Power of the Clockwerk Armor

Introduction

Rattletrap descends from the same far-flung kindred as Sniper and Tinker, and like many of the Keen Folk, has offset his diminutive stature through the application of gadgetry and wit. The son of the son of a clockmaker, Rattletrap was many years apprenticed to that trade before war rode down from the mountains and swept the plains villages free of such innocent vocations. "Your new trade is battle," his dying father told him as the village of their ancestors lay in charred and smoking ruins.

It is a poor tradesman who blames his tools, and Rattletrap was never one to make excuses. After burying his father among the ruins of their village, he set about to transform himself into the greatest tool of warfare that any world had ever seen. He vowed to never again be caught unprepared, instead using his talents to assemble a suit of powered Clockwerk armor to make the knights of other lands look like tin cans by comparison. Now Rattletrap is alive with devices-a small but deadly warrior whose skills at ambush and destruction have risen to near-automated levels of efficiency. An artisan of death, his mechanizations make short work of the unwary, heralding a new dawn in this age of warfare. What time is it? It's Clockwerk time!


Clockwerk is a Strength based initiator/ganker type hero with a global nuke that gives vision in the area that it hits, one of the longest initiators in the game, and an interesting area control tool.

Pros/Cons

Pros

315 base movement speed.
Very long initiation.
Global Nuke that gives vision of the area.
Fairly tanky.
Cheap Ability costs.
Decent escape with Power Cogs + Hookshot.
Battery Assault still works when disrupted/chronosphere'd/imprisoned/stunned/ect if activated beforehand.
Battery Assault causes some Heroes to be stuck in their casting animation until they do something else.
Can be useful in any lane configuration. EVEN SOLO VS AN AGGRESSIVE TRI-LANE!
Very good attack animation.
Power Cogs allow you to be useful in late game even if underfarmed.

Cons

Low Right Click damage.
Usually requires you to "Out Last" your enemy to get kills.
Requires you to be good with Hookshot and Rocket Flare.
Poorish farming ability.
Requires that he be in the midst of the enemy team if initiating a team fight.

Skills and Abilities

Battery Assault

"Whew, that tickles!"

Overview


Battery Assault is one of your main tools when it comes to ganking. It hits random enemy units that are inside its very small (Luna attack range) circle. Every time something is hit with shrapnel, it gets stunned for .2 seconds.


Damage Potential

Battery Assault does quite a lot of damage if you can hit 1 target with all the shrapnel. Over the course of 10.5 seconds, you will deal 169/394/619/844 after magic resistance reductions to the enemy. For one button press, thats pretty impressive. The only non-ultimate ability that gets close to that is Axe's Battle Hunger at around 470ish damage.


How it Helps You Survive

Battery Assault stuns the target every time you deal damage with this ability for .2 seconds which cancels channeled abilities, disrupts animations, and is just a general annoyance for the enemy that your chasing/have inside your cogs. This lets you keep the enemy close and reduces the amount of damage they deal to you.

This ability also works when your stunned, or otherwise CC'ed. This includes CC that 'banishes' you such as Disruption, Astral Imprisonment, and the like. Its also one of the few abilities that still works when under the effects of Chronosphere, so you can be a real pain to that Faceless Void who just Chrono'd you.


Stunlocking and Other Facts.

Since this ability cancels channeled abilities and interrupts casting animations, this ability can stop certain Heroes from casting anything, even instant spells! These are usually Heroes with horrible casting animations.

The interesting bit is that if the Hero listed tries to cast, they will be stuck repeating the animation over and over until they do something else, Battery Assault ends, or they die.

These Heroes and their spells are...
This is especially helpful when you've got someone inside your Power Cogs, as said heroes might try to use these abilities to escape you or deal damage to you, and Battery Assault pretty much denies that.

Another little fun fact is that if you manage to get Battery Assault off before you get CCed in ANY WAY, the spell will still be active and will still damage opponents. The only CC that will stop this is death, but then death is the ultimate CC (unless your skeleton King).

