[Full/Dynamic] Goo's Guide To The Tinker Mentality v2.0 (Updated & Tweaked)

Preface

In before Goo why are you posting this again?! Ever heard of Edits?! Yes, ok. If you dont recall I created my last Tinker guide over a year ago if I am not mistaken, that means it is not updated for 6.83 and I never had the time to go in and play a bunch of Tinker games to test stuff and try to find the path of least resistance in terms of dealing with the nerfs, and there was a lot of them. So, I am re-creating this guide, its basically 50% the old guide, with modified values and explanations where its needed; and 50% new stuff, new content, explanation of how you go about playing the hero nowadays. Now with that aside...

Also this guide has a ton of colors and pictures to, you know, keep it fun and easy to digest. If you think this guide is distracting because of the reasons listed, here is a link that should do.

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I decided to create this guide because it seems that as of today the dawn of time, 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 I'm 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 Deceit 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.

I highly recommend that if you find this guide any helpful you also check out my guide to mid and my guide to improving and technique. They both complement the playstyle of Tinker and overall how is a decent mid handled.

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Wheee! Dotabuff!

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1. The Tinker Mentality

This section is exactly as in the old guide, everything here is still relevant.

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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 master race. Be polite. Be efficient.

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1.2. To Hero To Zero In One Patchnote

So, if you are not familiar here is the list of nerfs (and small buffs) for Tinker, well, at least the recent relevant ones.

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6.81: Heat Seeking Missile is no longer blocked by Ethereal Blade, Ghost Scepter or Decrepify. This was more of a fix to an unintended mechanic, after all Heat Seeking Missile has always been Magical damage. If you dont remember this was the deathball meta patch, stuff like Death Prophet, Brewmaster, Faceless Void, Skywrath Mage and Tinker were topping the charts.

6.82: March of the Machines damage changed from Universal to Magical, this means it does no longer affect Spell Immune units. Ancient Creeps are spell immune and are no longer affected by March of the Machines, also Mud Golems. This was the buzz kill. Basically this means that Tinker cannot farm underground, he has to get his gold the legal way, last hitting and taking part in fights; and he isnt the best hero for any of those things. This meant that your item timings were going to be severely affected, mainly because you used the ancients to get a 6/7 Minute Boots of Travel or to get a 14 minute Blink Dagger. Now that cannot be taken for granted, you have to go in and risk your life to get key kills, and if you die for some reason there goes your early Boots of Travel and your whole early game and part of mid game.

BUT WAIT!



This patch also nerfed Dagon making it so it costs 180 mana in all levels. They nerfed Ethereal Blade a LOT (for Tinker at least); is no longer instant but a projectile that travels at a painfully slow and disjointable 1100 units per second, and it does no longer turn the caster ethereal form (unless of course you cast it on yourself). And on top of this: Changes to gold and EXP Mechanics including Rubberbanding, networth dependent kill rewards and other comeback algorithms hurt the concept of Tinker a lot, considering he is a hero that thrives on building an item advantage, and that generally goes alone. Gets killed, Gold giveaway, and goodbye to that advantage.

6.83: Heat Seeking Missile now does 25 more damage in all levels. Small buff, kinda noticeable ingame though, I'll go into that later.

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That's all.

2. Starting Items, Early Game & Building

Alright, you may have seen up there the sexy dotafire.com overlay of items and skill builds. Disregard that information. Well, not completely, but please DO NOT just go with that and not go through my explanation, Tinker is not a hero that is built the same way every match, and that is not something I can lay down up there in the diagram. I will explain what items you buy in what situations, and why so you can develop that itemization gamesense yourself that will come very handy in matches.

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You got two options for starting items. First one goes like this: Tango (A full set of 4 Tangoes purchased by yourself), and a Null tallisman. Tango is basic regen, better than Healing Salve for many reasons, mainly because it's sustain more than it's healing; also because you deal with harass and aggro a lot in the mid lane. Null tallisman is great for making sure you don't fail at your one job, last hitting. Then it builds into Dagon later so, there is that.

