Nessaj, the Chaos Knight

Knight in blackest armor.

This week, bestowed upon us is an agent of pandemonium itself: Chaos Knight!

As the name suggests Chaos Knight is very reliant upon luck, possessing one of the highest potential damage outputs available to both strength heroes and carries. As long as his luck holds true, he is a truly fearsome opponent. Chaos Bolt (Q), has both a damage and stun component. Depending on the dice, it can stun for up to 4 seconds and deal either poor or very reasonable damage. Reality Rift (W) teleports himself, the target and any illusions present to a random point between the two. As well as granting him bonus damage for the next hit. Chaos Strike (E) enables Nessaj to deal tremendous amounts of physical damage, allowing him to potentially strike for up to 3 times his usual damage. This is the highest of any non-ultimate critical in the game. Finally his ultimate, Phantasm (R) summons up to 3 illusions of himself which deal full unmodified damage but take additional damage. Giving him in essence quad deeps.

In similar vein to Mirana, Chaos Knight is typically played as a ganker with good potential to carry providing he does well enough early game. In essence making him a semi-carry.


Chaos. Chaos never changes.

Except in the case of Chaos Knight. I'm not sure what version it was introduced but reality rift used to be a regular blink strike, which functioned very similarly to Rikimaru's. The change has essentially reduced his manoeuvrability defensively and increased it aggressively, allowing him to use it almost as pseudo-initiation with a bit of luck.

And as the namesake suggests, Nessaj relies a great deal on luck. For those of us not in favour of the RNG god, stay away!

I'm going to be discussing Chaos Knight in the context of laning at mid and ganking as runes are available and whilst I will discuss sidelane ideas, the primary focus is from the middle lane outwards.

Guide to reading

In most situations, something bolded will have an important point. Blue text typically refers to crowd control and Red text typically refers to damage whereas Orange typically refers to other points such as advice.


I am testing this for this article, if successful I will incorporate it into others if not I will discard it. As always please leave feedback in the comments section, it is always appreciated :)

Statistics

Chaos is Fun...damental

Strength: 20 + 2.9

Agility: 14 + 2.1

Intelligence: 16 + 1.2

Hit Points: 530 / 2221

Mana: 208 / 832

Damage: 49 - 79 / 138 - 168

Armor: 3.96 / 13.76

Movement Speed: 325

Statistics are given as at level 1 and 25 respectively.

From the get go we can see that his starting strength is fairly reasonable, giving him decent early hp in lane. Not too much, but a suitable amount for a melee hero. One of the more glaring things however is his base intelligence, int gain and mana pool. All of Chaos Knights spells have a high cost relative to his mana pool, at level 2 you will have enough mana to chaos bolt and reality rift only once. Whilst his ability starts low it has a reasonable gain, allowing him to effectively utilize his his ultimate and his crit which his astoundingly high base damage lends to well. However although the upper range of his base damage is high the lower range is mediocre, meaning he can hit both very hard and pretty nominally early game. It also adds alot of variance to his critical strike late game. Armor wise it's average, atypical of other melee carries / semicarries. Although comparison to other mid strength heroes would lead us to believe it's on the lower end of the scale.

It's also worth noting his base movement speed is the second highest in the game at 325, just below Luna's.

The skills

Chaos Bolt

Ability Type: Active
Targeting Type: Enemy Unit

Discharges a mysterious bolt of energy at an enemy. Stunning for a random amount, as well as dealing a random amount of damage.




Range: 500
Damage: 1-200/50-225/75-250/100-275
Stun Duration: 1-2/1-3/1-4/2-4
Manacost: 140

Cooldown: 10 seconds

Additional Details:

• Damage type: Magical
• Damage and stun duration appear above the targeted unit's head, visible to both allies and enemies

Reality Rift

Ability type: Active
Targeting Type: Enemy units

Teleports the Chaos Knight, any illusions and the target unit to a random point along the line between the caster and target. Grants bonus attack damage.




