Glass cannon synergistic focus fire harassment [ Hamstertamer November 18, 2017 Introduction Clinkz is a carry with both insane snowballing potential and powerful late game scaling. He's an "assassin" type of carry who excels at picking off single heroes by popping out of invisibility with his very high burst damage. He can gank, he can push, and he can ball out of control really hard if he manages to have a good early game. Unlike other hard carries, he's mainly about farming heroes - not creeps. While being a pretty simple and straightforward hero fairly noob-friendly, his ability to "snipe" heroes who are sitting out of position added to his very high early burst damage in lane make him a lot of fun to play. This guide will give you a collection of builds and playstyles on this hero as you will see there isn't a single one - instead there are several options depending on what you are up against. It focuses on the early-mid game decisions because as you'll see that's the most important turning point for Clinkz. There are two main item builds on Clinkz, one that focuses on rushing Bloodthorn, and another based on armor reduction with Medallion of Courage + Desolator. Have a nice read! Pros / cons Pros + Insane damage output + Late game carry with very high ganking/snowball potential + Good lane presence. Strong harassing ability and high damage output in lane. + Great map control with Skeleton walk. Can move and gank anywhere on the map including enemy jungle. + Extremely strong pusher. Can take down towers in seconds and split push like no other. + Surprisingly tanky for an AGI hero thanks to his ultimate can gain up to +880 HP! + Punishes split pushing. Hard. + Decent escape with *max movement speed* on top of invisibility. Can often escape even when detected by dust/gem/sentries. + Does really well against most heroes. Has very few true counters Slardar, illusion heroes, and..that's it really. Good pick in almost any game. Cons - Extremely squishy in the early game. Very easy to burst down in lane, 2 stuns = dead Clinkz. - Attack animation is literally dumpster tier. Takes a million years to fire a bow for some reason. - Ghost scepter, blademail, force staff and heaven's halberd ruin your fun. - Extremely item dependent - *huge* mana issues, lacks mana even with a big INT item like orchid or sheepstick - Purely single target damage. Can't deal with illusions. - Questionable teamfight presence, especially in early-mid game. - Completely momentum dependent. Cannot recover from a bad start. - No, seriously, he absolutely needs a good start and good early farm in the first 15 minutes otherwise he's useless. Skills and skill builds Gives a ton of attack speed, which gives great burst damage for gaking, teamfighting or pushing towers. This skill sclaes extremely well so it's maxed second. - Searing Arrows gives you a high boost in attack damage at the cost of paying 10 mana per hit. This allows you to deal a lot of right-click damage even early on. - In lane, this is best used as a harassing skill. Cast this skill manually on enemy heroes and you can harass without drawing aggro from enemy creeps. This makes Clinkz one of the best harassers in the game. - This skill also gives you free last hits in lane. At level 3 you deal ~85 damage on each hit, making last-hitting a breeze. However this only works as long as you have mana ; which you won't if you abuse it. - Therefore it's best to keep Searing Arrows for harassing enemy heroes while you last-hit with your normal attack. - Searing Arrows is not an unique attack modifier. Therefore it stacks perfectly with other unique attack modifiers like Desolator, lifesteal, Eye of Skadi, etc. - Searing Arrows goes though magic immunity and works on towers. - This skill drains your mana heavily. Only put it on autocast if you have a mana regen item. Otherwise only activate it when needed ganks, teamfights, big pushes... - Invisibility and maximum movement speed. Main use of this skill is for ganking pop behind an enemy hero and burst him down. - It's also a decent escape because of the high movement speed. Even if your invisibility gets detected by Dust of Appearance, you still have a lot of movement speed so you can still run away if you don't get chainstunned. - This skill allows you to roam the map like no other. Go scout the fog for ganks. Walk in the middle of the enemy jungle with impunity, etc. Always activate it when walking long distances, the movement speed bonus really helps. - Activate it right after using a Town Portal Scroll, it won't interrupt your TP and you will be invisible when TP'ing. - Always use this skill before any kind of engagement. It gives you a lot of damage and HP. The highest HP jungle creep has 1100 HP. if you eat it you will gain 550/715/880 HP and 55/72/88 damage. It makes a huge difference in your DPS and survivability. - Jungle creeps are the best. Aim for the Papa Bird, the Papa Satyr, the big centaur, the troll, and the bears. Because of the long cooldown it's best to avoid using it on lane creeps. - Death Pact actually heals you. Since it increases your current HP when you cast it, when the buff ends you will have gained that much HP. This skill gives you a lot of sustainability as long as you have the mana to use it. - Death Pact increases your *base* damage and HP, which means that Manta Style illusions benefit fully from the skill. - Again, always, always use this skill whenever you can. Skill build Max Searing Arrows first. It's your strongest early game skill, whether for harassment, last hitting, or kills. 