DOTA 2 - Clockwerk

Introduction

“Some assembly required.”

Clockwerk is a melee strength initiator and ganker. He is one of the most popular offlane heroes in both competitive Dota and public matchmaking thanks to his superior creep control, relative item independence, good defensive abilities, and the ability to gank other lanes as soon as he hits level 6. He excels at isolating and killing lone enemy heroes.

You can find Clockwerk's complete character profile here.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Amazing initiator
• Good base move speed
• Very strong offlaner
• Good ganker
• High solo pick-off potential once he hits level 6
• Decent push/anti-push
• Fairly item independent
• Good at isolating enemies and/or dividing enemy forces
• Global nuke that also grants vision, making it good for scouting and remote pushing

Cons

• Needs levels
• Not at all a right-clicker/DPS’er
• Not the most reliable escape mechanisms
• Doesn’t scale all that well
• Fits into a fairly niche role – not always a good pick
• High skill ceiling and high skill floor – not a good beginner hero
• Incorrect use of Cogs will hurt your team more than help them
• Highly mana dependent

Item Build

Starting Items

Clock is almost always played as a solo offlaner, for the reasons mentioned at the start of this guide. Good starting items when played in this role are:

- Healing Salve, a set of Tangos, a Stout Shield, and 2x Branches.

It’s possible to switch out one of the Iron Branches for a Clarity if you’d prefer. Some people, especially those who intend to rely more heavily on Rocket Flare and Cog will often do this. Either option is fine. I personally prefer to go straight for a Bottle (almost as if I’m playing him like a mid), which quickly solves any mana issues I may have.

Early Game

So, as I just mentioned, I like to Bottle rush as Clock in the offlane. Even if you opt to get Boots of Speed first, I still highly recommend Bottle. Yes, you’re in the offlane and so likely won’t have rune priority over your mid, but it’s still an amazing item pick up, solving both your regeneration issues in one go; Clock is heavily reliant on mana, but also takes his fair of damage as an initiator.

Bottle will also allow you to gank as soon as you hit levels 6 or 7 without needing to return to base, something I strongly advise you to do (I love rotating mid as soon as I hit 6 to try and secure a gank on the enemy mid and give my own mid a nice boost – with Hookshot you can do so without revealing yourself and most of the time it will not be expected the first time you attempt it.

Grab some Boots of Speed, upgrade an Iron Branches you have into a Magic Wand, and purchase a Bracer for some cost-effective stats if you want (recommended) to round out your early game purchases.

Core Options

Clock has a lot of options open to him when it comes to core items.

First of all, upgraded boots. The most common option here is Phase Boots, which synergise well with Battery Assault for preventing enemies from getting away.

However, I generally opt for Power Treads. Clock isn’t a right clicker and has fairly high base move speed any way, so I feel Phase Boots are a little bit redundant unless used for Battery Assault. Power Treads on the other hand help you to tank up a bit, allowing you to take some of that initial punishment you’ll get from initiating.

Some build guides will recommend Arcane Boots. Clock is mana hungry, but I prefer purchasing a Bottle to remedy this while also giving you health regeneration and the ability to buy more useful boots, rather than Arcane Boots.

Secondly, your first true core item. There are four highly common options here, and I’ll go through each in turn. It’s important to note that all four are excellent on Clock, and are well worth purchasing as luxury extensions later on in the game even if they’re not your first core item pick up.

Drums of Endurance – I'm a big fan of Drums of Endurance on almost any hero, and they synergise with Clock well too. They're cost efficient, easy to build into, and provide utility for your entire team with the move speed and attack speed auras. In short, they’re great if you have poor farm or are fighting constantly.

As one of the most cost-effective stat items in the game, the stat gain it provides a strength initiator like Clock shouldn’t be under-estimated either. You also likely have a Bracer from earlier in the game, making them a natural extension to your existing item pick-ups even if they won’t ordinarily be your ideal first core item.

Aghanim’s Scepter – Aghanim’s Scepter gives you decent stats, and a nice boost to your health and mana pools. The main reason it’s so damn good on Clockwerk though is because of its buff to his ultimate, Hookshot. It increases the Hookshot’s targeting radius from 125 units to 175 units and, crucially, reduces the cooldown from 70/55/40 seconds to a mere 12 seconds, which frees it up for use multiple times in extended engagements and allows you to use it much more freely.