Now there is another way. Literally Nothing. Buying absolutely no items at the start, and get Bottle straight, now; how effective is this? Honestly? Pretty freaking effective. You stop playing as a solely mid farming hero towards Boots of Travel, and start spamming spells at the opposing mid to burst through their regen and zone them out, take runes, etc. Wear them down slowly, and if they wont fall back wait for them to come out to their danger zones and just nuke them down. If you are given a good rune, bring the madness to a sidelane. Avoid doing this if you arent level 6 at the very least, so you have SOME nuking power, level 3 Laser and level 3 Heat Seeking Missile is a bare minimum you need to land a gank, level 8 of course is better, for level 4 all around. Consider Laser does 300 damage (well 320) and Heat Seeking Missile about 260 after reductions, so seeing someone with a single bar (you know, HP bars of 250) they will be killed by any of your spells, and if you see someone with 2 bars you can kill them with two spells, three bars are scary, because if you waste spells on them they will not die and you will be left with spells on cooldown, aka vulnerable.

Anyway... remember to use Laser to last hit if you are having a tough time with your attack animation and base damage without null tallisman.

If you went for the straight Bottle you should be getting it pretty much in the first 40 seconds of the match, considering creeps arrive to the river at about 25 seconds in.

If you went for Tango and null tallisman you should be 1:30/1:40 max.

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Right after that, of course, Boots of Travel. Its simple, just dont die while building them, they are a big leap of gold, especially that early, they dont go building up, you gotta have 2k gold in your pocket, and that is a dangerous position to be in. With them you can replenish mana like a charm, and recharge your Bottle (and allies' Bottle's too) to help them out with regen issues. Of course they are THE Tinker item, but lets not forget they also help you out with movement speed, as Tinker's is pretty slow, for the same reason being Boots of Travel so core on him.

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.

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3. Core Extension, Mid Game & Building

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

You can use it to chain missiles (I'll explain later) and disjoint projectiles aswell.

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 180 mana and -no cooldown-, 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, this is sort of true but at the same time misleading. Sustaining Ethereal Blade shots will burn though your mana way faster than using Dagon then Soul Ring and Rearming and reapeating. It will amplify the damage each dagon shot deals, but overall slow you down making it so you have to commit to a single enemy. Ethereal Blade has a travel time too, during mid game it is key that you pick up kills as fast as possible, and Ethereal Blade is slightly counterproductive in that sense. Ethereal Blade becomes way more important later on, when enemies are tankier and you have to use multiple Rearm rotations to take them down, so you use Ethereal Blade in the first rotation and then just dagon them twice or three times before the ghost form wears off. Buying the Ghost Scepter on the other hand if you really need it to deal with a nasty rightclicker/basher on the enemy team before finishing dagon 5 is totally viable, do it, but dont get the full Eblade, is not a sound investment. Just be happy, upgrade your dagon to the max, get that extra intelligence. Pretty straight forward again, also: look at this, how can you not upgrade it. Gets dispelled when the target starts channeling a Town Portal Scroll, but not when starting channeling Boots of Travel.

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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, safe TP out, etc.



This is something I always tell people when they are playing Core Int heroes. They key to success is keeping yourself relevant, and you achieve this via item pickups. And that is exactly what Ethereal Blade does.

In the later game you wont have the problem of mana pool anymore, and high int makes the Ether blast itself do some damage.

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. If you have to deal a killing blow you can always just use Heat Seeking Missiles.

The times for Ethereal Blade purchase are:
Under 30 Minutes = Nice, Fast.
Around 33 Minutes = Average, Decent
Past 35 Minutes = Not good

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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.

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4. Fifth Item & Above & Late Game

This might be the most controversial thing about my guide so far.

Alright so this section is about pickups outside of the core and core extension, situational and luxury pickups, anything along those lines.

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First off: Abyssal Blade is a big, situational purchased, usually considered a seventh item but sometimes be turned down into a Scythe of Vyse alternative, as a sixth item.

