Chen Stormstout - assassin tank?

So that title probably sounds inane but I cannot think of a better way to describe my experience playing the Legendary Brewmaster's incarnation in Heroes of the Storm.  The most famous panda in Warcraft can just as easily take hits for the team and disrupt enemy positioning as he can burst down priority back line targets and chase down fleeing survivors.  The result is the line between assassin and tank blurring to a point it should not be able to without the aid of beer goggles.
Though he's best known as the "lowest tier hero", as dubbed by Blizzard at PAX East, developers recently stated Chen's win rate since then is trending upwards (which in turn means, that people like me can post about him without permanently damaging our credibility!).  However, I can understand why many in the community would initially want to place him somewhere around third or fourth tier - at first glance his move set doesn't have enough crowd control for a traditional tank,but not enough burst to be a reliable assassin either.  His talent selection also appears inconsistent, vacillating between both damage and defense, as if the designers couldn't decided how they wanted him to be played.

Chen's talents are all over the place.

What if he was meant to be both?

With the proper talent selection, Chen can make the most of his combo-reliant fighting style to pile on sustained single target damage while sticking to his quarry and, unlike other tanks, finish them off on his own.

While real pandas are anything but ambush predators, Chen provides exceptional ganking potential, either alone or with teammates.  His initiation ability, Flying Kick (Q), can be modified to either deal bonus damage for burst or inflict a crippling slow that allows your team to catch up for the kill.  Either way, follow up with the standard combo of Keg Smash (W) and Breath of Fire (E) to apply the slow and burn effect, both of which have talents to increase utility and damage.

What makes his combos so dangerous is that unlike other heroes, Chen can execute his multiple times in a single fight, as all of his basic abilities have a cooldown of only five seconds.  Their high cost in his special brew resource does little to negate this, as he can refill it ridiculously quickly (you can make it even quicker with a talent point if for some reason that still isn't fast enough for you).  Any distance a fleeing enemy manages to gain while you're drinking can be covered with a single flying kick.

As I mentioned earlier, this ability can be upgraded for a few different uses with its multiple talent options, but all of them make for a particularly impactful initiation.  I'm particularly fond of "Combination Attack" (significantly increased basic attack after landing Flying Kick) and "Pressure Point" (massive slow of 90 percent), both of which are available at level 16.  The choice between these two serves to further emphasize a Chen player's gameplay decision between utility and damage.

The fire spirit assists Chen as part of the Storm, Earth and Fire level 20 talent.

Currently, the conventional wisdom in the community is that Wandering Keg is the better heroic ability, with its crowd control, damage and mobility.  It's certainly true that a well-timed barrel role can change the course of a teamfight, but I've found that the burst damage of "Storm, Earth and Fire" can make it a viable choice, especially when another tank is providing reliable crowd control.  At level 20, whenever Chen uses an ability, one of the three elemental spirits will fight alongside him for a short while, with its own unique trait (earth attacks slow, lightning is ranged and fire is fast melee).  Any of the three provide a significant boost to Chen's sustained damage output.

The lightning spirit alongside Chen.

In conclusion, what I really wanted to share with this post was that we should take tier lists, be they from the game developers or respected community members, with a grain of salt, and not let them stop us from trying out a character that interests us.  In my case, because I decided to take Chen for a spin, I now have a new hero to use when completing my "play 3 games with a warrior/Warcraft hero" quests.  Or if my team needs a pick-me-up.