Hello, Librarian Husky here! Who knew there would come a time where Tinker is broken, specifically Tinker‘s Support? Honestly, Tinker core has been good quite a few times throughout Dota’s history, but I don’t think I can confidently say there’s a period in time, at least that I remember, where Tinker Support is probably almost definitely one of the most potent strategies of the patch. Now, you might be saying, “This can’t actually be good.” Okay, well, let me prove to you that it is actually good. In fact, it’s extremely good and really easy.

Why Tinker Support is Effective

A lot of you watching this might be like, “This is too hard, this hero has too many buttons, it’s way too difficult, I can never pull this off.” No, I understand you’re 38 with kids, you haven’t done exercise in 3 years, but trust me, you can still pull this off. It’s quite easy, so let’s get into it. On top of that, go sign up to the Gam Le website, guys.

Starting Items for Tinker Support

Now for starting items, we’re going to be looking at Zinc’s build and his gameplay here. They just won a $500,000 tournament picking Tinker Support. This is not a random pub I picked; this is Extreme Gaming against Team Spirit. Okay, let’s continue: two circlets, two branches, a blood grenade, sentry, and three tangos. Pretty standard. From there, you’re going to ship out another set of tangos generally.

The Strength of Tinker

You don’t have to worry as much about Tinker because of the reason why this hero is broken, which is March of the Machine’s repair bot. His fast head just recently got buffed by 50%. You heard that right. So what does it do? When Marching Machines is passing through an ally, it applies a non-stacking heal.

Understanding the Healing Mechanism

You can’t spam a bunch of marches to make it OP. It provides a non-stacking heal over time, and every single time you get hit by a bot, it reapplies this 4-second heal. It doesn’t heal you just for 4 seconds; it heals you for 4 seconds as long as you’ve been hit by a new robot.

Applying the Strategy

It’s important to understand that you have to hit a new robot each time. In the laning stage, the first thing he does is go to trade with MOS gun. You might think this hero can’t be that good at trading, but 310 movement speed, 60 base damage, and seven armor would beg to differ.

Effectiveness in Trading

When you put down the March of the Machine, trading with a five becomes really easy. When these March start to hit you, you’ll notice he’s Healing a lot. It’s 15 per second. The minimum Healing is 60, but this ability lasts for 6 seconds. Realistically, you can get hit by the first bot, providing 4 seconds of Healing, and then the last bot, extending the Healing to almost 10 seconds, which is 150 Healing if you optimize it.

Optimizing the Healing

To optimize it, you have to follow the March and the Machine to the edge. This technique maximizes the Healing potential by ensuring you get hit by the robots at the beginning and end of their march.

Optimizing Tinker’s Healing

You’re not actually going to do this; it’s not that practical, but it is sometimes. What I mean by that is if you wanted to optimize his Healing on Zin Q here, he would actually have to follow this line of the March and continue to hit the back line of the bots all the way to the end. You have to run in a diagonal line. I’m just telling you that so you understand how the ability works.

Practical Application in Laning

You can actually use this strategy to maximize your Healing in the lane as well. Run with the back line in a diagonal, straightforward line. I tested it in a lobby; it actually works. From there, it’s pretty basic: just spam March of the Machines off cooldown. It is a really long cooldown, about 35 seconds, which is pretty rough.

March of the Machines Strategy

You’re going to use it about once per wave. It’s going to heal you and your offlaner, and it’s also going to push the wave extremely hard because it works on the creep wave too. This hero makes it really hard to interact with him, and that’s a good thing. You’re not looking to dominate the lane, even though you can in some cases.

Winning Lanes with Tinker

If your offlaner is a strong hero like Viper or Sand King against Monkey King, you can win those lanes just because of the raw Healing you’re outputting. You’ll notice he’s going to use March almost as much as he can. Both he and his offlaner will stand in the March and continuously heal to ridiculously large amounts of HP.

Choosing Abilities

At level two, it’s not shocking that he’ll take Laser. There are some lanes where Defense Matrix is not bad, but for the most part, Laser at level two is the way to go. It deals 75 damage, making it a solid choice for early game engagement.

The Benefits of Pure Damage

It’s pure damage, which is nice if you’re against something like Monkey King. Clicking laser to make sure he can’t actually man up is extremely high value. You could imagine why: it’s 100% miss rate for 3 seconds. Literally, they cannot auto-attack. You can also use it on the enemy Support so they can’t trade with you.

Maximizing March of the Machines

The last thing I’d like to recommend for the laning stage, outside of the fact that you should max March of the Machines, which is probably pretty obvious, is you want to unblock the large camp. You’ll notice he actually did do it this lane and he’s pulled it up to this point. It’s pointless to show, but just know that it’s good.

