Clockwerk - the King of the Offland

Introduction

Why is clockwerk the King of the Offland? Coz of these 2 skills:

Rocket Flare

Power Cogs

They are the soul of this hero and his greatest strength.

I ve played a lot of games on this guy, coming up to a winrate of 70% in high/very high bracket, which is pretty good.

The strongest side of this hero is that it can easily suffer solo hard lane versus 2 or even 3 oppposing heroes.
Why is this so important - because you can decently opppose the enemy dual or tri-lane, not allowing their main carry to free farm and at the same time you let your teammates to have their own easy trilane or easy dual lane + jungle.

Bottom line - clockwerk is one of the strongest solo hard heroes, that can farm his necessary items no matter what, using his Rocket Flare
Also, he has an amazing escape mechanism, using his Power Cogs

Items

Early game

It's necessary to get a lot of heal items - so i usually get x2 Tango and sometimes add Healing Salve. Also you have to spam your Rocket Flare all the time so i usually go x2 Clarity.
You can also get x2 Iron Branch to get your stats and to move on to Magic Wand later.

If you oppose the nuking lane, it will be a better choice to go Magic Stick + 2x Tango + 2x Clarity + Iron Branch

After spending some time on a lane, you gonna get your Boots of Speed and i highly recommend to go Arcane Boots right after your Boots of Speed - because it gives you the possibility to spam your Rocket Flare and increases your mana pool.

Why you shouldnt go Phase Boots - the answer is because if you are a hardlane solo clockwerk, in the beginning of a game you gonna rely on your Rocket Flare, coz it's a safe way of farming against 2-3 heroes and you ll never have problems with mana if you go for Arcane Boots - so you ll always have your Power Cogs to escape.

Mid Game

So, you have your Arcane Boots and maybe Magic Wand - the next item i highly recommend you going is Drums of Endurance - an amazing (underrated in pubs) item.

It gives you +9 to all stats and most imortantly - the +5 ms aura and +5 as aura - which is a great way to help your team. In the current meta, most of the pro teams rely on auras, coz it gives you a bonus when you push and increases your chances to win 5x5 teamfight.

So, we have our Arcane Boots , Drums of Endurance , what should we go next?
It totally depends on how your game is moving. If you get those items before 15 minutes of a game, you can go straight to the Aghanim's Scepter - an amazing item if you get it 20-25 minutes in game. If you get those items too late, you have to go for more team oriented build - such as Mekansm or Blade Male or Vladimir's Offering

The Mekansm heals your team - which improves the team fights and it also gives + 5 armor aura.
The Vladimir's Offering is good to purchase if you have 3-4 melee heroes - and it also gives your team an armor aura.
The Blade Male is an amazing initiation item - you Hookshot someone, then Power Cogs him and you are alone against maybe 3-4 opponent, while your team is trying to reach and help you. So during that time all the agression is towards you and having a Blade Male deals a massive amount of damage to your enemies or prevents them from aatacking you, which is also a good thing coz they got confused.

Late game

Not the best item to get when it's 35-40th minute of a game is the Aghanim's Scepter - at this stage people are usually grouped up as 5 and the reduced cooldown wont help you a lot.
So i'd advise to go Shiva's Guard - if they have a lot of right-clickers or Black King Bar if they have a lot of casters or the Assault Cuirass

Skills

As mentioned before, if we are talking about an offlane clock, we must go into Rocket Flare - the key ability to survive the hard line.

Based upon Rocket Flare, our skill build should be like this:

1. Power Cogs
2. Rocket Flare
3. Battery Assault
4. Rocket Flare
5. Rocket Flare
6. Hookshot
7. Rocket Flare
8. Battery Assault
9. Battery Assault
10. Battery Assault
11. Hookshot
12. Power Cogs
13. Power Cogs
14. Power Cogs
15. Power Cogs
16. Stats
17. Hookshot
18. Stats
19. Stats
20. Stats
21. Stats
22. Stats
23. Stats
24. Stats
25. Stats
26. Stats

As you can see, i placed Power Cogs in the 1st place - you have to do it on the hardlane to block the creeps, so that the line will be pushed closer to your tower and you can feel more safe.

Team Work

When you hit lvl 6, try to ask your mid hero to come and gank enemy's carry - with your Hookshot and Rocket Flare you can do it.

Try to outpush the creep waves by using your Rocket Flare, but use it only when your tower is being pushed and there is no one to defend it, dont just spam.
It works the same way as Natures Prophet's Wrath of Nature - use it only your tower is being pushed or you splitpush, dont just use it on a cooldown.

How can i improve my skill

You can practice your Hookshot in a game with bots, then go to public and improve there.

But there is a moment when you feel that you know, how to play this hero and cant learn anything else from just playing pubs - that's the time when you go to dotabuff+ and you look through the statistics and games of the best clockwerk players in dota 2.

But dotabuff+ is not free, that's why i am sharing this screenshot with the best clockwerk players - so all you have to do is to find their dotabuffs and download their recent games - and after that you can analyze and improve further.

Summary

Clockwerk is a hero that demands the game maturity from a player - you have to initiate and many times you just die. But before you die you put a lot of influence on a fight with your Power Cogs and all other skills, you confuse your opponents and they usually use a lot of skills on you so your teammates wont be harrased by them.

With his escape mechanism and his rockets Clockwerk is one of the best Hard-laners in dota2 and by using this hero, you can give your main carry another support to do a trilane or put one of your teammates to a jungle.

If you have any questions or ideas how to improve this guide, feel free to post your comments, all of them are welcome!