Chaos Knight

Chaos Knight is a melee strength Hero with one of the highest physical damage outputs of all heroes. He is mostly played as a semi-carry and ganker. As his name implies, he has a theme based on randomness and uncertainty. His regular attack has an incredibly high thirty damage spread, making his last hitting ability somewhat unreliable. Chaos Bolt is his most notorious luck-based ability which, at max level, can stun a target anywhere between a mediocre 2 seconds to an effective 4 seconds that will almost certainly assure its death; it will also deal a variable amount of damage ranging from miniscule to moderate. Reality Rift pulls Chaos Knight and his target to a randomly chosen point along the line between the two and gives him bonus damage for one attack. Chaos Strike is a crit-based ability with one of the lowest proc chances, yet also one of the highest multipliers. The illusions produced by his ultimate, which retain his full damage and only take double damage, benefit from his Chaos Strike and can teleport alongside him to attack the target whenever he uses Reality Rift. With up to four illusions being produced at Phantasm's highest level, Chaos Knight's damage output can be multiplied to be five times as great during teamfights later in the game, and it is not uncommon to see enemy heroes being killed instantly after being Reality Rifted by the apocalyptic horsemen. Thus, CK is played as a carry who excels in both the mid and late game, if the game drags on long enough and he is able to acquire enough strength-based and survivability items to ensure that his illusions can stay alive, he will be able to overpower most hard carries.

Tips

 * While ganking in the early-mid game, use Reality Rift to get close to the enemy, then hit him once with your bonus damage and use Chaos Bolt to stun. If you're lucky, you could even get more than 2 hits while he's stunned.
 * In most situations, max Chaos Bolt and Reality Rift first, since the critical damage from your Chaos Strike is negligible in the early game, and you won't have enough mana to summon the Phantasm(s) with your ultimate.
 * Always activate your Armlet of Mordiggian before using your ultimate, since the illusions also gain bonuses from it.
 * By buying a Sange & Yasha, you'll be able to disassemble it later and build a Heaven's Halberd and a Manta Style. You may buy the first item if you need more survivability, since it gives you more health, some evasion and a reliable disarm; buy Manta Style first if you farmed really well, and you wish to confuse your enemies even more. It also grants additional increases to attributes.
 * Diffusal Blade will give Chaos Knight's illusions Feedback. Like Phantom Lancer, an army of Chaos Knights can deplete enemy's mana very quickly. Its active ability can also be used to ensure that enemies do not escape Chaos Knight's army after Reality Rift, if Chaos Bolt is unavailable.
 * Buying an early Soul Ring will solve most of Chaos Knight's mana problems.
 * Desolator may not be a good item on Chaos Knight himself, but the armor reduction will make your target squishier allowing your Illusions to deal more damage to them. Consider having an ally buy one instead to apply the Corruption debuff on enemy heroes or towers.
 * Phatasm boasts the most powerful illusions in the game, creating an army that can boost Chaos Knight's damage output for up to 400%. When used in conjunction with Reality Rift and Chaos Bolt it is often possible to destroy the target before they get a chance for retaliation. Given that your illusions do full damage and are far more durable than illusions produced by any other hero always remember that even if your main hero dies your illusions still pose a very serious threat.
 * If you manage to farm a Manta style you gain two additional albeit somewhat weaker illusions that serve to wreck havoc among enemy ranks, Manta Style illusions much like Phatasm and rune illusions are pulled to your target with Reality Rift. You can often use this to block your target in a swarm of illusions they will not be able to escape from. The ultimate orb from Manta Style also boosts your mana pool just enough to allow you to cast illusions together with your ultimate ability.
 * It is not entirely advisable to pick Chaos Knight against an enemy Medusa owing to the fact that Medusa's Stone Gaze destroys illusions regardless of their stats and given that your illusions are produced by your ultimate ability with a rather long cool down you cannot afford to have them destroyed easily like Naga Siren, Terrorblade and Phantom Lancer who can produce illusions much more frequently.
 * You may also want to be careful against an enemy Quas Wex focused Invoker. Given Chaos Knight's dismal mana pool and intelligence gain Invoker's EMP can completely drain him of mana even in later stages of the game and without his active abilities Chaos Knight isn't nearly as potent.

Trivia

 * Chaos Strike's ability icon bears a similar appearance to a D20 dice, commonly used in table-top RPG games, where a full 20 usually results in a critical. This is representative of the chance that comes with the ability.
 * Chaos Knight's lore and responses draw many references to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and his ultimate is a literalisation of it.
 * The line "Ah, Tidehunter, can I offer you a seabiscuit?" is a reference to Seabiscuit, a famous American racehorse.
 * Fitting his theme, Chaos Knight has the most varying attack damage in the game. His actual damage on attack can be up to 15 more or 15 less than his displayed damage.
 * Chaos Knight's actual name in DotA was "Nessaj". This was removed in his transition to Dota 2, likely due to the change in his background story.
 * Enigma, Io, Keeper of the Light and Chaos Knight together represent the four fundamental forces of the universe with Chaos Knight representing the strong nuclear force. This is reflected in several of Enigma's responses to these heroes.
 * At some point in the older versions of DotA, Chaos Knight's critical passive chance was 11% and had a secondary passive which gave him a 1% chance to do 10 times his normal damage..
 * Chaos Knight's mount's name is Armageddon and most responses that talk of Armageddon are actually referring to his steed rather than the event itself.