The argument behind a Abyssal Blade on Tinker relies solely in the active effect of said item, The guaranteed stun. The reason this is so powerful opposed to a Hex instead is because you can stun through Magic Immunity, and with Rearm chain it so its permastunning someone through their Black King Bar. You can pop BKB yourself, then blink next to their BKB'ed Troll Warlord and keep him in place as long as you have mana. Especially useful in the late game, two rotations of 2 second stuns each go though 4 seconds of someone's BKB, leaving them open for you to hex and go from there. You can implement it to your purchase order like so:

* Bottle, Boots of Travel, Soul Ring, Blink Dagger dagon, Ethereal Blade, Scythe of Vyse & Abyssal Blade (stashing or selling the Bottle).

Or alternatively: * Bottle, Boots of Travel, Soul Ring, Blink Dagger dagon, Ethereal Blade & Abyssal Blade. This is good for those cases where its really key that your target is stopped dead as soon as possible, for example when going against a 4 protect 1 strategy.

Generally you will be buying it AFTER Scythe of Vyse, around minute 50, 55 max.

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Eul's Scepter of Divinity is the most 6.83 item I can think of. Everyone is doing it. And it has always been a weird item on Tinker, in the good sense, you dont see it much, but its fairly effective at what it does, and it does multiple things.

-Purges silences off of you.
-Good for escapes in conjunction with Blink Dagger
-Cheaper disable option in alternative to Scythe of Vyse
-Movement speed
-Any other thing you can come up with

Basically you buy this when its really difficult picking off kills in the midgame, and so your farm is slightly slowed as a result of that. In this situation you see yourself diving a little big further and risking your life a bit more to get those kills and their gold. And Euls is an amazing gap closer, and its even better with no cooldown.

If you ever played Puck you know how to use a Euls defensively, the key is how do you use it as Tinker aggresively. And its really simple, you just cyclone your target and so you have time to Rearm without them fighting back or running away (Gap closed). You blink in, Dagon, Euls, Rearm, cyclone ends, Dagon, and repeat.

This is how you implement it in your purchase order.

* Bottle, Boots of Travel, Soul Ring, Blink Dagger, dagon 1 & 2, Eul's Scepter of Divinity, the rest of dagon up to 5, Ethereal Blade.

You then see if you need more disable power you can sell the Euls and purchase a Scythe of Vyse.

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Orchid Malevolence is an alt pickup for Ethereal Blade, mainly when the opposing team has a really strong spell dependent carry and silence is a better option than ghost form, for example Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, Weaver, etc.

Its a fifth item so pretty much you are going to be getting it from the 30 to the 35 minute mark.

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Bloodstone is awfully specific, as its not an item that grants you any sort of DPS and regen isnt something you really need, same with HP pool. Well, Bloodstone does some neat stuff like:

-Upgrades your Soul Ring
-Gives you a faster respawn timer
-Allows you to deny yourself

That is really, really important thats why Im here PUTTING IT IN RED CAPS. Basically its an item you get when you are really leading, as a sixth, seventh or eigth item. That is before Scythe of Vyse, after Scythe of Vyse or after Scythe of Vyse and another item (Whatever that is, Abyssal Blade, Manta Style, etc). At that point you are rolling with swagaroni 60k gold networth and beyond godlike spree and if you get killed, well, your team is not going to necessarily lose, but its going to be really freaking hard to fight back from that point, thats why Pocket suicide is so amazing. Also it makes it so you lose less gold and respawn faster in case you get Doomed worst case scenario. Pocket suicide can be Rearmed. You charge it up and have the charges mainly to have the short respawn, the regen helps too but its not the main point like in a Storm Spirit for instance.

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Black King Bar is not the item that comes to mind when you think Tinker. He is not a position 1 carry, he doesn't get into short range in fights, he often isnt THE most important target to stun, etc. Then why BKB?

The Black King Bar is a really strong item pretty much on anyone, the power to completely block most spells and not be targetable is a 10 to 5 second godmode.

