Tinker easily wins Pudge inlane with any build. Even if you get hooked you can just blind him and bottle/salve through his rot. Harass him since the first wave and be aggressive since he can't do anything against you. After his lv6 take care because he can kill you, if you don't get hooked then you won't die. Always have wards.
Well at lvl 6 he literally walked to me ulti rot and hook, my biggest shit is the rune control against pudge, for some reason i am always afraid to try to get runes againt him because he can kill me, but i guess with the laser bottle stuff i can kill or at least defend myself.
So in the first lvls i should auto atack him a lot ?
I mean it doesnt matter what hero i play its always the same shit, he just takes exp gets bottle and camps for 10293828937128937 minutes for the rune, then he just gets lvl 6 and kills people.
Well first of all your MS is higher than his so he should not be able just to outrun you and ult you. Besides, after Pudge gets lv6 it's not a very good idea to go walking around the map getting runes, unless you know where he is. If he's missing, just bottle crow. Remember the most important thing before BoT is not dying. You can always just use March on big camp + small camp near your t2 which is a safe spot early game.
Yeah, in the first levels you should be aggressive against him, constantly hitting him abusing your range and superior movespeed. Sometimes he will try to turn and manfight you with rot, just blind him and he won't win you at all. Use the creeps to juke his hook, and remember that you can bottle through his rot.
Not passive, just safe, it's different. And skill build doesn't really depend on Pudge, but I don't think Laser+HSM is a good idea vs Pudge since you won't have all that space to gank and he will hardly be bursted down by these 2 skills unless he sucks hard. March is actually very good to kill Pudge, if he comes at you with rot you can cast March, he will be forced to back off and take damage or stay and die. It's possible to trick him into thinking he can kill you (eg if you're low hp) then you cast March and juke among creeps so he can't hook you.
Yes, Chains is the best Tinker in the world, and he also is the top player worldwide when it comes to top50 points. (Relentless made a thread about it sometime ago)
Nice guide. I like it. Tinker is one of my favorite heroes and I think he is severely underrated in high level pubs.
While the skill builds you mention are good I think you missed the overall best skill build. The 2-2-2 build. If we assume that ideal BoT timings with Soul Ring and Bottle is 8-11 minutes if you go mid then you should be level 8-12. This allows you to have March of the Machines maxed for the ancients but still have stronger lane control with 2 points in Laser and Missiles each. While maxing march earlier can help you push the lane it also forfeits lane control and allows their mid to farm more freely.
I think you should mention Nyx as one of the main counters to Tinker. Especially in this meta where he is picked all the time where Viper is not. Carapace screws with your Rearms and can easily catch you out of position. Combine this with his ultimate and you have to be careful before you get your Blink Dagger.
Carapace is annoying but Nyx is not that big of a threat if you know how to deal with him. Like I said in the guide, you need to always be in a safe spot so he will have a hard time finding you with Vendetta. About the skill build, I don't see how going 2-2-2 can be better than focusing March. I think SB is more dangerous than Nyx.
we won but still i felt pretty useless, i was ancient jungling so i went for the march build but still i fell like i was doing nothing for my team before hex, and my gpm was still low for a tinker i think.
Sorry for asking so much but i dont really know any other tinker player and i really like the hero, so everything helps.
But your argument for Viper was that Corrosive Skin counters Blink. Carapace does the same thing but can actually also catch you out of position easier. It also messes with your Rearms, even if you're in the trees which will cost you more mana. But the real problem with Nyx isn't when you have Blink. It's before you get Blink. Blink timing is around 13-16 minutes. Before that you can't TP to any lane if Nyx is missing and a good Nyx will be missing from the map all the time. You also have to be cautious to farm Ancients unless you got supports that really know how to play and Sentry the map for you.
The 2-2-2 build is a lane winner. What does maxing march do for you on lane compared to extra damage in Laser and Rocket? I think too many Tinkers focus on their own BoT too much and don't realize they can shut down the enemy mid harder if they go for 2-2-2. I think you can see the strength of 2-2-2 if you watch Arteezy's stream. He's been playing Tinker for the last couple of days.
