Timbersaw is melee strength hero who is best known for his tankiness and high mobility. One of the unusual mechanics of the hero is that he uses trees to move around and deal more damage. Timber is also unique as he deals pure damage with 3 different abilities, making him strong even against extremely hard to kill heroes.

Timber is mainly played in the offlane but can still be picked as a mid or safe lane hero. He’s generally a strong laner unless you have to play against 3 heroes or specific counters.

He’s also good at any stage of the game, so he can be played in any strategy, but you want your other heroes to have enough control as Timber has none.

Offlane is the most common lane for him. Thanks to reactive armor, Timber is a good offlaner as he is very hard to kill or zone-out by one or two heroes and he can pressure the enemies a lot once he gets a few levels. If left unchecked, he can even score solo kills after level 6.

Timber usually goes to the mid or safe lane to face melee heroes like Tidehunter, Bristleback, DK. Whirling Death is an incredibly powerful skill versus melee STR heroes. The philosophy is that Timber is very hard to deal with in such a 1v1 situation, which means he doesn’t need any help to win his lane. His teammates will be able to focus on the other lanes.

Although he scales well with items, he’s not a traditional carry but more of a space creator, so you need another damage dealing core.

Good friends to have are:

Strong Against:

Weak Against:

Timber’s skill build is very versatile. Whirling Death and Timber Chain are both good value points and also scale well, so it really depends on the lane you’re facing. Those are just general advises so that you can understand better how to build the hero in specific situations – there is no universal build. Very generally speaking:

Timbersaw can go for a lot of different items but usually has the same core items as he needs to deal with his mana issues before he can do anything else.

You need to get to level 3 without dying - Reactive Armor level 2 is where you start being tanky. 

The offlane really depends on the enemy heroes – if they can’t pressure you, you pressure them. If the enemies are strong laners and you can’t get close to the creep wave, you can go to the jungle with Quelling Blade. Timber is not very good in the jungle but you can still get something there. Try to steal the enemy bounty runes if possible.

As a mid/safe lane, you simply farm on the lane. If you’re playing against a melee hero, you can use Whirling Death to last hit creeps and harass the enemy at the same time. 

As an offlaner, you might be able to harass the enemy carry if he only has one weak support or he’s alone. If he’s a melee hero, you can simply spam Whirling Death or Timber Chain to both last hit and harass him.

You want to constantly take the creeps’ agro so you can gain armor and heal. Keep in mind that you can’t kill the enemies unless they massively screw up so you should simply wait patiently for level 6. Once you have it, use Chakram to bully the enemy carry out of the lane. At this point, you’re so tanky that the enemies can’t kill you anymore unless their mid or offlane comes to gank you.

As a mid or safe laner, you want to be as aggressive as possible. If you have picked Timber for that position, you’re probably up against a melee hero, so simply spam Whirling Death on him and destroy him. Again, spam attack on him as well so you can be constantly with full stacks of Reactive Armor.  

As we mentioned, a trilane will almost always be able to zone/kill you. On the offlane, you need to be cautious not to get flanked by the enemy supports and killed while you’re hitting creeps. A Timber Chain on lvl2 will help you escape bad situations easier.

Ask your team for a ward so you can see what the enemy supports are doing. You can probably deal with one support but not 2.

On the mid lane, you’re only vulnerable until you have Reactive level 2. After that, your armor and regen are too high and even if you get ganked, you will survive long enough for your team to eventually help you.

Magic stick/wand is very important on this hero as you can’t get burst down in a single stun and the enemies need to use a lot of things to kill you, so you will always have time to use it. 

The kill potential is pretty much non-existent before level 6, so don’t even try unless the enemy makes a mistake and stays at low HP close to you after getting harassed. Whirling Death and Timber Chain have low CD, so you can chase a low HP enemy down and finish him off with the two nukes if you have the required mana.

Once you have Chakram, you can use it to harass the enemy. Always try to get him low first before you dive him (for example throw a Chakram at him to deal some damage, then wait for it to refresh and then go). Solo kills are rather hard to execute because the enemies can disable you most of the times, but if you get some help from your teammates, you have every chance to get a kill.

As we already mentioned, level 6 is very important as Chakram allows you to dominate your lane.

The next thing you want to have is Arcane Boots + Soul Ring, so you can use your abilities whenever you want.

You usually want to stay on the lane until at least level 8-9 and unless your team needs your assistance, you can stay even longer so you can farm your core items.

With more levels and some mana items, your farm will also get better. Chakram and Whirling/Chain (whatever you decided to max after Reactive Armor) can clear creep waves easily and all you need in order to farm fast is mana. You can bring clarities to constantly regen mana.

Ganks with Timber are hard to execute. You want to help your team only when they’re fighting close to your tower, so you can teleport and join the fight easily. Or even better - ask them to come to your lane so you can kill the enemy and push the tower.

As every other offlaner, your priority is to get levels. Once you’re level 5-6, you can start being more aggressive.

