Tinker is one of the most interesting and intense heroes to play as he is never idle. Thanks to the combination of Rearm and Boots of Travel, he can constantly teleport around the map, recharge his mana at the fountain and always stay active. Rearm removes the cooldown not only of his spells, but also his items, which allows Tinker to get immense value out of items with active abilities.

Tinker is also a very strong nuker and base defender, which makes him extremely frustrating to play against. He is quite difficult to play, yet if you get good at him he is one of the heroes that can allow you to practically win the game by yourself.

Tinker can be good against any lineup, but he is particularly good if your opponents want to 5-man and push. He is great both at anti-pushing and split-pushing.

He’s rather dependent on the start he gets, but if he’s not shut-down early on, he can use his versatile item build to buy an answer to almost everything - Aghanim's to anti-push, Hex to provide control and initiate ganks, Dagon to provide damage and finish heroes off in fights, etc.

That being said, he is vulnerable to certain potent gankers and picking Tinker early on in the draft is generally not a great idea. If your opponents can easily find you and latch onto you, you will have to play much more defensively, which will greatly reduce your game impact.

Tinker needs levels and he’s a fairly strong laner while also scaling very well with items, so mid is the preferred lane. Moreover, his nukes give him kill potential in case your team has active roaming supports that want to pressure the mid lane.

Good friends to have are:

Strong Against:

Weak Against:

Mobile gankers with catch:

Tinker is not very flexible in his build early on, as he has two items, which are absolutely vital for him – Travels and Blink Dagger. By refreshing those two items with Rearm he gains huge mobility around the map and in fights – his trademark playstyle.

Later on you have a wider range of choices, but generally speaking in the late game you want to abuse items with active skills because of Rearm.

On the lane, you just want to last hit and deny in the first few levels. You can use Laser to blind the enemy so you can last hit or deny the ranged creeps which should give you experience advantage – this is the main thing to focus on. Laser will cause your enemy to miss even if he has already thrown a projectile, so executing this trick is very easy and profitable.

If you’re having an easy lane, you can just focus on farming there and eventually invest a few more points in Laser and Missiles before you start leveling March. If you have the opportunity to shut the enemy midlaner down, it’s better to farm on the lane.

Stacking and farming the jungle:

If your lane is hard or you’re being ganked, choose the farming build and stack a few camps when you have the time (or ask your teammates to do it). You can use March, push out the wave and go into the jungle to stack a camp. Once you have Soul Ring and Rearm, you can start farming the jungle.

Focus on the 2 camps close to the mid lane and try to always hit both camps with March of the Machines.

Also, try to always stack the neutrals – you can stack even two at a time. Hit the x:53 one and then Laser the x:55 camp to stack both. Check the stack timings for the different camps as it’s important for a Tinker player.

Farming the lanes with March:

The angle you cast March from is important. Against creep waves, you want to use March with an angle that will hit the most creeps with different robots. In this image, the red arrows are the correct usage while the yellow arrows won’t hit all creeps.

Against a moving creep wave like in the next picture, the red arrows are again the correct usage. If you use the angle of the yellow arrows, the robots will only hit the first or last creep in the wave and won’t kill the rest.

People also often make the mistake of using multiple marches on a single creep wave which is not always necessary. Most of the times, a single March usage will kill the entire wave, allowing you to spend the rest of your mana elsewhere – this is very important in the laing stage when you cannot easily recharge your mana. We will talk about the efficiency a bit later.

If you’re casting two Marches, it’s better if you use two different angles to make sure they’ll hit everything.

Your laning phase ends once you get your hands on Boots of Travel.

Tinker is a fairly strong laner as he has 2 nukes that deal very high damage on the early levels. He has a decent attack animation and his starting damage is very good – the only one with significantly higher damage is Puck (with 6 damage advantage).

As we already mentioned, use Laser at level 1-2 to secure last hits and denies on the ranged creeps to get some early advantage. If there are no creeps around you can trade hits with the enemy and you will always come out on top thanks to the Laser blind.

