General Discussionsome help with tinker pls :c

I think you have the right idea with what you build and throughout the game you seem to also perform decently well. Perhaps it is your "picked when you shouldn't have picked" deal that lets you down.

Some people to watch...

http://dotabuff.com/players/44346153
http://dotabuff.com/players/86735371
http://dotabuff.com/players/61061435

don't go for dagon before scythe in the games you're losing unless you can instashot most of their team.

just doing this as I think of things as I go along, excuse the lack of structure / order.

you've only played 9 games, that's not a reliable sample, don't feel too bad about it. for all we know, you could have some untapped godly tinker potential. having 1 win out of 9 games on tinker doesn't mean you'll have 10 wins on him after 90 games.

To start, stop getting rearm rank 2 at level 11 when you don't even have a max mana pool of 1000 yet. I would consider 1000 mana the milestone for level 3 rearm, which is normally what you'll have at level 13 (when all your QWE skills are maxed anyways) it's possible to get level 2 rearm before that, but you're mostly better off trading 1 extra second of channeling rearm another point in laser, rocket or march.

In the 3 games you got to level 19, you got rearm at that time. it might be coincidence, but if not, don't get rank 3 rearm at a predefined level, you should get it when your mana pool reaches a certain amount, or you have sheepstick (which will in most cases, also give you an acceptable mana pool). use your experience / judgement, but I get rearm 3 with at least 1500 mana pool, although I also have a sheepstick at that point. There's rarely/never a time I've had >1500 mana and no sheep.

[color=#8bfff1]I usually pick tinker when i'm radiant, to make sure i can stack while laning mid[/color]
That's a good idea, most players new to Tinker don't think about these small things.

[color=#8bfff1]I start with a mantle and tango, rush bottle and BoTs[/color]
Mantle + tango is a bad starting item build. Compare mantle to 3 iron branches

mantle - 150g, 1 item slot, +3 int
3 branches - 150g, 3 item slots, +3 int, +3 agi (3/7ths armour) and +3 str (57 HP)

the downside of branches is they occupy more item slots, but you aren't lacking item slots at the start of the game anyways, so that downside doesn't matter, while it gives you one or two extra hits of survivability (tinker has good base armour of 4.something)

Starting items I'd recommend:

• 3 branches + tango for a quick bottle
• 3 branches + salve + tango + mantle or circlet for good last hitting and lane staying power.
circlet gives some extra armour and HP but 1 less damage, and at the cost of delaying your bottle by a last hit compared to mantle.

• Null + salve + 2 pooled tangos if you need the best possible last hitting power to get XP.
if you sit back and just last hit you won't take much harass that you need extra regen anyways.
• Null + 2 branches + 2 pooled tangos, then buy a tango or salve with the first 120 gold before you go bottle, similar deal to null + salve, but with 2 extra damage.

Both these null builds will spend as much gold as the branches + circlet/mantle build, but it will give more damage, which is the most important thing if you are against a stronger laner than you. more regen won't help because you shouldn't be trading hits in the first place if they're stronger than you.

In one game I saw you max out rockets before laser. you shouldn't do this if you are trying to get kills, you may end up getting no kills due to not having enough single target damage, and also in the early game you won't have the mana or time to cast rearm for a second set of spells, so you want to max the spell you're going to use more often, which is laser, because one, it deals more damage, and two, it has a lower cooldown meaning you can use it twice in one fight without rearm.

In the only game you won, for some reason you sold soul ring. don't ever do this unless it is being replaced by a big mana item (bottle does not count). soul ring is your biggest source of mana pool besides maybe a bloodstone, even in the late game. the more times you rearm soul ring, the more mana it gives you, making soul ring a late game item because of the way it scales on tinker.

• scythe of vyse - 35 int = 35 x 13 = 455 mana pool increase
• soul ring = (# of rearms + 1) x 150 mana pool. in the late game you can get at least 5 rearms off. that's 6 soul ring usages which is 900 mana, since you'll use soul ring once before you cast your first rearm, and it's only 800 gold.

