[Dynamic] Goo's Guide to The Tinker Mentality

Introduction and Summary

Hello, and again, welcome to my guide to high-level Tinker. Here, forget about interacting with any women, because from this day you are married to Science! There is no going back beyond this point, so if you are not convinced that you can manage a proper Tinker, you know the way out.

I decided to create this guide because it seems that as of today, people that master Tinker is the midding bourgeoisie, and the rest is people that attempt it, and not necesarilly fail at it, but they never get the full potential out of the hero. As an experienced Tinker player Im here to expose the top tricks and explain the already known ones in depth.

So here we go, Tinker is of course an intelligence based ranged hero that can be extremely powerful if not dealt with early in the game. Smoke of deciet ganking, dewarding and blocking the ancient camp are some of the things you do to prevent a Tinker from unleashing hell upon your team.

There are plenty of things that make Tinker such a special hero, starting from having the ability to farm at extreme rates, being independent from his teammates, nuking down the tankiest of carries, to the possibility of traveling quickly to any point in the map. Be careful around Tinker, prolonged exposure to such an amazing hero may cause you stop playing other heroes partially or even completely, serious injury, or even death (Im not kidding, at least one of the above happened to me). I sure welcome any comments, but please, dont question my item decisions trying to make math-based comparisons, its not constructive, and if you want to earn the right to comment below, at least read the guide.

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Wheee! Dotabuff!

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The Tinker Mentality

Apart from the basic requierments you are need in order to play a proper Tinker, which is mainly decent mid lane prior knowledge and map awareness, there are some that are never on paper, and these are the qualities some one needs to raise the bar and stand out from the rest of regular Tinker players.

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Number 1: Muscle memory. It is key that you are confortable with your keybinds and that you are able to perform them quickly and with no error. Basically have macros in your brain. You must be able to:

Boots of Travel in, March of the Machines, Soul Ring, Bottle, Rearm, March of the Machines again, Soul Ring, Bottle, Blink Dagger to the treeline and Boots of Travel out, all in 5-10 seconds depending on your rearm level.

Farming fast and being able to know your weapons when engaging a foe have to be brainlessly inscribed in you.

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Number 2: Fast Reflexes. Mainly for the Blink Dagger, you have got to be able to dodge stuns, evade point-target spells, like Doom by jumping in the treeline and out of vision during the cast animation (since Blink Dagger is instant).

Protip: Imagine you are pushing a lane, and you see a TP animation coming up. DO or DIE. Regular Player: Blink Dagger into the trees and TP out. WHAT YOU DO: You quickly check the top bar for hero COLORS and proceed to decide, it is a dangerous encounter? Do you have enough mana to rearm several times? Are you properly armed? (remember armed is farmed without the F). Alright, you see its Beastmaster, so what do you do, you pretend to not know and proceed to attack the tower along with your creep wave, as soon as he finishes teleporting, you see the Primal Roar coming, you instantly Blink behind him, Dagon, He is now facing your way, he has no stun now, you Laser, he is blinded, you Rearm, Dagon, Blink behind him now, because as he is blinded, he will composite axes you, Heat seeking missiles from safe distance, Laser if he is not dead. $Profit$, Feel free to type rekt.

If he had a Black King Bar or any kind of Bash, you would not have engaged, but TPd out before he finished TPing in. HAVE THE MENTALITY OF A SERIAL KILLER, THINK OF EVERY SINGLE VARIABLE

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Number 3: Numbers. Being able to calculate your current damage output, minus magic reduction items, such as Pipe of Insight, is a big tactical advantage over your enemies. Not only that, but you have to be able to calculate their damage output just by having a quick glipse at their items.

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Number 4: Friendly, Forgiving, Teaching & Leadership. Do not be a moron, when playing Tinker you are representing the /masterrace/. Be polite. Be efficient.