Range: 550/600/650/700
Bonus Damage: 25/50/75/100
Bonus Damage Duration: 1.2 seconds
Manacost: 70

Cooldown: 24/18/12/6

Additional Details:

• Teleports the Chaos Knight to a random point between the two units (between 30-80% of the distance)
• Teleports the target enemy to the same location as the Chaos Knight, offset by 25 units towards the casters original position
• All illusions owned by the players Chaos Knight within 1400 AoE are also teleported to his final position
• The Chaos Knight and the target unit are made to face each other
• The Chaos Knight and all teleported illusions are issued an attack order against the target unit

Chaos Strike

Ability Type: Passive
Targeting Type: None

Grants the Chaos Knight a chance to critically strike on every attack.





Critical Chance: 10%
Damage Multiplier: 1.5/2/2.5/3

Additional Details:

• For every attack that doesn't crit, it becomes more likely your next attack will. See: Pseudo-random distribution

Phantasm

Ability Type: Active
Targeting Type: Self Cast / Instant

Spawns multiple illusions of the Chaos Knight.

Illusions last 24 seconds at all levels and take 200% damage and deal 100% of normal damage.


Illusions Spawned: 1/2/3
Manacost: 125/200/275

Cooldown: 140

Additional Details:

• Removes most BUFFS upon activation
• Brief 'transformation' invulnerability, similar to Manta Style's active, for 0.1 seconds

Analysis

As we can see Chaos Knight's active spells all take up a good proportion of his mana pool when cast, even his cheapest spell uses 1/12th of his available mana at level 25 alone. When used in conjunction with his other spells even more so, assuming his ultimate is maxed a full combo will consume 485 mana and 410 if his ult is level 2. This makes it glaringly apparent that this hero will have great difficulty with mana throughout the entire game and thus will have to buy at least one item to rectify this.

Chaos Bolt(Q)

I'm going to discuss Chaos Bolt in two parts, damage and stun, as it is one of his main tools for setting up ganks and dealing damage. Which both can either be exceptional or glaringly mediocre.

One of the important things to note is that the stun ranges from 1-2/1-3/1-4/2-4 as it levels, the large difference between possible stuns at early levels means he can either ensure a kill individually or provide a short stun for follow up cc. I believe it is a fairly reasonable opening stun from the jungle and the fog of war or out of an invisibility rune which will go one of two ways: the stun will be on the upper end, allowing allies to attack and conserve mana before chain cc'ing. Or the stun will be on the lower end, especially with bolt at levels 3 or lower, meaning allies will have to use additional mana to secure the skill. This is a very important point to consider and remember when playing and ganking with a Chaos Knight.

The damage component of the spell is both the strongest and the weakest early game, a further play on the chaotic nature of this hero. With a damage range between 1-200, 1-150 post mitigation, it is by far one of the strongest, and weakest, level 1 nukes in the game. By comparison Earthshaker and Lich deal 94 damage with their level 1 spells, Fissure and Frost blast, with windrunner close behind at 90 damage post mitigation. However the difference being chaos bolt also has a chance to deal as little as one damage at level 1, meaning that should the situation call for it by all means use the spell but be prepared for it to be little more than a waste of mana. Worst case scenario; 1 damage and 1 second of stun is a gigantic waste of precious mana. Do note though, as the skill levels increase it becomes more of a sub-par damage spell and a far better stun, dealing between 75-206 damage maxed. I find it better to think of this spell as a stun with some damage as opposed to damage with some stun.

Expensive manawise at all stages of the game and both potentially powerful or mediocre. However due to the additional safety factor that additional levels grant, as well as having his only real stun and magic damage tied into one spell, I recommend that you Max Chaos Bolt first, by 7.

Reality Rift(W)

What used to be a simple blink strike, exactly the same as Rikimaru's, has been remade into a spell more befitting of his role.

At max level Reality Rift has a cast range of 700, with both heroes landing facing each other, offset by 25 units, on a random point 30-80% between the two. This gives a lower and upper range of 210-560, essentially displacing the enemy hero by an amount between 490-140 from their original location as demonstrated below:

Reality Rift in a nutshell

As we can clearly see, both from the spell notes and the diagram, reality rift has a maximum 'good' displacement of 30% in front of you. Moving Chaos Knight little and moving the target by a fair distance, allowing you to capitalise off said displacement. However as is the nature of Chaos it can go both ways, displacing Chaos Knight up to as much as 560 units from the cast point, whilst moving the target only a lowly 140 units. Bare this in mind when using this spell, that it has the potential to backfire and put Chaos Knight in a very unfavourable position potentially in the middle of the enemy team.