If the lane equilibrium is on your side of the lane, you can zone the enemy hero out. Most ranged heroes can’t man-fight you because of the Laser.

Once you’re level 3-4, your nukes become very strong and you can focus on harassing the enemy with level 2 Laser and hits.

Quick maths:

• At level 3 (level 2 Laser) your nukes deal a total of 253 damage after reductions.
  
• At level 4 (level 2 Laser and Missiles) your nukes deal a total of 310 damage after reductions.
  

If you get the enemy to 2/3 of his HP you can try to play aggressively and finish him off with another Laser (when it cools down) and Missiles + a few hits. A useful trick is to wait for the enemy to approach a dying creep for a last hit – once the creep is low enough, start walking towards your opponent. Most players often don’t expect that and you will have a chance to score a kill.

Usually, a solo kill is hard to execute but if your enemy is careless, it’s not impossible. Most of the times you’ll need a teammate in order to land a kill. The good thing with this hero is that you don’t need much from your teammate – you only need a simple stun or slow as you have enough damage.

If your lane is going bad, you can simply max your March of the Machines and use it when the enemies are going on you – a level 2 March is usually enough to stop any kill attempts as it deals massive amounts of damage for a level 2 ability. When the enemies try to make a move on you, just cast March and blind the one who deals the most physical damage.

In this game, Tinker is up against Pugna – an average matchup.

He uses Laser to get creeps through Decrepify as the ranged creeps are pretty important.

Check how he holds the wave at 2:15 so it doesn’t get in the range of the tower and then uses March to farm it.

At 2:53 he stacks both the ancient camp and the medium one in the jungle. Then he farms the next wave with March and goes in the jungle to stack 2 camps again. He consistently repeats the procedure.

So even though he loses the mid lane, his farming efficiency is at a very high level. Check how he farms at minute 7 in the jungle. This position is very good because it allows you to hit all 3 camps with March.

Another nice trick (7:40) is that he teleports to base before having Travels and uses Rearm to refresh his teleport scroll. So he loses 100 gold worth of TP scrolls but regenerates and goes to a different spot to farm.

He gets Travels at 9:10 which is a very good timing and queues up Bottle next.

At 11:50 he teleports deliberately to the same place in the jungle to stack 2 camps again, which most players stop doing once they have Travels, but it is a good farming tactic. 

In order to feel safe in fights, you need at least a Blink Dagger. You could participate in small fights without it, but only when your team has an advantage. Otherwise, you risk dying and slowing your progression.

You can buy Aether Lens and/or Kaya to help you in the mid game fights.

Then you have to decide what your team needs in the specific game – Aghanim for fights and base defense, Hex for ganking or focusing an important hero in fights or Dagon if you’re having a good game and you want to have higher kill potential. 

As a Tinker, there are a few things you need to learn in order to maximize your efficiency.

• Shift-queueing the Blink Dagger
  

When you teleport to a creep with Travels, you always want to shift-queue your Dagger somewhere in the trees. Shift-queue (for those who don’t know) is done by holding Shift and using the Blink Dagger while you’re teleporting with Boots of Travel – that order will be executed as soon as you teleport to the creep. This is a very important thing to do as you never want to show on the map for longer than necessary.

There are heroes who can catch you even if you shift-queue the Blink Dagger if they deal damage to you instantly when you teleport and disable it. Examples are heroes like Weaver (staying with Shukuchi on top of your creep), Windranger/Lina/KotL/Magnus/Puck (using a flying projectile at the same moment your teleport finishes), Zeus (using ult a split-second before you teleport), Pudge (Rot), Clockwerk (Cogs), Void (Chronosphere).

Against such heroes, if you’re ever in doubt that they will attempt to kill you, start teleporting and then cancel it in the last moment – if there are heroes waiting for you, you will see it. If nothing happens, you can Rearm and go again. 

• Soul Ring efficiency
  

You can drop some of your mana items on the ground before you use Soul Ring so you can gain more mana. That will make your mana pool lower and Soul Ring’s effectiveness will increase proportionally to the amount of mana you get when you pick up your items again.

