A guide to Tiny, the Stone Giant
Tiny the Stone Giant
Author:spyAfterMath
Map Vers.: 6.65
Introduction:
Tiny is, even though his ultimate is a bit irritating in that respect, a raw caster hero. He can deal some decent damage in late game, but that’s not what this hero is all about. It’s all about instantly killing lone heroes, tossing and then killing heroes or maybe killing two or more heroes at once. A weird behavior between Avalanche and Toss allowed absurd nuking damage and instead of fixing this, it was declared official and hard coded into the interaction. His great time was during the legendary .48b lets-pick-lots-of-aoe-stuns-age, got then lost in the rise of new heroes and the dagger-nerfs and has been reborn with some sweet buffs and Dagger being a more offensive item than ever.
This guide aims at beginners and advanced players at the same time. I’ll try to provide technical details as well as some plain play style tips and tricks so you can look for a fast skill/item build as well as discovering the finer points of the little growling ownage-rock. In the end, you should read it all since knowledge is power, words that are especially true for a game as complex as DotA.
The Hero:
For an overview over his stats, you should visit the hero page at playdota: Stone Giant - DotA Hero Details
Just leave this page open as you read the guide, I’m not a big fan of redundancy.
Important is just one little fact that makes him pretty unique:
Casting Animation: 0.001 / 0
Having no (noticeable) casting animation means both spells can be cast at instant, giving you a nice edge over heroes like Lina or Leshrac as well as feeling very comfortable to use.
Other than that, his stats are not exactly the greatest apart from his awesome Str-gain and huge base damage. Having no armor and almost no agi at all is a problem that needs to be fixed though. His movement speed is one of the lowest in the game, but does increase through his ultimate.
The Skills:
I’d like to say in advance that Tiny’s skills are a bitch to explain, so I’ll provide a practical explanation and will provide you with some links, if you want to know more about the mechanical explanations. The tooltips for Avalanche and Toss are totally off though, so I try to give you the right numbers.
Avalanche
“Bombards an area with rocks, stunning and damaging enemy land units”
It takes 0.75 sec after casting till it stuns, no matter how far or close you cast it.
Pretty nice AoE-stun. The cooldown is quite long, but there is a nifty side effect about it, which we’ll deal later with.
Mechanically the spell is based on ladders Cluster Rockets, which makes it dealing the damage in 4 portions a 25/45/65/75 damage every 0.25 seconds.
Toss
“Tiny grabs the nearest unit, friend or foe, and launches it at a location. Upon landing, the unit deals damage in an area. It also receives an extra 20% of the area damage itself, or more as your size increases. Cannot toss Dragon Knight in Elder Form.“
Now it’s getting messy. Toss is a pretty complicated spell and the tooltip doesn’t help at all, since it’s wrong in most statements or at least not fully right.
Things you can toss: Heroes, Creeps, Magic immune units, most Neutrals, Syllabears’ Bear
Things you can’t toss: Ancients, Couriers, Cycloned Units,
Yes, that means you actually CAN toss DK in Elder Dragon Form, he just won’t fly like normal units but slide stupidly over the ground. Mechanically that doesn’t make a difference, it’s just a visual. And yes, you can toss repelled or bkb’d units, they just won’t get damaged.
Also the unit chosen that will be tossed in the 275 AoE around Tiny is RANDOM. It’s not the closest, it has nothing to do with the way Tiny stands or if you are scratching your head in the very same moment, if you want to guarantee that you toss a certain unit, it has to be the only valid one in the AoE.
The next thing is that you can’t “launch at a location”, you can only toss to units.
Things you can toss to: Heroes, Creeps, most neutrals, the tossed unit itself ( it will just fly straight up in the air)
Things you can’t toss to: Ancients, Spirit Bear, Magic immune units, Couriers, own units (i.e. Necrowarriors), Cycloned units
The tossed unit will fly to that unit for 1 seconds and then the stated damage will be dealt in the AoE. The tossed unit gets additional damage, which is 20%/35%/50%/65% of the AoE damage, depending on your level of Grow. Tossed allies will always be damaged with 20% of the AoE damage, regardless of your Grow-level.
The damage is magical damage and will get reduced by magic resistance / blocked by magic immunity.
50% of your Toss damage works on buildings as well, giving you a pretty good tool to lasthit towers. This surpasses even Glyph, allowing you to kill a glyphed building.
Craggy Exterior
“Tiny's body is made of solid granite, causing great pain to those who attack it. Whenever a unit within 300 range attacks Tiny, there is a chance that they will be stunned for 1.2 seconds.”
In addition to that, you also gain a bit armor per level. This also works against ranged units that attack you within the 300 AoE.
Helps a lot in lategame against those pesky agi-melee carries. In fact, for heroes with a high attackspeed it’s pretty suicidal to focus you, since you couldn’t do a better job of disabling them yourself.
Grow
“Greatly increases Tiny's power and size, but does so at the cost of his attack speed. Increases Toss's damage, and slightly improves Tiny's movement speed.“
Probably the worst ultimate in DotA, being mainly just forced synergy and eyecandy. Gives you quite a bit of damage, while crippling your already absymal attackspeed and increases the modelsize by 25% each level.
The amazing Avalanche/Toss-Combo (aka Ava/Toss)
Back in the good old days there was a bug/feature when you used Avalanche and Toss in rapid succession against one target, Avalanche could deal twice the damage that it normally does against the tossed target. Of course this got abused and actually made Tiny a quite competitive pick, that he wouldn’t have been without it.
To solve this issue once and for all, Ice Frog made that behavior official and triggered Avalanche that way, that if there is a unit tossed within the AoE, the damage will be applied a second time. I don’t want to bore you with mechanical details, it’s a bit more complicated than that but if you use Avalanche Toss as fast as you can after each other on the same target, you’ll deal the Avalanche damage twice.
If you have lvl 4 Ava, lvl 4 Toss and lvl 3 Grow you can deal 1095 damage before magic resistance to the tossed enemy, which is 821 dmg if he has no Hood of Defiance.
In comparison: A lvl 3 Laguna Blade with Aghanim’s Scepter deals 1150 damage before resistance.
Abusing this skill is what makes and breaks a good Tiny and can make you one of the most awesome killers in DotA.
Skillbuild
Always get your disable first. Always. Actually Toss scales better than Avalanche, since the casting range improves a lot, but the double damage from Avalanche in a Ava/Toss combo is too good to pass up. But due to the weird scaling of Avalanche ( the last level only gives you +40 dmg), getting level 4 Toss over level 4 Avalanche is recommended.
I’ve seen people switching Avalanche and Grow at level 8 and 9. Grow gives additional 45 damage to the tossed unit and another 40 physical damage for your combo and 5 ms, Avalanche gives 40 AoE damage and 80 damage to a unit in Ava/Toss. Since you won’t be using Avalanche only for Ava/Toss, I find Avalanche to be more effective and the 5 ms not really important. It’s a small difference though and only matters for one level.
