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Mantle of Intelligence
Circlet
Observer Ward
Faerie Fire
Iron Branch
Tango (Shared)Tango (Shared)
Bottle
Null Talisman
Soul Ring
Boots of Speed
Boots of Travel
Blink Dagger
Aghanim's Scepter
Aether Lens
Scythe of Vyse
Ethereal Blade
Shiva's Guard
Aghanim's Scepter
Arcane Blink
Scythe of Vyse
Aghanim's Scepter
Bloodstone
Ethereal Blade
Arcane Blink
Circlet
Circlet
Healing Salve
Iron Branch
Tango (Shared)
Tango (Shared)
Bottle
Boots of Speed
Boots of Travel
Soul Ring
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1 | 11 | 13 | 14 |  |
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3 | 8 | 9 | 10 |  |
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2 | 4 | 5 | 7 |  |
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6 | 12 |  |
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15 | 16 |
Here is my first guide, featuring my favourite hero Tinker.
There isn't many guides outlining what do build and what to do to make the game more enjoyable and gaining you MMR where possible. This guide will show you all the possible outcomes and what to build according to the game you find yourself in. This hero is a very difficult hero to master, but once you start to build some muscle memory with your hotkeys and how the hero reacts to the map, using Tinker becomes second nature.
I am currently level 29 with Tinker and i win most of my games with him at low ancient level.
I will assume that everybody that reads this guide understands what this hero is basically about, and how his skills work, there is many pages already outlining his abilities and such.
Enjoy!
Laser
This ability is single target pure damage that makes the target unable to hit there right click attacks. used in the laning stage to secure the range creep with the damage, or harassing and blinding the enemy laner to secure a last hit or deny.
Heat Seeking Missiles
This ability is best used from afar, and your best nuke to lower the enemies health during a teamfight. most of your damage in a game will be done by this ability.
Your rockets can be cast well before the enemy knows, so a rearm an be used in the meantime.
March of the Machines
This is used as a farming purpose, highground defence, and teamfight damage during the early/mid game. i use this to stack neutral camps and get my travels (i will show you later how this is done)
Rearm
This ability is what makes tinker so much fun to play, resetting all of his items and abilities. The only items that it does not work with that tinker will possibly get are Aeon Disk and Black King Bar.
Starting Items
2 Shared tangos, circlet, mantle, fairy fire, branch, observer ward. (180g left over)
These items are a good balance of right click damage for harass and last hitting, regen, and committing to the items of the online stage.
Tinkers starting items can be manipulated however you wish, it all depends on what middle hero you are against. For me it depends on how the enemy mid hero can lower your health, for eg. if i am against a Queen of pain that maxes her Q, i will use my 180 left over gold after starting items and invest it in a salve.
My starting items very rarely change, the 2 circlets that the higher level Tinker players use is just for the stats, and the circlets are never built into nulls, sell them when inventory becomes full. Find what ever works for you.
Online Stage
This build must not change. it is absolutely essential to have at least a bottle, soul ring, travels and blink. But at this stage following my build you should also have a Null talisman.
At this stage you are extremely effective on the map. once you get the blink, you have high kill potential and a huge power spike.
the earlier you can get to this point, the more dangerous you are to the other team and must be taken advantage of, for eg. you can blink straight onto a phantom assassin and kill her, as long as she has no help, she is completely helpless.
Before this time, tinker is at his most vulnerable, and it is by far the most difficult aspect of mastering this hero (getting to this stage uninterrupted by enemies).
First Build (very reliable)
This build is extremely reliable because of the cast range of laser and mana levels.
laser in this patch with scepter is crazy levels of damage, so the cast range of this is well utilized. The Active items are really nice to use with the increased cast range.
In Your Face Build (Fastest Farming)
This build is for using Shivas guard, and you will be dangerously close to the enemy heroes to be able to use it effectively, so think about this before you commit to it.
However shivas guard makes it the fastest farming build, however the most risky.
You will quickly realise if you have chosen poorly, because you will either die alot, or be ineffective when you shouldn't be.
Sometimes Build (Normally when Stomping)
This build is just Tinker getting way out of control with your mobility and damage being too overwhelming for the enemy team, and this is taking advantage of that.
The biggest difference is using bloodstone for the mana and the spell amp.
Dagon
I have tried getting this item many times in this current patch, and in my opinion it is an absolute trash item, you would have to be too close to make it work, and the changes to the scepter have made it a much better pickup.
The idea in recent patches was to get dagon if you were doing extremely well and had level 1 dagon by 15 min and you would just blink into heroes faces no matter who it was and nuke them before they could even react, this was high risk high reward, but i do not recommend for this patch.
Aether lens
Fantastic item for so many reasons. Cast range on blink, eblade, sheep, laser. mana regen, mana capacity, cheap item.
