Ready to bend some Real Time with Chronos?!

Welcome to my 1st basic guide. Chronos, Keeper of Time

I aim to deliver basic, yet informative guides to the way I play certain Gods. This is only one of many ways to play Chronos, make sure to test it out with your own build and then try mine, so you will be able to see what fits your play style the most.

Chronos is at the momment one of the best AP Carries in the game in my opinion. His big mobility with AOE stun and really high burst allows him to literaly destroy anyone, even a tank! Also his ultimate allows him to dive turrets like a boss since he can just go back in time and be as he was except with more gold.

PROS:

- High mobility
- High sustain
- Huge burst
- Decent Crowd Control
- Hard to be ganked, cuz of Rewind

CONS:

- Very weak early game or till he gets Rod of Tahuti
- Low Defense
- Long cast time on ultimate, it takes a while before you go back in time
- Hard to hit his abilities

Chronos' Abilities

Passive: Wheel of Time
When Chronos activates his second ability; Accelerate, he gains a buff for 8 seconds depending on where the hand of the clock was.
- Section I: Heal 1.5% of his maximum health per second.
- Section II: 75% Mana Refund on Abilities
- Section III: +20% Magical Power (this is mostly used in early game, as soon as you get Polynomicon you're not going to use it anymore).
- Section IV: +35% Magical Power Contribution to Basic Attacks (this is just simply BROKEN, it affects towers and your normal attacks with Polynomicon and Speed buff will just simply kill anyone 1vs1. FYI you have to time your polynomicon with usage of your abilities so you bring out the highest burst possible.

1st Ability: Time Rift
Chronos creates a rift in time, dealing magical damage to all enemies in the small area of effect after a short delay.
- Radius: 10
- Damage: 80/125/170/215/260 (+85% of his Magical Power)
- Cost: 50/55/60/65/70
- Cooldown: 5 seconds (with Cooldown reduction boots 4.25 seconds)

At 1st I wasn't sure which ability to max but after you look at the cooldowns of 1st and 3rd ability you see that maxing 1st ability will bring out much more burst, than maxing 3rd ability.

2nd Ability: Accelerate
Chronos gives himself a movement and attack speed buff, makes himself immune to the attack debuff to movement speed and locks the wheel of time, granting him additional benefits for the duration of Accelerate.
- Movement Speed: 20% movement speed when activated + 10/15/20/25/30% overtime.
- Attack Speed: 20/25/30/35/40%
- Lifetime: 8 seconds Cost: 70/75/80/85/90
- Cooldown: 15 seconds (with Cooldown reduction boost 12.75 seconds)

This ability really starts to shine in mid and late game.
You have to time it correctly with your passive (make sure you're in section IV at all times in mid and late game)
A little trick I discovered was with Cooldown reduction boots if you get your passive in section IV once, you are able to spam 2nd ability all the time and you will be in section IV at all times.

3rd Ability: Stop Time
Chronos fires off the gears of time in a ball, slowing any enemies hit by the attack to a stop, leaving them stunned and dealing magical damage to them on the initial hit and again when they are stunned.
- Damage (Applied Twice): 30/50/70/90/110 (+40% of his Magical Power)
- Stun: 1 second Cost: 65/70/75/80/85
- Cooldown: 16/15/14/13/12 seconds (at max level with Cooldown reduction boots 10.2 seconds)

This ability is really hard to hit on max range but in medium and short range you have nothing to worry about. You hit your 3rd ability and place 1st ability under and you will remove like half hp of the guy in laning phase (after Rod of Tahuti).

4th Ability: Rewind
Chronos turns back the flow of time, reseting himself to where he stood 8 seconds in the past, while returning him to the same mana and health he had at the time and resetting all his cool downs.
- Cost: 100
- Cooldown: 120/110/100/90/80 Seconds (at max level with cooldown reduction boots 68 seconds)

This ability is very useful, if you know when you can use it to get those 8 seconds back. You must know that it can kill you or it can save you and bring you a penta kill, since you can cast your abilities all over again.
Note: You cannot use this ability meanwhile being heavily CCd (stuns, throw ups, silence, taunt), so purification beads are very useful in order to time your ultimate correctly and survive impossible situations.

A very big CON to his ultimate is that it has very long cast time, so if you already press your ultimate and still die meanwhile Chronos is preparing his mechanism inside him, you can scream at Smite for making this ultimate with such a long cast time :D.

In Build 1 there's enough dmg to clear minion waves really fast + you don't have to rush Rod of Tahuti, which might fit some people much more. So feel free to try it out. I find it very VIABLE build.
The only thing that you miss with BUILD 1 is one defensive item, either Void Stone or Wall of Absolution, so you have to know how to play it really smart in order to not get killed, but it definitely has TONS OF DMG!