Whether you get Craggy or Stats after level 11 depends on your enemies. If physical damage starts to play an important role quite early in the game or the enemy team consists of many melee heroes, Craggy will be your choice. If that is not the case, feel free to fill in some Stats, they really help your low manapool and some HP never hurt. At least after lvl 16 you would want to skill Craggy anyway, you simply need the armor. Adjust to the situation.
Itembuild
Starting items
2-4x
, 1-2 
, 1-2 
, 
, eventually a 
Always get a chicken if your team won’t buy one. Always. Don’t be an idiot, you’ll need it soon.
Tiny needs desperately some Manapool. Without items that increase your pool you won’t be able to do Ava/Toss until level 5. With just 3 Branches you won’t be able to do it until level 3.
But you want to be able to do it at level 2! So no sobi masks, bottle first, basilius rings or similar stuff. Get cheap stats (either 4 branches or 2 Branches + Mantle) and cheap regen (Tangos + Clarities) and you’re ready for laning.
Follow up items for laning
-> 
, 
, 
, 
The order depends on the game, sometimes you want fast Boots, sometimes you need the regen of Bottle (especially if you go mid and have good access to runes), sometimes you face a spellspammer like Bristleback or Zeus and need a Wand for free Mana and HP. Fact is, you want these three items as soon as possible in your inventory. Also buy soon a TP-Scroll and never run around without carrying one. Then upgrade the Mantle you bought at the start into a Null Talisman.
After fixing your basic regen and manapool needs get a
You need this and you want this. This is what Tiny needs for owning and there is no item that is second to it. You will never invest better 2150 gold than in this thing. You should already be ganging and roaming a lot, but always keep in mind that a Dagger will increase your killing potential by a huge amount. Last hit carefully, steal creeps from your carry, killsteal as much as you want, your justification is always “need dagger”.
With the acquisition of Dagger, you've completed your
Core Build
This is your core build and basically Tiny is done. Everything that goes beyond these 6 items is luxury and not really needed (albeit Tiny has some farming ability and it’s no shame getting one or two items more).
A small note to Arcane Ring
:
Arcane seems a logical choice on Tiny. It increases the pool a lot, gives really good manaregen, gives even a bit of Armor and the supporting part isn't worst. But Tiny doesn't need much Mana. In fact, Tiny needs 240 Mana to cast his combo and 75 more to use Dagger. What Tiny needs is to complete Boots/Bottle/Dagger as soon as possible. Skipping Bottle is not an option, so the question is whether you get Arcane and Bottle or Bottle+Wand/Null. The latter is 700 gold cheaper, gives HP and most importantly burst regen and much much easier to build. Farming the 1k gold for Energy Booster is a pain, especially when you want to start ganging and roaming as soon as possible. The only big item you want to farm in early game is Dagger and thats where you need to put your money. Skip Arcane, you don't need it.
A small note to Soul Ring
:
Soul Ring is one of the many cute little items added by Ice Frog that make early slot management hell. Tiny is definitly one of the heroes that look like a great wielder of SR, having sufficent HP to balance out the HP loss and having terrible Int, which makes absolute manaboosts a lot more usefull. The truth is, i just don't know yet. It is great for farming, but the 150 hp loss in fights is especially early very noticable. It also costs quite a bit money and your slots are packed anyway.
If you wanna go SR, try a itembuild along that way: Branches + regenstuff -> Bottle/Boots -> SR -> (Int-)Treads -> Dagger. SR/Bottle/Treads allows for some really cute stats-manipulating and should balance out the HP loss very well. You won't need a Null when you go fast Treads, so you can also cut some money there. Add a Wand if the enemies demand it (spellspammers) or after your Dagger.
Luxury:
Footwear:
Tiny can survive till deep lategame with just basic boots, since your most important way of moving in fights is Blink. On the other hand, it’s no shame to upgrade the boots earlier.
can be good choice if the Dagger seems far far away and certainly helps in placing your spells, but it can't replace Dagger. On the other hand Dagger can easily replace Phase, which is why i recommend other boots.
So the choice is between
and 
. If the ganging goes well, Travels are certainly the better option. It saves you one slot, gives you a lot of movementspeed and frees you of the need to teleport to towers (not blocking the valuable teleport time for somebody else). Treads give you at least a bit IAS to balance out your massive damage and can be switched on intelligence to increase your pool further, so that you could throw the Null Talisman out. I’m almost always going for Travels, but Treads are dead cheap and the IAS is really noticeable.
Caster Items:
: Did I say that movementspeed is not important? Well, that was a lie. 25 ms more certainly won’t hurt, while giving you finally a reliable source of Manaregen, even if Bottle and Wand are empty. The cyclone has numerous uses like breaking channeling, stopping an enemy when chasing or saving yourself, by cycloning yourself and thus buying you needed time for a blink in the heat of the fight. It ‘s also really cheap and has small pieces, making it a good choice, even if the money isn’t exactly rolling in.
: What’s better than 900 nuke damage? 1300 nuke damage of course! In all seriousness, Tiny is actually a decent user of Dagon. The ability to instantly kill somebody without him being able to do anything at all is a pretty valuable one. The biggest downside is the price and the high manacost (180 mana at level 1) but it also gives some usefull stats. I do not recommend upgrading it, but sometimes you just want to keep up the instant kills and the upgrades aren’t as bad as most people make it.
: The king of all caster items. Not much to say about it, will allow you to spam your spells at will, gives you the best disable in the game, even gives a bit HP. Would be perfect, if it wouldn’t be so costly and composed from such terrible items like Mystic Staff. Nonetheless if you can get it, get it. You can never go wrong.
: Lots of Manapool, a really nice big AoE-slow-nuke and countering Tinys biggest weakness: physical damage. Too bad that Guinsoo is so good, so I could tell you to get this under every circumstance. That way, I’ll just highly recommend it, this thing was made for Tiny.
: A bit of mix between Guinsoo and Dagon. Sometimes silences are almost equally powerfull as the hard disable of Guinsoo (f.e. against Storm Spirit, Puck, QoP and other heavy spellreliant heroes). Soul Burn lasts 1.5 secs longer than Hex and amplifies damage by 20%, Orchid itself is much much easier to build, is 600 gold cheaper and helps with physical damage. On paper it’s not really a bad choice and if you also need to deal some physical damage it’s a decent option but in most cases the Hex will just be more important. I never bought it, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying it.
: Seen it in one replay or two. Can’t say much about it, it seems to me more gimmicky than gamebreaking. It can’t replace Dagger to place your spells but at least it gives some stats and IAS. Really a personal decision, but I guess Tiny would be a good hero to buy it with.