The thing with Viper is that he perma-cancels your Dagger. Nyx can't do that. He can activate Carapace only 1 time and if he does in March you will take minor damage. The stun isn't a problem unless you're not in a safe spot.
And I don't see NP as a threat.
One thing I didn't mention in the guide and I plan to add soon is that Tinker can work very well in a trilane.
Why do you BoT before soulring? If you stack on radiant shoulnt soulring let you farm up BoT as soon as you have lvl 6? (Assuming you have the soulring already)
I am not a tinker player just wondering :D
Like I said in the guide you can do so if you want to. Soul Ring before BoT and Rearm at 6 works. It's just my personal preference.
Mostly because even if I'm stacking ancient I usually don't stack them every minute since there are times when it's not very safe to leave your tower or because you'll miss lots of creeps. Then I prefer killing the stack a bit later, and then I don't need the Soul Ring. A full Bottle is enough to do so.
He's actually more dangerous after his lv6. Early game he doesn't disable you so much, just Laser him. But you need to be extra careful if you're soloing against a hero with disable (Cold Snap, Electric Vortex). If you see him missing, stay under tower and ask for allies to have a TP ready.
Thanks Sano, I love this guide :) Tinker has always been a fun hero to me. I must say though, now that I know the exact timing to push out mid lane, that has helped alot to control runes.
Also had the nicest moment last night after reading your note on laning against Pudge. He came at me around level 2 with rot on. I dropped march and juked around a creep. Ended up getting first blood :D
On another note, is there any specific bindings you use? I seem to have grown comfortable with my current setup, but I don't think its optimal since I am a little slow at clicking things. Like using dagon, I feel i can be faster. Any advice?
Well this is personal, there are awesome players who use Legacy keys even though I don't see why it's better than a custom setup, but it doesn't disturb their gameplay so whatever. I use QWER for skills, and 1 2 3 4 5 space for items. But I think you can be fast with any setup.
The only thing is that some people use alt+hotkeys to use items, and I think pressing 2 keys instead of 1 can make a difference when it comes to speed. But I never used it so I can't tell for sure.
Yes that's what I mean. It's not core as your last item, but it's very good and it's better to do it as a last item than as a second/third like some people do. For example, in the match I posted at the end of the guide (Liquid vs Na'Vi) Qojqva went BoT - Dagger - Hex - Dagon 5 - BKB and then Bloodstone.
hahaha a lot of people use March at xx:50 to stack with it, but it's just not worth it! Using March at xx:50 means the new ancients will barely get hit by it. It's better to stack with auto attack and use March in order to hit all the ancients, unless you're in a hurry to come back to lane, then you can use March at xx:50, go back to lane, 1 minute later repeat... but this way you'll slowly kill the ancients, constantly be out of mana, and your ancients will be permanently low hp which makes it easier for the enemy team to try to steal them.
edit: only now I saw the "bottom dire" part. You mean stacking when you are in a trilane? It's not worth to do so, save your March to clear the big stack or to fight. Ask a support to stack for you.
It's good to stack in mid if you're safe to do so and if you're not gonna lose many creeps. However, if you're Dire that's more difficult and a lot more dangerous. When playing Dire sometimes it's better just to stack the big camp instead, especially when you're not feeling safe.
The reason Tinker sucks for Dota is because all ideas about keeping the wave near tower so that the carry (or the whole team) can farm properly goes out the window. Often, Tinker is the ONLY hero with farm as the lanes are so pushed everywhere that only himself and the entire enemy team is getting proper gpm/xpm. If the pushes are not properly assisted (or can't be) then Tinker is a Class-A feeder of creeps. The most played build is a rush to Boots of Travel, followed by constant pushing until lose. Rockets and lasers might as well be pointless as double/triple march kicks in. Sadly, if this is the role, then Nature Prophet is by far superior as his teleport allows him to assist in ganks anywhere, even not near a lane.