The combo you can do is: Bottle -> Rearm -> Shift-queue drop items -> Bottle -> Soul Ring -> Pick items -> Teleport. Of course, try to execute it only if you’re in a safe position, i.e. your fountain.

• Bottle in backpack
  

Once you have more items, you don’t want to sell your bottle. Keep it in your backpack and when you’re at the fountain, switch it with a mana item (to lower your total mana pool) and use it to regenerate faster. If you’re out of mana, you can drop your other mana items on the ground as well. While fountain regenerates %HP/Mana, Bottle always regenerates a fixed amount so it will be most effective when your total mana pool is as low as possible.

• Rearm refreshes a disabled Blink Dagger
  

That means that even if you’re being hit, you should not panic. In some cases, you will be able to Rearm and then instantly blink before the enemies hit you after the Rearm. This is done easier if you have a quick cast key for the Blink Dagger as you will only need to press one button.

Tinker’s farm skyrockets once he has a Blink Dagger. The way to farm is to teleport on creeps, blink into the trees to stay safe and use March of the Machines to clear out waves and neutral camps. Farming the creep waves also automatically qualifies as split-pushing, as you are out-pushing the lanes at a very high pace – this is why Tinker is one of the best in that department. He pushes waves while just farming, no matter how far into the enemy territory are they.

Cast one or two Marches on the creep wave and then go jungle if possible and use March to damage two neutral camps. Try to use your whole mana pool before you go back to base to maximize your farm – a lot of players only cast 2 marches on the creep waves and then teleport back to base with 60-70% mana left, which is a waste of time.

Check the clock as well – if it’s close to x:53-55, you can stack the neutrals camps.

Try to take the bounty runes if you’re close to them – two of them are worth a whole creep wave.

Once you clear a creep wave, you can use Rearm and Blink to go forward and clear the next wave as well with Marches from the trees. You just need to have a general idea of where the creep wave is going to be on the specific time – for example, most players know that the creep wave reaches T2 tower at about x:12 or x:42, so you want to cast March at x:10/x:40. You can also look at your own creep wave at the opposite side of the map. The enemy creep wave will mirror it.

Another mistake that a lot of players make is to steal their teammates’ farm. There’s a limited amount of resources on the map. As a Tinker, you can farm everywhere and this gives your team a huge advantage as you can distribute those resources much easier. This means that you can select the more dangerous spots to farm as that leaves easier to access farm for your teammates. Especially important is that you don’t teleport to farm on a lane where your carry is heading. For example, your carry is farming in your jungle and then plans to go to the pushed-in safe lane – don’t teleport to the safe lane to farm. Doing this a couple of times will waste a lot of the time of your own carry and he/she will end up under-farmed for no fault of his/her own. Before going somewhere, check where your teammates are and go to a lane where no one is currently farming.

The Tinker wards

There are specific spots where players can put wards on cliffs on the edges of the map and those spots are called Tinker wards because they cover huge areas and have unobstructed vision (and they’re used against Tinker obviously).

Fortunately, those spots are only 4 (pictures below) and the wards need to be placed on those exact spots – the diameter where you can place it is only about 1-2 cm. This means you can dodge those areas if you ever have even the slightest suspicion that the enemies might have a ward there.

Tinker is one of the best comeback heroes in the game – you always have a chance to turn it around, so don’t panic if you’re in a bad position and focus.

You can farm anywhere on the map and if you play correctly, it’s very hard for the enemies to catch you. If you suspect a gank, you can always stop your teleport in the last second to check if they’ll go on you.

If you’re already on the lane, after you cast March of the Machines, instead of teleporting to the base, you can blink again (or even twice) further into the trees in order to dodge ganks. This will move you with 1000-2000 range away from the March position where enemies will search for you.

Tinker is also one of the hardest heroes to push against, if not the hardest. 2 or 3 Marches are usually enough to stop any push attempts. Here are a few tips for successful defense:

• Make sure to be in position before the enemies arrive at your doorstep. A common mistake Tinker players make is to teleport to base after the enemies are already sieging your high ground which makes defending much, much harder. If you cast Marches before the enemies reach your high ground, their creep wave dies almost instantly and even if they try to siege, they will pay with blood for every second they stay in the March.
  
