Chronos - Is it his time to shine?

Chronos has usually been on the line between being a good, viable pick and being a god that doesn’t really bring much to the table due to other gods who were usually exceeding Chronos’ capabilities in every possible way. The most notable examples of those gods are Freya and more recent (and powerful) Ao Kuang.

That has all changed, however, when Chronos’ early game was buffed (change to his mana refunds on his passive ability). His kill potential has also increased thanks to a buff which removed the possibility for enemies to just remove the effects of Chronos’ Stop Time [3] by using any slow immune abilities or actives such as Sprint (rank 2 and above). All these adjustments combined with Hunter’s wave clear being nerfed have even put Chronos in new, now much more viable positions around the map - Chronos is successful as an ADC or in the solo and middle lane positions.

Abilities

Wheel of Time [Passive]

When you use your Accelerate [2] ability, Chronos will get different bonuses based on the position of the clock hand.
Section I: Heals Chronos for 10.5% of his max health. While it is a decent enough sustain tool for a mage, you won’t get to use this ability much until mid to late game because of its mana cost and also due to the fact that other more useful bonuses will be unavailable to you until Accelerate [2] goes off cooldown once again. I recommend using this ability between team fights when you can’t afford to go back to base or when you’re fleeing from enemies just to get that small health boost.
Section II: What better way to clear a minion wave than by using 60-80 mana for all of your abilities? You’ll make great use of this ability in the early and mid game, in the late game it becomes redundant.
Section III: This is a weird one. While it is not by any means useless, I find that mostly I just use the fourth section much more as it simply provides more reliable damage.
Section IV: This is Chronos’ bread and butter. The basic attack damage increase is huge (20% base in-hand attack scaling + 35% from the ability) and I recommend locking the clock hand in this section as much as you can when you’re trying to do a lot of player damage. It is also great for burning objectives down quickly.

Time Rift [1]

Time Rift is a great nuke with high damage and magical scaling but with a slow buildup and a tiny radius. Its short 5 second cooldown makes using this ability worth it even when you can’t guarantee the hit. As long as you’ve got the mana, go for it! It can be cast through walls and you can get a free hit right after your Stop time [3] stuns the target. Surprisingly, the ability also has a big enough area of effect that it can hit the entire wave if you stack them up with your Stop time [3] and push the front minions back a bit with your basic attacks.

Accelerate [2]

There is not much else to be said about this ability other than that it's an ability which truly keeps Chronos’ kit together. It removes your basic attack movement speed penalty which means you won’t have to let your fingers off the mouse to move at full speed. Another thing to note is that your movement speed increases throughout the ability’s duration while the attack speed already starts at the maximum value of the ability’s rank.

Stop time [3]

This ability has a slow projectile and a long cooldown but it has many uses. You can use the stun to set up many hard to hit abilities such as your own Time Rift [1], stop your enemies from chasing or buy yourself enough time to use Rewind [4] safely. Remember that enemies have to use beads or a crowd control immune ability to free themselves from the stun as slow immunity no longer stops the ability’s effects. Please, also note that while the enemies are under the effects of this ability, they have their attack speed reduced by 20%.

Rewind [4]

While Chronos doesn’t have 9 lives, 2 of them are usually more than enough to deal with the whole enemy team. Just remember that Chronos is still a mage and 2 times 0 is still 0. The ultimate has a short wind up and can be used aggressively for the cooldown resets or defensively for the health regain. However, I would not recommend using it just to reset your cooldowns when fighting a hunter as you will be standing still for a while which makes the hunter’s job of killing you much easier. Do not hesitate to use the ultimate earlier (especially in late game) - better safe than sorry. Using the ultimate to just reposition is not a bad idea either. Yes, your health bar won’t go from 1% to 100% so it probably won’t look really good on cameras but the important thing is: you will be alive.

Ability leveling:

This is the standard build I use for Chronos. The priorities are: 4>1>2>3 with some changes here and there to optimise Chronos’ damage and survivability. I prefer to level up my ultimate for the 10 second cooldown reduction on it but you can also try to level Stop Time [3] over the ultimate. Doing that will provide 40 more damage and 1 second cooldown reduction to the 3rd ability.

