General DiscussionCriqtue my tinker game play

just watch chains, ferrari_430, etc

I can watch your game later, now I'm not home.
But I can say one thing: your farm was really bad. You should have dagger + dagon 5 in 30 min in most cases, or even less.
However, this may be not your fault entirely, like I said, I didn't watch the game. For example, in my last tinker game my team got completely overrun and I couldn't farm anything (I got travel at 17). But this is a very rare thing.

Well i really like the hero so i would like to hear any advices too.

http://dotabuff.com/matches/363695445

This game was kind of depresing :/

You went for Laser + HSM build, highly risky especially vs a strong mid hero such as SF or DP (didn't watch the game so I don't know which one was mid).
Both can easily dominate the lane if you don't get march, they use Swarm or Razes to push lane and you can't get runes.
If you go for March build you can use it at xx:45, push the lane and grab the rune, or push the lane and go stack ancients or strong neutral camp.
The main problem with Laser + HSM build is that, if you don't get you BoT early, you're pretty much screwed, because you have no reliable way of farming it. If you have March build, even with a bad start you can recover by farming jungle / ancients and split pushing side lanes.

Yeah, my farm started off ok actually, then we got dominated and it slowed down quite a bit. I am still practicing the last hitting with tinker though, dont have his animation down as much as my other mid heroes. thanks in advance for watching the game - i do feel like my biggest issue with tinker is in terms of decision making.

Cant seem to find the right balance between farming and helping out the team, when to do which. I generally do well with him in terms of the laning phase and get my farm "decently" but struggle to have the mid game impact as my other mid heroes

keep ganking enemies
http://dotabuff.com/matches/365738654

^ I don't see how a game with 9 anonymous players with a big KDA is a good example of Tinker gameplay... if you want I have plenty of those
http://dotabuff.com/matches/371695371
http://dotabuff.com/matches/357466030
http://dotabuff.com/matches/347725503
http://dotabuff.com/matches/346277815
http://dotabuff.com/matches/341541593
http://dotabuff.com/matches/338274041
http://dotabuff.com/matches/338274041
http://dotabuff.com/matches/254130647
http://dotabuff.com/matches/253824662

This doesn't mean anything. This doesn't make me a pro Tinker. If you start snowballing it's hard to stop you, even if enemies are good. If they suck, then it's very easy to make a 30ish kills game.
I'll watch OP's game to see if I can help with something.

@OP
First of all, you need to improve your last hitting. Tinker's animation is not the best one in the game, but is pretty decent. You started with null + salve (I prefer tango, because I hardly get harassed enough for the salve to be necessary) vs a Warlock. He had 10 less damage than you and even so he managed to last hit better than you in the first waves. And there's no reason not to laser him - this harasses and prevents him from denying or last hitting during a couple of seconds, which pretty much guarantees you at least 1 lh. It's not like you're going to run out of mana.
I don't know why you got HSM at level 2. You should get march, unless you're going for Laser + HSM build (not recommended). At lv3 you laser him and throw a missile which costs you 215 mana and achieves nothing. Having lv2 march in this situation would've been better.
Both you and WL are last hitting terribly... nobody has bottle in 3 minutes. You should have it earlier so you can control runes. Using march at 2:45 is a good option so you can quickly clear the 2:30 creep wave and go get your rune. At 2:56 you try to stack the ancients, but you were clearly late, so you shouldn't waste time doing this, just go back to the lane and try to get your Bottle as soon as possible. Then at 3:40 you throw a March too soon, and it does nearly nothing to the creep wave. You should wait til 3:45 when the creep wave arrives so you can use it to its max potential. And when you use march, don't run away from lane, because using it doesn't guarantees the last hit. You should stay and lh while WL is forced to back, then go get rune.
Then you succesfully stack a camp and grabs the rune, fine. In the lane, you use March in your direction, but this is not the best way... usually you should try to use it in a diagonal or parallel to the river. This way you get the biggest number of hits.
At 5:39 you had a CLEAR chance of solo killing WL and didn't notice it. He ran toward you. You just backed off, afraid, but if you used March and lv2 Laser (that's what I would have instead of Laser + HSM) you could have killed him. He had no mana for ult (even if he had, if you attacked him, he would be forced to use it and wouldn't kill you). 5:45 you use March correctly but doesn't stay in lane for last hitting / get experience. You get invis and waste a lot of time waiting for WL with Rubick in your lane, but he knew you had it. It's not worth it to waste last hits this early on: you need your BoT as soon as possible.
I don't like getting Soul Ring before BoT. You could have cleared that stack without Soul Ring if you were full mana with your Bottle charges. This way you would have gotten your BoT 3 mins earlier. Keep in mind that, with ancient stacking, a hero kill and not dying, you got your Travel at 11:30. This is a bad timing. I consider less than 7 min excellent, less than 8 min very good, less than 9 min good, less than 10 min decent. More than 10 min is bad, especially when you killed a big ancient stack, didn't die and got a kill. The main problem here is your last hitting. Before clearing the stack you had 27 last hits in 9 min. 3 CPM is pretty bad for a solo mid, since you didn't get ganked and WL wasn't a great player or a big counter hero.
After BoT you start playing decently, but I think you walk too much. I don't walk with Tinker. I TP, use skills, hide and TP back. You keep walking and, the more you walk, the bigger are the chances of dying.
Your first death was stupid, sorry to say. You TP mid to help a teamfight, but for some reason you don't use you dagger. You just can't TP in the middle of a fight with Tinker. Keep this in mind: if anyone touches you, or even knows where you are, you're pretty much dead. You ALWAYS have to be hidden, or very far from the enemies. You should have TP'd and shift+Dagger into the trees, where you would be safe to use March and Missile. If the fight takes too long you can TP to base, TP back and repeat the process. In fact, you never use your dagger, which is quite curious. The first time you use it is at 21:45 to kill ES. Btw, you didn't use your combo correctly. If it was a hero with escape mechanism, you wouldn't get the kill. The correct way to kill someone is use HSM from some place where they can't see you, blink and use Laser+Dagon, in a way that the 3 spells hit at the same time. This way you minimize their reaction time. For example, if you use this correctly you can kill even a hero with blink (QoP for example). If you blink and then use HSM Dagon Laser, you won't kill nearly as much.
When farming the 3 camps jungle use each march in a different direction so they hit every camp. The way you use it doesn't hit one of them.
Your second death is as stupid as the first. You can't just walk toward 3 heroes to Laser someone. This is not how Tinker works. You should be in a safe place using skills, and only get spotted if it's necessary and if you're not gonna die.
25:30 you "harass" WL, but you could have killed him. He was near the TP. Dagon shift dagger to the trees, use HSM, rearm, HSM, blink and Dagon Laser. I think he would have died before the Laser. 26:30 you don't kill Jugger because you didn't do what I said above about hitting the 3 spells at the same time, so he had time to react and use the spin. 27:15 you die again for the same reason, you expose yourself too much. 28:30 you missed an easy kill on WL, he was alone and didn't have ult. Just use the combo I mentioned.
When you TP to farm a sidelane you stay in the lane wtf o.O that's complete suicide, if anyone gets you you're DEAD. You have to blink to trees and use march from there. If the enemy team had a Nyx, BH, they could be waiting for you. If they had SB he could charge you. If they had Storm he would jump on you Orchid you and kill you easily.