If you don't have space for bottle, keep it in the fountain so you can restore you mana more quickly when in base, or give it to a support who could use the regen. if your carry has a spare item slot and saves a double damage rune, if his damage is mostly base damage rather than from items, a DD rune can give more DPS than a daedelus, for the same number of item slots. do not keep the bottle in your inventory when fighting because it will only give you a 210 mana pool increase, no matter what you do with it. soul ring scales with your items.

If you do get dagon, that doesn't mean you have to go dagon 5, because it will leave you with a shit mana pool if you have nothing else. For mana pool only, you're paying 1250 gold for +2 int increase, whereas force staff, euls or ultimate orb (for hex) give you 10 int for ~2.5k gold, the price of 2 dagon recipes, and the first two also give you utility (which is what tinker lacks, his QWE already give him good damage).

You can get e-blade without a dagon, it provides an 80% slow and stops the enemy from attacking. against pure right clickers, that's as good as a sheepstick, which you can then use on people who have big spells.

"[color=#8bfff1]When i hit lv7, my skillbuild is usually 2-0-4-1 when I'm against a pretty easy lane hero and 1-4-1-1 if I'm against a squishy but hard laner[/color]"

I don't think a 1-4-1-1 build is good. You don't stop pushes as well as 2-0-4-1 or 1-1-4-1, you have neither single target damage of laser, or the teamfight damage that max march gives, nor the farming power of march if you fall behind, which could happen if you die. you even said your 1-4-1-1 build is for against heroes you have a hard time laning against, which is even more reason to get march to farm.

So 1-4-1-1 doesn't let you stay ahead unlike a max laser + rocket ganking build, nor defend as well as a max march turtling build.

If you wanted to harass the enemy out of lane, 2-0-4 is better because laser is more damage efficient against single targets than rocket is, blinds for 3 seconds, and also has a lower cooldown which you don't have to rearm for, missiles you generally do.

You shouldn't always get rearm at 6 if you aren't going to farm the ancient stack any time soon. The situations you can get it are when you get soul ring before travels for free rearms allowing you to farm the regular jungle as well as ancients, or if you are having such a good lane that you'll get travels really quickly. If you're just sitting in lane last hitting, you could go 1-2-4-0 since rocket's damage goes up from 100 to 175 (huge % increase), and still get rearm when you get travels.

Don't blindly follow a skill build, be prepared to change your skill build to what is needed at the current time. To do this, save your skill points. I think it was arteezy or qojqva that was a safe lane tinker on dire in a competitive match, and they only had rank 1 laser by level 6, which allowed them to skill rockets if it could get them a kill, without losing the farming potential of march if there were no kills to be gotten.

http://dotabuff.com/matches/576566126
cherry-picking this match of mine, at first I was considering a 2-0-4-1 build or 1-1-4-1, but I was against zeus. and this specific zeus i was playing against had really bad last hitting, and keeping laser at 1 for the blind was pointless because he'd just use arc lightning anyways. At level 3, I had 2 points into laser and nothing else, that's why it shows that I got a second point of laser at level 2. I got rank 2 laser for the mana effiicent harassment.

Just compare 2 casts of rank 1 laser to 1 cast of rank 2 laser. Both do 160 pure damage, one costs 190 mana, the other costs 120.

Levels in march may not have been useful for laning against zeus, because zeus can push back the wave, and also arc lightning has a long cast range so he would still be able to get cs with arc without being harassed.

I got rockets at 3 and 4 because I got a solo kill as he was trying to escape. had I blindly gone 2-0-2 and didn't save my skill points, I would not have gotten a kill in that situation. Here's a tip: by default, holding down ctrl and pressing a skill will rank it up, so I held ctrl, quickly pressed W twice, released ctrl, then pressed W again for a kill, and took less than a second.

I didn't get rearm at 6 because if I did, I would only have rank 1 march which would be too mana intensive to farm ancients with, and because I got a kill and had decent lane cs, I could just go travels first rather than soul ring for ancients, although in hindsight I should've kept a skill point since i ended up getting travels at level 8.

I could've gone 2-2-1-1, but instead I went 2-2-2-0 by level 6, because a second point in March increases it's damage from 16 to 24 (50% increase) for only 5 extra mana, which is better for damage than casting 2 rank 1 Marches and using Rearm if you're limited on mana.

