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There are generally two types of heroes we all dread playing against. There are the ones we hate to play against because they are strong. There are also the ones we hate to play against because they are annoying. When stars align, these two characteristics come together and we get something absolutely abhorrent. Yeah, today is one of those blog posts.
We are not going to mince words: Tinker was the inspiration for this post in the first place and is by far the annoying character in the entire game. His whole kit is about sucking the fun out of the map for the other nine players involved.
This is usually fine, as the hero does take a while to take off and is quite skill-dependent, but lately he got a little bit too good. 56%+ win rate in Divine+ games with a 10%+ pick rate is very telling. Essentially, one can first phase pick Tinker every single game and have a lot of success.
Sure, there are some heroes Tinker struggles against. Static characters like Zeus, Nyx Assassin and some mobile heroes like Spectre, Anti-Mage or even Storm Spirit can technically deal with him, but they are far from being a hard-counter against a well-played Tinker.
The big problem is Tinker doesn’t need much nowadays. They took away his farming tool in March of the Machines and gave him a basic ability he needed a farming tool for in the first place in Keen Conveyance. Now, the moment Tinker is level 12 with Blink Dagger he is already close to unstoppable and he even saves on an item slot.
And it’s not like you can prevent the hero from farming well. Between Laser being AoE Pure damage for taking stacks and second item Shiva's Guard, it is highly unusual for Tinker to fall behind.
Still, we feel like getting rid of Laser AoE would definitely be a step in the right direction. Let Tinker be this late-game monster, just make sure he doesn’t get there at minute 20.
Arc Warden is a very peculiar hero. His win rate rises with the skill level of players involved, but then sharply falls off at pro-level pubs. Essentially, unless you are playing top 2500 Immortal pubs, the hero is most like a problem for you. An incredibly annoying late-game problem that has multiple game-stalling mechanics built in.
The hero farms very fast, but we feel like it isn’t the problem. Between the potential double hero, hence double Maelstrom and double Hand of Midas, he can accelerate to his other key items, but this mechanic is fine. We have other heroes like Alchemist and well-laned Anti-Mage, Naga Siren or Terrorblade who absolutely takeoff net worth-wise and they don’t always feel annoying.
The problem is Arc Warden gets to be annoying and utilize the full extent of his net worth with little to no repercussions. Moreover, later on he gets to have a 40% cooldown reduction on his Tempest Double and it means very low cooldown Scythe of Vyse, Overwhelming Blink and Bloodthorn.
What it means is that the enemy team has to commit resources comparable to the resources they need to commit for an actual hero to get a kill on Tempest Double and while they do get a nice bounty, there is no opening created for actually progressing the game.
They can’t necessarily push or take Roshan, since the Arc team still has their full roster. Moreover, with some stalling, they most likely will have another Tempest Double in a couple of seconds, making Arc clone kills a very frustrating exercise in futility.
We don’t know how to solve this conundrum, but having a guaranteed sub-40 second “respawn timer” on Tempest Double feels wrong. Considering it can be further reduced to 30 seconds with Octarine Core, the frustration with the hero is very understandable.
We don’t have a solution to this problem, but we understand why it exists: the hero isn’t too good in the professional scene and we fully support Valve balancing the game around the absolute highest level of play. It makes for a much better game design, even if it is a bit unfortunate for a large part of the playerbase. Still, we are certain that there is a creative solution to this problem.
Perhaps you have one? If so, share your ideas in the comment section below.
Imagine Arc Warden having his summon cooldown increased to 70 seconds if you actually kill it. Oh wait it was really a Brewmasters aghs, my bad. (Sarcasm off)
On the real note though, those heroes are not hard to dial back, just get the laser not enough damage to kill a ranged creep at lvl 4, it'll slow tinker enough to force a Kaya before blink or suffer with double casts.
Its just Valve seems to be reluctant to mess with heroes toolkit lately. I assume they want "big patch" out, and THEN dial down the winners, and up the losers.
Or maybe they are just busy making new immortal-bloody-golden-arcana-persona-skin for invoker.
