Chen for Dummies

Introduction

Hello im 4k player usually spamming support
I like micro heroes like chen, visage, np, etc
I have more than 20 games experience as chen so you can trust my build (jk im still new to this hero)
please enjoy the guide

TL;DR

As support
- Get smol creeps when laning
- Just S T A N D, HEAL and RIGHT CLICK A LOT
- Don't feed your creeps
- Rush Mekansm it's gud
- Use Hand of God and Mekansm to heal. Be a healing slave. Be a healbot.
- Use Penitence to deal more S M A C C to people
- At midgame get bigger creeps and stomp em' all
- Get more aura or support items
- At lategame get ora aura creeps and look at those auras

As Core
- Get Holy Persuasion and take the ranged lane creep
- Last hit and deny. EVERY. SINGLE. CREEP.
- Rush Helm of the Dominator it's gud
- Get 5 creeps and RUN DOWN ALL THE TOWERS
- Get AURA ITEMS AND LOOK AT THOSE BUFFS. ALL OF THEM.

Pros / Cons

Pros
- good healing slave have multiple healing abilities
- great sustain ability in the lane
- Can dominate multiple creeps with good abilities
- a cool sugar daddy who can dominate up to four slaves

Cons
- no stronk cc
- need some amount of micro to utilize creeps to max potential
- creep spawn is rng so sometimes you waste time waiting for good creep
- falls off late game

Skills

Skills
Penitence (Q)
- slows enemy & increase your allies attack speed (similar to Curse of Avernus)
- simple to use: click on enemy and right click them
- the attack speed bonus also applies to tower and wards
- this skill can do some nonsense **** like boosting the attack speed of tower and Death Ward and your enemy will blew up their mind
- you can use this on the enemy when they are diving or tanking tower hits to surprise them with nonsense amount of tower damage
- you can pair Penitence with Death Ward or Mass Serpent Ward, or any summons like Summon Familiars for some sick machine gun play

Holy Persuasion (W)
- sick micro ability the signature ability of Chen
- the maximum level of creeps that you can take is limited based on its level, from level 3 to 6
- the creeps have their minimum base health set, and also gets bonus attack damage and movement speed
- when you level up your skill or upgrade it with talent, the existing creeps doesn't get their bonus stats updated, so you need to capture new creeps to get the bonus. yeah i know it suck, pls volvo
- more tips about creeps on later section

Divine Favor (E)
PASSIVE
- stronk healing aura & heal amp
- amplifies Tango, Healing Salve, Headdress, and any other healing items or auras
- very good to be paired with heroes who have good sustain abilities or just likes health regen, such as Timbersaw, Lycan, Bristleback
- secretly strong with Io because you just amplifies heals for both Io and the tethered hero
- past the laning stage, the health regen isn't too relevant anymore, and this ability is more about recalling people to you when they are split pushing or just respawned
- you can use this on allied hero's creeps. Be careful about misclicking them.

ACTIVE
- can be used to call allies for gank/after they tp to base/after they buyback
- can be used to call your creeps when they are split pushing, on fountain, or after you tp'd elsewhere
- CANCELED BY ENEMY DAMAGE
- useful for split push (either your teammate or your creeps) so you can create pressure at multiple places and still be able to fight with your entire team

Hand of God (R)
- heals everyone on your team & your creeps
- have a global range
- very good to be used together with Mekansm to heal lots of health instantly

Talents

Level 10: +200 cast range OR +200 health
Usually +200 Health is better because you don't benefit too much from cast range talent, unless you're building active items

Level 15: +20 Holy Persuasion Damage OR -40s Divine Favor Cooldown
The Holy Persuasion Damage is better for pushing and easier to use. Take divine favor cooldown if you can coordinate with your allies.

Level 20: +1000 Holy Persuasion Minimum Health 20 -30s Hand of God Cooldown
Get the Hand of God cooldown. If your creeps are dying fast, it means the fight is over.

Level 25: +350 Hand of God Heal OR +5 Holy Persuasion Max Units
Just get the Heal talent. On very rare occasion, you want to get the max units talent with Aghanim and get tons of auras.

Skill Build

STARTING SKILL
Start with E because it's broken
You won't benefit much from Penitence at the start of the game
Take W if your enemy have summoned thingies like Beastmaster and it's annoying.


ACTUAL SKILLBUILD
Generally Max Holy Persuasion then Penitence then Divine Favor
Generally you want to max W because THAT'S THE REASON YOU PICK CHEN

Prioritize Penitence when your team lacks disable and there's someone on your team who can use the attack speed buff. It is generally better because on pubs it's hard to use E

Prioritize Divine Favor when your lane partner needs that juicy heal
Take Divine Favor until you don't need it at laning stage, after that just take Penitence

Always take Hand of God. It's free Mekansm

Skipping talent is fine if you don't need them yet.

EWWEWRWEE
Take more Divine Favor if your carry needs more babysitting

EWWQWRWQQ
You can take more Penitence if you are winning the lane and your carry benefits from attack speed.