Power Cogs

"Cozy in here, isn't it?"

Overview
Power Cogs is your area control ability, and a really good one at that. When activated, Clockwerk is surrounded by 8 cogs that are about the same size as him. Any enemy or allied Heroes that were close to Clockwerk when he activated the ability (Melee range) are transported into his cogs where he can start killing them.

Clockwerk can destroy his own cogs by hitting them, or if an enemy hits a cog 3 times. If any enemy units that have mana touch the cogs from the outside, they are zapped, stunned, and knocked back for a second.

In order to attack your own cogs, you must first press A, then click on the cog you want to attack. Once Clockwerk attacks it, it'll disappear, allowing you and anyone trapped inside to escape through that section.


Area Control
Power Cogs main use is for its area control. Due to the fact that Clockwerk surrounds himself and any nearby enemy Heroes inside a box of cogs. This lets you beat on the enemy Hero with very little chance of them escaping, while denying help from melee who are outside the cogs. Ranged can still attack you/your enemy from outside the cogs without getting zapped.

Also if you or the enemy Hero are hugging the cog wall while inside, enemy/friendly melee Heroes can attack you/them. Though enemy melee heroes have to do so when the cogs are powered down.

This ability is great for another reason; it allows your allies to hit the enemy you have trapped in your cogs with their hard to hit abilities such as Torrent, Ghost Ship, Sun Strike, and others.

NOTE: Enemies can blink outside of your cogs if they have an ability or item that allows them to do so. Also if your enemy has a Manta Style/makes illusions, it is possible for them to push themselves out of your cogs by activating said abilities, however this isn't 100% unlike say, a Force Staff.


Damage Utility
Power Cogs isn't used for its damage, but rather for the area control it provides. Though when an enemy with a mana bar touches the cogs from the outside, they get zapped and pushed back. This is helpful, because if you cog someone with creeps nearby, the creeps with no mana wont trigger your cogs, wasting their charge.

It should also be stated that each cog only zaps 1 thing before it powers down, and it wont power back up until you re-use the ability.

This ability also drains mana, depending on the damage it deals. This has the potential to mana starve some Heroes if you activate this in the middle of the enemy group and some of the low mana Heroes get zapped by it. But this is just icing on the cake, the main use for cogs is Area Control.


Using Power Cogs to Escape
Power Cogs, being an ability that creates a wall around you, can also be used to escape from an opponent who is chasing you. If you use your Power Cogs in a narrow path, such as around the top jungle on Radiant side, then attack a cog in the direction you wanna run, you will put a wall between you and your opponent, possibly allowing you to get away.


More Uses for Power Cogs
If you'd prefer to use Clockwerk in more of a support role instead of a roaming/ganking role, you could use Power Cogs to hold back creep waves in the early game. You do this by walking in front of the creep wave like you'd normally do, but once they're all bunched together, you trap them inside your cogs. Best case scenario, you stall the wave for 5 seconds. Otherwise you'll probably split the wave up dramatically. This is very important as it allows you to solo against an aggressive Tri-lane, as you can keep the creep wave near your tower, especially if their jungle is warded correctly.

Rocket Flare

"Where'd that come from, right?"

Overview
Rocket Flare is a global nuke that reveals the area that it travels over and reveals the area that it hits for 10 seconds. It has a pretty massive AoE, so its easy to hit targets with it once you get used to the flare's travel time.

However due to all of this utility, it suffers in the damage department, only doing 150 damage at max level (After magic resistance). Even so, it has so much utility that if it had the damage of a normal nuke it would be completely broken.


A GLOBAL Nuke!
This is one of the very few Global nukes in the game. This means that you can target anywhere on the map, and the flare will hit there after travel time. This allows you to push 2 lanes at once if you so desire, farm a lane from a distance, add support to a far off lane or skirmish, or maybe even get a long range kill! The area of this nuke is also really big, so don't forget about that!


Scouting and Utility
Since Rocket Flare reveals whatever the projectile travels by temporarily and reveals the area that the nuke hit for 10 seconds, this ability can be very useful for scouting and gaining intelligence on where the enemy may and may not be.