Blade Mail – A bit more of a defensive/passive option. Blade Mail is a good item to consider on Clock because, being a strength hero you have a fairly large health pool, and being an initiator you will often take the brunt of any initial damage dealt in a teamfight. With Blade Mail you can use this to your advantage to take damage whilst returning it to anyone foolish enough to hit you without a BKB.

Blade Mail activation in low matchmaking will be ignored (meaning they die), and in mid-high tier matchmaking will often cause a knee jerk avoidance of attacking you unless you’re really low on health, allowing you to get off your initiation with relative impunity.

Force Staff – There are a few reasons for picking up Force Staff. First, the generic benefits from the item: It gives you much more mobility and more direct team utility. It’s an amazing escape tool that can be used to save yourself or allies that get caught out of position, and can also be used on enemies to force them out of position in turn.

More specifically: On Clockwerk it allows you to continue your Hookshot into Cogs initiation combo into the late game, and allows you to target even melee DPS’ers that you might otherwise want to stay clear of. Ideally you’ll want to Hookshot onto the enemy team’s carry, then trigger Cogs, trapping them in place. If the person you’ve targeted is actually capable of killing you 1 on 1 in your Cogs then you can Force yourself back out. This essentially allows you to isolate an enemy core for a good 5-8 seconds without necessarily trapping yourself in with them.

Luxury Extensions

Ghost Scepter – he go-to luxury pick-up if you find the enemy team is able to bring you down quickly with physical damage (typically in the form of right-clicks). Most often this will be the enemy carry taking you out of the fight quickly with auto-attacks. Ghost Scepter will buy you a clutch 4 seconds of physical immunity, which gives you time to create distance between yourself and the enemy carry or at the very least buys your team 4 seconds of distraction time. If you can Cog them in with your for the duration then all the better.

Black King Bar – A little bit more situational than the other items listed in this section, but nonetheless always a decent item to purchase on virtually any hero. If you find you’re being locked down in engagements then go for a BKB.

Heart of Tarrasque – Will make you a tank. Your health pool will be enormous and you’ll also hit a bit harder. A good luxury item if you feel you’re falling in teamfights too quickly, but I prefer…

Heaven’s Halberd – If you do feel you die too quickly in teamfights consider Heaven’s Halberd instead of Heart of Tarrasque. You get a nice chunk of health, damage, and bonus effective health (through evasion), but you also become a bit more of a utility/anti-carry hero thanks to the Disarm active, which will prevent the targeted hero from attacking for 3-4.5 seconds.

Assault Cuirass – Moving into serious luxury territory now. Both Assault Cuirass and Shiva’s Guard (which is next on the list) are extremely expensive and you will be lucky to make either in a typical game. However, if the game goes the distance and your team does not yet have one of these then they are fantastic pick ups.

The plus amour and attack speed auras for allies and minus armour for enemies makes it the ultimate late-game utility item. It will also make it easier to break the enemy base, as the minus armour applies to enemy buildings as well as units.

Shiva’s Guard – Shiva’s, for similar reasons, is fantastic, granting you a significant armour bonus as well as ending any lingering mana issues you may have. It also gives you further utility for the team, thanks to the AoE Arctic Blast and slow aura.

Situational Items

Sentry Wards, Dust of Appearance, Gem of True Sight – all-important detection. You’ll need at least one of these in your inventory if the enemy line-up features an invis hero, because once you Hookshot into them you’ll need some way to detect them. Sentry Wards and especially Gem will give you superior vision going into the mid and late game.

Necronomicon – Great if you’re part of a pushing line-up or your team is struggling to break the base. Also a great item for teamfights and for countering any invis enemy heroes.

Vladmir’s Offering – Situational utility item. Your entire team will benefit from the bonus damage, mana regeneration, and armour auras. It’s doubly good if any of your team’s core heroes are melee DPS’ers thanks to the lifesteal aura. And, of course, Clockwerk being a melee hero (albeit not a right clicker) benefits from all of the auras.

Mekanism – It’s situational. As one of the best teamfight items in the game (and certainly the best in the early and mid game) it’s core for your team, but Clock is not an ideal candidate to purchase it. Ideally your team will consist of either a core who often goes Mekanism (such as Viper), or has supports capable of purchasing it. If it doesn’t, you should build it yourself, but be careful to manage your mana around it.

Crimson Guard – A good defensive/utility item. If you decide to opt for an early-ish Vanguard then later upgrading it into a Crimson Guard is a good way of buffing your inventory in the late game when Vanguard’s usefulness tapers off and inventory slots are at a premium.

