Ok, I'll be the first to say it...TECHIES SUCK

I played a game as Naga Siren recently. At 3 minutes, I used Mirror Image illusions to clear all of the techies' hard work at the rune and lane :).

Oh God...
I just checked :

Techies' mine explosion radius : 500 at most, for all mines. Only 425 for his ult.

Necrobook true sight radius : 1000
Necrobook archer attack range : 550.

Techies' life is just going to suck. You can mine sweep infinitely with the Necro archer while leaving the warrior out of mine range. Techies can't do jack, he can't even farm the Necro creeps.

Volvo pls...you just released a hero that becomes literally useless as soon as the enemy team builds a single necrobook.

Do I see the new winner of the "worst hero in DotA" contest? Like hey, let's make a hero whose sole purpose is counterpushing but let's make it so that building necrobooks make him useless. Because hey when is the last time you saw a pushing lineup build a necrobook :)

Well the thing is that in lower level pubs no one builds necrobook. And also no one wants to play support... so it is pretty hard to counter them if you don't do it yourself.

Seems like you don't play against smart people. Techies should stay in lane after plopping a batch of bombs.

I play against some pretty decent players.

Techies is just not a powerful hero. I think we can all agree that techies MUST plant a lot of mines in the beginning of the match to try to get a surprise kill.

Mid they are absolutely garbage, so let's not even discuss that.

As a support they must stack and pull constantly to rush their soul ring and get their mines going.

As an off lane, they are trash. Off lanes need to be able to escape danger, or need to be able to steal experience without risking dying versus a tri lane. Techies can't do that. If you say "Oh you can just suicide!" the cooldown is far too long for that to be considered a viable strategy.

In my opinion Techies MUST support, because they don't fit anywhere else. As supports, they are quite weak as well. Who are the best supports right now? Probably SS, Sky, Veno? All 3 can roam, and 2 can push. Techies cannot roam, and can only push. Techies also has a hard time getting levels to push correctly, since they are extremely easy to bully out of lane.

Imagine a tri with techies. Non factor. "Techies should never tri lane!" Okay, imagine a dual lane with techies. Let's say Sky/(Anyone) vs Techies and... Anyone. Sky lane wins, period. The only way I could see techies in a lane would be a tri lane with viper, just because viper is so incredibly strong, that he could carry the techies in the laning phase with his incredibly powerful skill set.

Techies is just a niche hero, that is fun to play. To bomb someone is always hilarious, but he just won't have any impact once people get used to playing against him. A hero that CANNOT lane, but requires levels to go lay mines (Which cost a lot of experience if they don't pay off), is just an insanely risky idea. You're basically jeopardizing your team by making them fight 4v5 for the majority of the game if your mines don't pay off.