General DiscussionTips on timbersaw and how to win games w/ him

I doubt you can win games with him atm. You gotta snowball really hard, if you are not godlike 13 minutes in, you can just qq.

Yes, that's what my friends told me as well (1500 mmr higher above me) but I still wanna learn the hero

Tbh slardar/earth spirit is getting repititive

I think you have to learn 3 things:how not to feed before level 6, how to timber chain wherever you want, and how to hit the enemies with all your 3 spells at once and then you're basically set for success

"decent bloodstone timing (17-24)"

the difference between a 17 min bloodstone and 24 min bloodstone is pretty big. 24 is like ridiculously slow. second, a 7 min difference in item timing is showing that you're inconsistent with the hero. my guess is either you're picking him into lineups he's weak against, or you're trying too hard to get kills and ending up dying.

"I always go stout tango salve"
by this I assume you mean 1 set of tangos and 1 salve. which leave you with starting gold left over, which you have no reason to save. either get another set of tangos or get a mango. mango is greedier so it's better if there's kill potential in your lane while another set of tangos is better if you're gonna be trading hits / getting harassed often.

ignoring stat items is not greedy. only getting 2 sets of regen is greedy. as an offlaner you need regen over stats. "standard" offlane starting items are either 3 sets of regen and stout because you're going to be taking lots of harass in a 2v1 or 3v1 lane, or boots so you can avoid feeding first blood.

2 strength is 38 HP when a salve is 15g more and gives 400 HP, which allows you to stay in lane for far longer than if you had bought 2 branches instead. your starting int and str is decent so you don't really need stats, and getting agi in order to increase your armour is not efficient at all.

also consider getting 2 points into armour early on. every game you follow the exact same skill build besides your choices at level 2 and 3. 4-4-1-2 at 11. the lack of extra survivability and HP sustaion in the laning phase is probably hurting you and contributing towards your slow bloodstone timings.

instead of going 1-4-1-1, try 1-2-2 into 1-4-2-1. the extra regen makes a noticable difference in the laning phase while you still have timber chain maxed by 8, which only takes 600 xp. having that extra regen from level 4 onwards (or sooner) instead of at level 12 definitely has a game changing impact over the slightly extra damage from levelling up your Q or W.

17 min bs is not very good actually
ill come with shittons of tips once i have time to write them down

Yes it's a fact that I'm inconsistent with the hero, because I do both of what u just said (pick it bad + chase unnecessary kills only to be rotated into)

I used to do 2 points in reactive armor (5 months ago?) and I felt like I wasn't doing enough dmg but I might try it again some time

I also do 8 tango salve when I expect a hard lane (vs silencer/sky) but I might be playing offlalne a bit too greedy since I'm used to earth op spirit (who I can find success even with 2x gauntlet 2x branch tango start) and slardar (w/c is fairly tanks with a stout rop start that can build to tranqs)

@triplesteal u seem to have lots of matches with the hero. It would be great if u can give me tips on the hero

Btw this hero doesn't feel strong rn at all outside of his strong counter push w/c flat out wins me games when we have a hc

the starting build i use is:
stout/tangos/mango/branch/shared ward.

early itembuild (lane phase)
you can get 4 more tangos with courier later if there is an urgent need. tangos > salve in any case for tombersaw.
rather usually you might need to get sticks in the side shop. its a very good item on timbersaw if at least someone on your lane gonna give u charges (sky, pa, etc.)
after than u usually go for arcanes. if u r somehow winning the lane, start to build them with energy booster and get boots later. in all the other cases (=95% of games) u buy boots first.

