Chaos Knight is one of the few carry heroes in Dota 2 that are typically played extremely aggressively. His skill set gives him a huge kill potential and allows him to dominate the game from the start and to stay on top of it if the game does go late - he should not be underestimated as a carry, his illusions give him absurd damage output with items.

The hero fits well in ganking and 5-man strategies where aggression and fighting are in focus but he is not suitable for split-pushing or turtling because he farms slowly and tends to fall behind in more passive games.

Becuase of his incredibly explosive physical burst potential, cool look and responses, CK is a very fun hero to play and learn. This might not sound important, but it's easier to get better when you enjoy the hero you are playing!

No matter the position in which you put CK, you always aim to combine him with heroes with kill potential, which will allow you to be aggressive and stop the development of your opponents. It must be emphasized that winning your lane is crucial. If you lose it, you will not be able to be dominant in the mid game. Consequently, you should pick the hero only when you are certain that the lane in which you put him will go well.

Provided CK is your only carry, the emphasis on the early stages of the game is even greater. Assuming that you play too defensively, you could end up losing the farming war and as a consequence - the game to the enemy carry. However, when you have another carry in your lineup, taking things late is not so bad as you will have on your team two heroes that are scary with farm.

Mainly due to your poor flash-farming capabilities, you are not a good comeback hero. You are very strong early on, very strong mid game and quite decent late game, so what you are supposed to do is get ahead, stay ahead and win. As a result, whenever you lose your lane and early-mid game with CK, you are going to have a bad time.

In the safe lane, CK will have access to the most farm from all lane alternatives, which means he will be scariest in the mid and late game. The downside to this laning decision is that you will not be able to use your kill potential as much in the laning phase. Nevertheless, you could totally shut down the enemy solo offlaner as he/she is not likely to survive an initiation from your side, and the follow-up of your laning partners.

A defensive trilane CK is more likely to be the only carry hero in his team, which would put an emphasis on the mid game. When you make this pick, you should be confident that you could be aggressive and build up an advantage after the laning stage as going too late could be risky. With a defensive trilane, the enemy hard carry will probably also have a good start.

If you see that the enemy team has a not-very-strong trilane with an important carry in it, you could take advantage of this and create a strong aggressive lane with CK. His skills and stats (control, damage, speed and survivability) make him very strong in a 3v3 or 2v2 situation. It could often be the case that your enemy carry will not be able to reach the creep wave from fear of dying as a result of your initiation and the follow-up of your lane partners.

Putting CK in an offensive lane will free up the easy lane for another solo hero which could be another carry or semi-carry. In addition, having the enemy supports preoccupied in the lane might give freedom to your mid laner. He is less likely to get ganked, which means that AGI heroes with carry potential, but without escapes become more viable mid laners. This will relieve a great deal of pressure from your CK as he will be able to focus more on being aggressive and dominating the lane/mid game rather than on farming and carrying. This will also allow you to transition into the late game more safely as you will have multiple carries.

That being said, an offensive lane CK is a risky move because if your lane doesn’t work out and you cannot easily swap lanes you will be at a big disadvantage. Your supports wouldn’t be able to leave you alone in the lane and you cannot farm jungle, so you might end up stopping the development of your CK and at least one sup at the same time. Only send CK in an offensive lane when you are certain you will be able to win the lane.

CK is a surprisingly good position 4 hero. He has great initiation, good control, he is fast and fat and he can easily trade hits with other supports favorably.

As a support CK, you will likely do very well in the early game, but you should consider what your role will be in the mid and late game. In the ideal situation you will be able to find some farm and to transition into a semi-carry.

In mid and late game fights you usually want to stay back util your opponents have used most of their AoE skills. Afterwards you can try to enter the fight with your Illusions to try to pick off the squishier enemy heroes – you deal very significant damage even with cheaper items (e.g. Solar Crest).

The best partners of CK are heroes who can amplify his kill potential and help out in dominating the early stages of the game:

Strong Against:

Weak Against:

In terms of skill builds, CK is fairly flexible because all three spells scale well and could be useful early on. You need at least one point in all three and afterward, you usually mix and match what you need situationally.

• Prioritize Chaos Strike for sustain and damage in the lane and for farming.
  
• Prioritize Chaso Bolt against mobile enemies.
  
• Prioritize Rift for harassing and fighting.

