Is Tinker broken in Dota 2 patch 7.32b?

Tinker is one of Dota 2’s most annoying heroes. He is very hard to master and requires excellent APM and map awareness. But in the right hands, he can be a complete menace.

In professional matches, Tinker is not picked very often because of his early game weaknesses. The meta allows teams to dictate a high tempo and he is not very valuable in the first 15 minutes of the game. But if his farm is good, he’ll win matches almost on his own after that point.

But IceFrog decided he wasn’t strong enough, so he gave him some serious buffs in Dota 2 patch 7.32 and decided to not make any adjustments in Dota 2 patch 7.32b. As a result, we’re now stuck with a Tinker whose win rate is 51.55%. Given the complexity of the hero, this shouldn’t be the case.

Tinker’s strengths

Tinker becomes powerful as soon as you buy a Blink Dagger. The farming capabilities and kill potential of the hero increase enormously after that point.

His mana pool problems are gone, because there are very effective ways to reach 1000+ mana in the early game. There are neutral items that give you +200 mana and with just 300 more on top of your natural mana pool, you’re already there.

Once he has 1000 mana, Tinker can simply abuse his Rearm, which now has a cooldown of 3.5/2.25/1.25s and a mana cost of just 130/185/240. On top of that, Tinker no longer needs Boots of Travel because of his Keen Conveyance ability, which is connected to Rearm. At level 1, this ability works like a normal TP scroll.

At level 2, it allows you to teleport to friendly units and at level 3 you can teleport to friendly heroes as well.

The thing that makes Tinker overpowered is the level 15 and level 20 talents, which grant his Defense Matrix +125 damage absorption and +25% cooldown reduction. This means that Tinker can now empower his position 1 teammate with 25% CDR, 445 damage absorption, and 40% status resistance for 15 seconds! For some heroes, this will be enough to make them OP!

By the time he’s level 20, Tinker can guarantee a permanent disable on one of the key targets during a fight, as long as he has a Sheepstick. He can also blind multiple enemy heroes with his Laser for 6.5 seconds! Or, if you choose the other level 10 talent, he can deal 1000 damage every 1.25s with his rearmed Heat-Seeking Missile.

Playing against Tinker has never been harder. At least in previous Dota 2 patches, you knew he had to buy a pair of BoTs. But now he doesn’t.

Header: Valve Corporation