Fighting Items:
: This is your first and primary choice if you rather want hit somebody with your 250+ damage than disabling them. It fixes your armor, helps your allies, increases your attack speed (which is all you need) and helps with destroying building. Simply the best choice dps and defense wise.
: Techincally you can deal quite a bit of damage with Grow 3 and the Berserk of MoM. It’s also dead cheap, but needs a slot, the last thing you need is lifesteal and albeit you have some HP, physical dps will just rape you if this is activated. For the same purpose rather buy a Dagon. Saver, more reliable and at least adds some stats.
: Assault is better. In terms of raw numbers it’s quite close, but AC is cheaper AND has all these nice aura thingies. And Eaglehorn is pretty much the worst item in the game, goldwise. Maybe if you need to outcarry a Troll or something similar.
: More IAS. Pretty much everything there is to say. I admit, I didn’t do the math but my feeling is that Tiny needs plenty of IAS before buying damage is actually worth it. The passive is nice, making it pretty ugly to actually hit you. AC is still better, but you could get it afterwards (wtf, what kind of game are you playing?!?!).
: A bit more than 1k hp, 40 damage and makes you more or less independent from the fountain. Certainly a good item but never really felt the urge to buy it.
Every other DPS item won’t cut it in comparsion to AC and Mjollnir and Tiny is not really a hero you would want to buy a Divine on. Manta is pretty cool, since your illusions get damage bonus but don’t suffer from the IAS malus, but doesn’t cut it either. If your role in the game shifts, because your carry drops out or because your teammates suck, getting a fully carry build can be necessesity, but to be honest I never actually had to do this. Tinys dps can be quite impressive but he lacks original carry abilities (bash, cool orbs, amazing critical or just a decent movementspeed). He wins games in midgame with his amazing ganging ability and that is what we’re concentrating on.
Gameplay
Laning
Tiny is a very flexible laner. Two AoE nukes, quite a amount of HP and huge basedamge allow for a range of combos as well as soloing. I'll just try to cover the general concept here. Try out some stuff yourself.
Dual Laning:
The Classic. Pick two stunners, put them on a lane and hopefully they'll be able to get kills and dominate the lane. If you put Tiny on a dual lane a ranged hero is preferred to harass the enemy so you can deliver the final blow with your nukes. Furthermore it needs to be a point-click stun (or slow) so the combo can be started without problems of aiming or similar stuff.
Venge / Lion / Maiden are the common picks for that situation. They go well with virtually any hero and are your dreampartners. But Witch Doctor, Twin Head Dragon or Lich can also work very well. These combos are no-brainers and will put any enemy in that lane into huge problems. Ranged heroes also have the huge advantage that they don't need to run up in melee range, which can often screw up a Ava/Toss combo. Whenever you can lane with one of these guys.
Special Mentioning deserves Bane Elemental. His Nightmare is the perfect spell to isolate a hero. Casted on a hero in the middle of your creepwave will just make the creepwave pass by and leave him unproteced for a perfect Ava/Toss combo or the option to toss him in your towerrange.
In public game, any disable will do it. You can f.e. toss a Slardar or Cent on the enemy so they can place their stun and you can follow up, Sand King stun, Sven stun... you name it. Your lanecontrol is a lot less, since you are vulnerable in between your nuking combos but you are still a threat to anybody uncautious and can easily score a kill. Like said before, melee heroes have the disadvantage that they will fight in...melee range and thus can screw up your Toss. A smart ally will just move away a bit so Tiny can Toss freely.
Solo laning:
Soloing with Tiny means in almost every case soloing mid, because the only reason we're able to do this are RUNES. Runecontrol is essential to every solo Tiny, since all your ganking and surviving runs on the free bottle-charges of the runes. Bottle gets highest priority, if you must buy a pack of Observer Wards yourself so you'll be the first to snatch the runes.
Most likely you'll be meeting a strong ranged solo hero (PotM, Nevermore, Viper, Tinker, you name it) which will give you a hard time, but don't despair. Your nukes are awesome and a Nevermore won't be smiling that much after getting the third Toss on his head. If you happen to meet a melee hero there, be agressive as hell. Hit him several times, maybe a nuke here and there and then look for the second of unawareness where you can catch him alone in a Ava/Toss.
Soloing usually mean superior farm, even if your enemy is decent. Using a nuke to lasthit a few creeps + harassing is a very valid option. Try obtain your core build as fast as possible, sometimes you might be even able to rush the Dagger. If you have a Dagger after 8-10 mins, you are the most powerfull hero in the game at that point and nobody is save from you.
A short excursion about abusing Runes:
Trilane:
Trilaning isn't new, but was forgotten for a long time and in rediscovered in the recent versions. These days trilaning rather means a mix of roaming, creep pulling and actual laning. Heroes like Vengefull Spirit, Earthshaker, Maiden or Venomancer will be your best friends. Tiny can certainly fit into a trilane, especially Toss can be extremly powerfull if used well. I'll not go much into this, the concept is the same like in dual laning but the pressure can be a lot higher on the enemies. If you're doing it well, you can fully force them out of the xp range and deny several creepwaves or get a bunch of kills if they dare to approach the creeps. It's risky and difficult though, since you'll be underleveled if you don't own and every player needs to know what they're doing, otherwise it might backfire pretty hard.
Roaming
Tiny abandons the lane after level 8 or 9 completely. You have now two main goals: Kill People. Get Dagger. Often goal two comes by fullfilling goal one.
Runes and Wards are your best friends. Nobody can stand 900 damage at that point, you need to abuse that. Every two minutes, make sure you (or maybe, but just maybe, an ally) gets the rune. Then watch the minimap, look for evil coloured dots and go there. Be aggressive, stick around and always have the finger on your spells to waste no time. You don't have that much mana, so you can't allow yourself too much failure so bring allies to help you. The enemies carries are your main target, but surely everything that dies will do it. A lone farming carry is your wet dream, but you can even make a go against a enemy dual stun combo. If you can get the initative, one of them will be dead before they hit the ground.
When your amount of gold approaches the 2k, you have my permission to hang back a bit. At 1,7 or 1,8k i often just go to a lane or the forest to grab the last bits of money without dying. A Ava/Toss combo can instantly clear a creepwave at that point, so just do it. At point 2150 gold you buy your Dagger. If you have no mana you can return to the base, if not have it send to you by chicken.
Roaming with Dagger
Nah seriously, no more waiting for allies, no more need for pre-stunning. Just blunt and pure rape is what you're going to do now. If you see an enemy below the critical amout of damage you do and he's standing alone, blink up, avalanche, toss, +250, thank you very much. Wait 20 seconds. Choose your next victim.
This is the hot phase for Tiny and you need to put all your energy into it. You just run up and down the map, preferably together with an ally that can also blink or has a long-ranged ability and kill shit. If you manage to gain mapcontrol now, you're on the road to winning this game, since the enemy will live in fear while your carry has freefarm. Keep up the wards in their forest and be fast with your fingers.
