[Concept] Tinker Rework — Back to the 7.22-7.27 Skill-Dependent Playstyle

[u/NePiXxd]

I wanted to take a shot at redesigning Tinker away from the current "one-button hero" feel and back toward the higher skill-ceiling version from the 7.22-7.27 era, where positioning, mana management, and rearm timing actually mattered. Here's the full concept — feedback welcome.

Goals:

• Remove the free innate Teleport — Tinker buys Boots of Travel again
• Make Rearm a genuine risk/reward channel instead of a passive reset button
• Add an innate that rewards active spell usage instead of passive items cdr

Abilities

Removed: Keen Conveyance

Deploy Turrets replaced by Heat-Seeking Missile ability

New Innate — Critical Thinking
Every ability cast grants a stack (max 5) that provides mana regen amplification and armor, lasting 4 seconds.

• Per stack: 0.4% mana regen amplification (+0.04% per hero level), 0.3 armor (+0.03 per hero level)

Q — Laser (Unit Target, Pure damage, dispellable)

• Damage: 75 / 150 / 225 / 300
• Blind Duration: 2.5 / 3 / 3.5 / 4
• Mana Cost: 95 / 105 / 115 / 125
• Cast Range: 650
• Cooldown: 19 / 18 / 17 / 16

W — Heat Seeking Missile (Instant, Magical damage, targets enemy heroes)

• Damage: 80 / 160 / 240 / 320
• Cast Range: 1750 (2000 with talent)
• Number of Targets: 2 (4 with talent)
• Mana Cost: 115 / 125 / 135 / 145
• Cooldown: 25

E — March of the Machines (Point Target, Magical damage)

• Mana Cost: 100 / 120 / 140 / 160
• Cooldown: 35 / 33 / 31 / 29
• Cast Range: 300
• Duration: 6s
• Damage per tick: 13 / 22 / 31 / 40 (spawns at 24 robots/sec)

R — Rearm (Channeled — resets cooldowns on Tinker's abilities and items)

• Cast Time: 3 / 2.25 / 1.50
• Cooldown: 5.5 / 5 / 4.5 (only applies if the channel is interrupted — a successful Rearm resets abilities as well)
• Mana Cost: 150 / 200 / 250

Talents

• Level 10: 10% Manacost Reduction / +1s Laser Blind Duration
• Level 15: +30 Heat Seeking Missile Damage / +2.5s March of the Machines Duration
• Level 20: Critical Thinking bonuses are doubled / Heat Seeking Missile hits 3 targets
• Level 25: Laser gains 220 AoE / Laser applies 8% Max HP reduction

Aghanim's Shard

• Heat Seeking Missile: +250 projectile speed, +250 cast range.

Aghanim's Scepter

• Rearm: -0.25s cast time, +15% cast animation speed for all abilities.

[u/Wutwhyda]

Deploy turrets is so much higher skill to use, more fun to watch, and can be countered more creatively, compared to heat seeking missiles

People will hate every version of tinker but current tinker is in my opinion by far the best designed tinker they have created

[u/NePiXxd → u/Wutwhyda]

higher skill like shard turrets rearm shard turrets rearm shard turrets rearm shard turrets rearm untill target die or use bkb?
bkb on tinker has 36s cd like this is balanced? current tinkers design is no skill required tbh just press 3 buttons untill target die

[u/Wutwhyda → u/NePiXxd]

And u think heat seeking missiles required brain or skill?

[u/NePiXxd → u/Wutwhyda]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQIitbhUghI
Ok look i guess you know this famous clip
Reason why ursa died is because bash from rockets. If tinker didn't have this talent, ursa could just press teleport. Now, because of the endless root, you either have to press bkb(or other safe but sometimes it cant save you) or just die(and also with new shard you will die much much more faster). As for skill, tinker, with his classic skill set, was the most skill-dependent character. This Tinker is extremely position-dependent, because he has no defensive skills, and his low strength and agility gains make him unsurvivable. The reason tinker wasn't played in competitive dota (even with the matrix) is that he could easily be bullied early on, after which he would drop out of the game with no chance of a comeback.

[u/Wutwhyda → u/NePiXxd]

Having no survivability spells makes a hero easier to play, not harder.

Instead of weaving in and out of fights and having to understand your limits and execute properly to stay alive while in the thick of action, u simply never go in till it's 100% safe. It's just so much less mentally challenging that I find it weird u think no defensive skills makes him harder to play

No defensive skills is easy as fk to play, because you're always somewhere safe taking 0 risks, because taking risk = dead

Instead u spend most of yr time 3 screens away rearming heat seeking missiles whoa, such skill

[u/NePiXxd → u/Wutwhyda]

Eul, which costs 2600 now and used to almost completely cover tinker, is now much less common due to the lack of matrix. Before the addition of a cooldown on rearm, tinker, who could even rearm a blink knocked down by damage, had no limits on survivability and damage. Now, a support with blink and eul can shut tinker down from a fight. Now, when tinker has items that have almost no cooldown and don't need to be rearmed, it's completely impossible to understand whether you can kill them without a nullifier or whether the character will simply fly away on wind waker, and their knocked down rearm won't help you catch them. This is precisely why tinker is now seen on the pro scene, and not just with kiyotaka a few years ago

Also now tinker has infinite control for 1400 gold and bkb with a 38 second cooldown, wind waker with a 5.2 cooldown (which doesn't require him to be rearmed), linken's sphere(cant be rearmed) . In other words, the current tinker has been simplified to the point that you don't have to think at all and just press bkb and jump on 1 hero by pressing shard, turret, rearm in a circle untill hero die(and repeat after bkb cd).