This is one of the main reasons that Rocket Flare is taken first. With it, you can shoot Flares from inside your fountain at the start of the game to find out what lane the enemy is going to and adjust your team's lane assignments accordingly. Mid/late game, you can use this to see if the enemy is in the fog where your going to push or anything like that.

You can also use Rocket Flare to scout out runes if you don't have the rune spots warded.

Hookshot

"Hello, boys!"

Overview
Hookshot is the ability that allows you to engage from an incredible distance. It acts much like Pudge's Meat Hook, however it brings YOU to the ENEMY instead of the ENEMY to YOU. It also stuns the enemy when the hook latches onto them and when Clockwerk collides with them, along with anything else that Clockwerk hits when hes zipping to the enemy. He can also latch onto Friendly targets, including friendly creeps, use this to escape if you need to!

Do note; When Clockwerk is flying towards his Hookshotted target, he is silenced. This means he can't que up moves while traveling.


Thats Some Range!

Hookshot has a massive engagement range. The range at level 3 is about from your spawn to the middle steps of your base. This means that you cover about 1/4th of the map with one hookshot.

Hookshot is also MUCH easier to land than Meat Hook. Clockwerk has a very fast casting animation, and the hook is about 5x faster at reaching its target area than Meat Hook. It also has a slightly bigger 'latch' range than the hook. Do note though that missing the Hookshot will hurt your mana and make you waste a long cooldown.

It should be noted that Aghanim's Scepter reduces the cooldown of Hookshot to 12 seconds, making it a very good item on Clockwerk.


The Stun is Longer Than it Says

An interesting little tidbit about Hookshot is that the stun indicated in the tooltip is when Clockwerk collides with an enemy. When Clockwerk latches onto an enemy, the enemy is also stunned, but this stun is separate and varies depending on the distance Clockwerk travels with his Hookshot. The formula is this...

0.02 + [(Units Traveled/500)/10] = Latch Stun.

This means that if you latched onto an opponent from 2500 DOTAmeters away, you would stun them for 0.52 seconds, plus the 1/1.5/2 second stun from Clockwerk colliding with the opponent.

Runes

Since Clockwerk is mostly a ganking Hero, he can make very good use of Runes. If your not in mid, try to leave the Runes for whoever is in the middle lane unless an enemy is going to get it, but otherwise grab it. Its also usually fine to pick up runes mid-game, unless someone in your team needs it more.


Double Damage Not a very useful Rune for Clockwerk as it doesn't help him set up a gank as well as some of the others, but it can still be used to kill someone inside Power Cogs faster.

Illusion The worst rune for Clockwerk. If you bottle this and activate it when your inside your Power Cogs, you might push yourself or your opponent outside of the cogs. Grab it to refill your bottle if you need to, but don't use it to help your ganks. You can use the illusions to scout though.

Haste Tied with Invisibility for best Rune. This lets you walk next to an opponent and kill them with your Battery Assault with little chance of them getting away. This also lets you set up your Power Cogs without the need of Hookshot easier.

Invisibility Tied with Haste for best Rune. This lets you set up your Power Cogs without them knowing where you are for the most part. A little trick with the Invisibility Rune is that if you bottle it up, when you activate it you have about a 2-3 second window where you can preform any action and you will still go invisible. This lets you, but not limited to; Drinking your Bottle, casting Battery Assault and chasing people with it while invisible, among other things.

Regeneration Refills your health/mana, use as needed.

Items

The Starting Items





These starting items give you a good amount of stats, decent last-hitting power and survivability, can be turned into an Urn/Wand cheaply, and give you decent regen with tango/Salve.

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What Boots to Choose?

Are my preferred choice if your having mana issues/like to scout with Flare a lot. While Clockwerk might have cheap mana costs, sometimes you get enough ganks that you start to have mana issues, and this alleviates that. However if you don't find that you have mana issues, use different boots.