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Item Progression #1 (And Early game)

Let us go through this ones as fast as possible. Tango is regen, Tango is life, buy it (or ask for it, unless you need 4, dont be cheap.) Observer Wards. You need one rune warded, if you are on team Radiant, to ward the ancient camp (which actually can be done with a single ward, and if you can, ward uphill, it will help you when using March of the Machines in the lane, harassing your opponent, and if its a potentially dangerous midder, such as Pudge or Tusk, its recommended to keep your eyes at him at all times, but them yourself if those arent provided by your support squad, if your team has one.

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Bottle is important, runes, regeneration, etc. Helps early in the lane, but once its later in game, your Bottle is used mainly just to save you from tight situations, and recover mana faster in the well. If you bought only the Tangoes, using Laser to ensure a couple last hits and grabbing a fast Bottle is sure the way to go. Bottlecrowing is important if the opposing midder is pushing in or winning runes.

During this period of time you should be stacking the ancient camp if you are on Radiant. Leaving lane around X:40-X:42 to get there X:50 and stack at the X:52.5 mark. This farm will be later used to boost your Blink Dagger.

Getting the Bottle around or below the minute mark is decent timing.

Now start farming those expensive Boots of Travel, when you get 450 gold buy Boots of Speed, they will overall help you contest runes and escape ganks.

This is where it gets funky, if you decided to go for the farming oriented march build, let know your teammates that ganks are not possible until you get your hands on Boots of Travel, use March of the Machines to ammass gold fast in the lane, and never forget to stack your ancients (if the stack is getting out of hand, remember to start the stack earlier X:51 or even X:50).

If you decided to go for the nuke oriented build kills are going to be the main gold sources you are going to go for. Getting first blood will boost your Boots of Travel by quite a bit. Ganking lanes with good runes, such as haste, and getting kills there, or on the enemy jungler will get the ball rolling for you. Killing the opposing mid is easy with this build with enough mana in some cases, when the opposing mid is either a squishy agility hero, such as Sniper or Mirana, or a hero that puts themselves in danger when engaging you, and one of those mistakes will cost them their life, such as heroes like Pudge.

These are the times for Boots of Travel purchase:
Under 7 minutes = Great, fast Boots of Travel
Around 8 minutes = Decent Time
Past or 10 minutes = Slow Time

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IMPORTANT NOTE: Rearm IS NOT TO BE SKILLED AT LEVEL 9 EVERY TIME, THE SKILLING OF Rearm SHOULD BE IN SYNC OR IN SIMILAR TIME TO THE PURCHASE OF Boots of Travel, having one but not the other is cringe worthy.

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Soul Ring is simple, you use it everytime you are going to Rearm in order to not deplete your mana in 2 seconds. You should be getting this baby 2-3 minutes after grabbing your Boots of Travel. Once you get your hands in Boots of Travel and Soul Ring along with your Bottle, you should take down your ancient stack. In the case of team Radiant (the stack you have been doing for some minutes now) it is done in this fashion:



In case you are in team Dire, the ancient stacking is on the hands of your handsome position 5. Although is not necessary, it helps a lot, as I said, to get a faster Blink Dagger. In the Dire side, in order to clear the stack you should stand near the tier 1 bottom dire tower put your face on the treeline to the left and start casting March of the Machines, Soul Ring, Rearm and so on, Bottle up to recover mana, and any health you are missing from reapeatadly using Soul Ring.

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Item Progression #2 (And Mid Game)

Now onto the big guns, Blink Dagger. The Blink Dagger is the most important item you must have every Tinker match. Why do I say this? Because to what I found in my research, people tend to consider Force Staff a viable alternative to Blink Dagger, sure I'll give you intelligence, hp regen, yea sure, nice. There is two main reasons you have got to buy Blink Dagger, The First Reason its pretty straight forward, its to Blink to the trees in order to safely TP back to base. The Second Reason: Some say Force Staff is better because it doesnt cancel when you are attacked, and you can help teammates. But, consider that with Boots of Travel's speed, its not hard to juke around for 3 seconds and the Blink out. If you are under Damage over time, it will probably be over before you are dead, and if its something like a Doom (hero) chasing you down with Scorched Earth that could potentially get you killed, you turn around a fight. The Blink Dagger is not perfect, but in comparison to the Force Staff, Tinker benefits better from it. Remember: The Tinker Mentality

