Chen and the pub stigma

Chen is extremely underrated and underplayed in pubs (even at high ranks) because most players are afraid of heroes with micromanagement skills.

Generally, we think that picking heroes we can’t use at their 100% is a terrible idea. Honestly, when I find Chen in a match, my first thought is that the player may be either a pro or a big feeder, but I tend to associate the hero to a negative feeling most of the times.

During the past years, IceFrog tried his best to make Dota 2 and its mechanics as friendly as possible for the average player, which led to drastic changes and reworked heroes.

7.20 certainly affected Chen in a positive way. I understand that many veteran Chen players might miss the old Holy Persuasion (now it has a creep level cap of 4/5/6/6) because his army is not as strong as in the past in the early game, but all his other abilities improved and scale a lot better in the late game.

Chen’s skill build

The image below shows the most popular skill builds used in competitive games during March. The ability without the icon symbol is Divine Favor, the new skill that replaced Test of Faith in 7.20.

As you can see from the data, the great majority of the pro players completely ignored Penitence, invested two points into Holy Persuasion in order to have access to level 5 creeps, and prioritized Divine Favor.