Dota 2: Instructions to play Clinkz patch 7.30, the hero is storming the meta

Dota 2 patch 7.30 has finally revived Clinkz, a hero neglected by the pro arena for quite some time.

Every time Dota 2 releases a new patch, the game always has heroes that benefit as well as disadvantages, and the initial analysis often doesn’t show all the effects of the update. Some changes, at first look weak, but are much stronger. In 7.30, the unexpectedly strong hero was Clinkz.

Clinkz has long been the hero that Icefrog experimented with. For new skills, nerfs and buffs, you can see that Clinkz has been adjusted by IceFrog for the past 3 years! This resulted in the hero being virtually absent from the pro scene during that period, with his main appearance going all the way back to TI8. When Dota 2 patch 7.30 came out, Clinkz received a lot of changes, one of which was a new skill called Burning Barrage, to replace Strafe.

At first, Burning Barrage looks weak. One of the strongest things about the old Clinkz was its ability to get behind and finish off a hero or two with Strafe. With that skill lost, how does the hero play? Burning Barrage is a skill channel and with a soft carry like Clinkz, no one wants Clinkz to stand still and use the skill. Initial impressions were not good and was reflected in a tweet by Evil Genius team support Andreas ‘Cri1t’ Nielsen:

the crimes against clinkz continue

— Cr1t- (@Cr1tdota) August 18, 2021

But in fact, Crit and those who criticize Clinkz are wrong! This hero performed very well in pubs as well as at ESL One Fall. When the new patch came out, Clinkz’s win rate dropped by about 4% from 52% to 48%. But when people learned how to play the new Clinkz, the win rate kept increasing and surpassing the old patch.

In the Dota 2 pro arena patch 7.30, Clinkz won 12 out of 15 games (80% win rate), with 9/9 at ESL One Fall.

So why is the new Clinkz with Burning Barrage so strong? The answer is simple: heroes can farm a lot faster than most other carries. Let’s take a look at the following statistics:

Clinkz’s average GPM (gold per minute) in the pro scene:

From patch 7.20 to patch 7.29: 454
Patch 7.30: 699 (767 at ESL One Fall)

Burning Barrage helps Clinkz become the male version of Medusa thanks to the ability to farm lanes and jungles to stack at breakneck speed. Although the skill reduces damage by 40%, it has an attack modifier for all arrows and targets. That’s Medusa’s level 25 talent, while Clinkz is already available. With Maelstrom, even though the damage is reduced in attack, Clinkz still deals massive damage to creeps. The more creeps, the more Maelstrom proc, and the damage also increases from there. In addition, because of the longer attack range compared to hand attack, Clinkz can clear wave creeps from a safe position, something the hero couldn’t do before.

Skill Upgrading

The new Clinkz requires maximum Searing Arrows and leaves two points for Burning Barrage, one point for Skeleton Walk. Burning Barrage is the second skill that needs to be maxed out. As for the second case, that is when the support stack gives you a lot of camps in the jungle (did it ever happen in pubs?), then raise the maximum Burning Barrage first due to the lower cooldown.

Up Item

The way to build items for the new Clinkz in the safe lane carry position is quite clear. Maelstrom is always the first item because it not only helps you to farm, but also creates a large amount of damage in teamfight. Not to mention this damage is both physical and magical, making it more difficult to deal with for the opposing team.

The second item is usually a Dragon Lance. It adds stats and attack range to both Burning Barrage (increasing it from 900 to 1040). Then there’s the Eye of Skadi, which not only adds a lot of stats, but also slows all enemies within 200 units of Burning Barrage, making escaping from it difficult. Skadi is also a good way to deal massive Burning Barrage damage if the team doesn’t have a lockdown.

After Skadi is Aghanim’s Shard, which spawns two Skeleton Archers every time Clinkz exits a Skeleton Walk. You can choose to ignore this item if you are always standing behind and do not intend to get close to the enemy hero. In this case, go to BKB or Daedalus, depending on the progress of the game. Daedalus has a chance to inflict critical strike for each Burning Barrage arrow that hits an enemy! Sounds great, right?!

This build is similar to that of Nikolay “Nikobaby” Nikolov of Alliance when he faced T1 at ESL One Fall. Then, the carry of PSG.LGD team Wang “Ame” Chunyu helped popularize this build.

But in PSG.LGD’s 2-1 victory over Team Spirit, Clinkz was also used in mid. Ning “xiao8” Zhang is a position 2 Clinkz player. In this case, he goes to Glepnir (buffed in 7.30) and green stick. If you root multiple heroes with Glepnir, Clinkz will easily launch Burning Barrage more effectively, and the surrounding Burning Army can deal even more damage. The Chinese team applied this strategy twice and won both times. That shows Clinkz has many ways to play.

After a long time, Clinkz is finally back in the pub as well as the pro scene. Given the hero win rate at ESL One Fall, Clinkz will definitely be nerfed in 7.30c.

Hopefully the nerf is not too strong to help Clinkz be trusted at TI10. For now, let’s spam Clinkz to climb the rank.

According to gosugamers

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