Chen players, do you need boots?

Chen Aura doesn't make Chen heal others more, it makes people on your team under the effect of the Aura receive more from heals. If you have a Pos 3 who could go for Mech or Greaves, so long as the people being healed are in Aura range, they'll heal for more.

With that said, if you're the 5 or 4, you're gonna be pretty broke as it is, though you will be on the outside of fights instead of in them. For that reason, is it worth going Boots at all early if you could just instead use Smoke (with a reason, of course), or Drums for movespeed, coupled with a movespeed related neutral? Obviously you can't rely on getting the MS neutral, but perhaps buy boots if you don't get it?

I feel Chen is so naturally slow that if he gets gone on, movespeed won't save his life too often. Kiting is useful yeah, but that's not going to happen for long regardless of movespeed if you're without any armour or magic resist.

The only positioning Chen needs to accomplish is being in range for Auras, which is easy, and then being in range for Penitence, which I feel is a fairly decent cast range already.

For the same price as Boots, you can get a Basi, Headdress, Buckler, Smokes and Sentries which feel like they'll accomplish a lot more in an early fight.

Do any of you skip, or at least put off getting Boots? If not, have you any advice on where to get gold from early on? I've got around 50 games on Chen with a 56% WR, but I don't feel like I've learned enough about him yet, and Jon Gunnarson on YouTube, who posts all kinds of micro hero guides, mentions a lot about delaying Boots on Chen.