Tinker is Outdated
For most Dota 2 players, the mention of Tinker’s name usually brings memories of getting bursted by this annoying hero that could never be caught, as he blinks around and refreshes his cooldowns every second. However, the past year has seen Tinker decline in popularity and win rate. He is now at a 45% win rate on Dotabuff and has a pick rate of 5%, much worse than the average of 8% for most heroes. Despite getting buffs from the beginning of 7.00 all the way up to 7.25, the hero feels weaker than ever. It has been difficult for me to see the decline of one of my favorite heroes, and one of the most creative heroes in Dota being in such a state.
Several buffs over the course of 10 patches
Tinker’s weaknesses are an interesting case study into how factors other than the base hero itself can affect the overall strength of a hero. Dota 2 has changed so much over the last year or 2, and these changes in playstyle along with the release of new heroes and items essentially power-crept Tinker to the point where I would argue that Tinker as a hero is OUTDATED.
New heroes
Tinker’s play style relies on him being slippery and being more mobile than his opponents, constantly blinking and pressing spells while being in a much safer position than most heroes can reach. Ever since Reborn, it has been harder to execute the strategy that makes Tinker unique: it feels like every major hero and item update since then works well against Tinker. Let's take a look:
Hero releases since Reborn
- Monkey King: extremely mobile, can chase Tinker down in the trees and get close to him. Has a large AOE stun that prevents Tinker from blinking or TPing out.
- Dark Willow: probably the weakest counter on this list. Can Terrorize over the area that Tinker might have blinked to, has a defensive option in Shadow Realm.
- Pangolier: Rolling Thunder means Tinker literally cannot do anything to him, while Pangolier can break trees to find Tinker. Swashbuckle with Basher gives Pangolier the ability to cancel Tinker’s Blink, while being extremely mobile.
- Grimstroke: can scout Tinker with Stroke of Fate; has a point and click silence that gives vision; latched Soulbind removes Tinker's mobility.
- Mars: Builds Blink Dagger as the first major item, can blink and Arena of Blood, breaking trees and potentially stunning with Spear.
- Snapfire: can Cookie someone into the trees to find you and Mortimer’s Kisses can completely invalidate Tinker’s mobility in any fight.
- Void Spirit: Has a disable in Aether remnant, Lots of AOE damage, and 2 Astral Step charges that can catch up with Tinker easily
Nullifier and Status resist
This item really invalidates one of Tinker’s main defensive options which is constantly being able to ghost scepter and blink away. The main reason why this is important is that everyone has access to it. Although it costs a lot of money, the existence of the item makes it so that any core hero with a mobility item and a Nullifier is able to kill Tinker. Another small addition to consider is that Status resist is tacked on to items that are commonly bought by most carries.
Meta is too quick
As Dota 2 players have grown over time, they have realized that a proactive style of play usually beats a defensive style. In today’s day and age, a mid hero that can’t provide anything to early fights and provides no pressure is too weak to be played, and Tinker needs both Boots of Travel and Blink to properly take part in skirmishes. Usually, teams fall too far behind to compensate for the space that Tinker needs early game.
Even if Tinker gets ahead early game, Tinker only has a small window between when he is ahead and the enemy cores get their BKBs to essentially win the game. The reason for this is that Tinker cannot push towers. He can keep lanes pushed, but does no damage to towers. For most stages of the game, there are just better heroes to pick.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are several reasons as to why Tinker is a very weak hero right now, and they really have nothing to do with the base hero itself. It is very interesting to see several factors contribute to making a hero strong or weak. I think Tinker is an interesting case study because we get to see how changes in the game completely invalidated a playstyle. If Tinker cannot blink around trees and cast spells safely to annoy the enemy, he is essentially a very mobile range creep with some magical burst.
fIrsT.
This means that you need to find new strats and options for this hero, when comunity rush just One strat for hero, you must understand that sometime this become weak for many reasons like meta, players experience and new heroes/items. This is not hero problem, this problem of conservatism.
This bullshit article , tinker still strong
Interesting take on Tinker, but I like to think that the reason that he started falling off is because the heroes he'd beat in lane, which would kickstart his snowball, can now either ignore him, or turn it around.