Pop it in fights, if they wanted to stun you now they cant, they cant cancel Rearm, you wont get stunned by AOE that want even aimed at you like random Fissures and you will survive through AOE nukes no problem, stuff like Dragon Slave, Thundergod's Wrath. It gives you much more freedom to work in fights.

Don't go full ham because theres still a lot of stuff that pierces it, from pure spells to bashes. Get BKB when you need it, its completely match dependent, but try to not get it too early, fifth item is the earliest I recommend, right after Dagon, but the later the better (what I mean is that there is no point having a BKB on Tinker 20 minutes in, you dont have enough farm to be stun worthy, 50 minutes in though...

BKB is an item that you will be stashing a lot, I will go into that later.

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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

Manta Style is also a really stashy item, you dont run around with it in your inventory all the time. I purchase it as a seventh or eigth item.

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Shiva's Guard is not the most ideal pickup in my opinion, there are many better options for stashing items, but still, it gives you some cool tools to work with:

-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).
-Gives flying vision (you can see through the tree line and avoid being ganked)

Seventh or eigth item, mostly eigth.

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And finally the famous Scythe of Vyse. 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.

Think about the Hex as a slow that also mutes the target (and disables passives sometimes). You can Hex someone just as a silence, you can Hex before they pop their BKB.

Scythe of Vyse is the most common sixth item, replacing your Bottle in the main inventory. 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.

A question I get a lot is: How do you implement it in the rotation? Its simple, even if this varies sometimes you can use this list to know how to use your rotations.

When slotted in standard build: Soul Ring, Boots of Travel, Blink Dagger, dagon 5, Scythe of Vyse & Ethereal Blade.

- Scythe of Vyse at least once every two rotations
- Ethereal Blade at least once every two rotations
- Soul Ring, once per rotation
-Dagon once per rotation
- Bottle at least once per rotation.
- Blink Dagger situational, one per rotation except last one; this way you dont have to Rearm to get into the treeline, and you do it way faster.

Basically if you are dealing with a weak opponent that its not 100% vital to keep permahexed or permaghosted, or a squishy support that dies to Ethereal Blade, dagon, dagon just as well as Ethereal Blade, dagon, ethreal blade, dagon; you can totally skip that second useless Ethereal Blade. This is said rotation:

Scythe of Vyse, Ethereal Blade, Bottle, dagon, Soul Ring, Rearm, dagon. Recast Scythe of Vyse and Ethereal Blade whenever it wears off.

When dealing with powerful opponents just dont risk it, and do everything once a rotation. I will burn though your mana faster but its much more consistent. Here you cast Scythe of Vyse and Ethereal Blade even before it wears off, so there is no window of danger for you, in a very small time lapse they could pop BKB for example.

Scythe of Vyse, Ethereal Blade, Bottle, dagon, Soul Ring, Rearm, Scythe of Vyse, dagon (this one is still using the first Ethereal Blade effect), Bottle, Soul Ring, Rearm, Scythe of Vyse, Ethereal Blade, dagon.

Also keep in mind that when flurrying (or using shift queue) sometimes the travel time of Ethereal Blade is slow enough for the queue to continue and use dagon before the projectile has actually hit, and that is kind of pointless. For this reason I put the Bottle command in the middle of the two, that is usually enough time for the projectile to hit, at least when you are around 500 units away from your target.



Gotta love my juggernauts.

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5. Stashing & Slotting

Alright! If you have never got to the point of stashing and over 6-slotting you are either a scruberino or you have never played Tinker. Or you play support, whatever.

Basically you get to the point where you have so much money that your inventory is fully maxed out, have money for buyback and you are still building more items, and more items, and you can buy the observer wards and detection for your team, even gem of true sight for allies to carry. A Tinker that has been fed constant farm and kills, and he still has momentum 60 minutes in, and he is still scary for the opposing team and relevant in fights becomes this philanthropist for the team, running around with more gold than the whole other team combined.