60 damage is really insane at that point in the game, it's like a free Sacred Relic. Clinkz's early game damage output is often completely underestimated which can easily lead to free kills. Max Strafe second. While the mana cost can be a bit problematic when you add the cost of the Searing Arrows, this skill when maxed gives a ton of attack speed which can easily burst down any hero at that point in the game as long as you have good positioning. Then max Skeleton Walk. Your invis skill scales decently but damage burst is way better than movement speed really. Always take Death Pact whenever possible. Talent build Fairly self-explanatory. Lervel 10 talent depends on what type of damage you're facing. It's important to take the Searing Arrows multispot at level 25 because it solves the hero's major weakness teamfights. Laning and role Clinkz is a carry who is very good at ganking, but he's not a dedicated ganker. The difference is that he's extremely farm-dependent and absolutely needs a good start in the first 15 minutes of the game to be effective. Clinkz needs to freefarm a lane, really. No matter what build you go for, there's no way around it you need a good farming position. Here are the possible laning situations you can have Safe lane carry dual lane or trilane Almost always the best option for Clinkz. Clinkz in competitive DotA is exclusively played as a safe lane carry. Being able to freefarm the safe lane for ~15 minutes allows you to get your main items like Orchid Malevolence very quickly, with a possible Hand of Midas on top. Having supports in your lane is always great because Clinkz has high damage but no disable, so imagine all the kills you can get with a support with heavy disables like Lion. Solo safe lane Clinkz doesn't necessarily need babysitting in lane. He can solo the safe lane perfectly well, which leaves room for supports to roam, do an aggressive trilane, have a jungler, etc. Clinkz can solo easily against most solo offlaners and dual lanes. Aggressive trilane or dual offlane Clinkz has very high damage output in the early game so he's a decent option if you want to run an aggressive trilane with disablers like Vengeful Spirit, Ogre Magi, etc. Just beware that he's pretty squishy so it only works if you're not facing a lot of burst damage. Solo mid Searing Arrows make Clinkz a decent solo mid. He wins a lot of 1 vs 1 matchups because of his harassing ability and his ability to get "free" last hits. The only thing he really struggles against is heavy burst damage, so be weary of mids with heavy nukes and get early HP items if needed treads, bracer, raindrop. Roaming supports can also cause you problems so always watch out for mid lane ganks. All in all he's a pretty solid solo mid and most of the mids with no escapes are on your food list when you hit ~level 6. Solo offlane? Really? Let's be straight here Clinkz is not, and has never been, an offlaner. Don't confuse him with his archer sister Windranger. Also don't confuse him with Bounty Hunter. There's a lot of reasons why Clinkz offlane is just not viable against any kind of competent players Clinkz needs carry level of farm in the early game to come online. Because of the way he works ganking without a disable, if he doesn't have enough DPS you will just reach a point where you cannot get solo kills because enemies are too tanky. Clinkz is a terrible comeback hero and starting at a disadvantage from a bad laning position hurts him hard. Clinkz has no HP and can be bursted down easily. He cannot solo offlane against a trilane if you're up against a trilane it's pretty much GG for you. Clinkz has no safe way of farming from a distance. If the lane is pushed towards the enemy tower, he has to come near the creeps to farm and he can get caught out easily. Most offlaners just go there to sap experience. If an offlane Bounty Hunter gets 10 last hits in 10 minutes, there's nothing wrong with that, he can just start ganking as soon as he hits level 6 and come back from Track gold. But if a Clinkz gets 10 last hits in 10 minutes...he's pretty much out of the game. Offlane is for utility heroes that are not very farm dependent and can do with just getting experience. Clinkz is a carry, he's nothing without farm, and he provides no utility whatsoever from his skills. So Clinkz offlane is purely a pub thing, and it's essentially only viable a way to exploit bad lanes in the enemy team. If you can manage to solo offlane and get carry levels of farm like 40-50 last hits in 10 minutes, then by all means go for it. If you know you'll be up against an Ursa + Omniknight dual lane with a jungling Lone Druid, then by all means go offlane, this lane is a joke, you can just freefarm it as much as you want. But it won't always be like this. So you can only go offlane if - you know that you're up against a dual lane and not a trilane, and - even then, if