I wrote a guide on how to play Tiny
Tags: Guides And Tutorials, Rd2l, Dota 2

What am I buying? (Position 4)

Let’s talk about starting items. I can tell you right now that the best set of items to begin with on Position 4 look like this:

Tiny thrives off of two things; being faster than your opponent, and being able to start saving for your Blink as fast as possible. These items are generally what you want to do that with. Buying boots first generally means you also want to take the ward with you as well, as you will be able to place it before the enemy can reach the area you will be warding.

On your journey to the 2250 gold item, you will need some items to enable you to save for it. Tiny gets his gold by being active, by rotating, and by generally being aggressive. Your best friends for this are the following:

Tranquils are the most cost efficient boots for being active early in the game. Since you bought boots with your starting items, you will probably end up getting them fairly quickly since you only need the 425 gold to upgrade. Your first goal is generally either to rush towards the Tranquils, or to buy a stick first and then go Tranquils. Stick is another incredibly cost efficient item which will help with your mana sustain, since after most engagements you will get enough stick charges to at least give you mana for +1 spell. Upgrading to Wand is an option, but I generally don’t go it unless I know the game pre-blink will be especially “brawly”. Mangoes are generally not worth buying for the mana they give you, and I generally only get have them around if there’s a tree. Clarities for this purpose are MUCH better, since you will often have downtime where you are rotating between lanes, or where the enemy just won’t approach since it’s very easy to get people out of position if they approach you. Raindrops are good for the mana sustain as well as the fact you will be fighting a lot early. I generally buy 1 set every game, and maybe 2 depending on how I think fights are going. Wind lace continuing with the general idea that you being faster than your opponent is what you want, plus, it’s cheap!

Eventually you will get your Blink Dagger, and that’s where your item build really opens up to whatever sounds cool to you! Your average timing for Blink Dagger will usually be between 10–20 minutes depending on how well your game is going. The latest blink timing I have gotten recently is around 23 minutes, which is sub-optimal but you will sometimes have those sorts of games where you can’t get the timings you want. If I haven’t bought wand at this point, I usually upgrade now, and then start building towards whatever item I want to go next.

My usual thoughts for Position 4 are to go one of several routes. Either I go for some form of utility, or I capitalise on the burst combo as much as possible. Either option will involve some sort of mana regen in the item, or something that at the very least involves INT so that I can make up for it. My most common purchase at this point in the game as you can see from the above screencap is Euls Scepter.

Euls Scepter is a generally just great item for Tiny for several reasons. First of all, you can buy another Wind lace after you buy it so that your MS is even higher. Secondly, the Mana regen it gives is more than enough to sustain yourself, whether that be through split pushing waves or through constant search for pickoffs and other engagements. The active just being the icing on the cake, being able to cancel TP scrolls even if your spells are on cooldown and just generally having a item to catch up with people is what Tiny wants. Not to mention the fact that you also just bought Euls and Blink, meaning you’ve just become more elusive since you can Euls into Blink to escape tricky situations.

Euls is also good against the tempo items that a lot of Mid laners like to buy currently, namely Orchid, since you can either purge off the silence, or Euls the Orchid carrier so that your allies have time to create some distance between themselves and the enemies aggression.

Other items after Blink can include ‘burst enhancers’ if you’re doing particularly well and you think you can capitalise on your burst damage later into the game. If the item hasn’t been bought by a teammate, Veil is a very good option for this; coupled with the benefit of boosting allied spell damage and being fairly cheap. If you need a Ghost Scepter, then buying an Ethereal Blade fairly quickly after can be good for being offensive with that item route.

Most utility items are good since these items are never truly bad anyway. Items like Lotus and Force will always be useful, and sometimes it’s your job to buy them. If you’re against a hero like Doom, you can even buy a Linkens Sphere to put on your core (this is a fairly expensive item decision, I rarely ever do it but it is an option). You can build buff items around your teammates as well, like Vlads and Solar Crest as well if you’d like. The common aspect of all these items is that all of them provide some form of mana/mana regen, which is the main reason I haven’t suggested Halberd as an item to go after blink. It’s incredibly difficult to sustain Halberd when you don’t go for some item to boost your Mana pool first.

Echo Sabre?

Echo Sabre on Position 4 is sometimes an item that comes up in builds, and for good reason. If you want to increase your physical output with a less than 3000 gold item, then Echo is definitely the item you want to pick up. It synergises with your ulti bonus damage and negates the reduced attack speed of Grow. I’ve seen high MMR Tiny players like Cr1t do this from Position 4, and I don’t think it’s particularly bad. However, I basically never buy the item. The only time recently I can find myself buying the item recently was in a game where I was snowballing SUPER hard and I had a Magnus on my team to empower me. Relying on Physical burst on Tiny puts you on a timer the moment you go down that route, and if your game slows down in any way it becomes incredibly easy for the enemy to catch up with you and basically negate your advantage. Going down the Utility/Magic burst route with Tiny makes you much more reliable, as sources of magic resistance are usually much rarer, and as BKB durations get lower your item choices will get better. Going items like Veil or Euls are also much more selfless, and will likely net you a greater advantage over getting an Echo and amping your physical burst.