To see the true level of crap that Tinker is, try playing any of the following: single lane Tinker, jungle Tinker, no-push-gank-only Tinker. You'll quickly realize how much of a slave he is to the fountain and just how little damage he does for the amount of money that he requires.
He is simply an inefficient hero for most pub matches. He is only at proper levels of effective with a professional team supporting his mobility by using hawk or familiars. Without this, he should be classified as a feeder.
Wow your argument is just terrible
You said something like "if Tinker is played wrong he feeds the enemy with creeps and doesn't allow your team to farm -> thus Tinker sucks"
I don't even know how to answer this kind of reasoning
I'm saying that he can't be played right unless the whole team supports him. Which is a very different statement. I'm saying that there is NO way to play him right if the whole team does not sign up to support his shenanigans.
How can the argument be terrible if the data supports this?
A winrate of ~43% suggest that he is losing a lot more than he's winning. He's an expected negative contributor to the team.
For a hero that has an economy/farm rating higher that Dark Seer through mostly on lane creeps and not jungle, I'm not impressed by his winrate.
Edit/Added:
There is a finite influx of gold on the map. If you're teleporting around marching to rush your core items, you better be able to make up for it by contributing in team fights. Something is very wrong with a hero when his performance slips more and more each day that he is marching harder and harder.
I don't even consider him a threat anymore. When I see Tinker, I think of the food delivery man.
^His winrate is so low because people suck with him, SIMPLE. If a bad player picks tinker he can fuck his entire team easily.
"Often, Tinker is the ONLY hero with farm as the lanes are so pushed everywhere that only himself and the entire enemy team is getting proper gpm/xpm. "
You could say the same with every kind of pusher hero, that its why you need to think about what lanes are you going to push and why, that its why if you cant push any lane you go farm ancients or the jungle.
"He is simply an inefficient hero for most pub matches."
I am still bad with this hero but a really good tinker player wins the game alone. There is so much pub stomps games because of a good tinker player.
Dude you're using dotabuff average winrate as an argument. You know what average winrate means right? Means it takes into account 3k- rating players which are actually 80+% of the Dota population.
Anti-Mage 40.60% winrate. Wow, he must be the worst carry in the game by far.
SD 41.25% winrate wow this hero is probably never picked by pros.
Ember Spirit 43.85% this hero sucks. He just got added to CM and Loda, Fly, TC, BuLba and Wagamama said he's very strong but they are crying because this hero actually sucks.
Wisp has always had a winrate of 45% or less and he has always been the most used hero for pubstomping.
Are you a pro? No. Sadly you are not a pro, and neither am I. At the pub solo queue level that we play at, Tinker is an expected increase in loss. You can take that as you wish. Let's say that you randomly join 4 others. Someone else picks Tinker. What do you do?
Can you really expect to teach the whole population how to properly play Tinker? I think not.
I'm not stopping you from playing Tinker. If you're doing fine, then power to you, but I think Tinker needs a buff that's more meaningful than just having more rockets. If march hit buildings too, then Tinker would be at proper utility levels.
I don't think you understood my last post, I was laughing at the absurd suggestion.
Bro, what's your MMR? Because by the way you talk about this hero it looks like you have no clue about how he works in a game
Solo is 3600. Team MMR doesn't matter as it depends on the team. Look, if the hero isn't performing as advertised, it's hard to say that as an average player, I'm doing something wrong. Heck I don't even play tinker, I just farm Tinkers. However he works, he's not working. =P I only see food.
It's fine though, I don't really want to win this argument at all. I'd much prefer they keep Tinker exactly the way it is, because I know how to kill/farm Tinker players quite nicely. Thinking back on the last 12 months of games, I can only think of 1 or 2 losses against Tinker, and I meet Tinkers quite often.
http://dotabuff.com/matches/536595621 And it's easy to say when you're facing this kind of player. Tinker without Dagger or Forcestaff is free food indeed.