the enemy lane doesn't have 2 or more stuns. Items Clinkz needs a lot of things from his items, that's the reason why he's so item dependent! A brief list of what he needs A way solve his mana problems. He hardly has enough mana to cast his skills! Build as much DPS as he can. It's a must to keep his ganks effective A Black King Bar. Clinkz can't really teamfight without one. Disables. Clinkz needs to gank and he has no disable, he needs to rely on his items for disabling Clinkz doesn't need to build a specific survivability item, since he has Death Pact for survivability already, he just need enough mana to cast it! Black King Bar is generally the only defensive item he really needs. Clinkz has two main item builds, the first focuses on rushing Bloodthorn, the second focuses on armor reduction with Medallion of Courage + Desolator. Starting items Cost 625 gold Sage's Mask goes into either Ring of Basilius or Medallion of Courage. Rest is standard stats + regen. If going mid, the standard Tango + 3 branch into Bottle rush works perfectly fine. Early game Bloodthorn build Midas is an occasional pickup on Clinkz in passive competitive games, but in pubs its usefulness is pretty questionable. Sure it increases your farm and experience, but on the other hand going Midas delays the moment when you can start getting kills by a lot. And by the time you come online, 1 enemies will be more likely to have ways to dispel orchid, and 2 the enemy team will start 5-man pushing, meaning that there's nothing left to gank. Only recommended when you are your team's main carry and if you're freefarming, so you can get it at 7 mins maximum so that it doesn't delay your core. Please no "comeback Midas" nonsense on Clinkz, it's terrible. Early game armor reduction build Medallion gives more early burst damage than any other item. Armor reduction combined with your extremely high physical damage kills enemy heroes extremeely fast. It's the best pickup if you want to get early kills. Mid game / "core" item options Orchid Malevolence is the traditional build on Clinkz. It gives you pretty much everything you need good DPS, lots of mana regen, and a good disable that also amplifies your burst damage. Orchid is a really good pickup against these kind of heroes - Heroes with escape mechanisms the likes of Ember Spirit, Puck, Slark, Queen of Pain, Timbersaw, etc. Silence them and they can't escape. - Disablers the likes of Lion, Earthshaker, Bane, Shadow Shaman, Pudge, etc. The silence makes ganking them extremely easy, because they can't stop you with their stuns. But the true power comes when you upgrade it to Bloodthorn, which you should do immediately. Bloodthorn gives the best DPS for the money you can get, as long as enemies can't purge it. That's why you should rush it ASAP, before purge items come online on enemies. Later in the game you can use Nullifier to prevent enemies from purging it with items. BKB Black King Bar is pretty much a must if you want to teamfight with Clinkz. It's the difference between getting chainstunned and feeding, and killing everything in sight with your Strafe. Of course it depends of the heroes you're up against but seriously you'll need BKB at some point on Clinkz in 9/10 of your games. DPS extensions - Butterfly Arguably the best all-around damage item on Clinkz - Nullifier Amazing item on Clinkz, recommended in almost every game. The synergy with Bloodthorn is perfect, since it prevents enemies from purging it with items. And the slow has perfect synergy with Strafe. - Daedalus Gives a ton of DPS and stacks diminshingly with Bloodthorn crits. - Monkey King Bar Counters evasion, but generally Bloodthorn is enough for that already - Divine Rapier Clinkz is one of the best rapier users in the game with his high attack speed and pseudo-escape. Just two warnings 1 get a Black King Bar or you're just food and 2 only buy this as a desperate move when you are losing, never touch this item when you are winning. Defensive extensions - Black King Bar pretty much the only defensive item you truly need - Eye of Skadi Lots of HP, lots of mana, and a strong slow which is exactly what you need. - Linken's Sphere Can replace/complement Black King Bar in some games. Blocks a lot of nasty single-target abilities that go through BKB. Great item against Legion Commander, Vengeful Spirit, Beastmaster, Batrider, Storm Spirit, Naga Siren, Bloodseeker... Also solves your mana issues completely. Disable extensions - Eye of Skadi 35% slow that makes chasing during Strafe a breeze. Completely owns heroes without escape skills. - Scythe of Vyse the ultimate disable. Allows you to solo kill any single hero. Prevents enemies from purging Bloodthorn. Also gives you infinite mana. - Nullifier Items are the major problem of Clinkz. Ghost Scepter, Glimmer Cape, Blade Mail, Heaven's Halberd, Force Staff... these things prevent you from killing anyone. Use this and problem solved. Special mentions Ever tried ganking an invisible hero without dust? Yeah it doesn't work Clinkz is supposed to get solo kills so you can't count on your team, just buy your own dust. Situational items The best mobility item on Clinkz. Allows him to catch up with fleeing heroes and have an escape when