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Tango
Wraith Band
Boots of Speed
Soul Ring
Power Treads
Desolator
Void Stone
Ultimate Orb
Scythe of Vyse
Demon Edge
Crystalys
Daedalus
Aegis of the Immortal
Divine Rapier
Gem of True Sight
Dust of Appearance
Orchid Malevolence
Vladmir's Offering
Blink Dagger
Monkey King Bar
Maelstrom
Linken's Sphere
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4 | 12 | 13 | 14 |  |
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4 | 12 | 13 | 14 | |
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1 | 3 | 5 | 7 |  |
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2 | 8 | 9 | 10 |  |
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6 | 11 | 16 |  |
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15 | 17 | 18 |
Clinkz is a strong pushing and ganking hero who is prone to snowballing especially in lower-tier matches. He has one of the highest damage outputs in the game, but is fairly squishy. Success with him requires a solid knowledge of how enemies deploy invisibility detection as well as a good sense of what ganks are safe to take and which ones should be avoided. If he gets off to a bad start Clinkz doesn't have a strong comeback mechanic and it can be difficult for him to catch back up.
While Clinkz is making an appearance in the pro-scene, for the purposes of this guide I'm going to talk about ranked and pub play. Most of what is here on Dotafire is sorely outdated and doesn't take into account changes with the most recent update.
At the beginning of the game you need to focus on last hitting so that you can build a fast Soul Ring and Power Treads, preferably before the 8 minute mark. Luckily, Clinkz is blessed with 
Searing Arrows which makes last hitting creeps a breeze. Since you have insane DPS in the beginning of the game, feel free to harass your enemies.
Clinkz is a great mid as well as a good safelane carry. I usually prefer to take him mid, however, because it lets you hit level 6 faster, and I don't have to worry about a support who doesn't know that he shouldn't be taking my last hits. That said, if you have a support with a stun or slow (Lion, Crystal Maiden, Lina, Shadow Shamam, Veng, etc) then you can easily rack up early kills on a lone opponent by shadow walking behind your target, waiting for the stun, popping Strafe and bursting your victim down with Searing Arrows.
Once you hit level 6 and have your Soul Ring and Power Treads you are ready to roam around the map and get kills on your own. (If you were mid feel free to ask a teammate to take your place so that the enemy mid doesn't get free farm).
Clinkz's ultimate Death Pact gives healing, health and damage output based on the proportional stats of the creep that you target. It is absolutely essential to use before staging an attack. At the beginning of the game it's an incredibly mana-intensive skill, but smart use of your Soul Ring and Power Treads can mostly offset those costs.
Here's how you do it:
1) Locate a suitable creep, which is always largest creep available in a camp (IE, the blue Centaur, red Tomato, purple bird etc), or, if in a pinch when you are in lane eat a Seige creep.
2) Switch your Power Treads to Int, pop your Soul Ring and deploy Death Pact.
3) Finish off the creep camp with Searing Arrows (so that when you come back to it later there is another large creep to eat) and then 
Shadow Walk before the Soul Ring expires.
Now you're invisible, healed up past full health, have a good mana pool, and are boosted with lots of extra damage. You have about 30 seconds to secure a kill.
The best builds for Clinkz focus on his insane DPS while also managing his rather fragile mana pool. Staging a perfect gank requires good timing as well as a decent understanding of the enemy jungle. Once you've eaten a creep you have a short window of time to close the distance on a lone hero and light them up with your flaming arrows of death.
It's as easy as getting close to them, popping Strafe and watching them melt. They might be able to run out of range of you if it is still early game, but if this happens, just pop [[Skeleton Walk}} again to catch up and repeat the process. If they're caught alone very few heroes caught can survive.
If you can get Desolator before the 15 minute mark they will melt even faster and you are probably on course to win the match. (If Deso takes 25 minutes or more you will probably lose). In this patch Desolator is incredibly cheap, adds a bunch of damage and will let you push and take down towers with ease.
Most guides online argue that you should get an Orchid of Malevolence as your second major item. This is because the Orchid helps solve your mana problems and it's silence gives you an edge during a gank. However, in my experience, while Orchid is a pretty good item you will have a much better game if you spend a little more gold and instead buy a Scythe of Vyse. The so-called "Sheep Stick" has a more powerful disable and provides more mana regen. Just like the Orchid, you can buy the Sheep in stages, helping your mana trouble along the way while you save up for it.
The main reason that Sheep is better than Orchid is that while transformed into a cute critter, your target can't activate their items. Later in the game many enemies will have 
Blade Mail or 
Shadow Blade and can use it to escape your well-crafted attack. You do so much DPS that most enemies will be pretty close to dead by the time the 3.5 second disable expires.
When I have sheep stick in my inventory, I start a gank usually with a single auto attack, then sheep the enemy, and then finish off bursting them down.
There comes a time in every invisibility-dependent hero's career when the enemy team realizes that they need to start carrying Dust of Appearance, buying sentry wards and possibly even carrying a Gem of True Sight. This can cause some habitual invisible players to curse the day they were born and sit in fountain sucking their thumbs. But don't despair, all is not lost.
The trick to dealing with detection is as easy as understanding their strategy. Every type of detection has a weakness. If they're dropping sentries, you could try to de-ward, but in most cases it is just easier to look for a kill in another part of the map. If they use dust, Shadow Walk has the added advantage of also providing a speed boost. You can usually just run away. Finally, if they get a gem, the best strategy is to simply kill their gem-carrier and go back to murdering them.
Unlike 
Riki, Clinks is a ranged DPS hero, which means even if they can see you, you can still kill them from a distance. If the enemy team is doing an excellent job finding you, simply stand behind your tankier teammates and pretend you are 
Drow Ranger or 
Sniper. As just another glass cannon, you still do more damage than either of them.
Friends
Crystal Maiden: Her mana aura solves your mana issues and her frostbite can give you early kills.
Lion: He stuns, you burst down the target. It's a match made in heaven.
Shadow Shaman: see Lion
Spirit Breaker: Plan your ganks together for twice the success rate.
Life Stealer: He can hop a ride inside of you while you're invisible and help you burst them down.
Foes
Zeus: His lightening always seems to find you.
Slardar and 
Bounty Hunter: their detection abilities are annoying.
Legion Commander: her disable can really screw you, especially if she uses the blade mail combo.
Special Mention:
Your least favorite item that most enemy teams build:
Anyone who uses Blade Mail: seriously, if there is one item that counter's clinkz it's this one. In a typical gank you can have two or three arrows in the air before they hit your target. If they pop Blade Mail it is game over. This is why you need Sheep stick.
This is a very quick guide to Clinkz and I hope that it gives you a few basics to try the hero out. I'd love to include your comments into a more fully fleshed out guide. So please tell my what I'm missing below.
You can find a version of this build on Steam in the suggested builds menu.
Please feel free to up-vote this guide if you want to give it a try.
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