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Its not that hard of a concept to understand, you just have to develop a proper foresight and know what items you are going to need in that trip (Trip being TPing anywhere doing your Tinkering about and TPing back to base).

Keep in mind mana usage and faster regeneration by dropping. Drop big int items and spam Bottle to regen faster and go back to battle (or farming), every second counts if you want to get the better item timings. Also a thing to remember is that Black King Bar is going to be sitting in your stash a lot, since you cant Rearm is there is no point on having it in your inventory if its on cooldown.

Also a common thing when stashing as Tinker is messing up your keys, and it happens a lot due to muscle memory backfiring on you. Worst case scenario you pop your BKB while farming because you thought you had Bottle. Or even worse maybe you kill yourself with Bloodstone trying to use Soul Ring (and trust me I have seen this happen in low bracket Tinkers a LOT, like an absurd amount of times. So yea, this happens to everyone, maybe not with Bloodstone or BKB, but sometimes I do use my Manta Style on accident and kill my old illusions.

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6. A Cunning Plan (Le' Tips)

This is the section of spooky Tinker tricks, everyone has their own little tricks but these are pretty much general knowledge.

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First off disjoints:



This is part of my guide to improving & techniques, but I think it was relevant enough to put it here.

Disjointing is one of those things that really makes you feel you are playing the game. In case you for some reason dont know, disjointing is using a certain ability or item to dodge a spell or its damage, generally of projectiles. In this section I will talk about how to perform more effective disjoints and also go into details of some disjoint styles or uses you can take into the game for yourself.

Escape Disjointing is the most simple one, it is used when you are in an escape situation, meaning that you dont want to engage, rather get away from your pursuers. Note that most disable spells have long casting animations, are projectiles, are ground targeted and so easy to dodge or have short casting range (stuff like shackles or nightmare). So if you are trying to escape a vengeful spirit as naga siren, you can just easily disjoint her stun when she casts it with mirror image. The vast majority of times if you are using blink to disjoint you want to cast it in the direction your base is or wherever you are trying to escape to.

Narrow Disjoints are for those situations where you dont have a safe route where to escape to (assuming again you are using blinking abilities), unlike escape disjointing, or if you want to stick around for something like a teamfight, but just want to dodge a single spell. Narrow disjoints are regular disjoints, but done in a very reduced space, almost without moving, like blinking to the same place where you were or a few centimeters across. This disjoint has to be done in the last possible instant of the projectile in the air just before it connects with your hero, as it has to hit the space between the start of your blink and the landing point, so its a very small gap. For this is especially useful knowing the projectiles speed and the hitbox of your hero. Sometimes people are confused when a very small narrow disjoint is used, as it seems your spell vanishes and the hero you targeted is unaffected. However this could be not working in dota 2 anymore as I have been told, and even short distances provide the same disjoint effect my skillcap ;_;

Back Disjoints or backward disjoints, sometimes called back tosses are blink disjoints done along a kite move, to create distance between them and you. What I said in the last section, when sven pops a storm hammer at you and you wait until the last possible instant to disjoint it, and running away from the projectile at the same time so its on the air more time and sven is coming towards you waiting for the stun to outrun you, you turn around and blink behind him, but far away. This way, at the same time you are disjointing the storm hammer, you are also exploiting the fact that he ran all the way to you expecting the projectile to reach you, and now he has to run all the way back to you to your blink landing point, and with all that distance you can tp out, keep running away, or go into fog of war. Careful with the turning around part, as sometimes the turning rate is slower than the projectile and you can get hit before you can blink. Honorable mention to Ember Spirit the king of back tossing.

See this magnanimous graphic:



In order to counter Blink disjoint heroes you must use your casting animation as a tool, as Blink Dagger has no animation (excluding the turn rate to the target position) and other blink abilities have short animations that can be tricky to cancel use that to your advantage, imagine if someone tries to back toss you and you cancel your Magic Missile animation, they Blink back and you stun them there, now they are severely screwed, and by the time Blink Dagger comes off cooldown so is Magic Missile, and you probably got some allies come to help in those 10 seconds. So be advised, against high skilled players back tossing can backfire.