We lost that game to the AM, not Tinker. That wasn't a game I thought we were going to win anyhow. My friends were trying out new heroes. Notice how the Veno went carry build. *sigh* That game was a disaster for totally unrelated reasons to Tinker.
As per the 2nd match, yes that's the typical Tinker that I see all the time. TP in, march, TP out, repeat. After a while, it's a pretty predictable food source.
Added:
I think that Tinker would be more fun/effective to play if....
1) Rocket was a 2-charge cast. You cast to rocket then cast again before cooldown starts. You should be allowed to rocket the same target with both rockets. Agh upgrades to 3.
2) Reduce range for March by 30%, allow it to damage structures.
I'd like to incentivise more in-your-face aggressive Tinker play. Not this "screw my team, I'm pushing" kind of mentality. The reason I want this isn't because of times when I fight Tinker. It's those days when I solo queue and I get a Tinker on my own team. Those games make me sad.
Sano has my vote for the competition
Updated with "helpful allies" and "dangerous enemies"
Nice guide, Sano!
Guys guys need tips for playing against pudge :((((((((
I am so fucking bad going to comit sudoku
Tinker easily wins Pudge inlane with any build. Even if you get hooked you can just blind him and bottle/salve through his rot. Harass him since the first wave and be aggressive since he can't do anything against you. After his lv6 take care because he can kill you, if you don't get hooked then you won't die. Always have wards.
Well at lvl 6 he literally walked to me ulti rot and hook, my biggest shit is the rune control against pudge, for some reason i am always afraid to try to get runes againt him because he can kill me, but i guess with the laser bottle stuff i can kill or at least defend myself.
So in the first lvls i should auto atack him a lot ?
I mean it doesnt matter what hero i play its always the same shit, he just takes exp gets bottle and camps for 10293828937128937 minutes for the rune, then he just gets lvl 6 and kills people.
Well first of all your MS is higher than his so he should not be able just to outrun you and ult you. Besides, after Pudge gets lv6 it's not a very good idea to go walking around the map getting runes, unless you know where he is. If he's missing, just bottle crow. Remember the most important thing before BoT is not dying. You can always just use March on big camp + small camp near your t2 which is a safe spot early game.
Yeah, in the first levels you should be aggressive against him, constantly hitting him abusing your range and superior movespeed. Sometimes he will try to turn and manfight you with rot, just blind him and he won't win you at all. Use the creeps to juke his hook, and remember that you can bottle through his rot.
Great guide.
So before lvl 6 agresive after lvl 6 pasive ? ok i guess i got it
Thx sano
Edit: one question, what skill build you would personally use against pudge ?
Not passive, just safe, it's different. And skill build doesn't really depend on Pudge, but I don't think Laser+HSM is a good idea vs Pudge since you won't have all that space to gank and he will hardly be bursted down by these 2 skills unless he sucks hard. March is actually very good to kill Pudge, if he comes at you with rot you can cast March, he will be forced to back off and take damage or stay and die. It's possible to trick him into thinking he can kill you (eg if you're low hp) then you cast March and juke among creeps so he can't hook you.
Ok !
Since all of u are tinker fans here. Just to update you all. The best tinker on earth is
-http://dotabuff.com/players/61061435
He is a singaporean and plays on SEA server. And SEA server is the most tryhard server(proven). His solo rating is 5.9 and party rating 5.8 ^_^.
Yes, Chains is the best Tinker in the world, and he also is the top player worldwide when it comes to top50 points. (Relentless made a thread about it sometime ago)
I don't think Chains is better than qojqva atm. I mean, qojqva is playing against tier 1 teams. That means a lot
but we have an arrow vs FD in 8 hours, and seems like they're going to pick Tinker. Let's see what happens
Nice guide. I like it. Tinker is one of my favorite heroes and I think he is severely underrated in high level pubs.