In build 2 I tried rushing Gem of Isolation for that mana, but I still find that it doesn't have enough dmg in that early game you require to clean minion waves fast, even though it has a great PRO, your normal attacks slow with IV passive on and you're just chasing down anyone you wish to, so it's completely VIABLE build.

At lvl 1 buy magic power shoes lvl 2 and 2 health potions and 1 mana potion.

SUPER IMPORTANT THING: you have to get 1st blue from your jungler as he will probably need red or speed buff, so you have nothing to worry about getting him behind or messing his jungle up + you can give him a leash on the speed buff after you take blue and you will benefit him well and make sure you tell him to use hand of the gods on the speed buff so you will gain even more experience and more advantage on your precious mid lane.

Now 1st back you're looking to finish your shoes into Cooldown reduction shoes.
Then rush Book of Tooth
Demonic Grip
Polynomicon

CORE ITEMS DONE

Rod of Tahuti and finally Bancroft's Talon

Polynomicon is a really really good item for Chronos:
- because Chronos has very low cooldown on his 1st ability
- because Chronos has very high mobility with speed buff and Accelerate (2nd ability)
- because Chronos can normal hit w/o having his speed debuffed with Accelerate (no Fatalis needed)

How to use Polynomicon:

If you read the description of Polynomicon you can see and kind of imagine how to use it.
Description of Polynomicon: Passive Ability - Using an ability gives your next basic attack within the next 5 seconds +100% of your magical power as additional physical damage. The effect can only apply once every 2 seconds.

So you're looking to not spam your abilities too much, EXCEPT if you really have to. But this way you lose a lot of damage. So practicly your perfect combo would be:
- 2nd ability (IV passive)
- normal hit
- 1st ability (if you can hit it, w/o having the target CCd)
- normal hit
- 3rd ability
- normal hit
- 1st ability
- normal hit

That's the combo to bring out MAXIMUM DAMAGE with Polynmomicon.
Note: use any ability EVERY 2 seconds so do not spam the **** out of your abilites.

Even though the most useful combo is:
- Keep your 2nd ability going with IV passive all the time
- normal hit
- 3rd ability to stun the target
- normal hit
- 1st ability under the target (place it a bit in front of him, he'll probably move already)
- normal hits again
- 1st ability again (small cooldown)

If you're fighting a tank then you try to make the perfect combo since the tank won't have a huge damage output and you will be able to time your abilities correctly.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER: NORMAL HITS ALL THE TIME, CUZ THAT'S THE HIGHEST DAMAGE OUTPUT IN LATE GAME.

At lvl 1 buy magic power shoes lvl 2 and 2 health potions and 1 mana potion.

SUPER IMPORTANT THING: you have to get 1st blue from your jungler as he will probably need red or speed buff, so you have nothing to worry about getting him behind or messing his jungle up + you can give him a leash on the speed buff after you take blue and you will benefit him well and make sure you tell him to use hand of the gods on the speed buff so you will gain even more experience and more advantage on your precious mid lane.

Try to get Rod of Tahuti asap, because it will give you that high burst on skills + you will not need blue anymore and you may feel confident taking speed buff (most useful buff for chronos, will be explained later).

Then after Rod of Tahuti get Polynomicon and it will give you high burst with your #IV passive as you will gank and already be able to 5 hit people.

YOUR CORE ITEMS ARE COMPLETE!

After you're done with your core items you start looking for Magic Penetration as they will probably start being afraid of you and will buy a lot of magic resistance.
This is where Obsidian Shard will do its job :).

Now you're looking for some Defense as they will start focusing you... This is where you should really look at their team and see, if they have more Magic Dmg or more Physical Dmg.

Magic Dmg: Go for Void Stone
Physical Dmg: Go for Wall of Absolution

As the very final item you're looking for something that will give you attack speed and speed or attack speed and magic power.
I personaly prefer picking Demonic Grip (attack speed + magic power) over Fatalis (attack speed + speed), because it gives you even more of that burst from Polynomicon + you're taking speed buff all the time anyway so they can't really catch you if you play it safe :).

More and more people are telling me that they disagree with rushing Rod of Tahuti.

I still feel like rushing Rod of Tahuti gives you that really fast clean up of monsters on middle lane, so you can go ahead and gank right or left lane with your jungler.

It also gives you that mana regen that you so badly need, especially in early and mid game where you're looking to get as many kills as possible.
You do that by using III passive and IV passive, instead of using II passive to keep your mana going. I prefer getting extremely fed by ganking other lanes with jungler and securing kills, meanwhile still quickly clearing creeps on my middle lane. Buying other items that also give you mana regen will never give you that much Magic Power -> less kills -> slower clearing on middle -> less ganks -> harder late game.

