heal from 200/300/400 to 250/375/500. Then since 7.06, Holy Persuasion has had its cooldown reduced from 30/26/22/18 to 10 on each level and its mana cost reduced from 100/110/120/130 to 70/90/110/130.
Along with his recent movement speed boost, Chen became even more of a nightmare at earlier levels. The change to the gold bonus for stacking camps helped his development through the mid game. And in 7.07, he received a 20% XP talent at level 10, which was then buffed to 35% in 7.07c. This became the standard choice among pro Chen players.
VP.Rodjer’s Chen build in a dominant win over Optic
Talents helped support heroes maintain relevancy into the mid and late game, when before their only recourse was dependent on items. Patch 7.07 was a turning point when it changed Holy Persuasion to allow sending back creeps. Holy Persuasion is often necessary as a level one skill, but it didn’t do anything for a minute after the initial creep spawn. Allowing Chen to send back lane creeps gives him the ability to mess with the creep equilibrium—crucial to any offlane.
If patch 7.07 wasn’t already enough, 7.07d gave non-trivial boosts to his base damage (+5) and movement speed (300 to 310), and patch 7.09 gave a bonus 15% gold bounty bonus to the hero that stacked the camp. This alone buffed support heroes who could clear camps, such as KOTL at ESL Katowice and Sand King at PGL Bucharest. But Chen is a beneficiary to this change as well, in both offlane and support roles.
Does It Matter?
How underrated does Chen have to be until pub players start picking him up? Or is it just that heroes that require controlling more than one unit will never be popular? The usual suspects of Visage, Arc Warden, Lone Druid, Meepo, Beastmaster, and Broodmother rest at the bottom of our pick rate charts. Even Lycan, who has a staggering 58% win rate in the 4-5k+ MMR bracket, is 99th in popularity.
There are some exceptions. Nature’s Prophet is still popular, but it may have more to do with how 60% of players play him as a jungle hero. Then there’s Enchantress, who is the closest analog to Chen and once picked in pro games when the other was already taken. She’s picked nearly 4 times as much as Chen in pub games. But in her case, she tends to transition to a late game damage dealer than a herdsman.
Chen, in his current form, may never be popular, no matter how popular he is in the competitive meta or how inherently strong he may be overall. There was one glimpse of hope, back when talents were introduced in 7.00. His level 15 talent at the time gave 25% spell amplification, opening up an alternate build as a spell caster. Granted, his skill kit didn't have much synergy at all with the talent, which is why it was quickly replaced in 7.02. But it was an opportunity to refresh the hero, like how Ember Spirit had his magic damage build. What would Chen be without his creeps?
Chen is incredibly fun to play if you don't mind micro. If you do mind... well there's a talent tree for that.
Chen is a fantastic hero, finally an article provided adressing the issue. Too bad he is underrated, i don't mind microing at all ^^
One of the best heroes in game. People are too scared of micro, you can do just fine with novice micro and a minimum of map awareness for clutch heals. Not to mention the free "save your retard" card
i think beastmaster was the hero that made me learn how to micro. and since then i love playing chen. its so satisfying to micro well. also MUD GOLEM GANGBANGS ARE THE FUNNIEST THING IS THIS GAME
let me try to complete your sentences Troy Sanders : IS THIS GAME EVER NEED A CHEN? the answer is yes, this game is trying to provide Hero every type of players can fit into, and the likes of you Edge, is RARE. Statistics didn't lie, that also means the likes of PUDGE players out there is COMMON to find.
Chen's change to being able to finally teleport creeps back to him is huge. It's main issue remains that it's still a snowball hero to a large extent. if you ever lose your army in the later half of the game and it's still close, your in big trouble .
I dont play chen bcuz of his over reliance on creeps. Creeps dont even scale with game. Late game his creeps are easy to deal with and sometimes becomes an easy source of gold if mismanaged.
lol a majority of the players playing dota are scrubs who cant even deal with playing a single unit under their control properly...you want them to play a hero that is not only boring for one in the eye of the casual dota player (no right click no nukes) but also requires controlling multiple units? cmon who you kidding
the only reason scrubs might pick meepo and at least try to learn him is because a farmed meepo can be extremely fun to play blowing up everyone with a blink poof combo...its just the disposition of the general populace to pick carries and heroes with fancy skills...kills and fun to play is the name of the game as far as they are concerned...why exactly do you think pudge is number 1 in popularity?
no one picks him on the pro scene and very little in high skill pubs but the scrubs love him because? fun to play, easy kills..thats it
Hand of goLd?
