Thanks Ambush.

I searched for my username and it said it was private. I'm not too concerned with my actual W/L record, but more interested in figuring out how many unranked games I've played so I know how many more I have until I unlock ranked games.

If you search in the dota 2 client there should be a setting to disable that (which at first, I think, was the other way around). Then your username should show information, maybe after you play a game

I think Soul Ring is still pretty much a core item on Clinkz, unless you get an Orchid. I play a ton of Clinkz but prefer to win the game by taking objectives. Orchid first is fine against certain lineups, but it's also easy to counter (Ghost/Force/Euls/simply walk away) and then find yourself feeling not so useful beyond 20 mins. Early on, it doesn't provide enough damage imo. Why maybe get a kill with an Orchid when you can simply 3-shot that support from stealth with a Deso? Trying to teamfight on an Orchid Clinkz with a disorganized group of randoms can be very frustrating, and the new ult with guaranteed downtime means those fights can occur at some awful times. Now you're in there with 1000 health and pitiful damage. You run into situations like goofy describes where the enemy team is simply too beefy and you die to focus fire, or worse, you realize that you'll simply die so you don't participate and then your team spends the next 40 seconds pinging you while they wait to respawn.

I typically run Clinkz mid if I can, because levels are king. My build is invariably Aquila, Soul Ring, Deso as first three items. Aquila and Soul Ring are done by 5 mins and I'll usually meet the courier to go grab a large creep from the jungle for my first Death Pact, or I'll eat the enemy Catapult instead if the lane position is favorable. The Deso timing should be 11-12 minutes, but never later than 14. I go Boots of Travel next instead of Treads in nearly all cases and simply dictate the rest of the game on my own. The game is almost always over before my 4th major item, so my next choice is usually a BKB. This gives you a guaranteed escape and is in my scrub opinion a better teamfight item than Orchid for a Clinkz if you're forced to do so. I take any pickoffs I can get, but will actively avoid questionable teamfights. Even going so far as treating the rest of my team as a disposable 4000hp meatshield while I take objectives elsewhere. I often have 20k+ building damage at the end of a Clinkz game. My record is 26k, which basically means I was the only person on the team to attack a building at any point in the game.


Some other things you may already know:

At level 25, you can still kill any building except the Throne through Backdoor protection provided you've taken the Arrows and Strafe talent. This may not be true if you went for an Orchid/Bloodthorn build.

Tier 1 towers do not have backdoor protection. If there are any left after you finish your Desolator, go kill them immediately. The enemy cannot stop you.

Don't immediately blow Strafe if you know they have glyph and you're pushing with a wave. The enemy knows how Clinkz works. They'll see you killing the tower and they know to pop Glyph when you hit Strafe. So... don't. With the Deso, you melt towers regardless, and I can't tell you how many times I've simply killed a T1 without the enemy using Glyph. Or better yet, a T2, and then I'm able to get the Glyph as I march forward with Strafe ready on a T3 bot while enemy is pushing top.

Boots of Travel are a really good item. Tread switching is cute and all, but you're already at effectively the AS cap during Strafe, so I'd rather have the global presence any day of the week. One clarity potion offsets the mana gains of a dozen death pacts cast using tread swaps. I only buy treads sometimes on a safelane Clinkz when my mid gets wrecked and I know I'll need to help teamfight.

Nullifier removes Ghost Scepter and can break Aeon Disk protection.

Learn how to abuse backdoor protection. One trick I've used to my advantage quite a bit is later in the game if say I have a Dire wave pushing deep top, I will cut the Radiant wave and drag it along the ledge below the vision spire by their shrine. My creep wave gets close enough to the enemy base to disable protection. Meanwhile, I've invis'd through mid down to the bottom lane and take T3 bot during the 15 second window. If Glyph isn't available, the tower dies. If it is, it won't be for the next one.

Sheepstick is almost certainly a better option than another lategame damage item for a Clinkz.



I'm sure some/much of this is bad advice at 6k mmr where the enemies will adapt to the rat style, but I have a 60%+ winrate on Clinkz over several hundred games and more importantly, find this playstyle to be a ton of fun. I lost a lot of Orchid games before settling on this method as my preferred way of securing Clinkz wins.

I looked back at my most recent losses to see if I could figure out what the weaknesses are, but not much really stands out. I went Orchid first in two of them. One game I bought a Hurricane Pike and a Maelstrom (wtf?) and the other three I checked were just some good old fashioned stomps with some heavy feeding from other lanes. I appear to have lost mid to an Invoker in one, but I don't know how much of that was the uberfeed from Bristle and Spectre beforehand. Invoker is one of the easier heroes to lane against as Clinkz. There was a 10/10/16 Pudge in that game too, so maybe I got hooked a bunch?

Go play Clinkz, gents. It's good times.

Thanks for the detailed post! Lots of great stuff in there.

When do you get boots of speed? Do you wait until you start building boots of travel to even get those?

