This is Clockwerk

Despite his appearance he is not actually a robot

He’s a dwarf that’s covered himself in armor and tech.

He is Fantasy Iron Man.

He is played pretty much exclusively as a support these days. In the past he was played as the offlaner or sometimes mid, but he always kind of struggled there. I think he’s better as a support.

He is a melee and universal hero, meaning that he gets damage from all attributes rather than specializing in one.

And his innate ability is announcing damage amp based on his armor. Boring. Whatever.

What’s interesting about him is his four abilities and how they interact with one another.

His first ability is Battery Assault. Once he activates it, once every 0.7 seconds, Clockwerk will let off a burst of shrapnel at a random enemy within a small radius around him.

The enemy thus hit will take damage and be briefly stunned.

Each hit is weak and the stun is barely anything, but there’s a lot of hits and Clock can move and attack and cast other spells while itms happening.

At level one, Battery Assault does a total of 320 damage over 10.5 seconds. Which is a lot! The repeated stuns will also interrupt enemy attacks and spell animations.

However, if there are multiple enemies nearby, that damage and stun will end up getting split between them.

Probably pretty good for minions, too.

So Battery Assault is incredibly dangerous if Clock gets you alone, but not that scary if you’re standing in your creep wave or with allies. So Clock really wants to isolate you.

It actually deals double damage to creeps so yeah you can use it for farming purposes. Awkward to do so early game though, because Clock has serious mana problems.

So, here’s how Clockwerk will try to isolate you: his second skill, Power Cogs

When he activates Power Cogs, a circle of eight Cogs appear around Clockwerk. These are immobile wards that block enemy movement. They don’t attack or anything, but any enemy that touches them from the outside will take a small amount of damage, lose some mana, and be knocked back.

You can escape the power cogs by attacking one of the cogs twice, which will destroy it and provide an escape route.

Enemies who are close to Clock when the cogs are summoned will be pulled into the center of the cogs formation. Enemies that are further away will end up instantly being shocked and knocked back.

Used properly, Power Cogs can effectively trap an enemy inside alone so Clock can get his full battery assault damage on just them, and to keep other enemies from interfering.

Oh and they recently added the ability for Clock to attack the cogs to send them skidding along in the direction they were hit. This is generally more of a novelty than anything, but it is fun to play air hockey with your opponents.

You can also use cogs to block pursuit or drop them down in the middle of a team fight to disrupt enemy movement. Worth bearing in mind that Power Cogs also block allied movement, so it’s possible to grief your team with it (although that’s less likely if you pick the correct Facet, which I’ll come to later)

Really versatile skill, lots of different applications.

It doesn’t really do damage (or, well, not much anyway) but it enables Battery Assault and has a lot of other applications as well.

Clock’s third skill is Rocket Flare. Clockwerk fires a rocket that explodes and deals damage in an area. Enemies who get hit by this have their movement speed slowed substantially for about half a second.

The damage in Rocket Flare is actually pretty weak, but that’s okay, because it has two other interesting properties:

First, it has global range. You can fire a rocket to anywhere on the map. There’s travel time so long-range rockets are tricky.

The second is that when it explodes, it provides vision of the affected area for seven seconds.

So while it does do damage, its main purpose is as a scouting tool and for long-range harassment.

Think there might be an enemy lurking in the jungle ahead? Fire a rocket flare and find out!

The slow can also help you and your team catch up to a fleeing enemy, or keep a fleeing ally away from pursuers.

Clockwerk’s ultimate ability really defines his play style. It’s called Hookshot.

You shoot out a hook, which travels a long way in a straight line. If it hits a unit, ally or enemy, Blcokwerk gets pulled to them. Enemies hit by the hook get stunned and damage. This stun pierces magic immunity.

The range on this sucker is HUGE. Even at level one, the maximum range is off the screen if your camera is centered on Clock.

See an enemy standing alone? Hookshot to them, power cogs, battery assault.

An ally is getting jumped in a team fight? Hookshot to disrupt it.

Hookshot turns Clockwerk into one of the game’s best initiators and counter-initiators. It does requires a lot of skill to use properly but if you’re good with it it turns you into an absolute menace.

In particular, if the enemy team has a ranged carry who wants to stand back and dish out damage from range, like Sniper or Drow Ranger, you can and should make it your mission in life to Hookshot them. Even if you don’t kill them, disrupting them from being able to perform their role in the fight likely means a won fight.

And because Hookshot has so much range, enemies need to play paranoid about it.

That said, you need to ensure that your allies are in position to follow up before hooking in. Clock’s solo kill potential isn’t great; if you get too far ahead of your allies, there’s a good chance you just. Hook in and die.

Man don't make me want to play DOTA. I am a recovering former Thresh main in league.

With Aghanim’s share you get a new ability, a jetpack, which gives you faster and flying movement but makes you constantly move forward, allowing only limited adjustments to your angle of travel. The main purpose of this is to allow you to pass over impassable terrain.

Which is particularly useful for Clockwerk because your allies can block your hook, so being able to fly over trees lets you set up your hooks without your allies getting in the way.

With Aghanim’s Scepter he gets an Overclocking ability that temporarily improves all his abilities, but causes a movement speed and attack speed slow when it wears off. I will be honest, I have never actually used this. Only times I’ve bought it, the game ended before I got to use it much.

Now in Dota, at the start of the match, you need to pick between two (or more, in some cases) Facets which change how the character plays. Clock’s facets are Hookup and Expanded Armature.

Hookup makes gives Hookshot a larger stun radius, and makes it so that if you hook to an ally, it refunds some of the cooldown time and provides both you and the ally bonus armor.

The idea is that it makes Hook more of a rescue tool for your allies. It seems situationally useful, and I’ve tried it out against Legion Commander for instance. However, nobody ever picks this one.

And the reason why nobody take it is that Expanded Armature exists and Expanded Armsture rules.

What it does is increase the size of the circle of power cogs that gets dropped around you, and makes the cogs able to bounce enemies inside as well as outside.

This means that you and your allies can safely walk between the cogs to get in and out of the ring, so it great decreases the griefing potential.

It also means that you can drop cogs, walk out of them, kick a cog back in and have it pinball your opponent around the inside of the cogs.

And it makes it a massive problem for enemies during a team fight because your cogs just take up so much space.

Anyway the real reason to play Clockwerk is to do sick plays like this oneGodlike Blind Hook

So, items

First of all, make sure you bring two tangos with you to lane. You’re a melee support who wants to be up in the enemy’s grill and making trades; you need some healing to not just get forced out of lane (or die!)

For boots, given that you’re a spell-based support who has mana problems, you might imagine that you should take mana boots. But actually most people recommend picking up tranquil boots instead.

The reason is twofold. First, movement speed is very important to Click. You need it pre-Hookshot to get on top of your enemies, and you need it to rotate quickly between lanes looking for parties that need starting.

Second, when you go in on an enemy, you have to stick your body in there. You’re going to get roughed up. The out-of-combat regen means you can get back into the fight faster.

Plus, although you do have mana problems, and you are dependent on your spells, you shouldn’t be spamming them out. You’re not a full caster.

You can definitely get by on ferrying out some clarity potions between engagements.

After boots, your next priority should be something to help keep you alive when you go in. Usually that’s a Solar Crest, but if you’re getting hit with a lot of magic damage maybe you should consider a glimmer cape instead.

After that, what you should get next is going to depend a lot on what you’re up against, but it’s probably either a force staff or an Aghanim’s shard. Get the force staff if you’re up against enemies that you REALLY do not want to be stuck standing next to, like an Ursa or an Axe.

And you’re a support so probably if you get more items than this the game’s already over