As you are a carry hero, you are likely to have enough cash to afford a wide variety of items. Be that as it may, being a carry means that your item choices could win or lose the game. The basic philosophy to follow with CK is not to buy bonus damage items even though you are a carry. The reason is that your illusions don’t benefit from bonus damage. On the other hand, the Illusions inherit the damage and other bonuses given by stats (STR, AGI, INT). Consequently, you want as much strength as possible to make yourself and your illusions deal more damage and become harder to kill. Because you are a melee carry, you don’t want to be kited - you want to be immune to disables and to be as fast as possible in order to be able to stick to your targets and fight freely.

The suggested build is a well-rounded stat-heavy build which starts with cheap and cost efficient items and gradually upgrades to more expensive late-game items, allowing you to fight efficiently during the whole game. The build emphasizes STR, Mobility, and Attack Speed. 

Blink Dagger makes it much easier to initiate on hard-to-get-to targets and makes you a bit more mobile in general. You can skip it if you feel you don't need the mobility to initiate on the right targets.

The build skips BKB, because even if you have it your illusions will still get disabled. Nonetheless, in some games, you cannot afford to skip it especially if the enemy team has a multitude of disables and you are kited all the time. In such cases get it before the Heart.

Getting all possible last hits in the lane is quite important for you as you can’t compensate later on with flash farming. Generally, the items you exit the laning stage with will be the base you use to dominate the mid game. In that sense, it is very important to use your kill potential whenever possible; however, your real main priority is last hitting (as with every carry).

Your attack animation (attack point) is decent, but your main last hitting power comes from your base damage. At lvl1 you do up to 81 damage per attack, which is a lot. Despite that, the minimum damage is 51, which is not too impressive (it is still better than a lot of heroes). As a result, it is not smart to rely on your high max damage, and attempt hitting the creep too early for the last hit since an unlucky proc might cost you the last hit. It is better to play safer and go for the last hits when the creep is on low HP (below 50-60). If you have a lane opponent and you are fighting for last hits, you might try to hit a bit earlier to deny/last hit creeps before your opponent has a chance. Nevertheless, sometimes you will have problems exactly because of the unreliability of your attack.

Generally, it is smarter to use your kill potential to provide yourself with space, and farm without having to fight for each last hit. If the enemy is afraid to come near you, you will have free farm.

CK is quite terrible at active harass. Your mana pool is very low and your spells are quite expensive, which means that if you waste them for active harass, you will lose your kill potential, which is the main tool to win the lane. Therefore, it is smarter to use your spells only for kill attempts rather than to throw them just for a bit of damage. If you have spare mana, use Rift + Chaos Strike and a couple of hits to harass your opponent. If you do this often, make sure you have e.g. Mangos to recover your mana when you need it.

You have quite strong attacks + Chaos Strike. You are melee, which means that you will rarely be in a position to harass passively. If you are fighting for last hits versus another melee lane opponent, however, it is worth it to exchange hits. You have decent armor, good HP and high damage, meaning that you are going to win the hit exchange especially with the help from the Chaos Strike lifesteal.

Your main tool for winning the lane is your kill potential. At level two and especially three, you have both your kill spells, so you could aim to kill your lane opponents. It depends who your lane partner is; nevertheless, if he/she is a hero with early game damage, the two of you could, in theory, kill a more squishy target from full HP. If your opponents are not on full HP because of harass, killing them should be even easier. You are the one who starts the engagement in the lane, so initiate with your two spells and start auto attacking. It is up to your partner to finish the job with some stuns, nukes and attacks.

A good general rule is to always start with Rift for the minus armor and to follow-up with the stun. Only throw the stun first if your partner is trying to aim a spell and you don’t want to mess up the enemy hero’s positioning with Rift.

Only go for a kill when you are fairly certain that you will be able to get it. If your target runs always on low HP and heals with a salve, you will be at a significant disadvantage in the lane since you will not have any mana to try again. This could literally lose you the lane as if you lose your kill potential, you lose your lane dominance, and your opponent will not be afraid to contest last hits and to trade harass anymore. So, after a kill attempt, using a clarity is a very good idea.

In the laning stage, your most important timing is at lvl2 when you have both your stun and Rift. This gives you your kill combo and allows you to go on the aggressive and control the lane. Every further level in those skills will gradually increase your kill potential, but will not drastically change the way you play.

Always consider the timings of your lane partner(s). Being successful in getting a kill depends on them being able to follow up on your initiation. Some heroes are good at getting kills from the start of the game, while others need a few levels, so only initiate when the follow-up is there.