Correct, brown boots after Desolator, because you get movespeed from invis anyway. If my sidelanes pushed their towers quickly, I'll get defensive boots before finishing Deso since there's likely to be more general movement and ganking involved. An argument can be made for earlier boots to help with ganking sidelanes, but I'd have chosen a different hero if I wanted to play a roaming mid.

TIL Abyssal active is 2 seconds bash and Basher's bash is 1.5 seconds bash. Didn't realize there's an extra 0.5 seconds with the Abyssal active.

A couple random questions:

- Any Troll Warlord tips? Played a bot game with him and he's super fun, but found myself super vulnerable as a result of not having stuns/escape or a ton of HP - once I got hit with a stun and more than one hero was there, I was pretty much dead.

- I rarely see Outworld Devourer at my skill level but the few times I do he tends to dominate games - worthwhile/fun hero to learn? (edit: his mana passive seems so stupidly OP, will you ever run out of mana once it's maxed??)

BKB, speed items, lifesteal.

BKB is core on Troll Warlord. It's a great low level stomp hero because you win every single 1v1 and people aren't very coordinated, so you'll get plenty of solo kills. People usually buy a Shadowblade for that reason. Basically just grab attack speed and lifesteal like he said above and stunlock your way to victory. BKB so you don't die in a stun. The skillcap is how you use your ranged/melee toggle for catch early on.

OD has been nerfed and is no longer the automatic lane win that he once was. I don't know the new magic number of max mana where you are essentially guaranteed to never go OOM, but prior to the changes it was around 2000 or so. I'd imagine that has gone up.

However, his int steal is now tied to Orb, so again, his laning is not nearly as scary as it was. Astral used to deny exp for the victim as well, but I think that's no longer a thing. Your weaknesses on OD are low attack range and lack of sustain. You're forced to get some sort of health regen item. It makes for awkward itemization these days. That said, he is definitely a great option for low level smurfing because if you can snowball out of the laning phase, you'll just **** out damage like crazy. Astral is a pretty good skill for escaping some ganks. BKB is core on OD as well though because he is weak to stuns and silences.

I believe people in Astral don't get XP, not sure what you mean. And 2000 might not be far from how much mana you need now, ~1000 used to be enough to practically always have mana but that was back in buckler times way before the rework.

Astral is good for farming and great for it's versatility, but also a skill that is very likely to get you flamed by your team if you don't know exactly what you are doing.

I looked it up and found the theoretical mana breakpoint where you should never go OOM is just shy of 1700.

Astral Imprisonment used to deny 100% of experience because the hero was effectively removed from the game, but the internet says this is no longer the case. It just flags the hero as "hidden" and they still get experience. Still great in lane though because they cannot contest for last hits and it's a decent wave clear.

I don't particularly enjoy playing OD. When I see one picked for mid, there are plenty of options now to play against him. One of my personal favorites is Skywrath, but playing Sky mid is one of the many reasons why I'm not 6k mmr. Crush the lane and first 18 mins, lose the game.


I haven't been playing enough Dota in the past few months and didn't realize how meta Clinkz had become. Apparently he was hit with some nerfs, one of which affects something I posted above. The level 25 talent is now +3 seconds instead of +4 on Strafe. Turns out that is a HUGE hit to his ability to kill buildings through backdoor protection. Instead of killing it as Strafe runs out, you run out of gas around 15%. I did some testing last night for my standard item progression, and I had to add a Butterfly after Deso/BKB/MKB to have any hope of killing T3s or rax. T4s were out of the question. That's a lot of extra money spent on something without additional utility, which means a lot of extra time for enemies to catch up. No other 4th major items work, it had to be a Butterfly. Looks like teamfights and lategame pickoffs are back on the menu. I still like Deso/BoT for opportunistic destruction of objectives, but not being able to effectively guarantee quick megacreeps upon hitting 25 means that you can't just use your team as sacrificial lambs any more. Sad day for rat Clinkz.

my up and down streaks are ridiculous

after i hit immortal i lost like 10 games out 11 or 12 and dropped 250+ mmr I think

and then this

deso tide is new to me

Sometimes your team sucks at hitting buildings, and someone's gotta do it.

just bought it as we were killing T4s and throne lol

just won 4 more axe games WHATS HAPPENING

(thats an ongoing 15 win streak on axe )

Is this thread following the Kuala Lumpur Major at all? EG vs LGD in a couple hours seems hype

yup yup yup im always hyped for big games

u guys can add me on steam btw should be kirbynator (offlane or 3k) with a gandalf-rustled gorilla

NIP EG going to G3!

some ****ing crazy games

2EZ4RTZ

EG v NiP was insane

Can't stop winning either... this always happens to me I finally figure out how to win on LD in a patch and then it all changes Hopefully it's just a bunch of nice buffs for me

Yea amazing series. I was pretty sure eg would win once it went to game 3. Game 2 was a pretty big throw.

Invoker is such a stupid hero.