midgame itemization
bloodstone is a must, ofc. if you are far ahead, you can get point booster b4 soulring, in normal game scenario u usually purchase this too in a reversed order tho. disassemble arcanes as soon as u used them for the first time after getting point b. and vitality b., soul booster makes u stronger.
once u get your BS, your item choice may vary.
1) you managed to have a very decent start and u alrdy wreck everyone - get blink followed by aghs, or if you feel like being too squishy - skip blink. early BoTs are totally wor it, too.
2) average game of yours, you have low farm and are a real position 3 - get glimmer and shivas, or u can go for a very weird item - solar crest, if you are against some heavy rightclickers and in the same time have similar heroes on your side, who would benefit from the active of solar.
3) shit is totally fucked up and u got bs on 30th min - eul, glimmer, bm, ghost depending on what u need
you can combine 1-3 pretty easily depending on hiw the game goes tho.

lategame:
most common build is probably shivas/BoT/BS/aghs/sheepstick/blink(or glimmer)
octarine is okay, but only if you have both hex and shivas. this item is overrated.
heart is crap.
bkb is needed only if you play the hero in a very incorrect way and/or shouldnt have picked timbersaw at all.
linkens is situational.
lotus is situational and id say not needed, better to go for linkens.
eblade is for lulz or for the very lategame.
refresher for lulz or very lategame to use it jointly with sheepstick, or just as 7th slot.
abyssal is a situational lategame item against bkb cores, which i personally dont like.

timing for BS
10-14 - very good
14-17 - good
17-20 - pretty bad, but u can catch up
20+ - either the game is very passive or u fucked up, johnny

skillbuild
most common: 2-3-1(2)-2(1)-2-4-1-2-1-1-4-3-3-3-stats-4 etc.
u get lvl2 timberchain on lvl3 if the core hero on enemy's safelane is ranged or you are zoned completely
you can go for 2 early points in reactive armor if they have heavy physical dmg (2-3-3-2 or 2-3-2-3, for example).

try not to die during the laning stage unless you are trading ur life to their carry, you depend on levels too much to afford wasting time in heaven (or hell, dunno how dota god treats mad heroes).
once u get lvl6, request ur supps to help u to gank their carry, or start rotating urself if u alrdy have arcanes. basically ull rotate till the end of the game non-stop. you can clear jungle pretty easily, and clean waves fast, but dont abuse it - your cores need farm, too, and u'll have income from kills anyways.

i dunno what more should i tell, if u have questions, just ask.

^I love when advice is actually handed out by people who are really good and experienced with a particular hero.

That being said, I am really interested why you think heart is bad? Is it bad on its own, does it have way too little utility or there are just much better options? I mean, I get that buying a shiva and/or octarine is going to increase Timber's EHP and damage output a lot more, but heart also has regen, which you might find handy if you want to go in/get out of fights. But then again, it might be bad because octarine can offer sustain along with more utility just as well?

the utility of certain items should be considered relative to other options
y the time u can afford going for such a situational item as HoT is, you have more than enough survivability no matter which items u purchased - most of them give u tankiness and timbersaw is a fat hero himself. the marginal utility of investing more item slots in tankiness is very low, while getting mobility or control items benefits you a lot more in any scenario.

thanks a lot for the tips. i might've been playing timber wrong post-laning since i just try to farm the enemy jungle/creep skip lane to get t1 tower for a faster bloodstone (w/c sometimes gets me killed) and start to rotate once i'm lv8 (usually i have bloodstone or at least a soul booster). by that time i feel like im not contributing much to my team and we've already lost the game by that point

one question is how to use chakram. i always miss this skill from far away since it's so slow. what i do to remedy this is to walk up close to them near the creep wave, and throw it from there. however i dont think i've ever hit a long range chakram

and when should i grab bots? after blink but pre-aghs or after the both of them? sometimes i dont get it at all because i feel like 2k gold is too much but since u said i need to rotate whole game then i might need it after all at some point

"one question is how to use chakram. i always miss this skill from far away since it's so slow. what i do to remedy this is to walk up close to them near the creep wave, and throw it from there. however i dont think i've ever hit a long range chakram"

Too bad Timbersaw does not have a mobility/self-repositioning ability.