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Next. Missile Chain. This is actually really easy to do, but it can be sort of dangerous if you go too far. Basically what it is, is chaining Heat Seeking Missiles down a single or a pair of targets down a lane; you can do this by having Heat Seeking Missiles, Rearm at least level 2 and a Blink Dagger. Its also much more consistent if you do it during daytime.

First of all, practice doing long blinks. Try to get at least 1100 units per blink, and dont overshoot, this takes some practice sure, but trust me, it's something you want to be able to do to play Tinker to the max.

Missile chaining can be performed in any situation where you are out of combat range of enemies, and they are retreating.

Use Heat Seeking Missile and instantly after use Rearm, in the travel time of the missiles they will go into fog of war, blink forward and get them to flash out of fog for just an instant, use Heat Seeking Missile again, Rearm and repeat. Usually there can be 3 missiles in the air at once, during daytime I've managed to put four at max. And ends up in a lot of damage.

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Another thing you have to be used to doing is constantly changing position via blink dagger][/color every time you Rearm, specifically when you are in their side of the map.

Use March of the Machines, Blink, Rearm, Blink, March of the Machines again, Rearm, Blink; keep blinking even when you are inside the trees, this way they cant keep track of you just by using the line of the March of the Machines, sometimes they expect this moving, especially heroes that can screw you over when you are in trees, like Pudge, Mirana, Sniper, heroes that can break trees too. If they start checking go backwards, people very rarely expect that. Like so:

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And last but not least is Audio Cues! This is something I like doing, personally. And I've seen other people do it. Basically you have a specific music playlist and you play it when the match starts. Then just be hearing the songs in the playlist you know what should be doing, what item you should have by then, etc.
Its just like a cool audio reminder for your match tempo and item timings. I recommend creating one, its helpful if you learn to use it. If you guys want I can put up the one that I use for Tinker, it has Super Meat Boy OST, Metallica, Minimal Trance, and other stuff. They go in sync with the purchase order, I know that if I have Boots of Travel by the time Seek and Destroy ends means I've been sustaining at least 500 Gpm.

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8. Reddit Q&A!

This is some questions Ive been made in reddit about Tinker. From /r/learndota2 mostly.

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Q: hey what should I get as starting item? and what do you buy after bottle? do you get soul ring before boots of travel? also how do you play in lane and after you get boots of travel?

A: Usually a solid all around starting set is tangoes (one set or two shared) and a Null Tally. However, in this patch I have found full bottle rush is good enough to go for. No starting items, one last hit away from bottle, or a bounty rune. Level 1 laser to get the last hit guaranteed. You dont get soulring before BoTs anymore, what you would do before is build a quad ancient stack, then get to level 6 as 1-1-3-1, and take the stack with bottle and soulring, to get min 6/7 BoTs, but since you cant do that anymore you are using 800 gold, and that delays your BoTs; also Soulring's only use during early game is to compensate for mana loss from rearm.


Q: do people still get ethereal blade? what are common (winning build) for tinker?

A: Yes, eblade is a good buy as it has always been, usually I get it if they are scrambling around positions a lot and I need more burst + a little bit of defensiveness to avoid damage or getting bashed cancelling your channeling. If you have like a dagon 5 and need more damage and you dont need the hex or something like a bkb just yet, get the Eblade.


Q: what are common timing for the items purchase?

A: Bottle (00.30), BoTs (anything under 7.00 is really good, anything around 9 is average, 10+ is slow, 12+ is probably a loss), Soulring (90 seconds after BoTs max), Blink Dagger (12 to 15 minutes), Dagon 1 (17-20 minutes top), Dagon 5 (25-28 mins), Eblade (29-33), Hex (36 max). Not always like that because sometimes you get Eblade or the Ghost scepter before finishing Dagon 5, or get Euls or a BKB, subject to change but a good reference point.


Q: is there a special way to farm with tinker? i find i tp in to all lane and cast march but i seem to farm way too slow.