Whilst the description in the tooltip suggests that the bonus damage lasts for only one attack it actually lasts for the whole 1.2 seconds, meaning if his attack speed high enough he can get a second or third hit with the bonus damage active. Another interesting component of reality rift is its interaction with illusions, those occurring via Phantasm or other means, teleporting them to the same location as Chaos Knight. Whilst they are also teleported do note that they do not receive the damage modifier.

As his primary means of closing the gap with a hero, bonus damage and because of displacement's disruptive nature on player attention - I Recommend you Max Reality Rift second, by 8, in a similar manner to tiny: q w q w etc etc.

Chaos Strike(E)

Chaos Knight's bolt and rift are powerful ganking tools, with the potential for greatness or mediocrity, but could be given to an intelligence hero for a completely different effect. Chaos strike allows Nessaj to scale well into late game and take advantage of a few things; his bonkers base attack damage, his reasonable late attack speed and the bonus damage given by reality rift.

As we've prior discussed chaos strike has a very large on critical bonus, so surely it would make sense to max it first or second? I would say no, due to its random nature and to his other spells giving him 'guaranteed' damage. Whilst the payoff is large let us analyse a series of hypothetical situations:

Not as good as you think

At level 7 the highest attack damage you can have is 72-102, assuming you maxed crit and took 3 points in stats and are still naked for whatever reason. With a 10% chance to critically strike in an ideal world every 1 in 10 attacks would deal between 216-306 damage, including an armor value of 5, 20% physical resistance, it looks more like 173-245 critical damage. But this is all you'll get, say if you put one point in bolt and rift you'll get at most a 223-295 crit on your rift hit and a 2 second stun in absolute best of circumstances. In the worst case scenario you'll get roughly 84 damage, if you dont crit and hit for low damage, with a 1 second stun which your opponent will simply walk off. Say you went beast mode and put 3 points in rift and 4 in crit you might see a crit between 338-410, post mitigation, on your rift hit. All of these circumstances assume you might get lucky (should the stars align) but this is a bad way, at least statistically speaking, to play Casino Knight who we want to reduce that random element to an amount as manageable as possible.

For fair comparison let us look at Chaos Knight at level 7, having maxed Bolt then rift, in similar circumstances. Worst case scenario he will stun for 2 seconds and deal 75 magic damage, post mitigation, and deal 113 damage on his rift hit, probably getting an unfactored hit or 2 in as well, coming to a total of 188 mixed damage. Best case scenario he will stun for 4 seconds and deal 206 magic damage, and deal 137 damage on his rift strike coming to a total of 343 mixed damage. Again this is for one rift hit and chaos bolt only, not additional attacks or allies. At best a Chaos Knight skill building like tiny will deal better damage than reasonable Casino Knight and only slightly less than Beastmodecasino Knight, gets more dice rolls with smaller variance and less reliance on chance and gets to be credit to team.

TLDR: Don't take crit early, I beg you. I enjoy playing with Ganker Knight not Casino Knight

That said the triple damage payoff, that works on his FULL DAMAGE ultimate illusions, is pretty awesome later on in game. Max Chaos Strike third, by 15.

Phantasm(R)

Phantasm is Chaos Knight's ultimate and his 'Push-R to recieve deeps' button. Spawning, at max, 3 illusions which all deal 100% damage and can crit, and crit hard as we prior discussed, pushing up his damage output to 400% providing the illusions can get close enough - and with the help of Reality Rift they most certainly can.

However there are a couple of technical nuances regarding this skill I'd like to discuss.

Firstly, it will dispel most buffs upon activation. Haste, Double Damage, Repel and Shadow Word are all spells you can expect to see removed. Secondly it will give you a very brief window, 0.1 seconds, in which you are completely invulnerable. This can be used to dodge pretty much any spell or attack your reactions can account for, it comes at a cost though.