Toss will start to play a more important role. The "Toss-Swap" works basically just like Vengefulls Swap, but is a bit more difficult to pull off. Tell an ally to stand back, blink to an enemy (maybe even several enemies) and Toss one of them to your ally, where they are hopefully waiting with nukes and disables. Unlike Venge though, you got an AoE-Stun, Craggy and plenty of HP, maybe even Euls to save you after performing the swap, so you're not exactly forced to die. If you tank some spells, even better so your team hopefully can follow up.
If you're doing well, get Travels asap. I repeat myself, mapcontrol is everything and Tiny is brilliant at delivering it as long as he has allies that help him ganging.
Lategame/Teamfights
At some point, unless you were totally dominating, people will "grow out" of your nukes. Don't get me wrong, 1,2k nuke damage still hurts, but it's not fatal to a carry hero with 2k hp anymore. They'll start hanging around together or be in range so that small gangs can turn fast into big teamfights. Depending on your team you can have two tasks now:
1. Initiator. Tiny isn't the greatest initator in the world, but he'll do the job. Toss-Swap somebody out if you can or just dump your nukes and AoE stun on the head of 3+ heroes and hope that your allies can follow up fast enough. If you survived, move out of the fight, pop your Wand/Bottle and then look around. Try to use Toss at the next 10 second mark and then wait for full Blink/Ava/Toss 10 seconds later. Whatever happens, if your team could hold himself in the fight, you WILL kill somebody 20 seconds later, Ava/Toss can clear up anything.
2. Assassin. Basically the same thing as you did while ganging. Let somebody else initate (or maybe they initated against your team), look for that lone little evil squishy hero in the rear (there always is. Be it Lion, Sniper, Bane, WD, Rhasta or Zeus, there always is one) and TAKE HIM OUT. They'll be most likely standing isolated, making a perfect target for you. If you can take out Lion before he dumps all his disable shit, your team will fight at a huge advantage. Then just walk in the fight and hit people and get hit. You're extremly annoying just for having HP, beeing big and stunning people that attack you by having Craggy.
The time in between fights should now be used for farming some stuff. Hex can be gamebreaking, but AC or Shivas can also be of much use, especially if the physical dps starts to reign and you still run around with 8 armor.
That one damn 80 minute game
So you're in that fucking game that takes forever. People buy out all the time, so nobody really dares to push with full force or your team lost the momentum you brought them with your 20 kills. Most likely this happens because neither of the team is powerfull enough to rape buildings fast enough.
Just start dpsing, massing IAS. AC and Mjollnir are your best friends now and start beating up towers. Everything i said before stays true, but sometimes brute force is the only thing that helps. Hell, go backdooring if you have an ally for that (Clinkz, Naga, Sylla, Leshrac to mention a few) and just take out the damn rax so you can finally go pee.
Fighting with Tiny
Toss is a spell that screams for creative usage. Displacement of heroes is an extremely powerfull tool and goes beyond the simple damage and Ava/Toss usage. Especially Melee heroes are always susceptible to your tosses. Always have an eye your possible targets in the surrounding, the Toss-range is HUGE. F.e. you can Toss things over the whole river. You can use it for chasing, for the already mentioned Toss/Swap, you can toss enemies away from you or you can use Toss bluntly as a 1,1k range aoe nuke.
Many Tinys limit their selfs to the Ava/Toss combo, but Toss has a 10 sec cooldown, which means you can use Toss once in between every Ava/Toss combo and Toss alone can be deciding for a fight.
Especially in lategame fights aren't over after the first wave of nukes and stuns and you are often required to do more than one Ava/Toss. Stay around, be a nuisicance for every melee hero with Craggy (it's really incredibly annoying) and move yourself in the next strategic position to use your next Toss. You'll spend a lot of time watching your cooldowns so you can use your spells in time and don't "waste" the coolodown. In lategame 30 secs fight means, 1x Ava/Toss, 1x Toss, 1x Ava/Toss, 1x Toss and depending on the execution that means 3k+ nuke damage dealt (in AoE and single target combined).
Always stick around when you have Mana. Even with 100 hp, if Blink/Ava/Toss is out of cooldown you can still come out of the nowhere and finish a hero that thought the fight is over. Good hero placement and anticipation are crucial to every good Tinyplayer and will make him a worthy member of his team at all stages in the game.
Special mentionings
Don't play Tiny, i repeat, don't play Tiny when he's in the game. His aura makes Ava/Toss impossible and CotS will destroy your laning completely. Just don't pick Tiny against him, it kills the whole fun of this hero.
Fuck these guys. They don't counter Tiny directly, but they'll get Hood and have mass hp, turning your awesome nuking combo into nothing but a waste of time. Toss can still be cool, but they're just a pain to gank. Try to avoid them, they're just not your type of enemy. Concentrate on their little agi and int-fellows and mainly ignore them.
Like Silencer is to you, so you are to Meepo. You can't play Meepo when Tiny is around. He'll just die again, and again, and again, and again. Tiny doesn't die in one Poof combo, can't be beaten up in melee and actually the last thing Meepo wants is beeing in melee range to Tiny, because that usually means Meepo is plain dead.
Competetive Gaming
Tiny is (imo) a very valid pick in this version. He's seen only occassionally, but given enough space and farm in the early stages he can become the dominant midgame ganker you want him to be, scaling very well into lategame. The sheer numbers of his nuking damage stay impressive all game and he doesn't suffer from terrible hp like most heavy nukers (lion, lina, leshrac, zeus...). Craggy is also fairly underrated, beeing the bane of every melee carry without bkb. Developing mapcontrol for a roaming Tiny is crucial as well as giving him the possibilty to farm his dagger in time (20-25 minutes, not more).
Blight.Int vs. CNB
Kuroky plays Tiny solo mid, struggles in the beginning (laning against potm isn't exactly fun) but then shows the power of Ava/Toss. Also uses pretty much the exactly same build-up as i promote in this guide. Really good game, Puppeys Furion is also always a great watch. If you want to see how Tiny can work in a competetive environment, this is a good watch.
Kingsurf vs. Blight.Int (DP Asia)
The game itself is a bit weird, since some of the players suffer from lag (especially Azen), and the ks-guys start to flame pretty hard, but Ks.Sakuras Tiny is imo one of the highlights in this game. Very solid play, some brutal Ava/Toss combos, good farming, although a bit lacking in the "creativity"-department. The counterpart on the scourge side is Demons Sand King, so unless you enjoy Yamateh and Kuroky ricing all day, focus your attention on (of course) Tiny and SK.
Closing
This guide got a lot longer than i wanted it to, but i realized again how much information grow when you wanna be precise and still don't resent to tables and listings. I hope it gave you a brief idea on how to play this not only powerfull, but even more important really fun hero. In the beginning especially the Toss-stuff won't come easy, but after a few games you'll get the grip.