Aghanims Scepter
This is the reason that i believe Tinker is very good in this patch, the main reason being, the 20% current health reduction has made it to be crazy damage to heroes that in recent patches tinker was unable to kill. Spectre and Bristleback are made short work of with this update and no matter how tank they get, you can 1v1 Spectre now even with 5k health.
Ethereal Blade
Eblade is a really good pickup for tinker as it is a nuke, it amplifies magic damage from missles, a save for yourslf and your teammates. With aether lens you can easily prevent a teammatess death from the trees at a safe distance. The only downside to
this item is that it doesn't provide much mana, and it costs mana to use. If i find the enemy team is sustaining too much during a teamfight, i will opt for bloodstone instead
to continue the barrage of rockets and lasers. Against certain heroes it is very effective with your laser. Ursa, Troll, Pa, Riki to name a few (physical carries).
Arcane Blink
This is not a game winning item, but it gives more intelligence and the cast point improvement. if you are able to consistently and effectively use blink, sheep, rocket, laser, rearm. then it is a strong extension item.
Shivas Guard
This item is very useful for farming creeps fast, and nuking heroes. But the most essential information is the fact that it provides unobstructed vision in trees and highground. while a target is sheeped and you are nuking them to death, they will run to trees so they are out of vision for the next sheep after rearm, making you guess where they have gone, and blink on top of them, or blink to block them. Shivas negates this by giving vision. the down side of this is that the enemy can see your shivas effect when you are trying to escape, even if your hero is out of site in the trees, they will still know exactly where you have blinked to, allowing many abilites to stop you from escaping.
Almost every game i will get the same talents as above in this guide.
Level 10 Talent:
If i opt to get shivas guard, i will get the spell amp once all abilites maxed, because the cast range is not utilized as much as the spell amp. All other times i get the cast range.
Level 15 Talent
I always get the manaloss.
Level 20
I always get the march damage
Level 25
If they have a channeling spell hero, like shadow shaman, enigma, witch doctor, pugna, and they are being a problem, opt for the ministun. all other times get the laser damage.
Always always always level your laser first, the first wave is yours to get level 2 first.
Double click your hero picture to the right to centre the camera on your hero, using right clicks and pressing S to stop your hero, you can get very good at this after some practice. Ideally you want the melee creeps on your side of the river but outside the range of your tower.
You can use laser to secure the enemy range creep (most gold and experience), by lasering the enemy hero or laser the creep directly.
Control the creeps position by right clicking the enemy hero while you are close to the enemy creeps to make them attach you and pull them closer to you making them easier to last hit.
Level your rockets 2nd, if its puck or ember spirit or some hero that can dodge easily, dont bother with any points in rockets. Laser cannot be dodged.
Depending on whether the enemy hero is able to win the lane easily, depends on how you play the lane. Its either stack some neutral camps, or play the lane more often and stack a little.
If you put all your points in the nukes, it is high risk and high reward. It hardly pays off, but if you really want to sacrifice your march damage for single target nukes, dont go more than 2 in laser and rockets. A popular example of this is morphling mid. You can nuke him down easily while he is full agi, making him constantly fearful.
I will show you in a video how to stack the creeps and jungle effectively, but it isn’t wise to just leave the enemy mid hero free farm without an upside to that sacrifice.
Your team needs to understand also how tinker works during the early game.
It is very hard to rotate to a lane, usually via tp, because you have invested 90 gold into tping to that lane, you have to get a kill to make it worth the investment, also more difficult if you have 1 level in each of your nukes, which is what i have most games. If you are vsing a puck, as soon as they hit level 6 they should be looking for you in the jungle, or ganking a side lane, and you will need help to defend yourself. Because of this your team will feel like it is 4v5 at this stage which is very typical, and they might flame.
Tell them to relax, it is all apart of the plan with the heroes we have available. You will be online soon, with more than the puck can provide.
It is paramount that you call missing and keep an eye on the enemy mid heroes whereabouts to notify your team. Tell them to sit under the tower until the threat is gone, make the mid hero dive a tower, or waste a minute of time, while you get your travels. Countless times i have my offlaner saying “GG END,” then i finish the game at 25/2/10 carrying the team.
Most of your gold will be earnt in the jungle, timing this right you can march 6 camps worth of creeps at the same time, and 4 on the radiant (i will show you). It is safer in the jungle with more gold and exp, different from most other heroes.
Walk back to the lane and march the lane, back to jungle, to home and start again. I normally have to only buy 2 tps to finish the travels.
Good travels timing is between 9-12 minutes.
Anytime after that, something has gone wrong.