Unblocking the Large Camp

The reason why it’s really easy to do on Tinker is when you push the wave all the time. When you’re pushing every single creep wave, you have a lot of downtime. During this downtime, you should be buying one, two, or three sentries during the laning stage to unblock the large camp so you can spam pull it. You should also block the small camp so that they can’t pull the small camp.

Healing at Level Three

What’s really crazy is how much Tinker heals at level three. Once you hit level three, the bots start to heal for 25 per second, and that’s a ton. This Healing eventually starts adding up like crazy. It brings him from about 350 HP to around 500 something because the end of the March keeps going. It’s not like when the machines go away you stop Healing; it lingers for 4 seconds, so Storm gains like 250 HP.

The Biggest Weakness of Tinker Support

It’s the biggest weakness of Tinker Support: you’re not good at killing people. The reason why is that you have to somehow keep them in March, which is generally impractical in the early game. The main thing you want to do on this hero is TP mid and TP safe lane to actually save and counter-gank.

The Strength in Counter-Ganking

This hero is incredibly good at counter-ganking due to the miss chance of Laser and, of course, the Healing healbots. For example, he TPs bottom, pops the Laser on The Monkey King, drops the healbots, heals up his Lina, and does the same thing again. He buys enough time for Lina to live, and she ends up getting gone on again by Team Spirit.

Using Abilities Effectively

He hits level four, pops The Matrix, which gives 80 HP. That’s the main thing it does: it’s 70 mana for 80 HP and status resist. He buys enough time, gets The Monkey King really low, and although Lina dies, he gets a reward kill and feels good about it.

Itemization Strategy

For his next items, he bought a wand, a wind lace, and then boots. This guy is really, really greedy. When I say really greedy, I mean really greedy. He bought no clarities, no extra blood grenade, no extra sentries, no raindrops—none of it. I honestly suggest the same because you’re not looking to dominate the early game on this hero.

Focusing on Mid to Late Game

It’s not bad because you can walk up to people and heal them for some ridiculous amount, generally around 350 HP, which is crazy. But you’re really looking to just get to level six and eventually dominate the game.

Level Six Power Spike

The reason why level six is so OP is mainly due to the fact that you can just refill the mid’s bottle. He starts doing this for the rest of the game, buying two Null Talismans and constantly refilling mid bottle. TP to mid, drop repair bots, then return to base for full mana and HP, allowing you to rinse and repeat indefinitely.

Versatility at Level Six

At this point in the game, Tinker becomes a versatile hero. You can farm, fight, or do almost anything, similar to Nature’s Prophet. This flexibility can make decision-making challenging. It’s easy to make the wrong choice, so I recommend farming a lot.

Focusing on Farming

Since Tinker isn’t good at setting up plays, it’s best to farm camps and continually refill mana at base. This allows you to counter gank repeatedly until the mid game hits. Farming efficiently and refilling mana ensures you’re always ready to respond to enemy movements.

Mid Game Strategy

Let’s skip ahead to the mid game. Moving into our first mid game fight, observe from a free camera perspective to see Zin’s approach. At level six, he pops his repair bots to push the wave and heal up his Clockwork. The Puck initiates with a DD, feeling strong, but the repair bots start kicking in.

Healing and Damage Output

Clockwork heals rapidly due to the bots, and everyone, including Storm, benefits from the Healing. Simultaneously, enemies take substantial damage from March of the Machines. Despite his efforts, Tinker tries to save Clockwork but ultimately faces challenges.

Healing Through Team Fights

It’s not enough, but Tinker and Storm are actually Healing up a significant amount. Tinker will TP back to base after putting down one more repair bot. You see Storm has around 700 health, and moments later, he’s at full health. At the beginning of the team fight, Storm was at half health, and even after taking heavy damage, he ends the fight at full health.

Farming Capabilities

When I said this hero can farm, I meant it. Tinker can take ancient stacks by himself at level seven. You can do it at level six, but it’s slow. I recommend waiting until level seven and continuing to make stacks. Tinker can laser large creeps to take less damage, but the repair bots keep him at full HP, making farming easy.

Returning to Base

After farming, Tinker goes back to base and continues to TP into fights. If your team stays alive, you can pop your E to give them a barrier and use repair bots to heal. Tinker pings teammates, reminding them to sit in the bots for full HP. This strategy ensures your team has infinite mana and HP, especially when paired with a hero like Crystal Maiden.

Endless Resources

Imagine your team with infinite resources, never running out of mana or HP. This strategy allows your cores to stay in fights longer and farm more efficiently. If this team fight isn’t a perfect example, it clearly shows how broken this strategy can be.

Convincing Through Team Fights

I don’t know what will convince you if this fight doesn’t. If Zinq can’t prove it to you, then you’re just unable to be convinced. In the team fight, you lead with March. It’s simple: you pop March and click Defense Matrix on the frontliner. He clicks it on his Storm, which is one of the two frontliners; maybe it was better on Sand King. He drops the March and refreshes, putting zero priority on Laser.