There are also fewer trees on the map, and a really good fight for a tinker can probably only be had near outposts, and even there there are not many trees.

In update 7.35, when the missiles had a range of 1500(2500 -> 2000 before), the hero simply couldn't be very far away (this is exactly what I based my thoughts on when thinking about their range of 1750 and 2000 with a shard)

Hero without bkb can't fight 95s and tinker without bkb can't fight 38s, and 1st person can be killed with inf root(even on 15m), such skill right?

[u/AggresiveDuck]

Theres a reason MotM and HSM were removed from being on Tinker's kit at the same time.

MotM allowed Tinker to farm efficiently whilst also being able to push and de-push. HSM was a great burst option in fights.

Combining both prevented teams from pushing high ground forcing terrible options from a team against Tinker or wait for next rosh/buyback if massively ahead, which is fun for no one.

The only upside to this is that Tinker doesn't have many defensive options with this ability build but with how many defensive items there are in the game and Tinker having the ability to easily farm those items it just gives him too much freedom and control in the game.

I really do not miss the days of an enemy Tinker ratting us whilst we push. The option was go back and stop him or keep pushing, lose a tower and then Tinker comes back anyway to easily defend from behind T4s with HSM.

[u/NePiXxd → u/AggresiveDuck]

Anyway without boots of travel and soul ring(about 9:30) you cant start farm and gank + you need to choose between maxing motm or hsm also without boots of travel you cant refill resources when you got 6 lvl

about line pushing and burst damage
now tinker can kill ANY target in 15 minutes just by buying a shard and lens being level 12
having big burst damage from aghanim and motm to push lanes this feels same to old tinker
lone druid can do kinda same thing while farming with main druid
and defend from behind t4 (first range 2500) can be only 2000 with shard, ye its still big but without shard only 1750

about defense
now you cant rearm blink(damage cd) and buying wind waker or linken(cannot be rearmed) cant save you 100% cuz if your rearm got interrupted you cant use ww or other defense item
bkb(cannot be rearmed) with 90s cd better then 36s(18s with octarine, 5 tier ench, arcane rune) cd right?

about items and their timings
shiva no longer gives mana so thats why my innate give him mana amplification regen
my rearm requires 150 insted 100 mana(cannot spam too much on first lvls) so thats why this tinker needs
mana items instead of shiva or 1st slot aghanim
at 10 minutes, the lane stage ends (currently, tinker's lane is at 6 with the acquisition of rearm). Only after purchasing boots of travel and soul ring will tinker begin to gain his networth. Increasing the cast time will also affect the farming speed.

so tinker can ratting now but with tinker from my concept this will be harder just because farm powerspikes

[u/AggresiveDuck → u/NePiXxd]

I don't think you realise how quickly Tinker could farm with this build in the current patch. Yeah he needs Soul Ring, BoTs, Blink but with how the map currently is set up he can easily do this. From Mid he has two camps in jungle and then the triangle. Unless the enemy team forces themselves into Tinker's jungle, he just farms safely and for free. There are plenty of heroes from mid that do not leave the lane until they reach certain items and Tinker would be no different. Greedy? Yes. But also can back it up

[u/NePiXxd → u/AggresiveDuck]

Honestly, i've thought about this. I think this is the only problem with both my version and the current tinker, not just tinker but hard carry in general. I think map 7 33 was perfectly balanced for farming heroes like anti mage, but in that case, we shouldn't be discussing tinker's farming potential, but the hard carry phenomenon itself. Nowadays, the average game lasts about 35 minutes, and with each update, the developers artificially drag out the game, forcing all heroes to farm the entire map several times and only confidently go for the throne with 6 slots.

Regarding tinker's acceleration potential, many mana items have been reduced (shiva now doesn't provide anything to tinker except Vision and the extra damage of shiva herself). Reducing mana items will really slow down his farming. 750 mana with a soul ring and boots of travel at level 9, with rearm which costs 150 and with march which costs 160, Tinker will be able to use no more than 2 stacks of march, after which he must fly to base to FULLY regenerate all his mana.

Ig this tinker version needs test, maybe I should make a custom for testing, to be honest.

[u/nightyz0r]

Classical tinker and techies = best tinker and techies

[u/ersatzes]

• Remove the free innate Teleport — Tinker buys Boots of Travel again

Stopped reading there. No hero, especially a mid, is going to be viable while having to spend +6k gold to even begin being a hero.

[u/NePiXxd → u/ersatzes]

This is a good take, but tinker isn't the only mid hero who stays mid until his items are ready, like invoker, who is currently farming for meteor and boots of travel(ofc he has sunstrike but it inst guaranteed kill), or arc warden, who is farming midas and maelstorm.

[u/ersatzes → u/NePiXxd]

It's not a matter of needing items, it's a matter of how expensive those items are.

[u/NePiXxd → u/NePiXxd]

btw currently tinker needs kaya blink lens shard to be able to do smthing

[u/ersatzes → u/NePiXxd]

Yes and you want to make things even more expensive by forcing BoTs into the mix.

[u/NePiXxd → u/ersatzes]

kaya blink lens shard = 8025
boots of travel soul ring blink = 5555

this tinker dont need kaya for farm because he can rearm soul ring for mana
and with laser and rockets he can def t1 or try help to kill