Thank you for reading. Leave a comment for discussion, praise, critizism and cookies.
Edit: 07/05/10 Fixed some typos, added a part about Soul Ring, bumping.
Also i wanted to say thanks to all the nice comments i've recieved so far. I really appreciate it
Author:spyAfterMath
Map Vers.: 6.65
A guide to Tiny, the Stone Giant
*growl*
Tiny is, even though his ultimate is a bit irritating in that respect, a raw caster hero. He can deal some decent damage in late game, but that’s not what this hero is all about. It’s all about instantly killing lone heroes, tossing and then killing heroes or maybe killing two or more heroes at once. A weird behavior between Avalanche and Toss allowed absurd nuking damage and instead of fixing this, it was declared official and hard coded into the interaction. His great time was during the legendary .48b lets-pick-lots-of-aoe-stuns-age, got then lost in the rise of new heroes and the dagger-nerfs and has been reborn with some sweet buffs and Dagger being a more offensive item than ever.
This guide aims at beginners and advanced players at the same time. I’ll try to provide technical details as well as some plain play style tips and tricks so you can look for a fast skill/item build as well as discovering the finer points of the little growling ownage-rock. In the end, you should read it all since knowledge is power, words that are especially true for a game as complex as DotA.
The Hero:
| Str: | 24 + 3 |
| Agi: | 9 + 0.9 |
| Int: | 14 + 1.6 |
For an overview over his stats, you should visit the hero page at playdota: Stone Giant - DotA Hero Details
Just leave this page open as you read the guide, I’m not a big fan of redundancy.
Important is just one little fact that makes him pretty unique:
Casting Animation: 0.001 / 0
Having no (noticeable) casting animation means both spells can be cast at instant, giving you a nice edge over heroes like Lina or Leshrac as well as feeling very comfortable to use.
Other than that, his stats are not exactly the greatest apart from his awesome Str-gain and huge base damage. Having no armor and almost no agi at all is a problem that needs to be fixed though. His movement speed is one of the lowest in the game, but does increase through his ultimate.
The Skills:
I’d like to say in advance that Tiny’s skills are a bitch to explain, so I’ll provide a practical explanation and will provide you with some links, if you want to know more about the mechanical explanations. The tooltips for Avalanche and Toss are totally off though, so I try to give you the right numbers.
Avalanche
“Bombards an area with rocks, stunning and damaging enemy land units”
| AoE | 275 (not 200 like in the tooltip) |
| Castingrange | 600 |
| Damage | 100/180/260/300 |
| Stun duration | 2 seconds |
| Cooldown | 20 seconds |
| Manacost | 120 |
It takes 0.75 sec after casting till it stuns, no matter how far or close you cast it.
Pretty nice AoE-stun. The cooldown is quite long, but there is a nifty side effect about it, which we’ll deal later with.
Mechanically the spell is based on ladders Cluster Rockets, which makes it dealing the damage in 4 portions a 25/45/65/75 damage every 0.25 seconds.
Toss
“Tiny grabs the nearest unit, friend or foe, and launches it at a location. Upon landing, the unit deals damage in an area. It also receives an extra 20% of the area damage itself, or more as your size increases. Cannot toss Dragon Knight in Elder Form.“
| Grabbing AoE | 275 |
| Damage AoE | 300 |
| Damage | 75/150/225/300 |
| Cooldown | 10 seconds |
| Manacost | 120 |
| Tossing Range | 500/700/900/1100 |
Now it’s getting messy. Toss is a pretty complicated spell and the tooltip doesn’t help at all, since it’s wrong in most statements or at least not fully right.
Things you can toss: Heroes, Creeps, Magic immune units, most Neutrals, Syllabears’ Bear
Things you can’t toss: Ancients, Couriers, Cycloned Units,
Yes, that means you actually CAN toss DK in Elder Dragon Form, he just won’t fly like normal units but slide stupidly over the ground. Mechanically that doesn’t make a difference, it’s just a visual. And yes, you can toss repelled or bkb’d units, they just won’t get damaged.
Also the unit chosen that will be tossed in the 275 AoE around Tiny is RANDOM. It’s not the closest, it has nothing to do with the way Tiny stands or if you are scratching your head in the very same moment, if you want to guarantee that you toss a certain unit, it has to be the only valid one in the AoE.
The next thing is that you can’t “launch at a location”, you can only toss to units.
Things you can toss to: Heroes, Creeps, most neutrals, the tossed unit itself ( it will just fly straight up in the air)
Things you can’t toss to: Ancients, Spirit Bear, Magic immune units, Couriers, own units (i.e. Necrowarriors), Cycloned units
The tossed unit will fly to that unit for 1 seconds and then the stated damage will be dealt in the AoE. The tossed unit gets additional damage, which is 20%/35%/50%/65% of the AoE damage, depending on your level of Grow. Tossed allies will always be damaged with 20% of the AoE damage, regardless of your Grow-level.
The damage is magical damage and will get reduced by magic resistance / blocked by magic immunity.
50% of your Toss damage works on buildings as well, giving you a pretty good tool to lasthit towers. This surpasses even Glyph, allowing you to kill a glyphed building.
Craggy Exterior
“Tiny's body is made of solid granite, causing great pain to those who attack it. Whenever a unit within 300 range attacks Tiny, there is a chance that they will be stunned for 1.2 seconds.”
In addition to that, you also gain a bit armor per level. This also works against ranged units that attack you within the 300 AoE.
| Chance of Stun | 6%/12%/18%/24% |
| Damage per Stun | 25/35/45/55 |
| Duration | 1.2 seconds |
| Armor | 2/3/4/5 |
Grow
“Greatly increases Tiny's power and size, but does so at the cost of his attack speed. Increases Toss's damage, and slightly improves Tiny's movement speed.“
| Damage added to Basedamage | 40/80/120 |
| Attackspeed in IAS | -20/-35/-50 |
| Increased damage for tossed Units | 35%/50%/65% of the AoE damage |
| Movementspeed | 5/10/15 |
Probably the worst ultimate in DotA, being mainly just forced synergy and eyecandy. Gives you quite a bit of damage, while crippling your already absymal attackspeed and increases the modelsize by 25% each level.
The amazing Avalanche/Toss-Combo (aka Ava/Toss)
Back in the good old days there was a bug/feature when you used Avalanche and Toss in rapid succession against one target, Avalanche could deal twice the damage that it normally does against the tossed target. Of course this got abused and actually made Tiny a quite competitive pick, that he wouldn’t have been without it.
To solve this issue once and for all, Ice Frog made that behavior official and triggered Avalanche that way, that if there is a unit tossed within the AoE, the damage will be applied a second time. I don’t want to bore you with mechanical details, it’s a bit more complicated than that but if you use Avalanche Toss as fast as you can after each other on the same target, you’ll deal the Avalanche damage twice.
