Tinker
Boush the Tinker's diminutive race is known for its intelligence, its cunning, and its prickly relationship with magic. As a matter of pride, they survive by their wits, and use only those powers of nature that may be unlocked through rational methodologies. Even this forbearance has led to a great deal of trouble, as Boush can attest. Once a key investigator of natural law, Boush the Tinker led a vast intellectual investigation into the workings of nature, founding a subterranean laboratory in the rumored, mist-wreathed wastes of the Violet Plateau. While scorning mages for the dangers they visit upon the world, Boush and his Tinker associates haughtily wrenched open a portal to some realm beyond comprehension and ushered in some nightmares of their own. A black mist rose from the cavernous interior of the Violet Plateau, shrouding it in permanent darkness from which sounds of horror perpetually emanate. Boush escaped with only his wits and the contraptions he carried, the sole Tinker to survive the Violet Plateau Incident.
Base STR
19 +2.3
Base AGI
17 +1.4
Base INT
30 +3.3
Move Speed
305
Attack Range
500
Base Armor
2
Attack DMG
22–28
Projectile
900
Innate Abilities
Eureka!
Tinker gains 1% item cooldown reduction per 3 Intelligence, up to a maximum of 60%.
ITEM COOLDOWN REDUCTION:
0%
Abilities
Laser
Cooldown
19 / 18 / 17 / 16s
Mana
95 / 105 / 115 / 125
Fires an intense energy beam, damaging and blinding the target. Blinded targets miss all physical attacks.
BLIND MISS RATE:
100%
BLIND DURATION:
3 / 3.5 / 4 / 4.5
LASER DAMAGE:
75 / 150 / 225 / 300
RADIUS:
Boush perfected this rock cutting laser in his subterranean laboratory, never considering its combat utility.
March of the Machines
Cooldown
35 / 33 / 31 / 29s
Mana
100 / 120 / 140 / 160
Enlists an army of robotic minions to destroy enemy units in an area around Tinker.
RADIUS:
900
DURATION:
6
DAMAGE:
13 / 22 / 31 / 40
HEAL PER SECOND:
0
HEAL DURATION:
0
- Robots spawn at a rate of 24 per second.
Even though the laboratory has since been sealed off, the ability to radio in robotic drones is still in working order.
Deploy Turrets
Cooldown
24 / 22 / 20 / 18s
Mana
100 / 120 / 140 / 160
Deploys 3 uncontrollable turrets at the target location. Enemies hit by the impact take damage and are pushed away from the landing point. If Tinker is hit, he also gets pushed by the impact. Once deployed, the turret fires missiles in the direction of the nearest enemy hero.
CAST DELAY:
0.5
ENEMY KNOCKBACK:
100
TINKER KNOCKBACK:
400
IMPACT DAMAGE:
40 / 80 / 120 / 160
MISSILE DAMAGE:
20 / 40 / 60 / 80
TURRET HP:
40 / 80 / 120 / 160
TURRET RANGE:
650 / 700 / 750 / 800
TURRET DURATION:
4.5
ATTACK INTERVAL:
1.5
MISSILE SPLASH RADIUS:
200
MISSILE SPLASH DAMAGE:
50%
Rearm
Cooldown
5.5 / 5 / 4.5s
Mana
100 / 150 / 200
CHANNELED - Resets the cooldown on Tinker's abilities.
TIME TO REARM:
2.75 / 2 / 1.25
A new battery here, another set of rockets there, Boush continually improves on existing technology.
Talents
Aghanim's Scepter
Laser
Upgrades Tinker's Laser into a Shrink Ray, reducing the main target's size, current health, and maximum health by 0% (stacking). Does not pierce debuff immunity.
March of the Machines
March of the Machines applies a non-stacking heal over time when passing through allied heroes.
Deploy Turrets
Turrets fire missiles 20% faster.