The hero is just not in a good place at the moment. If you look at meta for 3k-4k (where you appear to be) he has a 43% winrate in pubs - 13th lowest of all heroes. In 5k plus games he's even lower - 41% and 6th worst hero overall. He needs a significant buff in 6.86 to become more relevant.

Starting items:
tangos, salve, shield, 2 branches, 1 clarity OR 1 ward (if your team doesn't buy one)

Mid game items:
I usually get a magic stick at the side shop, around 8 minute arcane boots, and I'd say 20 minutes for a bloodstone is pretty good.

Late game items:
I pretty much always Rush aghs after my bloodstone. Afterwards you can go for an oct core, heart, or anything that makes you tanky. Utility items also work but I personally never buy them.

Always dissasemble your arcanes to make your bloodstone.

Skill build:
I usually go for
1-2-3-1-1-4-1-2-2-2-4-3-3-3-stats-4-stats the rest

Why do I max q before w?
Maxing q allows much greater early game kill potential and you can zone like a god.

If you're taking too much harass in lane, level your reactive on level 2 (and then chain on level 3).

Laning

Spam your q whenever they come close to the lane and always trade hits, especially if you just "q"ed him (his super early game damage isn't too awful and reactive armor lets you come out on top. If there's at least 1 ranged then just try to hit 6 ASAP.

BE AGRESSIVE IN THE LANE (unless it's 2 v 1). I can't stress this enough. Maxing q first gives Timber such good early game zoning and kill potential

So how do you win games with timber?

- Win your lane
- Shut down the enemy hard carry (zone him out)
- Be impossible to kill. Your'e tanky as hell and have a ton of mobility.
- Many people underestimate his burst damage, including people who play him. Don't be afraid to turn on people.

Hope this helped, feel free to ask me any questions you got. :)

PS: If you wanna see how I lane with him I can send you one of my games or something.

5 mangoes FTW.

Finally found success with the hero. These walls of text rly do help in making me play the hero better, in my last timber game I won us the early mid game by rotating to bot and getting a double kill and another at mid. I snowballed hard however there were still mistakes like diving into necro ult shaman hold because I thought tornado was off cd w/c got me killed multiple times

However I still got a 17 min bloodstone. I completely skipped farming after 6, and by 17 mins I only had 25 lh, w/c was purely from the laning phase

Edit: Volvo pls apply an on hit effect on chain like a mini stun or slow. How come we get stunned when dk bashes us with his shield but not when a Mobile suit gundam dashes forward at 2200 ms A OSfrog pled

Well...dk does have strong arms.

"How come we get stunned when dk bashes us with his shield but not when a Mobile suit gundam dashes forward at 2200 ms" One of the funniest things I've read today :)

I've played more games of Timber than my top 50 hero and still have shoddy winrate on him >.< but maybe I can help.

The best all around starting items I'd say would be
Stout -> damage block against creeps when building up reactive armor charges
Tango
Salve -> this lets you play more aggressively as you can dip into trees and heal very fast during an engagement, or survive a last ranged attack as it flies through the air
Clarity -> Lets you stay in lane longer, also can be used to bait aggression
Mango -> counts as a quarter of a regen item from the 1hp regen, and burst mana is very important during laning
Obs ward from support

Honestly I could write an entire page on how amazing mango is, but you just have to try it and practice with it.

Timber is one of the hardest heroes to play well, and EVEN harder to play REALLY well. There are some days where I can hit my whirling death during chain flight and some days where I absolutely flub everything. So don't be discouraged if you have some bad games. The skill ceiling is what makes him so fun to play.

The thing about dota is that once you |understand| a hero, itemization becomes really easy. Timber's main weaknesses are mana and most importantly, LANDING his spells. He's the type of hero that is very high risk high reward. You have to kill everybody before they kill you, and you have the tools to do so. His damage output, provided enough mana, is probably the highest in the game but requires a lot of practice and awareness to dish out. This is why I sometimes go Atos after bloodstone, as it allows you to land all your spells more consistently, and the stats of Atos all benefit him well. As you get better at the hero, you should practice with Blink dagger. The higher you get in mmr, the more people know how to dodge Timber so you'll need the instant initiation it provides.