Think about Shadow Fiend. I've seen, heard, and participated in debates about this 1v1 matchup against Tinker, with some swearing that SF easily wins lane, but for the longest time majority hated the matchup because Tinker could bully you early with laser-rocket. But with the buffs to raze damage stacking, changes to necromastery, and the addition of neutral camps, SF could basically walk away, raze a few neutrals, and come back equal to Tinker, nullifying the early kill threat.
Totally agreed. i think Icefrog is trying to keep down annoying heroes like tinker, ember, nature's prophet and ... cuz a lot of people struggle to play against them
Tinker has always been and will always be a great hero given you know how to play him. The only problem is that most mid heroes win Tinker if they are equal opponents. The problem is easily fixed with being better than your opponent. Other than that he's still hardly killable hero with permahex and incredible burst. Yes, spec is more annoying than ever, but you can still hex the haunt illu before she teleports to you. Have you even seen a good tinker lately? The author just forgot what this hero is truly capable of because of some idiots picking it without knowing what to do. Tinker, meepo, brood, arc warden will always be at least niche picks, because of their unique nature.
By the way, there's a guy playing only tinker(when it's unbanned) at 8700 mmr avg. tv/mrxsmurf. I myself got 5k just by spamming tinker and arc.
EDIT: TINKER ONLY HAS TIME LIMIT UNTIL HEROES GET THEIR BKB'S??!! ROFL. Good luck playing against 7 slot tinker with 5s bkbs, I enjoy watching you struggle. (Lotus won't help. Almost nothing will.)
Edit 2: Edit 2: Your favorite hero, on which you have 47% winrate. ON CRUSADER BRACKET! You have no damn idea how to play the hero. Not even remotely. Or may be you simply can't press keys. Anyways, you're straight up wrong because of lack of understanding what this hero does and how does he do that.
Wow a lot of salt in these comments. Seems like Tinker will always be a niche pick. I've toyed around with the hero for a bit and in my opinion it's the hardest hero in the game to play. Harder than Meepo, for sure. Spell casting is an incredibly involved 8(?) step sequence you repeat while trying to ride the precipice of having impact and evading the enemy. It's fun, cool, and heroes like Tinker are the reason dota is a great game. That said it's hard to play. Heroes which are hard to play are hard to balance because in most hands they suck but in the right hands they're broken. Look no further than ES, AW, and Visage. In my low mmr and probably invalid opinion if the frog wants people to play more Tinker give him a talent at 25 where march damages structures.
Stats show that Tinker has a positive matchup against literally all the heroes you mentioned. Notably, he COUNTERS Mars, Monkey, and Pango, and not the other way around
I feel like you could take just about ANY hero and list off things that could potentially counter Tinker, but that's true of ANY hero.
Yeah pango can stunlock Tink IF the positioning allows for such a move.
Yeah Willow can root Tink, but he can still put down a world of hurt before death.
Yeah Mars can throw ring around him, but then it's a situation of who is stuck inside with who.
Yeah MK can scout him out, but the stun doesn't last long. The backup needs to be ready.
The strongest of the bunch here I'd say is Grimstroke, silences are far more effective on Tinker, and he then can't TP home (I think).
But I'm stuck on a question that kind of precedes this deep dive into counters: was Tinker strong because he didn't have decent counters? I'd venture to guess....probably....
fuck off none of the new heros counter tinker
What a surprise! An opponent from a few days back writing an article on one of our shared favorite heroes! Kudos to you on your content you have provided.
What kind of nonsense article is this
"In today’s day and age"
Please, author and commenters, as an English professor I ask that you never use the above phrase. "At this time" is less repetitive and slightly more precise. "Since the unveiling of Monkey King" or "since 2016" or "for the past four years" are all more precise and more interesting to read.
That'll be $40,000.
We get articles from crusaders with a sub 50% winrate now? Wild.
Tinker needs to snowball to win games, and not be picked into counters. Mid laners usually get last pick, so to can avoid this whole situation by, ya know, picking last...
Every time i played Pango vs Tinker, it was still hard unless Tinker wasn't good.