Are another strong choice for Clockwerk. These let you chase enemies better, and let you phase through them so you can land Power Cogs easier, especially if you or your opponent are lagging. You don't benefit much from the extra damage, but it can help.


Another great choice. After reconsideration, I find that if I'm not completely destroying the competition to the point where I'm constantly OOM and need Arcane, I'll pick up Power Treads. Its more damage and 100 extra hp for -5 move speed, which is nice.


A very late game item, though one thats not that desired since you can just use Hookshot to travel once you get your Aghanim's Scepter due to its 12 second cooldown. Only get if your rich and can't think of anything else to get.


A poor choice for Clockwerk. You'll be using your Bottle/Urn/Wand to heal, and they offer less movement speed than normal boots if your hit by enemy Heroes. DO NOT RECOMMEND

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Early Game, Core, and Core Extension items

Useful to restore mana and bottle runes once laning phase is over/if your mid. Since your a ganking hero, Runes help you out considerably.


Extra survivability and mana gain. Clockwerk doesn't need much mana to do things, so unless your snowballing like crazy, usually a wand/bottle/urn will do alright for mana. usually...


Since you'll be ganking for a majority of mid-game, you make a great Urn carrier. If your team has a Pudge or someone else with an urn, this can be skipped for something else.


A majority of your kills will be you out-lasting your opponent inside your Power Cogs. Blade Mail helps this a bit while giving you survivability. It also lets you scale well into lategame, since you'll usually have more health than the enemy carry, and if you initiate on them and they attack you, pop this and watch their health go down or cause them to swap to someone else.


Gives you good stats and reduces the cooldown on your Ult to 12 seconds, What more could you want?


If the enemy team has a lot of nukers and you find that you get nuked down too hard even with Blademail, pick this item up. Can be made into a Pipe of Insight later on if you want.


While you will probably not get enough for this item during the course of a game after getting Blademail/scepter, it gives Clockwerk lots of tankability which is really nice on him.


If your getting stunned constantly and need the magic immunity. Though you probably wont need this all that much.


You should always carry at least 1 of these on your person so you can teleport out of a bad situation/teleport to a team battle where you can't get to due to Hookshot/escape from an inaccessible area that an enemy Rubick might have thrown you to.

Remember you can double click the scroll in your inventory to instantly teleport to your Fountain.

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Situational Items

Smoke and Dust can be helpful if your trying to gank a Hero that can go invisible like Riki/Bounty Hunter or a Hero that has a Shadowblade. Or in Smoke's case, if the enemy has their jungle really well warded and you need to be invisible to Hookshot. Though Smoke of Deceit isn't as useful to Clockwerk as it is to Pudge

If you need to escape from a hero or offer some team support. Its just an overall good item, but not as much needed on Clockwerk compared to some other heroes like Lina or Zeus.

CC, and can add more damage resistance in cogs since you'll still hit your opponent with Battery Assault while you cyclone yourself. Also works for an escape and solves your mana issues for the most part.

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Items that Failed Testing


I know what you might be thinking "It gives him all the tank stats he wants!". However, Armlet of Mordiggian provides more tankability than a Vanguard and is much more abusable/scales better, and you'd get more bang for your gold if you just started towards your Scepter/Blade mail than go for a Vanguard. Even going for Bloodstone is better than a Vanguard because of how poor Vanguard scales considering how expensive it is. If you want something to block attacks, a Poor Man's Shield is better AND costs far less.


While a good item to help you with your meh farming ability and deals a good amount of damage when someone is trapped in your Power Cogs, Radiance is far too expensive for Clockwerk who gets a majority of his gold by ganking/teamfights when he can get more important items like Scepter and blademail.

Armlet Of Mordiggian

Basically a more versatile, better scaling Vanguard.

The main use of this item is to make you unkillable if the enemy is unable to stun you/deal more than 200dps to you. The reason being is because when you toggle the armlet on, it heals you for the amount of strength you gain from its active, and when you toggle it off, you lose that extra health. With a 2 second cooldown, this can be used as an infinite heal if used properly, IE, when at low health.

