Chen picks during Shanghai. Obelis has blessed us!

Chen is awesome. This cannot be argued.

I'm pleased to see him getting a few picks and bans so far during Shanghai. I think that one of Chens glaring weaknesses is that even though his push is very strong, overall it doesn't always equate to much. Essentially what it boils down to is... Tower gold is so low, and gold per second is currently so high, if chen pushes with a few allied heroes, and you split push, you usually come out ahead in gold and exp unless it's a t3 tower. He is more about threatening a push, forcing TPs, and making space. This is just my experience in games with him for the past couple of months.

Chen has received non stop buffs, but he is only recently seeing play. Why do you think this is?

Bad hero, too many buttons.

Typical sequence of Chen gameplay : Q -> Tab -> Q -> Tab -> Q -> Tab. Extremely complex and advanced button pressing XD

Buy yes more seriously I have no idea why he's not picked more. Especially now that heroes like Death Prophet, Lone Druid, Dragon Knight, Invoker or whatnot are top tier picks. There are a lot of options in terms of pushing lineups right now, and Chen is good in more or less any lineup that 5-mans early and/or goes for early rosh...which most lineups do actually. His mana costs got reduced by a lot which is a really big deal. Honestly I'd say he's not picked more because very few players play this hero, that's the only explanation I see.

I completely agree with the fact that split push can be very effective to trade towers against Chen, actually I saw that a lot when watching games. But then I saw a lot of Chens play...very passive really, no other way to put it. Like Chen getting drafted in rather farm-oriented lineups (wtf) and/or just lacking presence on the map.

Like always it feels like professional players need a few months to adapt. I'm sure we'll see a lot of the guy.

Praise the Lord of the Creeps.

I mean, it's not just the fact the hero was picked a lot that's noteworthy, it's his winrate. He had near 80% winrate in the open qualifiers, and a 68.57% in the actual qualifiers (That's with 35 picks and 53 bans, which is a lot given the most picked hero has only had 79 (And that's Gyro)).

Essentially all big pushing cores have been doing well in the qualifiers; Lycan, Death Prophet and Chen all have very high winrates.

Also I'm not shocked Chen got more popular given that he got direct buffs, and practically every jungle creep in the game got buffed. Even the move-speed change of boots was technically a buff for him. That and he's pretty good for sustain in fights later on, which is super relevent.

Also the biggest reason I think we are seeing Chen now is the fact that the stacking meta has died. We wouldn't see him in 6.84, because BH was a thing and 6.85 just had the massive amounts of early aggression and focus on jungle stacks, neither being things Chen excelled against.

Things are changing slowly from 6.85; A lot more push is being seen. Not to the levels of 6.81 uber deathball, but there is a lot of push/deathball. Including deathball Medusa.

The big test for the hero will be seeing Alliance or Secret playing, because theyhave two of the best Chen's in the world; If the hero is actually legit, they'll be using it.

That's a kinda scrub way to play the hero, you move all of your creeps at once with this and they clump together, blocking each other, you and your allies... at least that's what I remember from playing Enchantress that way back in early 2014. You can't bodyblock effectively with that type of control too. Not even mentioning the stacking you may do in-between or sending a creep to help your teammate gank someone... really good Chen players can theoretically do so much impact that it would be easy pts/tournaments for them with all those buffs - direct and indirect.

That being said, I personally am not a fan of playing heroes with a partial effectiveness. I prefer to either play a hero to their maximum potential or not playing them at all *cough* still not bothering to do fake Torrent and Ghost Ship *cough*.

Well I don't play Chen so can't say for sure, I've only seen people play him, but I doubt that it's so much different than Meepo, and Meepos don't have these issues, on the contrary actually.
Actually in the competitive games I watched with Chen I was expecting some kind of complex micro, but I pretty much saw Chen coming out of the jungle and tab-chaining centaur stuns, that's about it.
I mean yeah sure if you're stacking camps *while* ganking, it becomes more complex, but I've never seen that. Is there even a point? Splitting creeps to stack is one thing, but splitting creeps to gank feels a bit like a waste, after all troll net into centaur stun is really good and you need Chen's nuke on top, why not gank with everything you have? Harpies can be used to harass, but that's a different story, you have a control group for it and all it does is press Q.

I mean not splitting globally, but splitting so they won't make it harder for each other to move. Ever grabbed an Illusion rune on a melee hero with a big model only to realize that it has actually became harder to lasthit? That's the same thing there.

Meepo is a whole different deal, the hardest part about the hero is using all the clones effectively on the map, Poofing them to each other and throwing net multiple times is just a matter of few games practice.

Units' model/collision sizes has always been a part of dota that I understand nothing about. Never had any problem with that when playing Meepo. Lone Druid on the other hand keeps getting bodyblocked by his bear's huge booty and he has to buy Phase Boots just to deal with that. Do Chen creeps have to be micro'd individually so that they don't bodyblock each other? Only a Chen player can answer that. Angelo?

Ask Angelo... he seems to play Chen a lot.

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There are a few situations when creep order (When ganking) becomes a factor. An example would be with centaur and golem, you'll want the centaur to lead, golem to follow. If golem leads, the rock stun is too small for centaur to chain the stuns together. One trick I often use with golem (If their mid has low mobility [no blink, etc]) is farm with a golem until he's about 10% hp and dive with him. Getting all 3 stuns in combination with a net/stomp/clap provides a ton of damage and lock down at level 3. Overall though ganks tend to not be too cluttered.

However in team fights you'll want to start microing your creeps individually. If you have two centaurs, an owl, and a wolf I would do this: Right click the wolf to the carry. You don't want him in a group because his movespeed is high and he will always tank the tower during a dive because he will lead. Click the owl to anyone who commits with space against the tower for armor bonus UNLESS they have an initiatior with blink, in which I'd use tornado. Centaurs are dependent on the situation. You'll need a LOT of lockdown to be able to run centaurs up to a hero and chain stuns, because by the time you are breaking base people are blink, force, glimmer, etc... When breaking base I now prefer to use centaur stuns defensively to trade for other stuns, similar to a fissure. If beastmaster ults and you have ES, fissure counters that initation. If beastmaster ults and you have a Chen with centaurs, the centaurs can do their adorable hobble over to any heroes capitalizing on the roar and counter with stomp(s). If beastmaster roars and their team approaches with BKBs, run the centaurs at them to force charges, then send the roar target home.

#PraiseObelis