split pushing. Also the active is pretty useful in teamfights. A good item, but generally you buy other stuff skadi over this. Buy this when 6-slotted. Helm Niche items Solid DPS from the agility and the feedback, and the active is one of the strongest slows in the game. Ganking with the diffusal slow is extremely effective against heroes with low mobility and few disables. Not as good as the main items, but the mana burn can be pretty useful against certain heroes. Avoid these items - Bloodstone gives a lot of mana regen but that's really all it does. You don't need mana regen that bad. Item gives no DPS, no disable, and no useful ability. A lot of much more useful items can give you the mana regen you need Orchid, Linkens, Scythe, Skadi... - Radiance It's an item for tanky heroes who stand in the middle of teamfights, not ganking-oriented heroes like Clinkz. Radiance Clinkz is just as viable as radiance Invoker it's only useful for trolling newbs with invisibility. - Gem of True Sight Don't be that guy who buys gem on invisible heroes thinking you won't stupidly feed the gem. There's no reason to ever buy this over dust. - Drum of Endurance drum buyers...smh. They're beyond my help. - Rod of Atos Interesting idea, but having a disable is useless if you have zero damage so Diffusal Blade is just better. - Sange and Yasha just a worse version of Diffusal Blade with its weak slow, and gives no mana. Don't bother. Gameplay General tips Typically the way of playing Clinkz is all about roaming the map, searching for isolated heroes to gank, and split pushing towers with Strafe if you see the enemy team grouping up. Clinkz is a pretty poor teamfight hero in the early-mid game until he gets his Black King Bar essentially. Best avoid taking early teamfights if possible, pushing towers and looking for solo kills on defending heroes is the better option most of the time. To gank efficiently, start by eating a jungle creep with Death Pact, Skeleton Walk to sneak near your target, use your disables orchid, diffusal..., activate Strafe and burst him down. Don't forget ulting a creep before every gank, you really need the bonus damage and HP. Use Death pact on lane creeps if you can't find jungle creeps nearby. When you start getting some farm going and a recommended BKB, you can start joining teamfights. In teamfights, always try to focus high priority targets. Skeleton Walk gives you almost free initiation on any hero if you don't get caught by sentries, so choose your target carefully. Best option is to focus key teamfight heroes in the enemy team, the likes of Earthshaker, Witch Doctor, Invoker, Silencer, Omniknight, Venomancer, Zeus...you get the idea silence them if you have orchid and try to burst them quickly, it gives a big advantage to your team if you manage to take them out before the fight starts. Try to circle around and initiate from the back of the teamfight, not only are you far less likely to get caught by sentries, but you can get a free jump on enemy supports/initiators which is much more valuable that attacking that Wraith King who's standing at the front. Blink Dagger gives you better initiation without fear of sentry wards. Countering your counters Always look at enemy heroes' inventories. Watch out for these items, since a lot of items are serious threats - Dust of Appearance Reveals you, but you still keep your high movement speed from Skeleton Walk. If you don't get chainstunned you can usually still run away. It's still a problem though so watch out. Manta Style and Black King Bar dispel dust. - Gem of True Sight not really an issue for Clinkz as long as you notice which hero has the gem in time. Gem has a fairly short range that's easy to escape with your Skeleton Walk movement speed. Gem holders hardly live for more than a few minutes anyways so be sure when he dies to drop the gem in your base and never touch it again. Just make sure that your teammates don't walk around with the gem, especially when the enemy team doesn't even have invisible heroes... - Necronomicon Generally the bane of invisible heroes. Luckily Clinkz can escape their true sight radius with his high movement speed. Can still be an issue in teamfights though. - Sentry Wards Sentries are the only form of invisibility detection that can really be a problem. During the laning stage, watch for sentries in the enemy inventories. They are likely to place them in lane to prevent you from sneaking up on them. If they do, no problem, just keep farming the lane. Always look at enemy supports' inventories for sentries especially before a teamfight starts. Don't go straight in when starting a teamfight, it's likely that you walk in sentry range, instead wrapping around and "backstabbing" the enemy supports from behind the enemy lines makes you far less likely to get caught in sentry range. And if you do, you can just pop Black King Bar and manfight. Also watch out for dewarding sentries. This can lead to some pretty ******** deaths you walk through the entrance of the enemy jungle, and out of nowhere you get stunned and bursted down. Why would they ever have a sentry there? To deward of course! - Heaven's Halberd you use Strafe, and suddenly you sit there doing nothing because