While the skill builds you mention are good I think you missed the overall best skill build. The 2-2-2 build. If we assume that ideal BoT timings with Soul Ring and Bottle is 8-11 minutes if you go mid then you should be level 8-12. This allows you to have March of the Machines maxed for the ancients but still have stronger lane control with 2 points in Laser and Missiles each. While maxing march earlier can help you push the lane it also forfeits lane control and allows their mid to farm more freely.
I think you should mention Nyx as one of the main counters to Tinker. Especially in this meta where he is picked all the time where Viper is not. Carapace screws with your Rearms and can easily catch you out of position. Combine this with his ultimate and you have to be careful before you get your Blink Dagger.
Carapace is annoying but Nyx is not that big of a threat if you know how to deal with him. Like I said in the guide, you need to always be in a safe spot so he will have a hard time finding you with Vendetta. About the skill build, I don't see how going 2-2-2 can be better than focusing March. I think SB is more dangerous than Nyx.
Sano ( or any good tinker player ) can you please take a look at this game ?
http://dotabuff.com/matches/534226021
we won but still i felt pretty useless, i was ancient jungling so i went for the march build but still i fell like i was doing nothing for my team before hex, and my gpm was still low for a tinker i think.
Sorry for asking so much but i dont really know any other tinker player and i really like the hero, so everything helps.
Is NP a threat for tinker?
furi is more like a freekill instead of a threat. duuuuuuuhhhhh
@sano
But your argument for Viper was that Corrosive Skin counters Blink. Carapace does the same thing but can actually also catch you out of position easier. It also messes with your Rearms, even if you're in the trees which will cost you more mana. But the real problem with Nyx isn't when you have Blink. It's before you get Blink. Blink timing is around 13-16 minutes. Before that you can't TP to any lane if Nyx is missing and a good Nyx will be missing from the map all the time. You also have to be cautious to farm Ancients unless you got supports that really know how to play and Sentry the map for you.
The 2-2-2 build is a lane winner. What does maxing march do for you on lane compared to extra damage in Laser and Rocket? I think too many Tinkers focus on their own BoT too much and don't realize they can shut down the enemy mid harder if they go for 2-2-2. I think you can see the strength of 2-2-2 if you watch Arteezy's stream. He's been playing Tinker for the last couple of days.
The thing with Viper is that he perma-cancels your Dagger. Nyx can't do that. He can activate Carapace only 1 time and if he does in March you will take minor damage. The stun isn't a problem unless you're not in a safe spot.
And I don't see NP as a threat.
One thing I didn't mention in the guide and I plan to add soon is that Tinker can work very well in a trilane.
Added Tinker #1 role and Bloodstone
Why do you BoT before soulring? If you stack on radiant shoulnt soulring let you farm up BoT as soon as you have lvl 6? (Assuming you have the soulring already)
I am not a tinker player just wondering :D
Like I said in the guide you can do so if you want to. Soul Ring before BoT and Rearm at 6 works. It's just my personal preference.
Mostly because even if I'm stacking ancient I usually don't stack them every minute since there are times when it's not very safe to leave your tower or because you'll miss lots of creeps. Then I prefer killing the stack a bit later, and then I don't need the Soul Ring. A full Bottle is enough to do so.
How about spirit breaker early game? any idea how to deal with this guy? Just farm at jungle/ancient?
He's actually more dangerous after his lv6. Early game he doesn't disable you so much, just Laser him. But you need to be extra careful if you're soloing against a hero with disable (Cold Snap, Electric Vortex). If you see him missing, stay under tower and ask for allies to have a TP ready.
Thanks Sano, I love this guide :) Tinker has always been a fun hero to me. I must say though, now that I know the exact timing to push out mid lane, that has helped alot to control runes.
Also had the nicest moment last night after reading your note on laning against Pudge. He came at me around level 2 with rot on. I dropped march and juked around a creep. Ended up getting first blood :D
On another note, is there any specific bindings you use? I seem to have grown comfortable with my current setup, but I don't think its optimal since I am a little slow at clicking things. Like using dagon, I feel i can be faster. Any advice?