Items

Starting item: headress + Tango (+ Observer Ward/branch/sentry/ Tango/ Faerie Fire)
Headdress because it gets amplified by Divine Favor
In some games you want to get sentry because sometimes they will block your camps to prevent you from getting any neutral creeps.

Early game: stick, basilius, buckler, or RUSH MEKANSM

95% of the time you want to rush Mekansm. It is very strong on Chen, because you can amplify heal, also you can combine it with your Hand of God for lots of burst heal.
The other 5% is when you have another Mekansm buyer such as Necrophos or Io. You can get Medallion of Courage or Vladmir's Offering instead.
You can get Ring of Basilius first if you get a creep with good active

Ring of Basilius and Buckler is good after mek if you plan to get Vlad


Midgame: boots, Wand, glimmer cape, force staff, vlad, medallion, drum, pipe, hotd or


Lategame: Aghanim, locket, refresher

situational: Ghost Scepter / Eul's Scepter of Divinity

Aura/team items: Greaves, Pipe, vlad, Drum, solar crest, hotd
great if you're snowballing early

classic support items: force staff + glimmer

---

Core Chen

Animal Items
Helm of the Dominator
You rush this under 10 minutes, so at level 7 you can have up to 5 creeps. After that, you can have 5 big creeps to fight and push.

Necronomicon
If you have nothing else to do after winning your lane, get necro to boost your farm and push. Level 1 is enough most of the time.

Aghanim's Scepter
Get moar bigger creeps.

Aura Items
Vladmir's Offering
More auras for your team

Drum of Endurance
More pushing and fighting power

Guardian Greaves
Classic double heal

Pipe of Insight
Take it if enemy have lots of nukes

Assault Cuirass
More pushing power, also good against physical damage

Crimson Guard
Good vs summons and lots of physical damage instances

Lotus Orb
For protecting your cores.

101 Creeps

You can read from this link
https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Neutral_creeps

This knowledge is useful if you're playing heroes that revolves around neutral creeps or likes to get HotD like
- Chen
- Enchantress
- Doom
- Lifestealer
HotD Buyers
- Beastmaster
- Lycan
- Visage
- Underlord
- Io
- Enigma

You need to memorize each creeps levels, because your Holy Persuasion have creep level limitation.


At laning stage, the best creeps are harpy stormcrafter, ogre, and ghost.
The harpy deals so much damage, combined with basilius it can constantly deal lots of damage.
Ogre have frost shield with tons of armor and slows attackers.
Ghost gives you free skadi. Also very high attack damage (45-50).

At midgame, you will want Centaur, Hellbear, satyr, and Troll.
Centaur have aoe stun. Good for fighting.
Hellbear have aoe slow, also attack speed aura. Good for farming, pushing, and fighting.
Troll can ensnare people (cancels tp and reveals invisible), also summon skeletons. Good for farming, pushing, and catching people.
Satyr have spammable aoe nuke, and health regen aura. Good for farming, pushing, and sustaining but falls of at late game.

Some midgame combos
Multiple trolls and a hellbear, and you can push like a ******* wraith king.
Troll and multiple centaur/hellbear for ensnare into chainstun.

If your teammate only afk farming, you can just take tomato, wolf, and kobold, then order them to follow your carry for faster farming. You don't want to do this as chen but sometimes shit happens.

At lategame, just take anything with auras.
Hellbear for attack speed aura
Alpha Wolf for damage aura
Wildwing for armor aura
Potato/small centaur for magic resist aura

Situational creeps that works even until late game

Kobold Foreman for movespeed aura. Sometimes your team needs the movespeed to move around the map.

Satyr Banisher for purge/dispel. Great against windranger, ogre magi, dark seer, or anyone with annoying buffs.
For more info about dispel mechanics click here.

Mud Golem for ranged stun. Great if your team have no stun and the enemy have that pesky cm/oracle/wd.

Ogre's frost shield adds tons of armor and slows attackers. Secretly strong because you can have a secret Assault Cuirass+ Shiva's Guard armor aura for your team. Just keep track of your enemy if they have Invoker, Shadow Demon, Enchantress, or Oracle because they can dispel the shield.

---

Some tips about creeps

- The neutral creeps are literally free items and heroes. You can have free Diffusal Blade, Rod of Atos, Drum of Endurance, war stomp, Headdress, Buckler, Ring of Basilius, Pipe of Insight at the same time. Well, not all of them but only up to 4 (or 5 if you have Helm of the Dominator).

- Some abilities and items can be used on allied creeps. You can abuse this to catch enemies offguard. For example: Frost Shield, Ink Swell, Force Staff, Boots of Travel
- Boots of Travel and Dark Rift can be used on dominated creeps. You can abuse this when you are playing with Tinker by putting your creeps in unusual teleport spots

Attack Damage Types

For more info read these links:
https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Attack_damage#Attack_damage_types
https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Armor#Armor_types

Basically, there are 4 attack damage types and 3 armor types

This information is useful when playing core Chen

For laning phase, you want to have creeps with piercing damage type because it deals 150% damage to lane creeps (also most of the creeps).