Phantasm has two big problems, cooldown and manacost. 140 second cd at all levels, given the potential power of this ult it's not especially surprising but it is an astounding(ly bad) cooldown. Two whole minutes is a long time to wait for your super saiyan mode illusions that last 24 seconds, unless it's super late game it would probably be better to die instead of burning such a valuable ult.

Another point to consider is that illusion hp is based on your current hp, the timing of this ultimate is important and so is your hp. They also receive the strength benefits of Armlet without any of the negative regeneration. Avoid using it if you're on low hp unless you think the situation calls for it and the enemy is light on AoE. I advise you skill Phantasm at levels 9, 11 and 16.

Item Choices

Going to be going about this slightly differently this week, suggesting a set of starting, core and luxury items. These are complete basics, who you are laning against and your play style determines what you need from the get go as well as what you need later on. I'm not going to discuss items you shouldn't get just what are strong choices, sometimes CK really needs that Dagon 5 after all... ;)

Starting / Early Game

GG Branch

I tend to open with 3 or 4 of these, in terms of stats they're the cheapest gold per stat point in the game. They make your everything better. More hp and base damage, attack speed and most importantly more mana capacity. CK bleeds mana, help yourself early by taking these. They also build into your magic wand later on.

Gauntlet of Strength - Mantle of Intelligence - Stout Shield

Consider taking one of these instead of a fourth branch, should the situation call for it. Against a ranged hero who harasses alot? Shield. Against a bursty lane and need more hp? Gauntlet. Safe lane and want more mana capacity? Mantle. The choice is yours to make depending entirely on what you want to make your life easier.

Tangos - Healing Salve - Clarity Potions

A combination of these items, depending on the lane, is a must if you expect to last long. Unless your lane enemy simply fails to show up, in which suspect fishy business, you will need regen to get the ball rolling.

• Example 1: 4 x branch, 1 x tangos. 301 gold leftover.

This opening build has only one goal, fast bottle. Minimal stats and regeneration mean it will likely have trouble against a harass heavy lane, such as Storm or Windrunner, who can harass you without fear of counter attack.

• Example 2: 3 x branch, 2 x tangos and stout shield. 14 gold leftover.

Taken against a potential harass heavy lane, such as the prior example, to allow safe initial farm and continuous regeneration whilst last hitting. Stout shield in combination with your high base movement should keep you relatively safe. Feel free to swap out a tango for a salve if you'd prefer.

So you're in your lane you're getting gold just fine, where next?

Core

Power Treads

Gives movement speed and +8 to one of his stats and attack speed? A fairly strong pick up on any Chaos Knight. I would expect it to be used mostly for the additional mana or hp.

Bottle

I would say considering Chaos Knight's abysmal mana pool, his high movement speed and disposable stun he is a strong contender for the bottle carrier. Rift into stun should be more than sufficient to beat most heroes to the rune, assuming you know where it is. Chaos Knight does need a good team behind him to benefit from his spells and one to ward for him too, if you're not getting the vision it may be wise to consider a different solution.

OR

Soul Ring

I both love and hate this item. Disposable mana for a hero with a poor pool and the ability to temporarily increase his mana capacity? Good stuff! Forgetting to use it because I'm too busy concentrating, not so good. Use with care, you never know when that extra hp could have saved you.

Magic Wand

Trusty Magic wand. Consolidates the stats gained from our Ironwood Branches into one item slot as well as giving us another means of mana and health regen. A worthy pick up in most situations.



I believe these items to be core on Chaos Knight, they're all very cheap and effective at their role on our chance happy knight. The cheapness of these items allows us to get them quickly and move on to more powerful items if the situation allows, whilst retaining effectiveness if farm suffers or the game is short.

Further Items

Armlet

As prior mentioned activating Phantasm whilst Armlet is active will grant his illusions all of the benefits of the active effect with none of the negative effects. This blatent synergy with an already powerful ult and it's benefit cost effectiveness on a ganker is brilliant, strongly consider this item to cheaply push your already high damage and survivability higher.

Orb Effects

Either of these items can work well on Chaos Knight, providing you find yourself with the gold and the situation for their usefulness.