A: Look at the map and wherever you see creeps fightning creeps you Tp and kill the wave, if you get it just right you can kill top then bot and alternate from one to the other non-stop. If a lane has heroes or is risky to farm you can go to the jungle and use march to get 2 or 3 camps, and go from there. Best way hands down to get farm is to kill carries and sway gold your way, Tinker can do this extremely efficiently since you can go TP behind lines and kill farming carries, just be careful around bashers, Bkb's and stuf along those lines of ********, like omnislash.


Q: when do i start to join fight and get kills ? do I just farm until I farm dagon? people are keep blaming me for doing nothing but farming :s

A: If you get a good rune and you are level 6 (level 3 laser and heat seeking missiles) go gank a pushed sidelane. When you get BoTs and soulring you can help your sidelanes a lot, and when you are like level 10 (Laser 4, Missiles 4, March 1 and Rearm 1) and you have blink you can go for a lot of kills, since you can blink laser or missile people, and escape with blink or disjoint, etc. Also with blink you can farm safely using the treeline and go deep if they dont have any flying vision. The earlier you die the harder you get set back, if you die before BoTs, its going to be a hard match, if you die before Blink same thing. From there is not that bad.


Q: would it be a good idea to leave dagon as lv1 and just go straight to scythe or shiva, or some high int item?

A: Usually dagon 1 runs short, if I want to go for another item for whatever reason (for example your team needs a hex desperately) I build up to dagon 3 or at least 2, also leveling up dagon gives you intelligence.


Q: in which order am i suppose to use spells? missile - > laser - > dagon - > rearm?

A: Early game use laser to put someone out of the game, they got 500-600 hp you laser them now they have 200 and have to start running, then finish them off or have a teammate do it. Then, later on like mid game try to avoid using laser if you have dagon, it has a cast time long enough for people to stun you or position better to fight back. Only laser defensively to blind their right clicker and give yourself/your team some space. Late game same thing, but people have BKBs and can purge the blind off, so you turning around to blind them can get your killed. So, Eblade (hex has a smaller cast range so in the time the eblade projectile gets to them you get closer and hex them, eblade slows), Hex, Dagon, Missiles and rearm instantly (missiles are also a projectile so you rearm while they get to target) then after rearm Hex first (its only 3 secs so you have to be quick to recast the hex, to keep them down), then Eblade and dagon again, then rearm (no missiles, you cant risk running out of mana); from there you repeat that second part, rearm, eblade and dagon. Remember to use soulring before every rearm, and if you forgot, after every rearm works just as well. Blink whenever its needed to keep up. In you dont have one of those items just use the same sequence without said item, if you still dont have dagon (and of course no eblade and no hex) think about laser and missiles as your Eblade and dagon.


Q: what do you think about just skipping dagon and straight to bloodstone after blink?

A: No way, the only reason you buy a bloodstone is because you are in a huge gold sway and need some way to deny yourself consistently. Usually a seventh item, the only part you need is the deny mechanic, you dont need pools or regen. Rearm works with bloodstone suicide, the only downside is that you cant farm while dead, and getting charges get you faster respawn. Really consider the first thing I said, if its 45 minutes in and you are worth 40k gold and you die your team is going to start struggling 100%.


Q: which build do you prefer? laser + missle or maxing march in the early game?

A: Max Laser first then Heatseeking missiles, get Rearm the second you get BoTs (if that means you have to save that level-up, then do it), dont get any points in march until you have BoTs and soulring, you are not going to be farming lanes or the jungle (and you cant kill ancients), any more nuking power will help you get kills early game, and that's what gets you rolling.


Q: is it possible to get kills even without dagon? (after getting blink dagger)

A: I would say yes, but its really hard and you are going to need to be rearming and blinking way more to keep up and follow them around with your nukes to get the kill. Focus on getting any kill that comes to you, but if its like 16 minutes and you dont have a dagon dont go around ganking, focus on getting that first.