Using Abilities Effectively

The cast range of Laser is trash, so just use your two broken abilities. You don’t need to Laser unless an auto-attacking hero like Phantom Assassin gets on top of you. In this team fight, he pops a second March and another Matrix eventually onto the Sand King. His team heals up like crazy. This is a Wukong’s, Macropyre, Wall of Replica team fight, and his Sand King and Storm are just fine, standing in it and Healing back to full.

Farm Throughout the Game

Throughout the game, Zinq farms if nothing is happening. He’s never the one setting up plays and really shouldn’t be. If your team is AFK, calm down and farm. Tinker scales extremely well because his innate ability gives item cooldown reduction. For every point of intelligence, you get one cooldown reduction on items, not on spells. Rearm doesn’t rearm items anymore.

Optimal Item Choices

Whatever item you decide to buy, like Solar Crest and Glimmer Cape, they will have lower cooldowns. Rearm doesn’t work on items anymore, so focus on items that benefit from cooldown reduction. This ensures you’re always effective in fights and can Support your team continuously.

The New Tinker Mechanics

This is something to keep in mind about the new Tinker: people forget that Rearm does not work on items at all. It’s only your innate ability. This is fine because the innate ability is really strong. Generally, in the mid game, you’re going to have about 30% CDR on very powerful items.

Surviving in Team Fights

I’m going to ask you an interesting question: have you ever watched a position four hero walk into the middle of Team Spirit and not die to five heroes? Have you ever seen this? Five heroes surround a position four, and he just walks it off. That’s what Tinker does. He doesn’t even have Defense Matrix on himself when this happens, but he pops March, drops a laser, clicks his E, glimmers himself, and now he has a 600 barrier.

Effective Use of Abilities

He’s in March, so he’s Healing for 45 per second, which is actually 60 per second because of Locket. He’s not even close to dead. They ice path him, give vision, and he’s full HP, just walking it off. As the fight continues, he pops two Matrices. This is cool because if Clock goes in and gets stunned, it only lasts for 60% of the duration due to Defense Matrix providing 40% status resist. Frontline heroes become significantly tankier.

Optimal Item Choices

In terms of items, double Null Talisman is very important. The Holy Locket is crucial for amping heal bots. After that, you can consider other items based on the game’s progression. This setup ensures Tinker remains highly effective and versatile throughout the match.

Solar Crest vs. Glimmer Cape

I think Solar Crest tends to be much better than Glimmer because of what it actually gives you in terms of stats. It provides a pretty big mana pool—300 mana and four all stats. This hero has severe mana problems, so I’m definitely a big fan of Solar Crest over Glimmer. However, he’s obviously much more afraid of magic damage this game.

Gameplay Strategy

For the remainder of the game, your gameplay revolves around clicking W and casting E as much as possible. Keep clicking your E; it has a 15-second duration, so it’s really long. You can have multiple instances of it active in a fight. Then you just go to base, click W and E, and rinse and repeat.

Fight Execution

If a team fight breaks out, click your Glimmer Cape, and that’s it. Don’t frontline, don’t use Laser unless absolutely necessary. Using Laser is situational; avoid it in most cases to focus on your main abilities.

Final Team Fight Analysis

To conclude, let’s look at the last major team fight of the game. The team fight breaks out, and it’s not looking too good—Clock’s dead, Tinker‘s getting gone on. Despite having 2,000 health, he didn’t get his W off. This is almost the worst-case scenario, yet the team’s overall strategy helps mitigate the damage.

Tinker’s Defense Strategy

I just want to explain something important. He E’s himself in base, providing a 445 barrier. If he gets silenced, it doesn’t last very long due to the 40% status resist. This is what happens here: he gets silenced, which looks terrible, but the status resist allows him to get off his March much faster than he would have otherwise.

Surviving Under Pressure

On top of that, he’s equipped with Crimson Guard and Pipe, and he’s full HP as the March goes out. It continues to heal his whole team: Sand King is full HP, Lina is full HP. He has a 20 Locket and hasn’t even used it yet. His Glimmer is back up, and he just gave Lina another 700 barrier.

Mana and Item Synergy

With double Null Talisman, he now has a 500 mana pool. Tinker Support is broken. If you didn’t believe me, hopefully, this explanation convinces you. It’s very straightforward—this is the easiest Tinker has ever been to play. This hero is ridiculously straightforward.

Item Progression

For his next item, he goes for Greaves, which has a ton of synergy with Locket. It also provides a dispel against Puck, making it an excellent choice this game.

Thank you for diving into our guide! Discover our exceptional Dota 2 boosting services and elevate your gaming experience with our top-tier boosts.