Abuse the creep aggro trick to make yourself tankier – issue an attack command on an enemy to draw the creeps and max your Reactive stacks. Don’t tank the creeps for an unnecessarily long time especially on lvl1 when you don’t have a lot of stacks. Once your stacks are maxed, you should be very hard to zone-out. Don’t be afraid to use most of your regen to get to lvl3 – it’s a very important level for your tankiness and with lvl2 in Armor you will be almost impossible to zone out by most heores.

Be very aggressive, draw the creep aggro, hit the enemy and spam Whirling Death to harass him.

In this game, we can observe Newbie’s Moogy against KG.LUMINOUS. He gets a Timber vs Brewmaster lane.

Check how he always uses Whirling Death near trees in order to deal pure damage and also how much damage it does when you stack 2 attribute losses.

After 4 minutes of spamming, he manages to score a solo kill on the Brewmaster.

Once he gets the Chakram, he’s pretty much unstoppable on the lane. Also, observe how he pressures anybody who comes to his lane from this point on. 

Timber doesn’t care about timings in the mid-late game at all. All of his spells are low CD, which means he is always ready to fight. Moreover, he scales well with items into the late game, so you are usually not playing against the clock.

That being said, if you have a lot of momentum on your side, it is a good idea to try to end the game before the late game phase. With a considerable resource advantage you can hit a timing when it feels almost impossible for the enemy team to kill you in the mid-late game (30-35 mind): e.g. when you have Hood + Bloodstone + Shiva’s, while the enemy carries still don’t have big DPS items. Use this timing to push together with your team – you can tank the tower and take the attention of your opponents, while your allies are taking objectives (ideally the Barracks).

Timber is a momentum based, snow-ball hero. This means he has close to zero come-back potential.

If you have a bad game and you are playing from a resource disadvantage, your impact in fights will be much lower as you will be much easier to kill. Because of this try to make sure your early-mid game goes well or you will have a hard time winning.

If you are playing from behind there are a couple of things you can do to maximize your chances of success:

• Focus on farming and split-pushing, avoid unnecessary fights. You are a fast farmer, so it is theoretically possible to acquire enough farm to be relevant in the late game, if your team survives for this long and if you don’t die too often.
  
• Use your ultimate to slow down enemy pushes from a safe distance and to prolong the game as much as possible.

At this point, we assume you have your core items which means you have enough mana to spam your spells. You can farm very fast by just killing the creep waves with Chakram + Whirling Death. In this stage of the game, you can actually flash-farm as much as heroes like Shadow Fiend, Storm Spirit, Queen of Pain, etc.

You want to farm the more dangerous parts of the map – the offlane, some of the enemy jungle camps, etc. By doing this you provide scouting information to your team and you leave safe space for your squishier teammates to farm. 

Your game is basically farming on lanes/jungle and waiting for fights to happen.

In a team fight, you’re a front-line hero. It’s not necessary that you initiate the fight, but always try to join in as soon as possible. An exception is if the enemies have BKBs – in that situation, you might want to wait them out and just spam Chakrams from distance.

In a fight, you’re dangerous as all of your abilities deal pure damage (Whirling Death only if it hits trees). You’re also a hero with very low cooldowns, which means that you can have a lot of impact in prolonged engagements. You want to survive as long as possible, so you can continue dealing damage. You need to consider the enemies’ heroes and items and assess the situation – how long can you afford to stay on the front line and tank damage? If it becomes dangerous for you, you need to get back and kite the enemies with Chakram and Timber Chain. 

You’re pretty much able to do 600-700 pure damage every 7-8 seconds (less with Octarine), so try to stay alive. Timber is not one of the heroes who can just cast his spells once and then die peacefully.

Building up your Reactive Armor by tanking a creep wave or a neutral camp before a fight is a good idea, especially if your opponents have high physical damage. Of course, sometimes you don’t have this luxury, but try to do it as often as you can.

IceIceIce joins a mid-game fight. Notice how he focuses the enemy DK – because of his pure damage and attribute reduction, Timber is one of the best heroes in the game to kill him. He uses his mobility to finish-off the TA kill but immediately after he returns to his original target.

After DK dies he is left in a 1v3 situation. Instead of using Timber Chain to run away from the team, he decides to go through them and deal damage. He doesn’t man-fight them, but he smartly kites them and continues dealing damage, at which point his enemies decide to run away because the fight with Timber becomes too dangerous despite the big advantage in numbers. This is a great illustration of Timber’s early-mid game tankiness and of a player that knows the limits of the hero.

5-man pushing:

In a siege, you’re dealing pretty much 0 damage on the tower. You can, however, be the front liner and tank the damage, providing vision for your team.

Split-Pushing:

Although the hero is horrible at hitting towers, you can clear waves extremely fast with just Chakram and Whirling Death. You’re also very mobile with Timber Chain so you can get out as soon as the wave is cleared.

Your play style in that regard is pretty much like Tinker’s. This is also why Boots of Travel are good to have early on, so you can join fights if needed.

Always try to split-push when possible. Of course, follow your enemies’ movements as well, so you don’t get ganked.

You can’t do much to initiate ganks (unless you have Hex/Atos), but try to go with your team and deal the necessary damage to secure the kill.