This guide explains my tactics and opinions mainly from 1v1 but also some of them from team games.
Worship
First of all I want to point out that one of the best things that the Chaos Lord has, are his heretics' Worship. The Khorne worship increases the speed of your troops in range by 2. It is soooo important to maximize the use of this ability, not only with daemons but in all your engagements. For example the Chaos Lord under worship could tide up a set up team before taking too much dmg or could dive the enemy line to disrupt it.
Shrine
The other unique trait that CL heretics bring to the table is their Shrine, which summons bloodletters for a short period of time. Worshiping the Shrine makes it summon Blood Letters faster and increases the regeneration of nearby deamons. Apart from that the Shrine increases by 10% the melee dmg of your troops in range.
(After the nerf I think its usage is really niche... I can't think of anything else apart from defending a position while sustaining further more deamons, not sure if it is 100% viable in 1v1).
Weapons:
Combi flamer (100/30): Pretty good upgrade, decent at bleeding starting units like scouts,dire avengers, its also good when spliting and chasing. Pretty nice since the CL doesn't loose any mele capabilities and cannot be supress. In the lastest patch apart from having higher DPS than the default bolter also provides a higher range to the CL 26 --> 38.
Matchups:
SM: Helps at bleeding scouts (not core) and maybe against the TM turrets.
Eldar: Might need to be swapped for other weapon banshees counter banshees, but is really useful to make DA bleed.
IG: Active really powerfull against GMs and early turrets, since you can oneshot them with the active (before Savage)
Tyranids: Highly recommended, specially usefull when slowed by crippling poison, when using immolate can be devastating.
Chaos: Could be good for chasing hererics.
Orks: Good bleeding and stuff but not that core.
GK: Could be good if gk has a light armor start, IST and Ops can be bled a lot if you commit to chasing them for a while.
I would say is a highly recomended purchase in most cases since it will help deal dmg to enemies and bleed them at long range, making it a good tool to level up your CL.
Blood Maul (150/50): Has an awesome active, very useful disrupting blobs of units, both melee and ranged. I really love this weapon and should be taken into account the large distance models are thrown away + split apart, making them waste so much time regrouping.
Matchups:
SM: Only useful when threatened by 2 jump units.
Eldar: Useful when you feel you are being overwhelmed by banshees or seer council.
IG: Could be used to disrupt bloobs of GMs or deffending the back-line from ogryns.
Tyranids: Swarmy race can be used offensively running towards termas or in a deffensive way against hormas, raveners or genestealers.
Chaos: Only useful when threatened by 2 jump units.
Orks: Disruption is quite important for nobz or hitting the shootas.
GK: Not specially important since they lack of good jump units and the majority of their melee units are inmune to weapon knock-back.
Lightning claws(150/50): High dmg weapon with a decent active and a fast attack animation, which works especially well with some wargears of the CL.
Matchups:
SM: Good against ASM and heavy inf in general.
Eldar: Could be good to disrupt banshees and with other warhear,to be able to tank them.
IG: Useful againts the ogrys, will be able to tank and solo them with other wargears. Not core due to the lack of ranged weapon to bleed and not a useful active against blobs.
Tyranids: Can be useful to really dmg the Tyrant guard (won't heal or gain energy from wargears) and Warriors. Again careful with the crippling poison.
Chaos: Really nice weapon to rape the annoying CSM, or jump units, really nice to increase your tankiness with other wargears.
Orks: Good to tank nobz but also to deal high amount of dmg to the stronk orky backline, since you are inmune tu suppression.
GKs: Good against the heavy armoured race it is, but their terminators and paladins should be engaged in mele taking into account their dmg and tankiness.
Armours and Accesories
Now with armours and accesories I will talk in a more general way since it is more about the combination of them and player preference.
Harness of Rage (110/20) + Dark Halo (120/30)= Such an awesome combination of wargears it makes the chaos lord the 2nd tankiest commander of the game in T1 lvl 1 with 1650 hp, thanks to his shield ( HT has 1750 and FC 1620).((Lvl 10 CL will have 2701 hp with this build) Moreover, Harness of Rage increases his hp by 100 and regeneration by 2'5 hp/s, which helps when roaming.
The passive ability of the amour gives 5 energy on a small area every time the CL attacks in melee, which apart from giving 25 false hp to the CL with each hit, it really helps units like Raptors (need 2/3 hits at lvl 1 (energy regen into account) and only 1 hit at lvl 2 moreover Bloodletters will be able to benefit from the awesome worship and this wargear, which makes them energy independent.