Items:

Starter Items: I usually like to start out either with Vampiric Shroud, Lost Artifact and 2 potions of your choice or with Vampiric Shroud, Shoes, Active item like Purification Beads or Aegis Amulet (depending on the enemy mid laner and jungler) and 2 potions.

Full build: The Doom Orb gives you a big increase in magical power for a small price. Chronos has high ability scalings and the stacks won’t reset often as you should survive most teamfights thanks to Chronos’ ultimate and movement speed.

Shoes of Focus provide cooldown reduction which is a very nice addition because in most teamfights you will be spamming the [2] key on the keyboard impatiently waiting for Accelerate to come off cooldown. You can go for Shoes of the Magi instead but I think that Doom Orb and other items provide a lot of Magical Power already.

Demonic Grip is a great fit for all mages which rely on basic attacks heavily and Bancroft’s Talon will provide more cheap Magical Power and Magical Lifesteal.

Rod of Tahuti is pretty much a must for all mages and will boost your magical power even more. To finish it all off, I build Polynomicon which might be a bit surprising, but I do believe that it is worth it to build on Chronos because of his huge potential with it.

Substitute Items: Book of Thoth is a good substitute for Doom Orb or Polynomicon if you don’t trust yourself with surviving or hitting the next basic attack immediately after activating an ability. Don’t worry about getting it early though, because the stacks do not give you a big magical power bonus. The mana you get by leveling up is a much bigger factor here which means you can feel free to buy it at level 20 when you have a large mana pool. Another stacking item that is viable for Chronos is Warlock’s Sash. It will help you to survive even more and will prevent enemies from bursting you down (especially in your ultimate).

Actives: Chronos is a god who needs Greater Purification (Beads rank 3). Not only is he a mage and the 3 second cooldown reduction will help him out nicely, he also relies on this item because of his ultimate - you need to get out of any hard crowd control to cast it quickly and avoid getting bursted instantly.

These actives are not must buys and choosing the right one depends on the enemy team’s god composition. Aegis Pendant or Greater Aegis adds more defense to Chronos’ already good survival capability. Buying Greater Sprint is a good way to boost your ability to chase down kills as well as adding another escape option. Last but not least there’s Combat Blink. Combat Blink synergizes very well with Chronos and his Rewind [4] as you can just blink away and rewind in a safe spot to gain back your health and reset your cooldowns. The disadvantage to this active is obvious, you need to spend the full 900 gold for it to be a good escape tool. There is also something that you should remember: when you blink and use your ultimate within 8 seconds, you will only get back to the place you blinked to, not to the spot from which you blinked from.

Tips and Tricks:

- Play semi-agressively. As Chronos you don't have to be in the backline all the time. Sometimes it's just time to make the plays happen.

- Use your Time Rift [1] to poke often.

- Don't engage enemies when your Accelerate is on cooldown (unless they're running away). This will prevent the enemies to initiate on you while you're slowed by the basic attack penalty. Your basic attacks also do much less damage.

- The movement speed increase you get by using Accelerate [2] gives you the opportunity to dodge enemy's basic attacks and AoE spells. Use it to dodge as many as you can while also focusing on landing your shots.

Recap:

Chronos is a very strong mage with slower start but incredibly powerful late game damage. His ultimate makes him very hard to deal with in all stages of the game and even in a frequently ganked lane such as mid, he can stand his ground with ease. With the recent buffs his mana problems seem to have disappeared and his kill potential is now better than ever. He is also one of the few gods who can fill 3 positions - ADC, Middle and Solo lane which makes him unpredictable and very useful for many different team compositions. You can also use him in all of the game modes without a significant performance impact with the only exception being Joust (especially 1v1) where he’s been a top ban/pick for a very long time.

Thank you for reading my guide. If you have any questions or suggestions, please, leave a comment below this guide or send me a message on Twitter - @TheRikisak

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