Study

The main objective of Dota 2 isn’t to score an impressive number of kills, but to instead destroy your enemy’s base. To get there you will need to destroy a multitude of towers, which are tough adversaries in the early game. Pushers rise to this challenge, which abilities that deal extensive damage to buildings, or summon minions to soak up the incoming damage. Some team compositions feature many pusher heroes, designed to destroy the enemy base before the opposing team can buff up their carry.

Leshrac is a blue glowing centaur, who has an affinity for constant pulsating damage. His tower demolishing ability comes in the form of Diabolic Edict which, when maxed out, can very nearly destroy a tower in a single cast. The important thing to note is that Diabolic Edict is spread randomly to nearby foes, so you want to make sure the tower is the only valid target to inflict maximum damage.

Split Earth is an AoE stun with a fairly long cast-time, similar to Lina’s Light Strike Array. It does impressive damage and stuns for a decent period, letting you set up further spell-casts or get in a few important right clicks. His ultimate, Pulse Nova, is perfect for this, doing constant damage around him while draining his mana, togglable at any point.

His final spell, Lightning Storm, deals damage to a target then jumps to another nearby enemy. Again, it does reasonable damage and slows, letting you set up for an easier Split Earth. Alternatively it’s excellent for clearing creep waves in tandem with Pulse Nova, giving ol’ Lesh further pushing power.

No, it’s not Gandalf - but he’s still an adorable old man riding a horse. Keeper of the Light is fantastic at wiping out creep waves without mercy, thanks to Illuminate. The longer you channel the spell, the more damage it does once it’s unleashed. At level four, it can be channeled for five seconds, dealing 500 damage to anything in its huge range. This is enough to wipe out creep waves in one blast. It’s no toe-tap against any heroes who foolishly stumble in the way either.

Chakra Magic allows Keeper of the Light to keep casting Illuminate all match long without having to conserve his mana, restoring a chunk of precious magic-juice to any target with each cast. That really can’t be underestimated, particularly since it also reduces the cooldown of the next spell used, and makes Keeper of the Light an uber-friendly lane ally. Mana Leak forces opposing heroes to stand still or lose their mana pool, draining a portion with every step they take with it on them. They’re also stunned if it goes to zero. Good Illuminate targets.

His ult is a self buff that allows him to move from the place Illuminate is being cast, as well as giving him a pair of abilities. One blasts an area, evacuating it of enemies and blinding them. The other teleports an ally from anywhere on the map to KOTL’s location after a moment, an exceedingly powerful effect if used at the right time. While there’s a lot of depth to KOTL, you’re unlikely to go wrong in early days just killing wave after wave of enemy creeps until their Ancient falls over.

The robo-man is a mana-hungry, all-spells monster. He can put out an obscene amount of damage to any number of targets with his main three abilities, spread across a nuke, un-targeted damage for heroes only and a hyper-deadly AoE. Laser will burst targets down with ease, dealing decent damage and causing any heroes hit to miss attacks for a few seconds as they’re blinded by the glorious light.

Heat-Seeking Missile does better damage at a super-long range, but can’t be targeted, simply hitting the two nearest heroes to Tinker when it’s used. That’s a double-edged sword, making it less useful in team fights but able to hit enemies in the fog of war for harassment damage or a killing blow.

Meanwhile March of the Machines is every lane creep’s nightmare and a bullet hell fan’s wet dream. Spawning a huge wave of detonating robots that explode on and damage any enemies they impact, it has obvious utility of pushing a lane but is also lethal to any heroes who find themselves stuck inside without the skills to dodge.

However, what makes Tinker a true threat is his ultimate, Rearm, and clever item use. Rearm refreshes the cooldown of all your spells and items, with a few exceptions. It has no cooldown and a short channel time, so as long as you have the mana to support it, you can spam spells and activated items for days. This includes Boots of Travel, enabling the sweetest style of play in the game - teleport to a lane, hit all your buttons, use rearm, hit all your buttons again, then teleport back to base to regenerate. Then do it to another lane, and another, then participate in a gank, then back to a lane. It’s hectic and has a massive skill ceiling as far as ability management and timing goes, but even a new player will be able to have a fun and effective time bouncing around the map taking names, towers and gold.