These are the times for Blink Dagger purchase:
Under 11 minutes = Good
Around 13 minutes = Decent/Average
Past 15 minutes = Slow Blink Dagger

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dagon!!! YES! The wonderful item that nukes someone down for 800 magic damage by the cost of 100 mana and - Rearm-no cooldown- Rearm-, well, 15 seconds of cooldown. Just buy it, and upgrade it up to level 5, some say grabbing your Ethereal Blade when you are sitting at a level 3 or even 2 dagon and that you will do better with the Ether blast, and that will help you survive and amplify your total damage output, but trust me, just be happy, upgrade your dagon to the max, get that low mana cost going, and more intelligence. Pretty straight forward again, also: look at this, how can you not upgrade it.

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The entire level 5 dagon, if you didnt know, costs 7720 gold, so yea, it is going to take some time to farm up, but once you get the first one, killing
becomes easier and stuff, so that may help, but it is still quite a process.

The times for a complete Dagon 5 purchase are:
Around 22 Minutes = Good
Around 26 Minutes = Decent
Past 28 Minutes = Meh, you can do better.

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The Ethereal Blade, this is like your... erm. Dagon level 6. But with multiple other uses, you know, not getting gibbed by Ursa, diving the fountain, saving a teammate.

This is Tinker upgrading his Dagon:

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This is Tinker with both a Dagon 5 and an Ethereal Blade:

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Alright, but putting the bad jokes aside. Ethereal Blade is a great item in conjunction with Dagon, the combination of the two will surely kill most heroes in one rotation, if they dont, then Rearm and do it again. With these two, unless you need a blind effect, you wont be using your Laser or Heat seeking missiles not nearly as much as you have been, now you would just Ethereal Blade, Dagon, Rearm, and repeat. The mana cost of this rotation is lower than the regular rotation of Tinker's spells.

The times for Ethereal Blade purchase are:
Under 30 Minutes = Nice, Fast.
Around 33 Minutes = Average, Decent
Past 25 Minutes = Not good

Probably everyone has seen this video with our amazing DDZ striking down 92 kills in a pub, in the video there is a part when he takes down a Viper in the top lane, with three Ethereal Blade+Dagon rotations. He also buys a Bloodstone, a really strange purchase I will go over later on. I recommend watching it in Youtube.


Play Video

Item Progression #3 (Late Game And Luxury)

This might be the most controversial thing about my guide so far. THE SHEEPSTICK! HEX! or Scythe of Vyse pick-up. Some say it must be purchased earlier, maybe before buying Ethereal Blade or even before maxing the Dagon.

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That is not the best idea. Tinker excells at nuking down heroes, you cannot be attacked by a dead man. Take them down 1 by 1. This is why you must be careful during teamfights, and, unless it is early game and March of the Machines does considerable damage, you should engage on more than one hero at the time.

Now, when the late game comes, and you cannot take your foes quickly anymore, and they have a chance of fighting back, that is when it becomes dangerous for you. Thats what the Scythe of Vyse is for.

If you saw the ddz's video up there, he also does use of the hex to constantly avoid this window of opportunity for your enemies to hurt you, or worse.Stun you ;_;

Hex, Ethereal Blade, dagon, Rearm, Hex, Ethereal Blade, dagon, Rearm, and so on...

You have to be swift when perfoming this, your victim has to stay hexed 100% of the time.

For the Scythe of Vyse you are going to have to sell your Bottle to make space in your inventory. OR, you can keep your Bottle in your stash, and when you TP back to base to regen, you take it out, spam it, and when you are ready to go, you drop it back to your stash, grab your gear and go.