If you have lvl 4 Ava, lvl 4 Toss and lvl 3 Grow you can deal 1095 damage before magic resistance to the tossed enemy, which is 821 dmg if he has no Hood of Defiance.
In comparison: A lvl 3 Laguna Blade with Aghanim’s Scepter deals 1150 damage before resistance.
Abusing this skill is what makes and breaks a good Tiny and can make you one of the most awesome killers in DotA.
Skillbuild
- Avalanche
- Toss
- Avalanche
- Toss
- Avalanche
- Toss
- Toss
- Avalanche
- Grow
- Stats
- Grow
- Craggy / Stats
- Craggy / Stats
- Craggy / Stats
- Craggy / Stats
- Grow
- Stats /Craggy
- Stats /Craggy
- Stats /Craggy
- Stats /Craggy
- – 25. Stats
Always get your disable first. Always. Actually Toss scales better than Avalanche, since the casting range improves a lot, but the double damage from Avalanche in a Ava/Toss combo is too good to pass up. But due to the weird scaling of Avalanche ( the last level only gives you +40 dmg), getting level 4 Toss over level 4 Avalanche is recommended.
I’ve seen people switching Avalanche and Grow at level 8 and 9. Grow gives additional 45 damage to the tossed unit and another 40 physical damage for your combo and 5 ms, Avalanche gives 40 AoE damage and 80 damage to a unit in Ava/Toss. Since you won’t be using Avalanche only for Ava/Toss, I find Avalanche to be more effective and the 5 ms not really important. It’s a small difference though and only matters for one level.
Whether you get Craggy or Stats after level 11 depends on your enemies. If physical damage starts to play an important role quite early in the game or the enemy team consists of many melee heroes, Craggy will be your choice. If that is not the case, feel free to fill in some Stats, they really help your low manapool and some HP never hurt. At least after lvl 16 you would want to skill Craggy anyway, you simply need the armor. Adjust to the situation.
Itembuild
Starting items
2-4x
, 1-2 , 1-2 , , eventually a Always get a chicken if your team won’t buy one. Always. Don’t be an idiot, you’ll need it soon.
Tiny needs desperately some Manapool. Without items that increase your pool you won’t be able to do Ava/Toss until level 5. With just 3 Branches you won’t be able to do it until level 3.
But you want to be able to do it at level 2! So no sobi masks, bottle first, basilius rings or similar stuff. Get cheap stats (either 4 branches or 2 Branches + Mantle) and cheap regen (Tangos + Clarities) and you’re ready for laning.
Follow up items for laning
-> , , , The order depends on the game, sometimes you want fast Boots, sometimes you need the regen of Bottle (especially if you go mid and have good access to runes), sometimes you face a spellspammer like Bristleback or Zeus and need a Wand for free Mana and HP. Fact is, you want these three items as soon as possible in your inventory. Also buy soon a TP-Scroll and never run around without carrying one. Then upgrade the Mantle you bought at the start into a Null Talisman.
After fixing your basic regen and manapool needs get a
You need this and you want this. This is what Tiny needs for owning and there is no item that is second to it. You will never invest better 2150 gold than in this thing. You should already be ganging and roaming a lot, but always keep in mind that a Dagger will increase your killing potential by a huge amount. Last hit carefully, steal creeps from your carry, killsteal as much as you want, your justification is always “need dagger”.
With the acquisition of Dagger, you've completed your
Core Build
This is your core build and basically Tiny is done. Everything that goes beyond these 6 items is luxury and not really needed (albeit Tiny has some farming ability and it’s no shame getting one or two items more).
A small note to Arcane Ring
:Arcane seems a logical choice on Tiny. It increases the pool a lot, gives really good manaregen, gives even a bit of Armor and the supporting part isn't worst. But Tiny doesn't need much Mana. In fact, Tiny needs 240 Mana to cast his combo and 75 more to use Dagger. What Tiny needs is to complete Boots/Bottle/Dagger as soon as possible. Skipping Bottle is not an option, so the question is whether you get Arcane and Bottle or Bottle+Wand/Null. The latter is 700 gold cheaper, gives HP and most importantly burst regen and much much easier to build. Farming the 1k gold for Energy Booster is a pain, especially when you want to start ganging and roaming as soon as possible. The only big item you want to farm in early game is Dagger and thats where you need to put your money. Skip Arcane, you don't need it.
A small note to Soul Ring
:Soul Ring is one of the many cute little items added by Ice Frog that make early slot management hell. Tiny is definitly one of the heroes that look like a great wielder of SR, having sufficent HP to balance out the HP loss and having terrible Int, which makes absolute manaboosts a lot more usefull. The truth is, i just don't know yet. It is great for farming, but the 150 hp loss in fights is especially early very noticable. It also costs quite a bit money and your slots are packed anyway.
If you wanna go SR, try a itembuild along that way: Branches + regenstuff -> Bottle/Boots -> SR -> (Int-)Treads -> Dagger. SR/Bottle/Treads allows for some really cute stats-manipulating and should balance out the HP loss very well. You won't need a Null when you go fast Treads, so you can also cut some money there. Add a Wand if the enemies demand it (spellspammers) or after your Dagger.
Luxury:
Footwear:
Tiny can survive till deep lategame with just basic boots, since your most important way of moving in fights is Blink. On the other hand, it’s no shame to upgrade the boots earlier.