Well this is personal, there are awesome players who use Legacy keys even though I don't see why it's better than a custom setup, but it doesn't disturb their gameplay so whatever. I use QWER for skills, and 1 2 3 4 5 space for items. But I think you can be fast with any setup.
The only thing is that some people use alt+hotkeys to use items, and I think pressing 2 keys instead of 1 can make a difference when it comes to speed. But I never used it so I can't tell for sure.
to only thing you need to worry about is the shift key
When you say Bloodstone is "very important as a 6th item" wouldn't that suggest that you should often get it as your last item?
Yes that's what I mean. It's not core as your last item, but it's very good and it's better to do it as a last item than as a second/third like some people do. For example, in the match I posted at the end of the guide (Liquid vs Na'Vi) Qojqva went BoT - Dagger - Hex - Dagon 5 - BKB and then Bloodstone.
Sano could you post some tricks about ancient farming ? I mean at which time you should cast march from the t2 bottom lane dire ? X:50 ?
hahaha a lot of people use March at xx:50 to stack with it, but it's just not worth it! Using March at xx:50 means the new ancients will barely get hit by it. It's better to stack with auto attack and use March in order to hit all the ancients, unless you're in a hurry to come back to lane, then you can use March at xx:50, go back to lane, 1 minute later repeat... but this way you'll slowly kill the ancients, constantly be out of mana, and your ancients will be permanently low hp which makes it easier for the enemy team to try to steal them.
edit: only now I saw the "bottom dire" part. You mean stacking when you are in a trilane? It's not worth to do so, save your March to clear the big stack or to fight. Ask a support to stack for you.
^Oh i see thanks !, do you stack whenever posible ? i mean sometime i forget to stack or even worst i go there too early or too late.
It's good to stack in mid if you're safe to do so and if you're not gonna lose many creeps. However, if you're Dire that's more difficult and a lot more dangerous. When playing Dire sometimes it's better just to stack the big camp instead, especially when you're not feeling safe.
The reason Tinker sucks for Dota is because all ideas about keeping the wave near tower so that the carry (or the whole team) can farm properly goes out the window. Often, Tinker is the ONLY hero with farm as the lanes are so pushed everywhere that only himself and the entire enemy team is getting proper gpm/xpm. If the pushes are not properly assisted (or can't be) then Tinker is a Class-A feeder of creeps. The most played build is a rush to Boots of Travel, followed by constant pushing until lose. Rockets and lasers might as well be pointless as double/triple march kicks in. Sadly, if this is the role, then Nature Prophet is by far superior as his teleport allows him to assist in ganks anywhere, even not near a lane.
To see the true level of crap that Tinker is, try playing any of the following: single lane Tinker, jungle Tinker, no-push-gank-only Tinker. You'll quickly realize how much of a slave he is to the fountain and just how little damage he does for the amount of money that he requires.
He is simply an inefficient hero for most pub matches. He is only at proper levels of effective with a professional team supporting his mobility by using hawk or familiars. Without this, he should be classified as a feeder.
Wow your argument is just terrible
You said something like "if Tinker is played wrong he feeds the enemy with creeps and doesn't allow your team to farm -> thus Tinker sucks"
I don't even know how to answer this kind of reasoning
rolf dude are you high ?
I'm saying that he can't be played right unless the whole team supports him. Which is a very different statement. I'm saying that there is NO way to play him right if the whole team does not sign up to support his shenanigans.
How can the argument be terrible if the data supports this?
A winrate of ~43% suggest that he is losing a lot more than he's winning. He's an expected negative contributor to the team.
For a hero that has an economy/farm rating higher that Dark Seer through mostly on lane creeps and not jungle, I'm not impressed by his winrate.
Edit/Added:
There is a finite influx of gold on the map. If you're teleporting around marching to rush your core items, you better be able to make up for it by contributing in team fights. Something is very wrong with a hero when his performance slips more and more each day that he is marching harder and harder.