Yeah but you can also build mana instead of mana regen and keep taking blue. (that's a valid argument)
I will try this out and if it is going to work better I will update my guide. But for now, I am sticking to my standard build: Cooldown reduction Shoes -> Rod of Tahuti -> Polynomicon

At very level 1 you're looking to get 1st Blue Buff and use your 1st ability on Speed Buff to give him a leash, which will help him a lot. Be taking Blue Buff, till you get Rod of Tahuti and Polynomicon.

As the game progresses and you finally get Rod of Tahuti, you're looking to still maybe take Blue Buff, if you're camping your mid lane and just pushing it out.

After you get Polynomicon, you should really start ganking around and start taking Speed Buff.

Note: I duo queue with a jungler and I tell him to gank my lane when I am level 4 and we usually get a kill since he jungles Freya (throw up = really easy to hit my stun = KILL), and I hit lvl 5 and back and get Cooldown reduction boots and push out mid lane and just gank left lane with him and get a kill or two. We're ganking all the time, so this is how we win and carry the game since early levels.

Through the whole game after you get Polynomicon be taking Speed Buff and just simply dominating the whole game and carrying like a real BOSS.

At level 1 with Blue Buff you're looking on using your 1st ability onto 3 melee creeps and normal hitting them, till they die... Enemy mid god will probably push much faster than you will since Chronos is very weak early game and can't push at all.

At level 2 it already gets easier, you're using your 3rd ability to stun and 1st onto ranged creeps and one normal attack for each of them and they should be dead. Melee creeps same as ranged except more normal attacks.

At level 3 you will improve your 1st ability and it will already be much easier to farm the wave. You can already expect your jungler to gank for you so be ready to use 3rd ability (stun) and place 1st ability under the target and few normal hits and it should be enough.

At level 4 you're probably already much stronger than the opposite laner.
1st stop your passive with 2nd ability at III
2nd you have to hit your STUN! (3rd ability)
3rd you place your 1st ability under the opponent

HE SHOULD BE MISSING HALF HP BY NOW.

As the opponent will be staying more defensive and tower hugging you're just looking to hit level 5 and try to tower dive him w/o getting killed and using rewind to get to a safe position. If that's impossible you're already winning your lane since he's afraid to come towards you and you're free to zone him.

Note: It's hard to win He Bo with Chronos since he's a good counter, so ask your jungler to camp your lane for you and be ganking him constantly. If you will not play it smart, both of you will just die, since He Bo is a really strong mid laner and he can escape with his ult or deal TONS OF DAMAGE.

In teamfight you're looking to stay behind, maybe do some epic assassinations, if you're really fed.

You wait for the opportunity to stun as many targets as possible.
In case they're focusing you, just use your stun to save yourself and place under 1st ability and then just normal hit and any1 should die fairly easy. Except if it's some super tanky tank.


Before the teamfight try to be harrasing them as much as possible with your 1st ability and normal hits and of course 2nd ability IV passive and normal hitting them.

Note: KEEP SPEED BUFF ON YOURSELF AT ALL TIMES, IF POSSIBLE!

There has been released a Copy of brand new patch notes for 17th of July 2013:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OGR8Eb-I2fj4mhyENOSQomm_iveb0YKiBonc6s7xhek/pub <- this is the link, shouldn't contain a virus.

As you can see in the link there's been a huge change on Conquest map that will shut down any lane who will not be pushing the lane from the very beginning. -> Chronos is going to feel this a lot early game.

You no longer get gold from minions that have taken damage from your tower.

This is going to hurt a lot for his early game if playing against Poseidon or Ao Kuang who can push the lane like a boss.

#1: Play chronos
#2: Use my build
#3: Duo queue with a jungler who knows what he's doing
#4: Carry the game
#5: Get god rank 10 so you get legendary skin as soon as it comes out

This is all Folks,
Cya in next guide by iViolet!


This is still my 1st guide and I will try to update it as much as possible as I will be testing new builds and new skill order.

17th of July 2013 GMT+1 at 2.51:
- Whole rework on my guide (switched builds and messed up chapters a bit)


28th of July 2013 GMT+1 at 2.03 pm
- WHOLE GUIDE ALMOST GOT DELETED I HAD TO REARRANGE ITEMS AND SKILLS AND BUILDS, REALLY F***ED IT UP FOR ME... :'(
Take care people, + added some new builds and I got rid of Mobility Chronos

21st of August 2013 gmt +1 at 22.08:
- There have been no changes so far... I still run the 5th build as my main build, since I barely die with Chronos and it really pays off for me :)
- Changed 5th builds items -> Instead of Gem of Isolation, I rather take Rod of Tahuti, brings out much more burst, since I don't even die, I need no safety from Gem of Isolation.