can be good choice if the Dagger seems far far away and certainly helps in placing your spells, but it can't replace Dagger. On the other hand Dagger can easily replace Phase, which is why i recommend other boots.So the choice is between
and . If the ganging goes well, Travels are certainly the better option. It saves you one slot, gives you a lot of movementspeed and frees you of the need to teleport to towers (not blocking the valuable teleport time for somebody else). Treads give you at least a bit IAS to balance out your massive damage and can be switched on intelligence to increase your pool further, so that you could throw the Null Talisman out. I’m almost always going for Travels, but Treads are dead cheap and the IAS is really noticeable.Caster Items:
: Did I say that movementspeed is not important? Well, that was a lie. 25 ms more certainly won’t hurt, while giving you finally a reliable source of Manaregen, even if Bottle and Wand are empty. The cyclone has numerous uses like breaking channeling, stopping an enemy when chasing or saving yourself, by cycloning yourself and thus buying you needed time for a blink in the heat of the fight. It ‘s also really cheap and has small pieces, making it a good choice, even if the money isn’t exactly rolling in.: What’s better than 900 nuke damage? 1300 nuke damage of course! In all seriousness, Tiny is actually a decent user of Dagon. The ability to instantly kill somebody without him being able to do anything at all is a pretty valuable one. The biggest downside is the price and the high manacost (180 mana at level 1) but it also gives some usefull stats. I do not recommend upgrading it, but sometimes you just want to keep up the instant kills and the upgrades aren’t as bad as most people make it.: The king of all caster items. Not much to say about it, will allow you to spam your spells at will, gives you the best disable in the game, even gives a bit HP. Would be perfect, if it wouldn’t be so costly and composed from such terrible items like Mystic Staff. Nonetheless if you can get it, get it. You can never go wrong.: Lots of Manapool, a really nice big AoE-slow-nuke and countering Tinys biggest weakness: physical damage. Too bad that Guinsoo is so good, so I could tell you to get this under every circumstance. That way, I’ll just highly recommend it, this thing was made for Tiny.: A bit of mix between Guinsoo and Dagon. Sometimes silences are almost equally powerfull as the hard disable of Guinsoo (f.e. against Storm Spirit, Puck, QoP and other heavy spellreliant heroes). Soul Burn lasts 1.5 secs longer than Hex and amplifies damage by 20%, Orchid itself is much much easier to build, is 600 gold cheaper and helps with physical damage. On paper it’s not really a bad choice and if you also need to deal some physical damage it’s a decent option but in most cases the Hex will just be more important. I never bought it, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying it.: Seen it in one replay or two. Can’t say much about it, it seems to me more gimmicky than gamebreaking. It can’t replace Dagger to place your spells but at least it gives some stats and IAS. Really a personal decision, but I guess Tiny would be a good hero to buy it with.Fighting Items:
: This is your first and primary choice if you rather want hit somebody with your 250+ damage than disabling them. It fixes your armor, helps your allies, increases your attack speed (which is all you need) and helps with destroying building. Simply the best choice dps and defense wise.: Techincally you can deal quite a bit of damage with Grow 3 and the Berserk of MoM. It’s also dead cheap, but needs a slot, the last thing you need is lifesteal and albeit you have some HP, physical dps will just rape you if this is activated. For the same purpose rather buy a Dagon. Saver, more reliable and at least adds some stats.: Assault is better. In terms of raw numbers it’s quite close, but AC is cheaper AND has all these nice aura thingies. And Eaglehorn is pretty much the worst item in the game, goldwise. Maybe if you need to outcarry a Troll or something similar.: More IAS. Pretty much everything there is to say. I admit, I didn’t do the math but my feeling is that Tiny needs plenty of IAS before buying damage is actually worth it. The passive is nice, making it pretty ugly to actually hit you. AC is still better, but you could get it afterwards (wtf, what kind of game are you playing?!?!).: A bit more than 1k hp, 40 damage and makes you more or less independent from the fountain. Certainly a good item but never really felt the urge to buy it.Every other DPS item won’t cut it in comparsion to AC and Mjollnir and Tiny is not really a hero you would want to buy a Divine on. Manta is pretty cool, since your illusions get damage bonus but don’t suffer from the IAS malus, but doesn’t cut it either. If your role in the game shifts, because your carry drops out or because your teammates suck, getting a fully carry build can be necessesity, but to be honest I never actually had to do this. Tinys dps can be quite impressive but he lacks original carry abilities (bash, cool orbs, amazing critical or just a decent movementspeed). He wins games in midgame with his amazing ganging ability and that is what we’re concentrating on.
Gameplay
Laning
Tiny is a very flexible laner. Two AoE nukes, quite a amount of HP and huge basedamge allow for a range of combos as well as soloing. I'll just try to cover the general concept here. Try out some stuff yourself.
Dual Laning:
The Classic. Pick two stunners, put them on a lane and hopefully they'll be able to get kills and dominate the lane. If you put Tiny on a dual lane a ranged hero is preferred to harass the enemy so you can deliver the final blow with your nukes. Furthermore it needs to be a point-click stun (or slow) so the combo can be started without problems of aiming or similar stuff.
Venge / Lion / Maiden are the common picks for that situation. They go well with virtually any hero and are your dreampartners. But Witch Doctor, Twin Head Dragon or Lich can also work very well. These combos are no-brainers and will put any enemy in that lane into huge problems. Ranged heroes also have the huge advantage that they don't need to run up in melee range, which can often screw up a Ava/Toss combo. Whenever you can lane with one of these guys.
Special Mentioning deserves Bane Elemental. His Nightmare is the perfect spell to isolate a hero. Casted on a hero in the middle of your creepwave will just make the creepwave pass by and leave him unproteced for a perfect Ava/Toss combo or the option to toss him in your towerrange.
In public game, any disable will do it. You can f.e. toss a Slardar or Cent on the enemy so they can place their stun and you can follow up, Sand King stun, Sven stun... you name it. Your lanecontrol is a lot less, since you are vulnerable in between your nuking combos but you are still a threat to anybody uncautious and can easily score a kill. Like said before, melee heroes have the disadvantage that they will fight in...melee range and thus can screw up your Toss. A smart ally will just move away a bit so Tiny can Toss freely.
Solo laning:
Soloing with Tiny means in almost every case soloing mid, because the only reason we're able to do this are RUNES. Runecontrol is essential to every solo Tiny, since all your ganking and surviving runs on the free bottle-charges of the runes. Bottle gets highest priority, if you must buy a pack of Observer Wards yourself so you'll be the first to snatch the runes.
Most likely you'll be meeting a strong ranged solo hero (PotM, Nevermore, Viper, Tinker, you name it) which will give you a hard time, but don't despair. Your nukes are awesome and a Nevermore won't be smiling that much after getting the third Toss on his head. If you happen to meet a melee hero there, be agressive as hell. Hit him several times, maybe a nuke here and there and then look for the second of unawareness where you can catch him alone in a Ava/Toss.
Soloing usually mean superior farm, even if your enemy is decent. Using a nuke to lasthit a few creeps + harassing is a very valid option. Try obtain your core build as fast as possible, sometimes you might be even able to rush the Dagger. If you have a Dagger after 8-10 mins, you are the most powerfull hero in the game at that point and nobody is save from you.
A short excursion about abusing Runes:
Every, and i mean every, Haste or Invis rune needs to bring a kill, maybe a double kill. Pop the rune, take care that you have 240 mana, go to a side lane and kill something. There is nothing the enemy can do but frightened towerhugging if they know where you went. And even then, with a haste you might just towerdive, ava/toss a poor Drow Ranger and run back to your lane within 20 seconds. Regen means the living hell for the guy in your lane. Just bombard him with nukes untill you have no more mana, then pop the regen and give him a last avalanche and toss on the head. You should be now fully refilled and your enemy dead or running back to base. DD isn't as good but we take what we get. Use it to grab lasthits (you should have about 150 damage to lasthit in early game) and it ofc also helps with killing people if you have an ally that can provide another stun or slow so you can get in a few hits. Illusion can be used for the same purpose, but in early i prefer to just use them as scouts. If you got some trigger happy enemies, let them use a few nukes, maybe even an ultimate on a carefully microed illusion.