Also I got dagon before sheep, because it would have paid for some of it's cost if I got kills (which I did). My team were already doing well, so dagon let us stay ahead. I could've gotten a sheepstick sooner than without a dagon, but that might have allowed the enemy to win a fight because I only had an ultimate orb rather than a dagon. If you don't get kills with it, dagon just slows down your next item.

Let's say you get 5 kills because of the Dagon's damage, and each kill is idk, 300 gold. Dagon has recouped 1500 gold of it's 2720 cost, so it's basically given you 5 kills for 1220 gold, 5 kills worth of XP, and also made the enemies lose gold from deaths. This is much more impactful than an Ultimate Orb or a Mystic Staff for Sheep.

"[color=#8bfff1]Some of my teammates were complaining about me pushing the lanes too much early(especially when I max march first)[/color]"

You should be counterpushing mostly, rather than split pushing, since you lack tower damage. If you push one lane in too far to the enemy side, your teammates cannot farm it because it is too dangerous to, and if you don't have a blink, you can't farm it either. Also you're giving the enemy safe farm by letting your creeps get to their side of the map.

If there are no lanes to counterpush for some reason, farm the jungle and stack whenever possible, including the enemy's jungle. Position your marches so you can hit multiple camps. Every minute there are 2 waves of creeps in each lane (6 waves) and 5 regular jungle camps for each team.

Your team cannot farm the jungle as effectively as you can, so if you steal all the lane creeps, that leaves your team to farm the jungle ineffectively, and this can hurt your team's GPM. As an example, you can farm the ancients, and you can farm lane creeps. A friendly ally can not farm ancients, but can farm lane creeps. If you steal the lane creeps, your team only gets gold from creep kills, when they could've got creeps + ancients which obviously give more total gold.

What you should be doing is joining fights when the enemy push, and when the fight is over: if you win the fight, your team can push one lane while you go push another. If you lose the fight and you're still alive, you can keep the pressure off the other two lanes, so your team still has map control. You're no Lycan or Prophet, you can't take towers while your team is fighting 4v5.

http://dotabuff.com/players/86735371

Thumbs up on badgers SANO. There is a Tinker thread in detail on how to play him I would strongly suggest you read it it was made by Sano.

well, all of what Androgynous say is true. However I disagree on the starting item choices. I feel that if you're playing with a group of friends, you should ask them to pull you two tangos and you buy a null talisman straight up. I usually go for bottle, then brown boots then soul ring. By the time I have soul ring I might already have a few ancient stacks. Then, when i have 1-1-4-1, I'll clear the ancient stacks and usually will get my boots about the 8th to 9th minute mark. I've learnt that getting BoT before soul ring is rather hard against a strong team and unless you're snowballing with the 4-4-0-1 build, it's best to get a soul ring first. Since u like playing tinker in radiant, march your lane, go to the two hard camps at your jungle and land a march there. I think tinker is best played if u stayed some distance in a teamfight and spam rockets (this is when you have hex) and just blinking in to get a laser kill. other than that, you really depend on your team to win a teamfight. Talking about pushing lanes, it's best to communicate with your team which lane u plan on taking. When on radiant, I like to push the top lane. That way, after using march on the lanes, I can go to their jungle, the one with the small camp and big camp nearby and clear those two immediately. By the time you have cleared those, the enemy creep is already reaching your creeps. So, I guess the take home message is that you maximize your creep killing time. Also, whenever possible, have your teammates to stack for you and you guys can clear it together since Tinker have such a strong creep killing ability. Regarding item choices, I realized that rushing hex is only viable if you have a proper team. If not, its best to have dagon 5 and from there, you're free to do hex, eblade, etc. Although I would recommend hex, I guess its best for you to try eblade and learn how to manage your mana better. Having said that, when I go eblade dagon, I usually only max my ulti at level 19 due to the mana constraint.
Other than that, I guess experience is all it takes to improve. Keep practising and have the urge to farm more. Sorry if this text is such a clump :3 Good luck!

I did say that Null + 2 pooled tangos is an option. If you don't need the extra last hitting power, there's no point hurting your other lanes for it though. If you're against a weak laner, just harass them out the lane so they can't deny against you