Yes,we do.

The times for Scythe of Vyse purchase are:
Under 40 Minutes = Nice
Around 43 Minutes = Meh, Alright
Past 45 Minutes = You are a little off

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From now, the items are just extensions and luxury pickups, when having: Soul Ring, Boots of Travel, Blink Dagger, dagon, Scythe of Vyse and Ethereal Blade... and your Bottle in the stash, you are considered to be farm-complete. This is why for this items I am not putting a Time for Purchase list, since you can buy them in the order you need, if you even need them.

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Shivas guard is pretty much that item that you dont know why you buy it, but you just need something to throw that pile of gold to.

-Big AOE slow for teamfights.
-Easy way to clean up creep waves, instead of having to use March of the Machines.
-You know, that passive attack speed slow.
-Armor, if thats your jam (even if you shouldnt be getting hit).

Simple as that.

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Manta Style, again, one of those items you just buy to get rid of your gold:

-It helps you siege faster.
-"Purge" Debuffs.
-More Movement Speed.
-Mind Games.
-Scouting purposes.

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Black King Bar, you know what this does, if you dont, just mouseover... but really, you should know what a BKB is.

-Helps you not get stunned, and so, not getting any channeling interrupted.

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Ok. The Aghanims Scepter is more of a teamfight oriented, spam rockets everywhere item. Its for when if you show up in the fight you will surely get focused and die. So Blink into the trees, and spam the **** out of those missiles, easy teamfight contribution. It is more defense oriented. Or at least not as agressive as dagon and Ethereal Blade.

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* (The Taboo Items)

This chapter is for those items that people dont talk about. The Taboo items.

They are: Euls scepter of divinity and Bloodstone.

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First, the Euls scepter of divinity. This thing is basically the poor man's Scythe of Vyse. But it can be used also defensively, if you arent really good at dodging projectiles with your Blink Dagger, this will be surely more easy simple. If you are getting ganked, Tornado youself, and spam Blink Dagger to somewhere safe.

Also, the fun use for it, its the offensive posibility, as I said, its the poor man's Scythe of Vyse.

Dagon, Euls scepter of divinity, Rearm (while your victim is lifted, so they cant fight back), Dagon again, and so on...

It also gives you a little more Movement Speed.

If you want to purchase this, try to fit it along your dagon upgrading, if you are having problems ganking, y'know, mid game.

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The BLAWDSTAWN! or if you want to be fancy, the Bloodstone, its basically lots of regen, and a deny, and faster respawn. If you get this around mid game, teamfights and your own ganks will get you a pretty powerful Bloodstone. Again, use the ddz video as a reference.

You CAN rearm Pocket Suicide ( Bloodstone's active if you didnt know).

No gold for nobody.

It is a pretty costy item, so if you decide to purchase it, it will delay your everything.

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Short, Concrete, Spells Explanations

Laser, its a nuke, pure damage, and a blind. Use it early to secure last hits, to harass your opponent and to secure kills. Use the blind defensively.

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heatseeking missiles, its also a nuke, for 2 targets. Use it early to gank, late game to secure kills and add damage to the teamfights.

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March of the Machines, cast this in lane to push it and check runes or stack ancient camp, use it as a farming tool, and its ridiculous damage, you dont want to fight under March of the Machines ever. If you cast this when getting ganked, people is going to have to make a decision, either risk it and commit, or leave.

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Rearm, Chanelling spell, get this with Boots of Travel, removes cooldown times from all spells and items, for the exception of these few:

Black King Bar, Arcane Boots, Helm of the Dominator, Hand of Midas, Refresher Orb, Linkens Sphere, Bottle and Necronomicon.

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End Note

This is all, for now. Note anything you may be interested to learn about Tinker and I will consider adding it here.

For now its mainly items really, with some other stuff.

Ingame Guide Work-in-Progress!

Thanks for reading, if you did.