Now with the use of binds, its possible to toggle the armlet with no 'downtime' or time when your at 1hp. This can be done with the binding below.
NOTE: replace X with whatever key you want the armlet toggle to be bound to.

bind x "dota_item_execute 1;dota_item_execute 1"

In order for this to work, the Armlet must be in the TOP MIDDLE item slot, anywhere else and this bind wont work.

To activate this bind, you must enable the DOTA 2 console, here is a link showing how.

http://www.neutralcreeps.com/2011/10/how-to-open-dota-2-console.html

The default key to open/close the console is \.


Do note that there is a VERY small window in which you can die, but its about 0.02 seconds.

A video explaining the Armlet toggle.
How Armlet Works - Youtube link

Stratigies

When to skill Rocket Flare and Power Cogs over Battery Assault

Usually I skill Battery Assault first, as once you hit lvl 8, you'll have all 3 of your ganking tools. Hookshot, Power Cogs and Battery Assault, and Battery Assault hurts a lot at lvl 8 considering it deals about 800 damage over the full duration.

However if your finding that your having problems getting last hits in your lane due to being harassed too much, it is worth it to level Rocket Flare over Battery Assault so you can last hit better and harass them back better. It really depends who you are laning against.

If your constantly being dived by aggressive opponents, it might be worth it to take an early level of Power Cogs for an escape move.

If you are part of a very aggressive lane, it might be worth it to get a level of Power Cogs early as well to help set up a kill. Being stuck in one area for 5 seconds is usually death for most heroes.



Ganking an enemy Hero

When you manage to spot an enemy Hero by themselves, preferably one thats not pushing a lane and thus have lots of creeps around them, you have a few ways of ganking them.

If you can get close to them without Hookshoting in and get them inside your cogs, this is best.

Basically this method would be...

1. Use Haste/Invisibility rune or things like that if you have them.
2. Get close to Enemy Hero
3. Battery Assault
4. Power Cogs
5. ?????
6. Profit.


If you need to Hookshot in order to gank the enemy Hero, the flow would be like this.

1. Hookshot
2. Battery Assault
3. Power Cogs
4. ?????
5. Profit


The reason why you do Battery Assault before Power Cogs is because you will deal more damage that way, Battery Assault helps set up Power Cogs better due to its ministun, and the enemy Hero has a much smaller chance of stunning you before you get the second move off.

In retrospect, if you went Power Cogs to Battery Assault, there is a good chance that some Heroes could stun you before you managed to get your Battery Assault off, which means your losing lots of damage, taking more damage, and reducing the effectiveness of your cogs.


Using your Power Cogs to set up for other people.

Due to the fact that your Power Cogs keeps most other Heroes in a small confined area, its great to set up for hard to hit skillshots like ghost Ship, allow moves like Cold Feet to work without much of a problem, and stuff like that. Its also helpful for a Magnus/ Enigma if for some reason you manage to get 2-3 enemy team members inside your cogs to set up for their moves.

If your not using Power Cogs to gank other people but instead to set up for your team, it might be more beneficial to use Cogs before Battery Assault. so that you know that you'll get the cogs off.



VS an aggressive Trilane

Clockwerk is one of the very few heroes that can solo vs an aggressive trilane. With Cogs being the great wall that it is and Flare being global, he can farm while holding back creeps with cogs in the long lane. The idea is that if your fighting an aggressive tri-lane is to level Power Cogs as your first skill, instead of using Rocket Flare to scout. This lets you hold back the creep waves with Cogs, and gives you an escape mechanism if the tri-lane decides to jump on you.

Next you get and attempt to max Rocket Flare so that you can harass and farm. Since your vs a tri-lane by yourself, there isn't much hope of you getting into melee range of the creeps to last hit, so Rocket Flare will be doing that for you. Though depending on your opponents, you might not even use Rocket Flare to farm as they might be able to keep the lane equal even with you trapping your creeps in cogs every few seconds.