Your main goal is to get your core items while threatening the enemy offlaner(s) with your kill potential. You should be aggressive and dominant in the lane; however, as you are a carry, you mustn’t neglect your last hits under any circumstances. In order to dominate the mid game, you need items, and it is very hard, if not impossible, to get them only from kills. Nevertheless, you should be able to both be aggressive and farm at the same time.

In the lane, you want to exploit your early game potential. Being aggressive and with high kill potential will help you dominate the lane even without fighting. The fear of getting Rifted and Stunned will force most of your enemies to stand at a safe distance. If they come in to contest last hits, you could try going for a kill with the help of your partner. When you reach lvl3-4-5, you will become scarier as your kill potential will grow, so you should be able to take over the lane at this point.

As the time advances and you gain levels, you should increase your aggressiveness. You don’t want to spend all your consumables at lvl1 (when you are not that strong yet), so it is worth it being more defensive versus strong opponents early on to have resources when you have more points in your skills.

Starting with tangoes, Salve, Clarity, and mango, gives him enough sustain and mana regen in the lane.

He is using the second spell any time when its possible (without losing creeps) to harass and zone out Beastmaster. Notice how CK is not pushing the wave (he is denying creeps), making Beast Master`s game very hard.

After getting lvl6 CK immediately TPed top when he sees the opportunity to kill Lycan by using ult.

After the laning stage, he started to play very actively and to roam around, setting up kills. CTOMAHEH1 even solo smoked for the enemy SF.

In an aggressive lane, the emphasis falls a bit less on farming as you are most likely not going to be the only carry on your team. It could be said that your main goal would be to win the lane through kills and zoning out against the enemy trilane, which will put the opponent hard carry and supports in a bad position during the whole game.

Your number one priority is to stop the enemy lane from getting XP and farm as efficiently as possible. This, of course, is done best by killing your enemies; however, this could prove difficult, especially bearing in mind they are going to stay close to their tower. Therefore, if you manage to zone them out, you could achieve a similar effect.

Building an offensive lane with a CK is fairly simple – he is a fat frontline hero with good initiation and control. All he needs is supports that can provide the needed damage to finish the kill. Follow-up disables are also useful, especially in cases when the Chaos Bolt does the low stun duration with higher damage. Witch Doctor, Shadow Shaman, Bane are all viable options.

Once the laning stage is done, you want to fight. This either means searching for small-scale engagements if you have other good gankers in your team, or searching for team fights if you have good pushers and heroes with solid team fight presence. Either way, you want to flex your muscles and take away space from your opponents (take away map control), not allowing them to farm freely.

While you are doing that, you need to farm (after all, you are a carry hero) - farm the lane and jungle after a gank, or after a push.

As we mentioned CK is more of a semi-carry rather than a true hard carry. This means that compared to other carries he is at his strongest earlier. Usually, a BKB and one DPS/Tank item (e.g. Armlet) is all you need to start dictating the game, and whatever you get on top of that is just luxuries.

The laning outcome (how fat you are compared to the enemy team) will give you an idea what you need to do. Generally, because you are a very bad farmer (can’t flash farm), you have two general choices: search for small-scale engagements (ganks), or force team fights (by pushing).

The first one is the lower risk option. If you are under-farmed, you will not be able to shine in 5v5 fights because you will die against the multiple farmed enemy heroes. Consequently, if the laning stage didn’t go well for you (which shouldn’t happen in the first place since you are a very dominant laner), your only real choice is to gank. Start with a Smoke gank and take all heroes with high burst potential in your team with you in order to secure the success of the gank attempt. While you are doing it, tell your supports to ward and deward. This will give you map control and more opportunities to gank even without Smoke afterward. After a few successful ganks you should be back in the game - you have slowed down the item development of your opponents, and gotten some gold/XP yourself.

If your laning stage went perfectly, however, you can afford both choices. Either gank as described above, or force fights. You can tell your team to gather in one lane and just push. Stay on the front lines. You should be able to survive the initiation from your opponents, and with some good coordination you will either win team fights from very early on, or you will get lots of uncontested towers. Either way, you should be in a good position to complete your core items (the mentioned BKB + Fatness/DMG item), and try to end the game.

In team fights you are a frontline hero - you need to be in a position to latch onto an enemy that is overextending to start the fight. Remember that you could start a fight easily. Nonetheless, sometimes you lack the control and damage to finish it, so stick close to your team.

Consider how you use your Phantasm - it is usually best to cast your illusions before initiating or entering the team fight. This could help you kill your target before it even has the opportunity to respond as it will get hit by all illusions when you cast your Rift.