you can't attack for a huge time. Extremely annoying item, and you can't even purge the disarm! Get a BKB, and use Nullifier. - Town Portal Scroll Clinkz has no stun and the hero you're ganking can just TP out in your face. Thankfully you generally have enough DPS to finish him off before that. Scythe of Vyse and Nullifier counter TP's. - Force Staff You Strafe a hero, and he just forcestaffs out of your range or gets forcestaffed by a teammate. Nullifier deals with that, so does having a Hurricane Pike of your own. - Ghost Scepter You Strafe a hero, he instantly turns immune to physical damage for 4 seconds and just walks away like he doesn't care. Extremely annoying item. You can't just wait around for 4 seconds. Get a Nullifier. - Glimmer Cape Same thing. Get dust or Nullifier. - Blade Mail A problem for obvious reasons. Nullifier and Satanic are the two counters here. I think you get the message here. This is your friend. Friends and Foes Friends Aggressive supports / disablers Supports with good disables and/or burst damage are your best friends in lane. A good disable + Searing Arrows damage often results in a kill. Crystal Maiden deserves a special mention because of Arcane Aura. You really need that mana regen. Vengeful Spirit is also an amazing friend because of her armor reduction and the ability to save you later in the game. Initiators Clinkz cannot initiate teamfights and relies completely on his team for proper initiation. Good teamfight heroes are always a huge help. ROFL Chen creeps have the highest creep HP in the game so Death Pact them for crazy stats. He can't even get mad because it makes perfect sense for you to use his creeps as a food storage XD Foes While some heroes can be a bit annoying to deal with, Clinkz actually has extremely few true counters. There's always a bigger fish Slardar just ruins your fun. Not only does Corrosive Haze reveal your invisibility and puts your armor below zero, but he can chase you down with the combination of his sprint and the Blink Dagger he always builds. There is just no escape against that guy. Illusion swarm Illusion heroes are pretty tough to deal with because Clinkz is purely single target. - Phantom Lancer is a complete nightmare since you can't target him. Gatting a Mjollnir is the best option against him. - Chaos Knight is a big problem also because he can disable you hard with his Reality Rift + Chaos Bolt. - Naga Siren is not that bad because you can kill her individual illusions pretty fast, but Ensnare prevents you from moving and turning invisible for 5 seconds. - Terrorblade has no way to disable you and you can gank him pretty well so he's not on this list. And...that's pretty much it for your counters. Here's a few heroes you need to be weary about. While not really counters to Clinkz, they can still cause you a few problems. All these guys are pretty good at picking off Clinkz and chasing/disabling him. Special mentions - Bounty Hunter He's not really a counter to Clinkz. Sure he has true sight but he also has no way to disable you. He's a pretty easy pickoff for you. Buy Manta Style if you hate Track that much. - Zeus a bit the same as Bounty, sure his Lightning Bolt reveals invisibility, but he can't disable you when you run away and he's a pretty easy gank, or you can just split push and he can't stop you. Besides you can silence him in teamfights with orchid and make him useless. - Lion For some reason pub players have problems with this hero and think he's a counter to everything...seriously, just silence him with orchid silence makes him useless, and he dies in a few hits. And buy a BKB. - Chen Clinkz and Chen essentially counter each other. You can eat his creeps and get crazy stats from them, but seriously, when a Chen lineup starts 5-manning at the 20 minute mark and pushing your base, you're the one crying not him. Don't pick Clinkz thinking he's a great Chen counter, he's not. Summary Clinkz is a carry with a lot of mobility and the ability to constantly roam the map looking for pickoffs. He has a very strong lane presence and can generally win his lane easily as long as he doesn't get bursted down with nukes or chainstuns. His very high damage output allows him to instantly burst any single hero he comes across, however he can have issues against larger groups and strong teamfight heroes. He makes for his limited teamfight presence by his ability to split push towers in seconds, being a constant threat to the enemy base. Eventually he starts becoming a threat in teamfights as well. The most important part in playing him is getting a good momentum going in the early game, which will determine your success later on. Despite being very simple, he can be pretty fun and challenging to play especially with the number of different builds possible on him. Thanks for reading. I will happily reply to any kind of constructive feedback so don't hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments. Credits Credit to Kyfoid for being the voice of a generation. This guide is a tribute to him. The credits for the pictures go to Clinkz wallpaper official Valve wallpaper Clinkz by Ahrimatt Deviantart Clinkz by mrscrake Deviantart Clinkz bone by biggreenpepper Deviantart