Helm of the Dominator

Providing you've already made Armlet, Helm's lifesteal in conjunction with your gigantic crits provides excellent sustenance in teamfights making you even harder to bring down. Do not neglect the active! A centaur stun can make all the difference in a gank or the creep can be used to stack ancients for the carry if you can't find a better use.

Active: Dominate, bring target non-hero non-ancient unit under your control. Dominated unit lasts for 20 minutes, dying upon expiration. 

Range: 700

Manacost: 75

Cooldown: 300

Or

Diffusal Blade

More forced synergy than anything, if your team needs a Diffusal blade and no one can or is willing then this is a no brainer. Increases your attack speed (meaning more crits) with a splash of intelligence (meaning more spells) and a powerful active effect, for sticking to a target or removing troublesome buffs/debuffs, makes this a useful item to be considered but definitely not core or for every game.

Active: Purge, slowed to an initial 100ms then recovers movement speed over 4 seconds. Deals 99999 to summoned units.

Range: 600

Duration: 4

Charges: 8/8

Cooldown: 8

Remember these orb effects are: Mutually Exclusive of each other and are, in other words, incompatible.

Luxury Items

Manta Style

For the more carry-esque build, even more so if you've built Diffusal Blade, Manta Style provides a large increase in attack speed directly increasing the number of crits you'll make in a given game. It also increases your already great movement speed, allowing you better keep up with the target, and all round stats. Also more illusions!

Active: Mirror Image, Creates 2 illusion that deal 33% damage and receive 350%. Has a 0.1 seconds animation in which you are invulnerable, lasts 20 seconds.

Manacost: 165

Cooldown: 35 seconds

Satanic - Heart of Tarrasque - Heaven's Halberd - Black King Bar

Whilst I won't go into these in detail, they are all good damage / survivability items that work well with your crit and illusions. Remember to consider the situation, try to choose what is best in conjunction with your team and works well against theirs.

Mini Knight :3

Hero Synergy

Stuns work best in pairs, a pretty good rule of thumb. Chaos Knight is no exception especially considering the randomness of his stun, heroes with follow up from his initiation are definitely good to team up with.

Ancient Apparition - Lina Inverse - Demon Witch

These heroes get mentioned as they work well with anyone with stuns. All three have good damage and follow up from an opening, AA can do this mapwide so remember that. Lina has very good damage with some cc and Lion has good cc with some damage and his finger of pwn. These are good heroes to gank with.

Strictly speaking any hero with additional cc or damage works well with a CK on your team.

Strong Foes

Earthshaker

Ragior, the Earthshaker, gets a special mention again for his strength against illusion heroes.

Whilst you can reality rift over his fissures, or at least pull your target back over the fissure, his ultimate and abundance of stuns will make engaging him or his allies any very difficult. Watch for fissures cooldown and if he burns it prematurely now is your chance.

Tidehunter - Leshrac - Sand King

All three of these heroes cause grief for our friendly Chaos Knight. Tidehunter can slow you, preventing you from getting the damage output you need on enemies as well as reducing your physical damage output substantially. Leshrac has plenty of mixed damage which will quickly bring you to ruin and Sand King will simply sand storm and avoid you entirely if he doesn't want to engage. As well as this all of these heroes have large scale AoE damage, which will quickly kill your illusions.

Silencer - Diffusal Blade - AntiMage

Chaos Knight has an exceptionally weak mana pool and all these have one thing in common, the increase your shortage of mana. Mana is not something he has an abundance of and these heroes, as well as diffusal, can cripple him. Take extra care when playing against these heroes and when Diffusal comes into play. I'll amend this part to include Nerub Assassin when he's released.

Your Role

Finally, before we wrap this article up, I'd like to quickly remention Chaos Knight's role.

Early game Chaos Knight needs to play conservatively and build up those early items to allow him to flex his midgame strength. Once you have bottle, boots and the rune in tow gank and gank hard. Tell you team and hit those priority targets, heroes such as Drow and those with no means of escape are easy pickings for you and your powerful abilities. Try to punish early to keep your opponents as far behind as possible.

In closing

Look to the horizon for a video more specifically covering lane play and gameplay. In the mean time send me any questions you have to my email or social mediums.

~Gamesbass