As you have no escape mechanism and it is hard for you to disengage, it is usually the case that when you enter a fight, you either win it or you die. This is why it is wise to pick your fights. Usually (especially in the mid game) you should be potent enough to be in position to win most fights, with some proper help from your team. However, later on, team fighting could get riskier. For example, it could be unwise to enter a fight without having your Phantasm ready.

You are a carry and a tank, so try to stay between the enemy carries and your squishier teammates. Don’t go chasing after supports that are safely positioned behind their carries even though you might have the chance to reach them with Rift. This way you will allow the enemy carries to run into your squishier heroes, and you don’t want that to happen. If a support is overextending, it is a good idea to Rift it and insta-kill it with your illusions. Otherwise, stay in the front lines and fight the enemy carries. With the help of your illusions, you will be able to win most man-fights.

Saving your Phantasm to dodge spells is NOT a good idea later on. If you get the opportunity (a projectile is flying towards you), you should take advantage, but don’t wait for such an opportunity. You want to have the illusions for the whole fight, otherwise, you will be much less useful for the duration without them. Bear in mind that if you get on low HP before you cast your illusions, your illusions will be on low HP when you cast them as well, which means that they will be much more susceptible to AoE. Therefore, it is best to use Phantasm before the fight (before you initiate), or at the beginning of the fight (just as the enemy team is initiating).

In case enemy heroes have powerful AoE spells, you might want to save your ult until those spells are on cooldown. Be careful not to get into a man-fight without your illusions, however- they are your primary source of damage.

Example:

Chessie shows the right way to enter late game fights – use your Illusions out of vision, Blink in and use Rift + Stun. In this example Tusk’s snowball slows down his initiation, but he finds his Rift target a couple of seconds later and his team convincingly win the fight.

CK is a bad split pusher as he has no escape mechanism and he doesn’t have a way to push the wave fast, other than his auto attack. For this reason, you should push only with your team and leave the split pushing to your allies.

When it comes to pushing, Phantasm could be used to bring down buildings very quickly. It is not always smart to use your illusions for that though since they have a long cooldown and are very valuable for team fights. If they get killed at the tower before you use them to kill enemy heroes, you have actually wasted your ult.
If you feel that you are in a dominant position, you could push to force a team fight. Otherwise, it is safer to push only after you have killed some enemy heroes so that they are not in a good position to defend.

After the laning stage, ganking could be very rewarding for CK. You have huge kill potential and you can control targets well enough so that they cannot easily disengage. If you are successful in your ganks, you could build up a big enough advantage to end the game before the late-game stage, which is always a welcome opportunity.

If you aren’t as dominant as expected, and the game is not going according to plan, rather than playing more passively, you should try to smoke gank and catch your enemies off guard. It is hard to win a game with CK by turtling and farming as you could easily get out-farmed. You can’t split push, you can’t flash farm and you can’t anti-push. Your strength is in fights, and you could even win some when you are at an economic disadvantage, provided you get good initiation and surprise your enemies.

The later the game goes, using your Phantasm for ganks becomes less ideal since you want to have the spell up for important team fights. If you are behind, though, getting an important kill (for example - on the enemy carry) with your ult could help you stay in the game, so you need to make a decision. Most of the time, however, you can kill lone targets without Phantasm (with some help from your allies, of course).

You are a very scary hero in the midgame stage. As a result, you could actually win map control just with your presence - if you go to a lane with heroes from your team to help out, the enemies in the lane are going to have to leave or call their allies. Otherwise, they risk being initiated upon and dying.

As a consequence, you could win control of lanes even without fighting for them. If you end up having to fight, it is important for your team to be close to you to assist.

Nevertheless, the real way you usually gain map control is by bullying your opponents out of the lanes or their own jungle. Ward those locations, and if you see a target farming, try to gank it. Provided you are successful, you will starve out your opponents.

We emphasized a couple of times on how CK cannot win a farm war. This should not leave you with the wrong impression that you should not farm with this hero. You are a carry, which means that having enough items is incredibly important. Whenever you have the opportunity, you should take farm. What you shouldn’t do is passively farm one lane or stay in the woods for long periods of time. What you should do is push out a lane and then search for fights. You should farm whenever there is some off-time between fights and ganks. Ideally, you will successfully gank, push out the lane and farm the creeps there, push the tower, regroup and wait for your ult to cooldown while farming, search for another fight when it is ready, repeat.