But yeah you still need bloodstone in 95% of games and from there you need your game sense to tell you what to buy. If I've got plenty of mana regen, like lets say I got 10 or 11 charges after getting bloodstone, I'll get a blink or BoTs. BoT's are probably the best item to get if you aren't under a lot of pressure. Movespeed is actually the third most important thing for Timber, as it helps with landing your skills and playing keep away with your enemies.

Also, last hitting is super important with Timber, because he DOES require a lot of farm to do well. You need to be able to last hit almost every creep during freefarm, and certainly every one when using your spells to farm.

There's too much to this hero but I'll leave it here for now, also whirling death hits instantly and doesn't linger despite its animation, so timber chaining and landing a whirling death midway is actually really hard but will help your winrate if you master it. Hoping 6.86 buffs whirling to have an extended active hitbox QQ.

@free 2 play scotz
dont sacrifice maxing ur timberchain in order to get more points in whirling death. it not ony decreases ur dps due to higher cd on 1st spell, but also negatively affects ur mobility. getting more than 1 point in whirling b4 level 6 wonr work well for you unless you went mid.

also you will have to rethink ur item choice once u get higher in mmr, as well as realise that you early lane agression can be shut down very easily once the supports you face become good enough to be able to understand the game a bit better.

@muranji
the reasoning behind poor wr of timber is that the hero is pretty hard, i mean - he's certainly not OP neither part of meta, but he also requires a lot practice to be efficient. so whenever he's picked by a unexperienced played, his wr goes down, and it happens in most of the cases - there are rather few players who main timbersaw. i still have ~60% wr in 5k+ bracket.

a small note on aghs on timber: after ~400 games with the hero I finally learnt to use chakram without mistakes, and aghs turned out to be an insanely good item, but the breaking point happened after ~300 more games, when I understood that the optimal way can still be to skip this item. whenever the team i play against is close to 6k mmr average or higher, I skip aghs in most cases. aghs and bkb are extremely overrated among good (but not very good) timbersaw players, and the scepter is mostly good when u r snowballing or trying to do it against lower skilled opponents.
dunno who it can help to tho :d.

quickcast: its very hard to get used to it, but its totally worth it. if you want to master the hero, switch to it asap, at least for ur W.

also i forgot to mention halebard as a possible itemchoice b4, it gives u evasion against physical dmg which u need when playing against pa/slark/ta and some other heroes.

What does quick cast do

I heard some ppl do it on meepo

you use spells immediatly when u press the hotkeys to the location/target that is marked by your mouse at that point of time; you dont need to press mouse button additionally. it gonna be a bit hard at first with chakram, though.

also dont forget to use spell cancelling (S button in default settings). its extremely important for timberchain - sometimes enemies juke and u can kinda trap them by imitating using timberchain, see how they change the direction of movement, and at this point adtually cast your W.

When I turn on quick cast, is it global (ex I turn on quick cast on timber chain, do all w spells become quick cast too) or is it skill specific?

its just a hotkey setting, so it works for all the heroes. you can turn it off pretty quick tho, or even set up different buttons for quickcast and normal cast.

just a tip which i personally use...
if there are hard hitters like pa on the opponent team you can actually consider buying dagon/blademail as first item. Both way works for me dagon then chakram because chakram slows the more their hp is lower... if you go blademail make sure u tank everything and stand infront for your team.

skill specific, it's under a separate tab for all your QWER keys.

Not sure if you'd want quickcast for Timber though, it lowers the accuracy of your aim in exchange for speed. Missing a chain will get you killed more often than casting it a millisecond later.

@redrover
onbce u get used to it, this problem disappears. its a step on the path towards ideal play.