Always adapt your play to what your enemy is doing, if its a kunkka and you dont have your travels yet, you are dead. If its a puck, you are most likely dead, if its a viper, just tp out as soon as you see him. If they keep hunting you, your sidelanes have more space. Work your way through this phase, it is by far the most difficult time, they will take advantage of this stage. Use your march ontop of yourself and call for help if being ganked, your march deals alot of damage and can backfire on them, people often underestimate it and die.
Once you have travels, next essential is blink, providing you already have soulring. Do the same thing that you have been doing to get travels, however be prepared to gank sidelanes when the opportunity arises as you can tp to creeps, this process is quick as you can be liberal with your mana and tp back to base.
Blink timing should be from 12-15 min.
Now you are online and ready to fight, almost in time for rearm lvl 2.
Gank gank gank, use your huge power spike to blink around into trees spamming your rockets, then blink forward to laser and finish them off.
When tping in, blink straight away to a safe area, use your nukes and before every rearm, hit your soulring (this is the way i do it, some people use it after rearm, but my muscle memory has got it this way.
Dont wait too long for ganks. You want to tp, fire some nukes, get a kill then straight back to farming/pushing a side lane. What i have learnt over the years, is you have to be extremely aggressive with farming, not aggressive towards the enemy team, but aggressive for farming, group some neutral camps, 2 marches blink to lane, march. Try to get as many together as possible. Once you get some practice, you can march the creep wave without even seeing the lane, as you know what time the creeps will arrive at a certain point in the lanes.
When tping to a lane, if unsure where the enemy team is, tp to the wave coming, not the one that is currently being attacked, as they have no vision of this, you can blink into the trees, get 2 marches off, then blink away and tp before the enemy team are able to react. Some heroes will wait in the trees for you.
This is why people put “tinker wards” up on the side of the maps, so they can jump on you when you arrive. Its just a risk blinking into them, we have all died this way, but ensure it only happens once, there are many places to blink to.
Also be aware of what enemies pose a threat to your blink once you tp. Heroes that have an instant stun that is not single target, like lions earthspike, sandkings burrow strike etc.
Other ways of stopping your blink is damage per second that occurs constantly, for eg. Juggs spin, pudges rot, you cannot blink out of this. (But its a good way of baiting the spin out before your team ganks him).
Other heroes are intermittent damage and you may be able to get away with it, like sandking sandstorm, alchemist acid spray etc.
There are other heroes are just unable to stop your blink, like ogre magi, there is no way he can stop you. Heroes like crystal maiden that have aoe damage, like nova, if they time it perfect can stop it, but extremely unlikely.
If they cant stop you, they will just nuke that creep that you are tping onto.
You can also tp onto a creep to bait an ability out, i have had many faceless voids pull out a crono to stop me from blinking away, but i stop it the very last second of tp, just incase they do.
If an allie hero is running away from the enemy team, you can start the tp to a nearby creep and it will make them react, either turn to kill the creep, try and kill you, or continue the chase of your teammate. Its amazing how often this works, either of these options give your teammate the chance to escape, and it costs you nothing. If they continue the chase and you can blink away safely, try and do some damage.
Enemy hero dislikes
The heroes that tinker does not like are heroes that can close the distance, stun and put constant pressure on him, tinker does not like to be on the back foot.
Some of these heroes are:
Viper, Kunkka, Puck, storm, zeus, antimage, slark, clock, phantom lancer, naga, beastmaster, brewmaster, mars, doom, spirit breaker, ember spirit, templar assassin, weaver, broodmother, spectre, death prophet, riki, clinkz, void spirit, queen of pain, invoker, outworld destroyer, willow, wind ranger, pugna,tiny, night stalker. slark
Bad hero matches during laning: These heroes are able to punish tinker and really delay that boots of travel timing.
Zeus, queen of pain, ember spirit, void spirit, kunkka, viper, huskar, tiny, razor, pugna, invoker (quas wex), batrider
Enemy hero likes These heroes are normally right clickers that are affected by laser that negates their damage, or there abilities dont hold tinker down.
ursa, bristleback, earthshaker, dragon knight, alchemist, huskar, troll, sniper, drow, natures prophet, bloodseeker, monkeyking, terrorblade,
Good hero matches during laning: These heroes do not pressure tinker, however they most likely do not provide pressure to many heroes at all in mid.
dragon knight, tide hunter, chaos knight, timber saw, drow ranger, mirana, morphling, sniper, invoker (quas exort), silencer, bloodseeker, phantom assassin.
Heroes As Allies:
The best combos are the heroes that provide vision for rockets.
my personal favourite is bounty hunter, using track, blast them down with rockets from deep in the trees.
Spirit breaker is similar during charge to provide vision.
Any hero that is going to take the pressure and attention of the enemy team will help tinker.
if you are really taking over the game, but none of your cores are doing well, you are in for a tough game, as they will focus you. as soon as the tinker is dead, the teamfight is easy.
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