Armor of the Inferno (150/30): Such an awesomely awesome armor, it gives the CL 150 hp and the active Let the galaxy burn. LTGB fires 4 fire projectiles that deal weapon knockback AoE on detonation dealing 30 flame dmg on hit, but also setting the ground on fire for 12s. Okay I have to say that this armor works nicely against swarmy races such as nids or humans but also orks. LTGB is really useful tu disrupt heavy weapon teams, guardsmen, termas or shootas and then rushing and engaging them melee. Since the energy cost on LTGB isn't that high you can use Destrictive Strike to further disrupt the enemy or Kill the Weak to heal and disrupt.
Another use of the active can be hitting the enemy power, its quite effective to deal a lot of dmg to them but you will never kill them thats for sure. The fire projectiles are the ones that deal the dmg and they are not that accurated to hit all of them one gen. This is not the best use of the active but it might be useful sometimes.
Mantle of Hate (125/30): Is such a great armour but I feel is a bit too specific compared to his other wargears. It gives the CL 175 hp and 1 hp/s as well as giving him the Drain Life ability which immobilizes an enemy infantry unit for 3 seconds while healing the CL. This one is tricky, since the range is really low 12 and sometimes the heal is not enough to tank safety when focus fired. Another annoying thing is that the ability uses weapon knockback to immobilize the enemy unit, so heroes like the BC, HT, CL or units like terminators are inmune to it. However, even though is kind of specific it does the job for you in so many purposes:
Lock up sneaky units like WSE, Mek, Lictor...
Can focus fire Die-Last models like heretics AC or shoota-nob.
Can annoy set up teams targeting the guy with the main weapon.
Can annoy models with important weapons like SM missile launcher, plague marine missile launcher, raptors AC...
Focus fire single model units like most commanders and subcommanders.
Has a unique trait allowing it to deal 1.8x damage on retreat, so positioning and timing are a must when this ability to its maximum efficiency.
Armor of the inferno and Mantle of Hate can be also used in conjunction with Icon of Khorne (100/20) which, makes the CL to heal with each strike for 1.5% of his maximun hp ( better with lightning claws due to the faster Attack Speed). With these builds the CL is less tanky,(1175 hp lvl 1 and 1726 hp at lvl 10) when compared to the dark halo build, but if he can attack without being kited too much he will selfheal and sustain (much better at higher lvls since the hp will be higher)
Armor of the Inferno + Icon of Khorne allows CL to disrupt range units and SUT and tide them up
Mantle of Hate + Icon of Khorbe improves even more the 1v1 potential of the CL
The last but not least wargear is Daemonic Visage (125/35), I put this accessory on its own, since I mainly use it, when I don't want to spend too much resources on the CL. This item brings a great debuff to the table, when the CL strikes in melee it affects the enemy infantry units around him, reducing their dmg by 25% during 5s. As I said I use this item on its own but I find it quite useful when fighting against swarmy races, since one attack might debuff their entire army. To maximice the effectiveness of this item you can use it in conjunction with LTGB, so you can reach their back line without loosing too much hp.
Globals
For the last part of this guide I want to explain a bit the CL globals... There is a bit of controversy around, since compared to other heroes globals, they are not that easy to use and are a bit situational.
Malignant blindness (100r): Okay here is the one and only... One of the most discussed globals around, it is quite useful but keep in mind that it is kind of tricky... The easy use of this ability is to save your vehicles from long range AV weapons, but also to avoid retreat deaths (since the enemy will stop chasing). It has more uses like doing an sneaky engage or flanking, but this is quite difficult to use, since sometimes your units will attack the enemy while aproaching.
Blood Sacrifice(175r): Much more straight forward, you target one unit (heretic whenever is possible) and boom 4 wild bloodletters appeared. Use it to increase your chances to win a fight. Works nicely with Harness of Rage since the summoned bloodletter will regen energy increasing their time in the field.
Bloodlust(200r): Another great CL global. Once active, every attack of every CL unit will increase the dmg of the nearby infantry. It really synergies with heretics due to their high model squads. Bloodlust lasts for 25 seconds, quite a lot, but I recommend activating it when at least part of your troops are fighting the enemy, if not the enemy will be able to back a bit and make you waste 200 red :'( . Like Blood Sacrifice use it when you can win a fight is a great global but don't waste it trying win a lost battle.
Chaos Terminators(550/100 and 300r): Straight forward summon a squad of Chaos Termies. Useful in different scenarios but not going to explain them now
.Empyreal Abyss(500r): The chaos nuke (I love how it looks), it deals melee heavy dmg, 200 in the core of the warp but much much less in the outer part. People don't really like this nuke since it is not that reliable and most of the time everything will scape after hitting the retreat button. Don't use this nuke to destroy tanks, because you will probably waste 500 red.
Well I hope that someone finds this useful or gives ideas about how to use the Chaos Lord. I know there is plenty of people who hates de "Noob Lord" but if I forgot any interesting use of any weapon armour or accessory please tell me I'd love to learn something new.
PD: Sorry for my english tell me if something is wrong <3
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