I used to loath Tinker in games, but I just played VS him yesterday, and I don't really care when he's an opponent anymore. Unless it's a 50min+ game and he has Sheep, I generally think he's just kind of "annoying."
The meta is slower bro, much much slower.
@fathomorg yo! Your void spirit was clean dude, put your team on your back
Tinker is and forever will be broken, having a no colddown refresher is that powerful.
This hero in the hands of a skilled player is simply op, it will ruin your game faster than a techies spammer and you basically start playing another game, that's is not defense of the ancients but feels more like whack a mole with dodge the missiles.
The main problem is, this hero is being played in the exact same way since dota1, people go mid rush BoT & Blink and rat their way out to victory, nobody even try anything else, probably because you will get flammed.
Just like Bloodseeker got new life in offlane, Tinker is a hero that could possibly fill other roles and benefit by leaving the same old formula, exploring this hero in other capabilities could breath new life into him and his meta.
bullshit
U missed out on Yapzor tinker pos 4 lul
Man i really love how people with 3-digit MMR's talk like hes still OP.
As a tinker lover and historically like a 40% win rate, in the past 2 months, my Tinker winrate has been around 55%. I think all the buffs plus the tower hits change really help his last hitting. And the +2.5s march duration is just nasty for tower and hg defenses.
I do find that bloodstone is core on him now, somewhere after blink, kaya and scepter.
@low sodium master shake I think you try and win the game at blink, BoTs, Aether lens, Blyatstone and maybe shiva
This entire post seems like a mad tinker player
I am sure the article was meant for general audience, not just very high level players. However, tinker is a heavily reliant on the user fast mechanics and response time kinda hero which is a pretty good high skill bar in dota.
Nerds if you wanna absolutely destroy with tinker, all you need to master shift queuing. W33 or Qojqva are the ones you wanna look at. Also Tinker has a very hero breaking bug (Feature?) Where you rearm and the hero stands still for a sec, people who play tinker know what I'm talking about.
I completely agree with this post. However, I think there's a few other reasons tinker just isn't picked. Tinker is completely reliant on having a lot of item, yes, but he gets those items by farming the entire map. Every lane becomes tinker's when he gets BoTs, which leaves your entire team woefully underfarmed and forces them to passively farm the jungle. Tinker then has your entire team's networth, so if he dies, he just gives all of that to the other team. Even then, a farmed tinker is rarely strong enough to solo carry a game. Usually Tinker can be very farmed but not farmed enough to prevent his team from dying before he kills his enemies. Now, assuming you haven't already lost, tinker can't actually end games himself; he needs his other heroes to have items so they can end the game for him. But wait! Remember what I said before? His team won't have any items because all the gold is in the tinker who can't actually end the game himself. What a cool hero!
I don't think it's necessarily the hero. The game is just too fast. One team can't afford to have two farm oriented heroes. If you wanna pick a mid who farms for the first 15-20 min. You gotta have a fighting safelaner but then again, is your mid a "win condition"? I feel like Tinker is in the middle of nowhere right now, he needs farm, but is not strong enough to solo the game.
I'd say for the most part the hero is still fine. The biggest problem with the hero is not the heroes or tinker itself its the fact that the game is more brawl like than ever. Heroes getting levels faster, getting more stat items earlier on, neautral items helping as well as healing like Nether Shawl and Ring of essence for example. Its just harder to super burst people down like you did in other mid circumstances in earlier patches. This doesn't really make the hero useless I think its only that he is
A) picked less because they want more roaming and moving around the map heroes
B) can be a liability
and C) No one has really shown in a professional setting how to make him work in a consistent sense.
This doesn't mean it's not possible. and winrate doesn't really reflect anything in this situation because people are just going the normal way they've all been going.
@NGAM hah! i experienced it too. It is called "Cast Backwing"
https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Cast_animation#Cast_backswing
At first, i thought its my trash potato pc that gives me those laggy standstill animation. Turns out it was this hidden mechanic lol
Permahex, so creative hero.
Yeah hero trash rn
I think one important factor is that there are not many good neutral items for Tinker. you do not really have many options, unlike other carries.
ok retard crusader you have twice as many games as MMR