• March of the Machines has a huge area of effect, so you can cover the entire area around your high ground. If possible, you want to target the March close to your tower and the robots should go towards the enemies. Every next March should be at a different angle so that the enemies can’t hide behind their creep wave or behind other heroes. This is where Aether Lens is very useful as well because it allows you to position your March better from a safer distance.
  
• If you have Aghanim, you want to cast it on the closest possible target to you – even if it’s a creep, the Laser will still bounce on heroes within 650 range of it. This essentially increases your Laser’s casting range and also bypasses Linken’s Spheres. 
  

In the early/mid game, you want to teleport to help with ganks only if your teammates find a good target first. Executing solo ganks without having a Hex or Dagon is hard as most heroes have some disables, escape mechanisms or they can get help from their teammates. Also, this puts you in a risky position and killing Tinker is the top priority in your enemies’ agenda.

However, if you decide you want to gank someone early on, you can cast a Missile from the trees, quickly Rearm and then blink -> Missile -> Laser. This could be enough to kill low HP heroes who can’t escape.

Later on, when you have Hex, you can pose a threat to a vast number of heroes. You can perma-hex an enemy even if they have Linken’s (break it with Laser) and even if you don’t have the damage or time to take your target down, you can buy some time for your teammates to come and help you. This is very effective if you have teammates with Boots of Travel (they can teleport on a creep while the enemy is hexed and can’t kill it) or if they are already in position, so you just have to hex the enemy for your team to go in.

Keep in mind, however, that in the late game there’s a high chance that the enemies will always stay together and try to bait you by showing only one hero on the map. Don’t take make moves, especially in the late game when dying could result in your whole base going down.  

Tinker is pretty strong in team-fights, provided that he stays alive. A constant rule throughout the entire game is to stay out of sight – the enemies will know your relative position by seeing where your missiles are coming from, but making a move on you without vision is pretty hard without a hero like Storm or Spectre. Try to never stay close to the fight, don’t blink close to enemies – remember that your abilities have a huge casting range, especially with Aether Lens.

Take team-fights only if you already have Blink Dagger. Without it, you’re very vulnerable, so unless the fight is really in your favor (for example the fight is close to your tower where you can teleport and stay behind), you might want to go split-push and farm your Blink faster.

Tinker starts shining in team-fights when he has the Blink Dagger as that allows you to blink into the trees and spam your spells from there with low risk for your life.

Keep in mind that March is very strong in the early/mid game but loses some of its effectiveness later on. You can still use it to disable Blink Daggers in a large area. Also, if the fight is ‘moving’, March is good for covering your escape and obviously not that useful when your team is chasing the enemy.

Until you have Aghanim’s, you should focus mainly on March + Missiles. Laser becomes strong when it’s upgraded and with Aether Lens, you can use it from 975 range. Before that it’s too risky to walk forward to use Laser in a team fight – only do it when the fight is mostly over and you are finishing-off enemies.

Hex is also very good in team-fights because it has a huge casting range (with Aether Lens), so you can use it from a safe distance to disable an important hero. Same goes for Dagon, especially in the late game where the BKB durations are lower so you cast just burst heroes down after 5 seconds. 

• Video Example:

Notice how N[o]one stays at a safe distance and constantly spams his spells. When his mana is over he goes back to base to recharge, but he doesn’t wait for his full mana pool – that would take too long. He sees that his teammates need him and teleports with just enough mana to secure the kills and the fight with. He blinks aggressively when he knows his enemies cannot fight back.

Tinker is not good at hitting towers, so you never want to do that. However, in a siege, you can spam March to make it harder for the enemies to defend. Try to target it close to the enemy tower and it will cover a huge part of the enemy base. Use 2 or 3 of those and the enemies won’t even be able to come close to their own tower. That also disables their Blink daggers, so it makes initiating a fight much harder