The problem with this hero is that under Ancient, games usually last more than 30-35 minutes. People have problems with using early game advantage or just mindlessly push untill they all die and throw away all the advantage.
This hero can be pleasant to play only above that Ancient 1 at least.
Its not true that Chen is useless without his creeps in later stages of the game. You can provide a lot of utility with Greaves and Pipe. His ultimate has been buffed. With lvl 25 talent to heal, pipe and greaves you can negate over 1k dmg dealt to every single target in your team. Its a huge counter against heros that relies on initiating and nuking enemies like: Es, Sf magic build.
I personally dont know why people dont play this hero. Maybe because other people will spam "GJ NICE MICRO" if u fail a gank ? You can efectively play him with only 2 creeps and maxing test of faith instead. U cant save your retardss so fast, but its easier way to play this hero. Creeps die instantly after 20 min mark anyway so you dont need them unless you have aghanim.
Hand of gold!!!
All are healed!!!
*tries playing chen*
*fails 1 gank*
*gets death threats*
Yup, even as a seasoned rts player (good micromanaging skills) I just kinda avoid the hero because I want to keep the game as stress-free as I can...
Only black hero in Dota. Obvious racism on east european's part. They just aren't woke.
Best hero in dota since 2008.
Actually, I play Chen. I climbed from Crusader 2 to Archon 4 mostly by playing Chen. Micro is fun, and watching the commends go up is just as fun. ツ
chen is powerful and like wisp it's not fit for pub because it require good team work and specific strategy for it to make it excel really well. Stop looking at hero like how good this is or how bad this is. Dota is a team game, it isn't something like hur dur you pick this hero you will win, and you pick this hero you will lose. It's mostly strategy, teamwork and situational.
I am a scrub that gets limited game time and that means pubs... and like others mentioned I avoid heroes like Chen because my micro skills are bad and while I often get peeps who want to do good teamwork the coordination (or execution of teamwork) part is usually bad.
So for me it's not fun to play these heroes. but not because of the hero itself.
I like Chen. I just don`t play it. I`m more into heroes you can control your chances of winning, like hard carry and offlane roles.
As if Chen doesn't influence your chances of winning lulz. Good hero.
My problem with Chen (and other micro-intensive heroes other than Arc and Lone Druid) is how fragile the creeps are. I always sucked at Starcraft where units died in a second or two, my cave-person brain can only handle Warcraft 3 style where units can take a lot of punishment.
Chen is good but the micro is a bit hard. I'd assume im around 2k (i dont have ranked server in South Africa and the ping is a bit high on EU with my potatoe internet). For me laning isn't too hard with him but i lose myself in team fights or end up feeding my creeps to the enemy. I just don't have the skill to play the hero
некоторых персонажей стоит вообще удалить или сильно урезать
the only Chen player raising those numbers is Snith LUL
Its because sub 6k pubs dont know how to play around him
I've been spamming Chen a bunch. I feel like the issue that people have with him is that jungling sucks and they see him as a jungle hero. He's not. Chen is best at ganking at lvl 1-3, he has a huge power spike then, and again when he gets his aghs. The trick is to stay with the team and push the neglected lane with creeps. This buys space for your cores. You should max his E spell because the shorter duration of send back for your teammates. Anchient black dragons are incredible for pushing.
SnithFace
LUL Chen LUL
it is so hard to play chen with centaur stun i rather use mud gollem and satyr as disabler
I would like to play Chen but I have to focus on only 3 heroes to raise my MMR.
I personally like each and every hero and admire anybody who can consistently play with more than 10 heroes at a high skill level.
Chen is very intimidating to new players simply because of his reputation online(and nobody recommend him)
But other three star character like rubick and invo are learnt because there is a respect given to them and also DotA wtf videos ^^
The community has to actually encourage Chen players, Chen players have to post badass plays .
You can get rampage and kills with Chen I am sure, why on my first try with Io I got 5-6 kills
chen git gud
Dedication from? Did you mean "dedicated to"?
dotabuff desperately needs an editor, all your articles have simple mistakes like this
Combining creeps abilities for effective ganking is fun and challenging, I love Chen.
In the third paragraph, it should be "Hand of God," not "Hand of Gold"
Who TF gets worried about a Chen pick
@You're Crying Too: Improve your English please.
Dedication from Snith [to spam Chen, a hero that is always bottom three in pick rate]
I only started playing DotA for a couple of months now and what started as a joke from a friend of mine who introduced me to DotA, (I asked him who's the best character to use as a beginner and he said Chen) ended up in me making Chen my comfort hero. I really do enjoy playing this hero along with Visage and Warlock. :)