So you get a nice chunk of flat health (250), +2 all stats, +5 armor and 6 health regeneration. On top of that you gain a passive Damage Block ability, which gives an 80% chance to block 20-40 damage, and an active Guard ability, which allows you to create a shield which applies to yourself and allies in a 750 unit radius that grants everyone affected by it +2 armor and a 100% chance to block 50 damage.

Crimson Guard is somewhat comparable to Mekanism, but more suited to heroes with low mana pools (following Patch 6.82’s hefty increase in Mekanism’s mana cost). It performs a similar protective and + armor role (albeit granting damage block rather than direct health). If you fear being unable to sustain a mana pool for Mekanism but want to add utility/tankiness to your teamfight then a Crimson Guard is a great option.

Pipe of Insight – Pipe is more suited to Clockwerk as a luxury item than Mekanism. By this stage in the game your mana issues are much less prominent and so you can afford to pick up a team-based utility item that requires mana usage. It’s worth considering if your team would benefit greatly from a Pipe but has no more natural holder for the item.

Boots of Travel – Boots of Travel are great for the late game, when you need to free up a slot which would otherwise be taken up by a TP Scroll. With this, you combine your Boots and TP Scroll slot into one, allowing you to put a slot to better use. Will only become an issue in the extreme late game though.

Linken’s Sphere – A bit of a left field pick. Some good stats, an end to any mana problems you have, spellblock, and the ability to utilise the active on your carry hero makes Linken’s a potential situational pick up. Envisage, for example, a situation where your team’s carry is fairly fragile (say a Gyrocopter) and vulnerable to single target disablers and nukers (Lina, Bane, Vengeful Spirit, Rubick, Ogre Magi, etc. etc. the list is fairly exhaustive) and this tends to be a decisive factor in teamfights; a Linken’s would be a great utility pick up in such a scenario. This strategy is sometimes used in competitive Dota to good effect.

Skill Build

Battery Assault is skilled second or last, but is maxed first. A 275 unit AoE nuke with a mini-stun effect, Battery Assault causes shrapnel to hit a random nearby enemy every 0.7 seconds for 10.5 seconds. Each piece of shrapnel deals 20/40/60/80 damage.

At first it may not be obvious why Battery Assault is maxed first, but consider this other factoid: the total possible damage from Battery Assault (assuming full duration and just one enemy nearby) is 320/640/960/1280. Simply put: it scales amazingly well; those level 3 and level 4 figures simply cannot be overlooked when compared to the more middling scaling of Clockwerk’s other abilities.

The mini-stun effect makes it difficult for all but the fastest of heroes to get out of range of the Battery Assault AoE. While it is significantly less potent when there are multiple nearby units, its damage potential against a lone hero is phenomenally underrated in lower levels of matchmaking.

Power Cogs is usually skilled first but it is maxed last. This ability allows you to create a barrier of cogs after a short delay which trap any heroes within for 5/6/7/8 seconds and knock back any enemy units who approach the barrier, dealing mana and life drain in the process. The duration is such that 1 point is more than sufficient for the early game.

Cogs have a lot of uses, from breaking up teamfights, to delaying your creep wave (thus allowing you to get into experience range if you’re in the offlane), to isolating key enemy hero(es), blocking off choke points, and escaping from pursuit.

It is a highly versatile skill, but one which – if used inopportunely – will work as much against you as it does for you, potentially blocking off allied heroes from escape or from providing reinforcement, allowing an enemy hero to escape by narrowly failing to trap them inside, or trapping Clock inside cogs with an enemy hero he is ill-equipped to deal with. In short: learn both how and when to use it properly.

Rocket Flare is skilled last but maxed second so that Clockwerk’s damage potential is maxed out early on. It is a global range nuke which travels at a speed of 1500 and, when it lands at the designated spot, deals damage and provides vision for 10 seconds. Additional levels increase the damage (from 80 up to 200) and reduce the cooldown (from 20 to 14).

People often max this first. I feel this is a mistake in 99 times out of 100. Battery Assault’s damage scales much, much better than Flare’s damage. It also synergises better with your role as a ganker/initiator. If you put off Battery Assault you reduce your damage potential and make your early rotations much less effective. Yes, Flare is great for picking off low health heroes, but it’s a much lower percentage play than your bread and butter Hook into Battery Assault & Cogs combo.