Aghanim's Shard
Warp Flare
Cooldown
15s
Mana
80
Throws a flare towards an enemy, dealing damage, teleporting them away, rooting them and reducing their Cast and Attack Range for 2 seconds.
The target is teleported further the closer they are to Tinker.
DAMAGE:
150
CAST/ATTACK RANGE REDUCTION:
40%
- Max teleportation distance is warp_distance_pct_tooltip of Warp Flare's cast range, which decreases down to 0 at max cast range.
Tinker's deadliest weapon instantly turns an enemy into space dust. Research to resolve the annoying 'perfect copy' side effect... is ongoing.
Hero Performance
Median across all public matches · OpenDotaForm
47%
Win rate in recent matches
Performance
100%
KDA ratio (kills + assists / deaths)
Laning
65%
Last hits per minute over full game
Farm
75%
Average gold per minute
Fighting
34%
Average kills + assists per match
Experience
98%
Average XP per minute
Strategy
When to Pick Tinker?
Pfff... I don't even know where to start. 38% winrate at launch. THIRTY-EIGHT. Hawk Live called him the worst hero of the patch—losing 62% of his games the moment 7.41 dropped. CyberScore confirmed a 10% winrate collapse and added, completely deadpan, that the removal of Defense Matrix is something "most players are very happy about." And you know what? They are right. The entire Dota 2 community spent years dreaming of a world where Defense Matrix did not exist, and Valve finally delivered. The problem is what they replaced it with.
Defense Matrix was the reason Tinker was one of the most infuriating heroes ever designed. A damage barrier that simultaneously applied a slow to every hero attacking him, combined with a Translocator component that teleported him to safety the moment the fight turned against him—this was the combination that made a farmed Tinker feel genuinely unkillable. You would commit five heroes to killing him in his base after spending fifteen minutes watching him spam Laser and March of the Machines on your entire team from maximum range, hit him for two seconds, watch his barrier absorb the burst, and then watch him teleport out with 80% HP while your team wasted their BKBs and ultimates. The Dotabuff community has been arguing for years about whether Tinker needs a rework—"Every patch Tinker is either completely broken and solo-carries the game or complete and utter unplayable garbage. " Right now, firmly, undeniably: unplayable garbage.
What replaced Defense Matrix is Deploy Turrets—and I want to explain exactly what Deploy Turrets does so you understand what Valve gave Tinker players in exchange for the ability that defined the hero. After a 0.5-second delay, Tinker drops three uncontrollable turrets at a target location. They deal a small amount of magical damage on landing and knock enemies back 100 units. The turrets then fire missiles at nearby enemy heroes every 1.5 seconds, dealing 20 to 80 magical damage per missile, lasting 4.5 seconds total. The turrets cannot be controlled. They have between 40 and 160 HP and die quickly to any focused attack. And—this is the part that tells you everything about how this ability was received—deploying the turrets also knocks TINKER HIMSELF back 350 units from the deployment location. He cannot even stand next to his own turrets. He is knocked away from them the moment they land. The Rearm cooldown was slightly reduced as compensation. That is the trade. Defense Matrix—one of the most hated defensive abilities in competitive Dota history—for turrets that last 4.5 seconds, deal low magic damage, cannot be controlled, and punt the caster into the next postal code when deployed. Spectacular.
The honest answer to "When do you pick Tinker?" right now is you do not. The hero has lost his entire identity. Rearm still refreshes his items and abilities, and the Warp Flare displacement tool is still there, and Laser still blinds, and March of the Machines still floods the field with robots—but all of those tools were manageable without Defense Matrix specifically because Defense Matrix was what made retreating from Tinker impossible. Without it, any hero who closes the distance and ignores the turret knockback simply kills him. Spirit Breaker charges through the turrets—the 100-unit enemy knockback is irrelevant at charge speed, and the 350-unit self-knockback just repositions Tinker slightly before Spirit Breaker arrives. Batrider blinks and Lasso holds him in place. Lifestealer Infests an ally, walks up, Rages through the turret missiles, and right-clicks him to death in BKB. The hero that defined "impossible to kill when farmed" is now completely mortal, completely vulnerable, and without a Defense Matrix; he has no answer to any hero that closes the gap and commits to the kill. Do NOT pick him right now. Truly.
