Updates are few and far between in Dota 2, especially if they’re big since Ice Frog loves to cook for a while before releasing any massive changes into the wild. Naturally, when a hero is particularly impacted, it can make or break their performance, as Tinker has proved.
Tinker was nerfed into the ground this May in Patch 7.36 with numerous changes to his core kit and how he generally functions. His win rate at the time fell sharply to 33 percent and his overall state remained relatively the same over the course of the summer. While the Dota 2 hero did manage to climb back to about a 44 percent average win rate, he was never the same. But that all changed with Patch 7.37 at the end of July.
His Facet, Repair Robots, made Tinker one of the strongest supports in the game and his March of the Machines spell is borderline unstoppable. All of this now brings him to a whopping 58 percent average win rate across all Elo levels, according to stats site DotaBuff, with that mark being even higher in high Elo play. Tinker is also being picked nearly six times more frequently and three percent more than the average hero. He even works perfectly fine in the mid lane and can use his buffed Facet to act as a roamer, providing his team with substantial damage and heals.
The buffed Facet has made him generally easier to play, too, since Tinker doesn’t have to do all that much except cast March of the Machines frequently while staying out of sight. The spell is incredibly effective in teamfights as it provides Tinker’s allies with substantial amounts of sustain while inflicting serious damage on the opponents staying within its radius.
While he’s not his old self anymore, Tinker remains one of the most popular and most effective spell casters in Dota 2, though no one knows when Ice Frog will target him again.