That's it, pretty much. All your deaths were in the same way. I can tell you this was an easy game and you could have won it and stomped it, but your gameplay is very basic. You need to learn how to farm better, how to use your combos better and how to position yourself better when fighting.

Well the thing is i see the march build like some sort of farming build, with would probably delay my help to the rest of my team.

@Dorkly: you're right, but it's worth it. You need BoT to get into the game for real. March build GUARANTEES your quick BoT if you play decently. With Laser + HSM, if you fail your early game, it's 10 times harder to get into the game because it will be 100 times harder to get your BoT!
Besides, people underestimate a lot the damage of March. This skill wins teamfights. If the other team is forced to fight under 2 waves of March you have pretty much won the fight already.

Well i will try it. So in what lvl you up your ulti to lvl 2 ? I usually wait a lot ( lvl 16, lvl 17 ) to put a second skill point on my ulti.

The main reason for not leveling your ulti is mana, so I guess this changes a bit for each player, but I tend to level it as soon as I have the other 3 maxed (ie level 14). The level 3 is usually when I get my Scythe since I have more manapool, or when I get my EB since I'll use less spells in the combo. (this is usually around 18-20)

Not sure if it was mentioned, but soul ring is essential.

Thanks for the advice, especially about the combo sequence. Yeah my list hitting with tinker isnt great but i'm sure that will come when i get some more games with him.

I did notice i expose myself way too much compared to other tinkers i vs and i think thats where my main problem is. In terms of build, would you get 1 pt in lazer and max march and hsm or max lazer and march ? Also, the reason i leave my lane when i march is so i can make it in time to stack the ancients and pick up rune, i find if i leave any later i may miss the ancient stack. Is there a more efficient way of doing this ? What do you propose is the most efficient way of farming in the period i just get BoT to blink and dagon ? - aiming for kills ? ancient stacking ? jungling ?. The reason i dont want to TP everywhere farming all the lanes early up is because i dont want to steal too much of the carries farm, much like furions that just ult every CD and messes up the lane equilibrium.

How frequent do you TP to base ? at what levels do you propose skilling your ult ?

- In terms of build, would you get 1 pt in lazer and max march and hsm or max lazer and march ?

I usually max march - max laser - max HSM, but going for max march - max HSM - max laser is good as well. Just don't forget that at least 1 level of Laser is extremely important.

- Also, the reason i leave my lane when i march is so i can make it in time to stack the ancients and pick up rune, i find if i leave any later i may miss the ancient stack. Is there a more efficient way of doing this ?

Yeah actually I don't always stack the camp, because you will miss some exp and last hits in order to consistently do it all the time. However, it's not bad at all, just some personal issues. I don't really feel the need to do it usually. But sometimes I do.

- What do you propose is the most efficient way of farming in the period i just get BoT to blink and dagon ? - aiming for kills ? ancient stacking ? jungling ?

TPing in free spots, marching and TPing back. Good spots are your own lane, the ancients and 2 spots in the jungle: one near the lane where you farm 2 camps and one in the middle of the jungle where you farm 3 camps. And, of course, help your team to push / counter push. With Laser maxed it's very easy to get unexpected solo kills, people underestimated a lot your burst damage potential. Just don't expose yourself too much.

- How frequent do you TP to base ? at what levels do you propose skilling your ult ?

I don't know how frequent, maybe once every 15 secs? I TP as much as I can, my game is pretty much TP - use spells - TP back - repeat. Don't spend time walking around, it's dangerous and you'll have low mana. I discussed about the ult above, I usually go around 7 - 14 - 20.

If I can give an advice, it's to download some replays, especially from Chains. Watch his player perspective.

Laser + Missile is fine actually as it allows you to dominate your lane especially if the opposing mid is squishy like SF,though you have to be good at last hitting with tinker and have decent map awareness.However,if they are constantly ganking you then march build would be a better option,or if the mid is a hero like TA.

You need to improve on your last hits during your laning phase,and personally I feel going for laser+ missile might actually land you a few kills in mid.If you went for hex instead of dagon you might be able to contribute more for your team.By going for dagon,you are actually only gaining more burst damage which isn't bad,but you won't be able to perma hex and shutdown an enemy during a clash.