Tips & common mistakes
- Deploying Turrets pushes Tinker himself back 350 units on deployment—most pub Tinker players use it as a close-range self-defense tool and immediately fly backward into an even worse position than they were in. The only way to use this productively is deploying the turrets FORWARD of your position—aim it toward approaching enemies so the turrets land between you and the threat, the enemy heroes get knocked back 100 units, and the 350-unit self-knockback moves Tinker further away simultaneously. Used correctly, it creates distance. Used carelessly, it launches Tinker into terrain or walls.
- Rearm cooldown was reduced to 5.5/5/4.5 seconds—most pub Tinker players are not adjusting their Rearm rhythm and are waiting for old timings that no longer apply. The slightly faster Rearm means item cooldowns refresh marginally more frequently, which in theory tightens the Boots of Travel refresh window and allows faster global map presence. In practice this compensation does absolutely nothing to address the hero's core problem, but the timing adjustment is real.
- Warp Flare's teleport distance now scales with proximity — enemies standing close to Tinker when Warp Flare lands are teleported further than enemies at maximum cast range. Most pub Tinker players aim Warp Flare at maximum range, hoping to displace a hero far away. The correct use is waiting for an enemy to close in during an aggressive play — the closer they are, the further the teleport displacement sends them — turning a hero committing to a kill into a hero suddenly 400+ units away in a random direction.
- March of the Machines with Aghanim's Scepter now heals allies 35 HP per second as the robots pass through them—most pub Tinker players treat the Aghanim's upgrade purely as a damage tool. In the current meta where Bloodstone mids need sustained HP during extended fights, positioning March of the Machines to pass through grouped allied heroes provides meaningful sustained healing on top of the harassment damage. Aim to march through your team's position during fights, not just through the enemy backline.
- Laser no longer bounces with Aghanim's Scepter—this was a significant damage source for the old Tinker build where Laser chained between grouped heroes for massive blind and damage application. Most pub tinker players still build Aghanim's, expecting the bounce. It is gone. Aghanim's value is now entirely deployable turrets' activation speed and an extra missile volley, plus the March of the Machines heal. The item is significantly less powerful than it was in previous patches on Tinker.
- The turrets last 4.5 seconds and can be destroyed by enemy attacks—most pub Tinker players deploy them in dangerous locations where the enemy team immediately destroys all three in two seconds. Against ranged heroes with high attack speed, the turrets die before firing more than one volley. Against a melee hero closing the gap, the turrets deal minimal damage in the brief time available before they are destroyed or expire. Deploy them in locations that force enemies to choose between attacking the turrets or attacking Tinker — not in open areas where the enemy team can ignore them entirely and walk through undisturbed.
Summary
They massacred him. Genuinely, completely, and in the most public way possible—Valve removed the ability that defined Tinker's entire identity and replaced it with three uncontrollable turrets that last 4.5 seconds, deal low magic damage, and physically fling Tinker away from the fight when deployed. The 38% winrate at launch tells you everything. The community celebrating the removal of the defense matrix tells you everything else.
Tinker players spent years mastering one of the most mechanically demanding heroes in Dota 2, and the reward for that investment is a hero who now dies to any committed dive hero with exactly as much fanfare as any other squishy intelligence mid. Maybe Valve buffs him back to relevance. Maybe the best Tinker players in the world eventually figure out how to deploy turrets in ways nobody has discovered yet. But right now? Do not pick this hero. The boosters are in mourning.
The rest of the lobby is celebrating. And somewhere, Defense Matrix is gone forever, and Dota 2 is a slightly more peaceful place for it.
Strong Against
Popular Items
Starting Items
Early Game
Core
Late Game
Popular Neutral Items
Pro Players Known For This Hero