Finally, Clockwerk’s ultimate – Hookshot – is always skilled (levels 6, 11 and 16). This is a long range initiation ability which sends Clock hurtling towards any non-neutral units that you manage to hit with it after launching it. He deals damage (100/200/300) to any units hit along the way and to the target when he arrives at the location. That target will also be stunned for a brief duration (1/1.5/2 seconds). Additional levels increase the range of Hookshot, the stun duration and damage, and reduces the cooldown.

By itself Hookshot isn’t an especially powerful ability – a mere 1 second stun and 100 damage nuke for an ultimate?! What?? The power in Hookshot comes from its initiation capability, which when combined with Battery Assault (damage), Power Cogs (isolating enemy and keeping them in place), and Rocket Flare (nuke to finish them off) makes Clockwerk one of the most popular offlaners in all of competitive Dota. Yes, there’s a fairly high skill ceiling there, especially when it comes to landing the Hookshot, but the damage and initiation potential of Clockwerk is almost unparalleled.

Gameplay Tips

Some simple bread and butter combos: Early on, try to isolate a solo target away from the creep wave if you see an opportunity. Cast Battery Assault and follow them around/trap them in Cogs. When Battery Assault hits level 2/3 it will be enough to net you a kill against all but the most mobile of heroes if they’re caught on their own.

In the mid game your combo is: Hookshot > Battery Assault > Power Cogs > right clicks & Rocket Flare. Again, this will net you a kill in most situations, and that alone means you’re a fearsome ganker from level 6 onwards. Go ganking - to try and get the most out of this while it last; eventually your kill capability will taper off.

Battery Assault’s mini-stun only lasts 0.1 seconds, but it is still a stun, making it great for countering TP Scrolls, channelled abilities, or heroes who have lengthy cast animations (Jakiro springs to mind instantly, as does Enigma whose ultimate is all too easily cancelled by Clockwerk. Bane, Crystal Maiden, Lina, Ogre Magi, and many others also hate him because of Battery Assault).

Power Cogs have so many uses it’s hard to know where to start. At the start, use them to trap your creeps so that you force the creeps to meet much closer to your tower. They’re superb defensively in the lane, as they can shut a gank down as soon as you spot any aggressive movement towards you. Later on you want to use them to isolate and kill off a lone hero, and in teamfights to split up the enemy team or block off choke points. They can also delay pushes, forcing enemy heroes to either tank the mana and life drain or to hold off from attacking your structures. These are just a handful of examples.

Tip: Each Cog can be destroyed by enemy heroes by attacking it 2 or 3 times. Clockwerk destroys them in just one hit, allowing you to put Cogs up defensively before punching a small hole in the barrier for yourself to escape out of.

Note: If an enemy is pushed back by the Power Cogs then they are mini-stunned, making Cogs another potential way that Clock can cancel TP Scrolls or channelled abilities.

Rocket Flare provides 600 radius vision in the area it is cast on for 10 seconds. This makes it a very useful scouting tool. If you want to check whether the opposing team is attempting Roshan you can shoot a Flare over, or if you suspect they may be hidden in an area of the map covered by fog of war you can scout that area with Rocket Flare.

Tip: Rocket Flare can actually block creep camps. If you want to stop the enemy supports from stacking camps in the jungle or at their ancients, a well timed Rocket Flare can become a persistent thorn in their side. The Flare will only block the camp if it is physically in the area, however, which makes it difficult to time correctly; the post-Flare vision itself will not block the camp.

Although its damage output is fairly low, Flare is an AoE nuke, and so can potentially hit all 5 enemy heroes, dealing 1000 magic damage in a teamfight. It’s also good at remotely pushing creep waves, as the damage will apply to all of the lane creeps caught in its AoE.

Rocket Flare is also great for picking off escaping heroes who were on the verge of dying. Anticipate their movements and the speed at which Flare travels and try to snipe them down as they flee.

Hookshot goes through Spell Immunity, making it a good counter to BKB heroes, especially those who use BKB to channel important ultimates, like Enigma and Bane.

Tip: Hookshot works on both enemy and allied units, so you can use it to escape from a sticky situation if you manage to target it on the allied hero or lane creep that is within the 2000/2500/3000 unit range of Hookshot. A key reason Aghanims is so good on Clock is that it allows him to make these escapes even if he has initiated with Hookshot because the cooldown becomes a mere 12 seconds.

Last Updated - Patch 6.83.