If you play correct you can deal with both of them
cry kid
U forgot to mention that both of these heros are used by script and cheat users which takes the issue to a whole different level, also i think tinker is way worse than arc , because u can kill arc warden when u are on top of him but u just cant prevent tinker from blinking away unless u are playing with 200 stuns on your team
My solution to arc warden would be having his magnetic field not provide evasion to buildings which is the most annoying thing about the hero by far. Once you're ahead and everything's going great, he still has that shit to allow him and his team to easily stall the game until he has all the items he needs.
dont delete tinker!!!!!
Докрутились..
А арка не трогайтэ
As someone whos played as and against a lot of both of these heroes, they're no where near as bad as people make out. Matrix needs a nerf, and Arc needs to not have 2 free building fortifies.
Make Tinker's laser do 50% more damage to the hero and nerf the base damage so that the damage to heros is the same. Such a change would drastically reduce farm potential (ancient stack and ranged creep).
Tinker was at least manageable before rework - you either max nukes and try to snowball or afk farm 20 minutes and give space for enemies. Now it's braindead broken hero with nukes that deal more damage + AOE + shield + can't break his blink.
Arc is fair to play against (he can't blink out like Tinker at least when caught), but he has numbers busted - sparks do way more damage than they should, ult should have longer cooldown and/or give more gold on kill so you can't just spam it staying afk base.
Tinker rework tinker rework!
Seems like tinker is the most hated hero. But i like him. :)
not talking about bara? annoying ass hero
what do you have against ark? cool and balanced hero, weak against illusionists, summoners and in early game
I like the idea of making the cooldown on Tempest Double shorter if you acutely accomplish something with it (getting a kill, taking a tower, etc) or inversely making it longer if the double is killed too quickly by the enemy, so it's harder to just use it as a free pressuring tool.
Alternatively, what about making Arc suffer some penalty if the double dies violently? Not kill him off like a Meepo-clone, but maybe if the double dies far from Arc (so it won't happen in the middle of a teamfight), then Arc gets a temporary debuff to damage, HP, speed, etc.
Remove the arc warden building defense bullshit w/ magnetic field (as in, only applies to heroes), make laser only hit a max of 3 targets and I am happy
Neither of these two heroes are enjoyable in any sense to play against, just like Techies was. Techies is still in a decent spot, so there's no reason to believe they can't re-work these two heroes into a better spot as well.
I ban tinker every single game. Anytime I let tinker through, the game is worse for it.
tl;dr: item spam is OP
Arc Warden and Tinker are completely fine. The game needs to be balanced at the highest of levels being played and clearly high MMR players do not have a problem counting what these heroes do well.
Arc Warden and Tinker are situational picks at best in high level pubs and pro games.
you shouldnt make an article about deleting heros. you should make an article about this broken matchmaking! you can play any hero. you cant win against the matchmaking. gg rq
@Low APM
That's the problem with Tinker especially. He appears in 15%+ high level pub games and he wins 55%+ of them. The hero is by all definitions broken at the highest level of play.
Make Arc Warden ultimate cooldown 20-30s slower could be a nice fix !
>Arc Warden and Tinker are situational picks at best in high level pubs and pro games.
Hahaha, Tinker is first pick if it's not banned, how it's situational? Hero is absolutely broken and can't be countered, unless Tinker player does some stupid mistake. He also has 4 other heroes you have to deal with. Nah, Tinker is free MMR now and there is a reason why it goes to ban every game, and if it's not banned - you won/lost depending in which team it is.
if u have rad or cloak of flames tinker cant blink away.
" we fully support Valve balancing the game around the absolute highest level of play. It makes for a much better game design, even if it is a bit unfortunate for a large part of the playerbase."
This makes me think that dota is more and more a game meant to be streamed and watched rather than played. when you say Fuck most of the playerbase as long as the top 2500 players have balance, you have to realise that this is no longer a game for the masses
Where is Lycan? Where is Primal beast? Where is Meepo? Where is Brood? Where is Elder Titan? Where is Clinkz? Also its 2023 already why Arc's magnetic field still can save buildings even against mkb? This feature should be erased from dota after Miracle vs Alliance OMEGA LEAGUE invincible throne highlight 3 years before!
@Fried Cobra Stick [Loy]
You do know he has an ability that gives him a ~500hp shield that prevents Blink going on cooldown unless you actually break the shield and deal damage to Tinker? 50mmr players, smh
pretty sure the author of this post have skill issue xD