Q: what are some strong counters to tinker and how do you deal with it?

A: Counters to tinker go along the lines of heroes with a lot of magic immunity or resistance, like Meepo for example, Templar assassin is really annoying too because you can drop a huge nuke on her and she might block it, same with Void. Any long stun will screw you over, shackleshot is a huge one. Slardar and bounty hunter are heroes that can jump on you/break invis on you, both have high physical damage, ways to pinpoint your location and ways to cancel chanelling. Being under track is scary, they know exactly where you are which is key as tinker since you use the treelines and flash farm deep in enemy territory a lot. Then, heroes that wreck anything that stands still, Pudge, Mirana and Clockwerk, if you get caught by any of them you are probably dead. Then anything with magic immunity is annoying aswell, but you can hex them before they pop it and nuke them down/permahex them and its all fine, omniknight on the other hand.... Gyrocopter and SB are annoying because of missile and charge.


Q: what are ez opponents? and what makes them ez to face against?

A: Tinker feasts on three profiles of heroes: 1) Agility carries, like luna, drow or bloodseeker. You can kill them in a single rotation usually, also, they are easy kills that are worth a lot of gold. 2) Supports, they are usually weak and can be pinned quickly when they go ward or whatever; do not underestimate them though, if you get Frostbitten or Shackled you can very easily get followed up on and die, they can fend for themselves better than agi carries. 3) Farming mids, Tinker absolutely owns stuff like DP on mid, two huge nukes and being a constant threat makes them unable to go for runes and last hit properly.


Q: when do you level up rearms?

A: First one when you get BoTs, usually around level 7, but can go up to 9 sometimes. Second one its usually 11, but if my team isnt pushing towers yet and theres a lot of places to farm I get a second point in March and rearm on 12, so I can farm jungle more effectively. The third one is 99% of the time leveled on 16, that 1% is for pos4 tinkers that have euls.

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If you want to ask something you can go to /r/learndota2 clicking here.

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9. 6.84 Update

Small update for the patch, nothing to big, at least talking Tinker.

All buffs by the way:

The first one is something that I proposed for nerfs in 6.82, of course he didnt get this but the bigger nerf to ancient farming instead. I proposed that Laser scaled with levels, and they did that but as a buff here.

It was 3/3/3/3 duration on the blind, now it is 3/3.5/4/4.5 secs, thats a lot but then again, people buy BKBs and you generally dont use Laser much.

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Second buff is very small, doesnt make much of a difference but makes Soul Ring a little more relevant late game, just a tiny bit.

Rearm's mana cost from 150/250/350 to 125/225/325.

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Now the important part, the Aghanim's Scepter.

It is, after all, the aghanim's update.

The effect was reworked, it used to shoot 4 Heat Seeking Missiles per use and increase Laser's casting range, this second part has been reworked, it does not longer increase Laser's range, its much better now.

All visible heroes around 550 units of the primary target of Laser get Lasered as well, that is 320 pure damage and the 4.5 sec blind.

It is strong, but I am still unsure if I want to delay a proper item with an active for Aghs here, considering that it takes up a slot and you cant trust the enemy to walk close to each other, so its more of a situational AOE blind, with the nuke on top. Much better than the last Aghs upgrade if you ask me, this time maybe you will see it built. Gives Tinker a bit of AOE power, considering he is primarily a single target disable/nuker.

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And last but not least is the new Boots of Travel.

Are they good enough to get before finishing your slots? Yes, and No. If your team is roaming a lot and you could use some kills, then get it. As you have Blink Dagger most of the time and you can always TP out you can help your team commit to deep dives, they chase, you TP drop off, do the job and get out TP out.

Get it whenever you feel they could come in useful, or when you are slotted and its just upgrading.

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10. End Note

Damn, I hope you guys enjoy it like the last guide, at least I did. As always comment are welcome either here or in the reddit posts. You can see all the guides I've crafted by clicking Here[/url][/u] Bring it!.

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Anyway, I think thats it, you know how End notes work.



Goo signs.

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