Usually it is the ranged lane creeps. You can also get Hill troll which have a bit higher attack damage, also ghost have way more attack damage. So that's why most of the time you take Holy Persuasion at level 1 and take the first ranged lane creep to help you contest the cs.

Piercing damage reduces damage dealt to hero, but it is easier to harass with ranged creeps, also you only have access to better melee creeps at level 3 Holy Persuasion

Early Game

Early game
- stand near your core to provide healing aura
- right click your enemy
- get neutral creep as soon as they spawn or when you are pulling. When you are pulling, you can wait until the creep you wanted starts getting attacked, then use Holy Persuasion to dominate it so you get more denies to your creeps
- you can use neutral creep to harass enemy, or pull while you're harassing
- you can also use creeps to block camps from spawning, or stacking multiple camps

Midgame

- get creeps with active abilities to help you gank/kill
- group up with your team and try to gank or run down towers
- you can call your ally with Divine Favor so your core can split push or jungle and you can call them just before you fight
- you can use your heal globally to save someone
- How to gank: group up with your creeps and dive tower. After that destroy the tower. ez.

Lategame

- On lategame, heroes are stronger and can melt your creeps quickly so it's harder to use close range creeps like centaur effectively.
- what you can do is just get aura creeps or defensive creeps and put them behind hour team. Try to keep them alive to make them useful.
- Hellbear, Frostmage ogre, wildwing ripper, alpha wolf, centaur/potato are one of the best creeps for lategame because you don't need to put them close to your enemy. For hellbear

- your job is to HEAL and SAVE people and TRY TO SURVIVE, or you HEAL and you DED. Sometimes **** happens and you just become the punching bag for your team whenever fight happens. Deal with it.

Microing Creeps

The best (or worst) part of playing Chen is microing the creeps. Everyone loves (or hates) it. Microing these things aren't as hard as people think.

Tips
- Move your units together, don't micro it like starcraft unless you can
- Use tab to cycle through your units.
- Memorize their abilities and their hotkeys (these are VERY important)
- You can use ctrl+move/attack to order your units together without selecting them
- You can stack/pull camps with your creeps while you're doing something else.

Early game:
- Just control it together with your hero
- Use the creeps to harass enemy heroes or you can use it to pull while you're harassing

Midgame:
- If you have active creeps, put your hero in a safe position, and control your creeps
- Just group your creeps together
- You can call people with your Divine Favor, while they're farming or splitpushing

Lategame:
- Assuming you have aura creeps
- Group them and put them in a safe place when the fight begins
- Make sure your team affected by the auras

Splitpushing:
- Send your creeps together in a lane
- You can call them with your E, but it will get canceled if they take damage from player

Synergy/Counter

Synergy (as support)
Mostly melee carries, especially weak carries. You can provide lots of healing through the laning stage.
- Slark
- Spectre

Io
- Io
Meme synergy with Io. You amplifies the heal for both of you and the universe will explode.
Double heal is broken, especially with Mekansm you can heal like 2k health instantly. Make sure Ancient Apparition is banned.

Any hero with tons of regen so you can amp their regen more
- Timbersaw
- Lycan
- Lifestealer
- Meepo
- Huskar
Most of them also likes the bonus attack speed from Penitence to deal tons of damage

Deathball heroes
- Death Prophet
- Lycan
- Beastmaster
They like to have more bodies and auras to melt towers

Synergy (as core)
Mostly melee ganking heroes
- Tusk
- Clockwerk
- Earthshaker
- Earth Spirit
- Spirit Breaker
Just disable your enemy and right click them. A LOT.
You want some kind of disable as your position 4 because you don't have too much stun other than your centaur creeps. Also at lategame you can't really use your creeps because they melt easily.

Penitence and Tag Team is secretly strong when paired together because you can drop more punches into the enemy with that attack speed boost.

Personal Notes

Some of my most painful experience when playing Chen is

Instant gg on the chat because you first picked Chen or pick him as offlaner

Explaining my skills to my teammate for like 2 minutes straight and they still don't understand.

Walking through the entire jungle while trying to find a certain creep for like 2 minutes

Regathering creeps after you lost all of them in a fight.

Being useless after like 30 minutes.

Chen is kinda hard to play in pubs because you need to coordinate for Divine Favor and also pubs tends to drag game longer, so your effectiveness will fall down.
Don't worry about it, just keep playing until you can stomp people (literally with centaurs) like crazy. Practice makes perfect.

Thanks to The Church of Obelis for lots of educational videos about Chen

Helpful Links

The Church of Obelis

Dota 2 Wiki Links
https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Chen
https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Neutral_creeps
https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Attack_damage#Attack_damage_types
https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Armor#Armor_types
https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Dispel