In an Aggressive Tri-lane

When you are playing in an Aggressive Tri-lane, you'll probably use the same build as you would soloing an Aggressive Tri-lane, but switching Flares and Cogs around for your level 1 ability depending on what your team needs. In this configuration, you'll be using your cogs to lock down someone in an area for 5 seconds so you can get the gank on them, or using it to aid in an escape. It really depends on what your team needs at the time. Do note however that trapping someone in cogs means that your team gets a psuedo 5 sec disable on that person unless they can blink out, which can equal a kill.

Heroes that Fear You

The above Heroes fear you because you make it so they can't cast any spells. Some of these Heroes such as Naga Siren and Shadow Fiend can be certain doom if they have their Mirror Image up beforehand and/or have a Black King Bar, but with a Blade Mail this shouldn't be TOO bad.




Basically squishy Heroes that rely on Right Click damage with no inate lifesteal or blink move. Before you can fight these Heroes however, its recommended that you have a Blade Mail beforehand.




Two words, Battery Assault. If you activate Battery Assault before he Dismembers you, you will cancel his Dismember, and will only need to deal with his Rot, the hp you lost from Meat Hook and his auto attack damage. This is done by rapidly pushing the Battery Assault button when being hooked. (Default is the Q key)

At the same time he has to deal with your Auto Attack damage, his own Rot, AND your Battery Assault. Pop Blade Mail to REALLY make him hurt.

The annoying thing about Pudge though is that you'll need to make sure you manage to get the kill with Rocket Flare, otherwise he might just commit suicide thanks to Rot, denying you all the gold and XP you would've gotten from killing him.

If he has 20+ stacks on Flesh Heap and/or a Heart though, be wary. Though most Heroes would be scared of him at this point anyway.




Due to your massive imitation range with Hookshot and Battery Assault stopping him from teleporting, plus his inate squishyness, you counter him pretty hard. Make sure you pop Blade Mail after you do your Power Cogs so you'll pretty much make him kill himself off of his Laser Heat-Seeking Missile Dagon combo. If he doesn't do that combo because you have Blade Mail popped, there is a good chance you'll kill him inside your Power Cogs due to the damage Battery Assault does.

If Tinker levels up March of the Machines first, which seems to be a thing nowadays, this makes him easier AND harder to gank at the same time. If you have blade mail, it should be a very easy gank on him once he uses his Soul Ring a few times. Just be warned that if you manage to kill him, you are now in the middle of 1-3x MotM's, which does a deceptively high amount of damage.

Later in the game, most Tinker's go for a Blink Dagger which doens't phase you one bit, considering you make it useless if you engage with Hookshot, however some tinkers do use a Force Staff, which would make him much harder to gank considering he can staff out of your cogs, forcing you to chase him. Even worse if you decided to engage him in a MotM.

Also, depending on Latency, Battery Assault can stop Tinker from ever casting Laser and March of the Machines. However the Latency window is very weird, so don't rely on this little tidbit.


windrunner

Basically Heroes with no ways to escape your Power Cogs and are squishy.

Heroes to Avoid

skeleton king

Basically Heroes that are tanky/have a blink/ have inate Lifesteal. and/or have painful illusions that you can't stop with Battery Assault (unlike Naga Siren's, for example.)




Blade Fury + Omnislash = Dead Clockwerk. The worst part is that both moves make him immune to the damage of Blade Mail and Battery Assault. Hope that you have a team mate who can help you before you try to gank this Hero.




While Manta Style might not be a hero per-say, it does drastically reduce your effectiveness due to the random nature of Battery Assault and the fact that thee are now 3 things for it to hit instead of 1. If you have to fight a Hero who has this, Blade Mail helps out a bit, but be ready for a rough fight.

Closing and Credits

Thanks for reading this guide on Clockwerk. Most of what I've listed above I've gotten from testing.

Archmage MC- Guide Creator
Mylmyzz - For his video on the advanced usage of Armlet


UPDATE 1: Added more to the strategy section about soloing a Tri-lane/being in a tri-lane. Added some new information about Power Cogs.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, please put them in the comments below.