I don't even consider him a threat anymore. When I see Tinker, I think of the food delivery man.
^His winrate is so low because people suck with him, SIMPLE. If a bad player picks tinker he can fuck his entire team easily.
"Often, Tinker is the ONLY hero with farm as the lanes are so pushed everywhere that only himself and the entire enemy team is getting proper gpm/xpm. "
You could say the same with every kind of pusher hero, that its why you need to think about what lanes are you going to push and why, that its why if you cant push any lane you go farm ancients or the jungle.
"He is simply an inefficient hero for most pub matches."
I am still bad with this hero but a really good tinker player wins the game alone. There is so much pub stomps games because of a good tinker player.
Dude you're using dotabuff average winrate as an argument. You know what average winrate means right? Means it takes into account 3k- rating players which are actually 80+% of the Dota population.
Anti-Mage 40.60% winrate. Wow, he must be the worst carry in the game by far.
SD 41.25% winrate wow this hero is probably never picked by pros.
Ember Spirit 43.85% this hero sucks. He just got added to CM and Loda, Fly, TC, BuLba and Wagamama said he's very strong but they are crying because this hero actually sucks.
Wisp has always had a winrate of 45% or less and he has always been the most used hero for pubstomping.
Are you a pro? No. Sadly you are not a pro, and neither am I. At the pub solo queue level that we play at, Tinker is an expected increase in loss. You can take that as you wish. Let's say that you randomly join 4 others. Someone else picks Tinker. What do you do?
Can you really expect to teach the whole population how to properly play Tinker? I think not.
I'm not stopping you from playing Tinker. If you're doing fine, then power to you, but I think Tinker needs a buff that's more meaningful than just having more rockets. If march hit buildings too, then Tinker would be at proper utility levels.
March hit buildings LMAO I won't answer anymore
It does?
"March of the Machines deals universal damage through magic immunity and hits mechanical units. Damage does not affect structures."
I don't think you understood my last post, I was laughing at the absurd suggestion.
Bro, what's your MMR? Because by the way you talk about this hero it looks like you have no clue about how he works in a game
Solo is 3600. Team MMR doesn't matter as it depends on the team. Look, if the hero isn't performing as advertised, it's hard to say that as an average player, I'm doing something wrong. Heck I don't even play tinker, I just farm Tinkers. However he works, he's not working. =P I only see food.
It's fine though, I don't really want to win this argument at all. I'd much prefer they keep Tinker exactly the way it is, because I know how to kill/farm Tinker players quite nicely. Thinking back on the last 12 months of games, I can only think of 1 or 2 losses against Tinker, and I meet Tinkers quite often.
1 or 2 losses in 12 months? Well, you have 1 lost in the last 9 days. http://dotabuff.com/matches/523636650
http://dotabuff.com/matches/536595621 And it's easy to say when you're facing this kind of player. Tinker without Dagger or Forcestaff is free food indeed.
We lost that game to the AM, not Tinker. That wasn't a game I thought we were going to win anyhow. My friends were trying out new heroes. Notice how the Veno went carry build. *sigh* That game was a disaster for totally unrelated reasons to Tinker.
As per the 2nd match, yes that's the typical Tinker that I see all the time. TP in, march, TP out, repeat. After a while, it's a pretty predictable food source.
Added:
I think that Tinker would be more fun/effective to play if....
1) Rocket was a 2-charge cast. You cast to rocket then cast again before cooldown starts. You should be allowed to rocket the same target with both rockets. Agh upgrades to 3.
2) Reduce range for March by 30%, allow it to damage structures.
I'd like to incentivise more in-your-face aggressive Tinker play. Not this "screw my team, I'm pushing" kind of mentality. The reason I want this isn't because of times when I fight Tinker. It's those days when I solo queue and I get a Tinker on my own team. Those games make me sad.
Tinker has almost 2 times the Hero Damage of the second highest one in his team, you're sure you lost to AM? :|