@triple
who are you stacking with to get to 6k average

fuck i can't even imagine playing there, i would probably just sit in the corner of my fountain and cry

every time we play against 5.3k average stacks, check their solo mmrs :D.
or actually better dont. i notice im feeling depressed every time i see more than one 6k+ player on the enemy team in a 5.0k average game.

Generally, duo- or triplestacking is the way to go when i want to get to a higher quality games.

we never play against 5.3k average stack (as long as i'm in the party) xD
the highest i've ever been was 4.7k with you

when using quickcast, should i replace normal cast with it or bind it to a different key/key combination?

I didn't play the hero at all lately and don't have that many games in total either but he is still my 4th highest winrate hero and all I can say is you should try to be aggressive in the lane. Chain is a 100 damage nuke that only costs 60 mana. This is insane in the early game and let's you trade harass well.

Timbersaw also relies on proper skill build. I prefer on maxing 1st and 3rd and not that prioritizing second skill since I'm only using it as a "setter item" for Timbersaw. Man, we all know first skill is very great skill since it has minus strength and have a pure damage whenever it hits a tree. I prefer having boots as my first items since i can CS using first skill and he has a very great base damage. And yeah, timbersaw should snowball very hard during early game and i believe it can't do that much in late game if you don't have any decent mana items.

@arin
i suppose thats bcz ur low party mmr holds us back huehuehuehue

@rolling cabbage
replace

@sativea
timberchain is pure damage as well, and it allows u to escape, deal higher dps due to lower cd, and deal dmg to ranged heroes ti whom u cant approach close enough to hit with ur 1st

Also Bloodstone is not ABSOLUTELY core, especially after the nerfs. If you are doing really bad, just work on stuff like Blademail, Euls, maybe even a Mek and GG if no one else in the team is willing to do it.

@sam
this stuff didnt work well for me ever, i tried several different builds w/o BS, and none of the mturned out to be as efficient as BS one is, even for those given scenarios. however, it might depend on one's playstyle.

@triple
i was like 3.3 when i started queuing with you (i remember because we couldn't stack at some point because of mmr difference)

look at me now
xD

and im still sitting here at the same mmr level, meh

scrub detected
you should be 7k at this point

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1984278706
thank you based triplesteal

This is all very educational to me and I have taken it to heart and this is the result of my second attempt of Timbersaw

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1983029648

I'd say I did pretty good on him and even got myself a rampage.
However, there is still one question I want to know in order to become a better timber player...

When to not pick timber?

you are afraid of massive disables+minus armor, heroes with high mobility, or with magical nukes.

good ES players are a threat, as well as TAs and Slardars, but it can be applied only to those ones who are very good with the hero. Unexperienced players on this heroes wont scare u that much.

Laning stage and early game against Necro, Lina, Viper, Silencer, QoP, Sky, Luna, Clinkz, Ursa, Pugna (special tributes to his ward), Kotl (special tribute to mana leak that works when u timberchain), Shadow Shaman, Lion or Zeus is terrible; and all of them keep being a threat in midgame, too.

NS wrecks you all day (or night?) long.

Guys who can save your targets (omni and dazzle) can fuck up your game.

In midgame u got a lot of troubles with teams that play around DK or SF, early push strats > Timber.

In the very late game, u r not really afraid of anything specific, u r even stronger than a big share of the carries at this point. Timbersaw is a pretty sick lategame hero.

Thank you very much @triplesteal

All your advice has been significantly helpful and I managed to do well in my timber game again just now.

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1984929804

I was able to even able to snatch the aegis from the Dire side by timberchaining to the tree on the cliff of rosh and put my ult onto the pit for the perfect timing

I will play more to become even better

good luck with that!

Is it possible to TP out while using 2nd skill, just like storm's ult or earth spirit's rolling boulder?

yes
you can also abuse timberchain with chen/Io/BS suiide (if you have enough charges to revive immediatly)/blink/eul etc. if you time it properly