Trilane:
Trilaning isn't new, but was forgotten for a long time and in rediscovered in the recent versions. These days trilaning rather means a mix of roaming, creep pulling and actual laning. Heroes like Vengefull Spirit, Earthshaker, Maiden or Venomancer will be your best friends. Tiny can certainly fit into a trilane, especially Toss can be extremly powerfull if used well. I'll not go much into this, the concept is the same like in dual laning but the pressure can be a lot higher on the enemies. If you're doing it well, you can fully force them out of the xp range and deny several creepwaves or get a bunch of kills if they dare to approach the creeps. It's risky and difficult though, since you'll be underleveled if you don't own and every player needs to know what they're doing, otherwise it might backfire pretty hard.
Roaming
Tiny abandons the lane after level 8 or 9 completely. You have now two main goals: Kill People. Get Dagger. Often goal two comes by fullfilling goal one.
Runes and Wards are your best friends. Nobody can stand 900 damage at that point, you need to abuse that. Every two minutes, make sure you (or maybe, but just maybe, an ally) gets the rune. Then watch the minimap, look for evil coloured dots and go there. Be aggressive, stick around and always have the finger on your spells to waste no time. You don't have that much mana, so you can't allow yourself too much failure so bring allies to help you. The enemies carries are your main target, but surely everything that dies will do it. A lone farming carry is your wet dream, but you can even make a go against a enemy dual stun combo. If you can get the initative, one of them will be dead before they hit the ground.
When your amount of gold approaches the 2k, you have my permission to hang back a bit. At 1,7 or 1,8k i often just go to a lane or the forest to grab the last bits of money without dying. A Ava/Toss combo can instantly clear a creepwave at that point, so just do it. At point 2150 gold you buy your Dagger. If you have no mana you can return to the base, if not have it send to you by chicken.
Roaming with Dagger
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Big Lebowski
Walter Sobchak: [pulls out a gun] Smokey, my friend, you are entering a world of pain.
The Dude: Walter... Walter Sobchak: You mark that frame an 8, and you're entering a world of pain. Smokey: I'm not... Walter Sobchak: A world of pain. |
This is the hot phase for Tiny and you need to put all your energy into it. You just run up and down the map, preferably together with an ally that can also blink or has a long-ranged ability and kill shit. If you manage to gain mapcontrol now, you're on the road to winning this game, since the enemy will live in fear while your carry has freefarm. Keep up the wards in their forest and be fast with your fingers.
Toss will start to play a more important role. The "Toss-Swap" works basically just like Vengefulls Swap, but is a bit more difficult to pull off. Tell an ally to stand back, blink to an enemy (maybe even several enemies) and Toss one of them to your ally, where they are hopefully waiting with nukes and disables. Unlike Venge though, you got an AoE-Stun, Craggy and plenty of HP, maybe even Euls to save you after performing the swap, so you're not exactly forced to die. If you tank some spells, even better so your team hopefully can follow up.
If you're doing well, get Travels asap. I repeat myself, mapcontrol is everything and Tiny is brilliant at delivering it as long as he has allies that help him ganging.
Lategame/Teamfights
At some point, unless you were totally dominating, people will "grow out" of your nukes. Don't get me wrong, 1,2k nuke damage still hurts, but it's not fatal to a carry hero with 2k hp anymore. They'll start hanging around together or be in range so that small gangs can turn fast into big teamfights. Depending on your team you can have two tasks now:
1. Initiator. Tiny isn't the greatest initator in the world, but he'll do the job. Toss-Swap somebody out if you can or just dump your nukes and AoE stun on the head of 3+ heroes and hope that your allies can follow up fast enough. If you survived, move out of the fight, pop your Wand/Bottle and then look around. Try to use Toss at the next 10 second mark and then wait for full Blink/Ava/Toss 10 seconds later. Whatever happens, if your team could hold himself in the fight, you WILL kill somebody 20 seconds later, Ava/Toss can clear up anything.
2. Assassin. Basically the same thing as you did while ganging. Let somebody else initate (or maybe they initated against your team), look for that lone little evil squishy hero in the rear (there always is. Be it Lion, Sniper, Bane, WD, Rhasta or Zeus, there always is one) and TAKE HIM OUT. They'll be most likely standing isolated, making a perfect target for you. If you can take out Lion before he dumps all his disable shit, your team will fight at a huge advantage. Then just walk in the fight and hit people and get hit. You're extremly annoying just for having HP, beeing big and stunning people that attack you by having Craggy.
The time in between fights should now be used for farming some stuff. Hex can be gamebreaking, but AC or Shivas can also be of much use, especially if the physical dps starts to reign and you still run around with 8 armor.
That one damn 80 minute game
So you're in that fucking game that takes forever. People buy out all the time, so nobody really dares to push with full force or your team lost the momentum you brought them with your 20 kills. Most likely this happens because neither of the team is powerfull enough to rape buildings fast enough.
Just start dpsing, massing IAS. AC and Mjollnir are your best friends now and start beating up towers. Everything i said before stays true, but sometimes brute force is the only thing that helps. Hell, go backdooring if you have an ally for that (Clinkz, Naga, Sylla, Leshrac to mention a few) and just take out the damn rax so you can finally go pee.
Fighting with Tiny
Toss is a spell that screams for creative usage. Displacement of heroes is an extremely powerfull tool and goes beyond the simple damage and Ava/Toss usage. Especially Melee heroes are always susceptible to your tosses. Always have an eye your possible targets in the surrounding, the Toss-range is HUGE. F.e. you can Toss things over the whole river. You can use it for chasing, for the already mentioned Toss/Swap, you can toss enemies away from you or you can use Toss bluntly as a 1,1k range aoe nuke.
Many Tinys limit their selfs to the Ava/Toss combo, but Toss has a 10 sec cooldown, which means you can use Toss once in between every Ava/Toss combo and Toss alone can be deciding for a fight.
Especially in lategame fights aren't over after the first wave of nukes and stuns and you are often required to do more than one Ava/Toss. Stay around, be a nuisicance for every melee hero with Craggy (it's really incredibly annoying) and move yourself in the next strategic position to use your next Toss. You'll spend a lot of time watching your cooldowns so you can use your spells in time and don't "waste" the coolodown. In lategame 30 secs fight means, 1x Ava/Toss, 1x Toss, 1x Ava/Toss, 1x Toss and depending on the execution that means 3k+ nuke damage dealt (in AoE and single target combined).
Always stick around when you have Mana. Even with 100 hp, if Blink/Ava/Toss is out of cooldown you can still come out of the nowhere and finish a hero that thought the fight is over. Good hero placement and anticipation are crucial to every good Tinyplayer and will make him a worthy member of his team at all stages in the game.
Special mentionings
Don't play Tiny, i repeat, don't play Tiny when he's in the game. His aura makes Ava/Toss impossible and CotS will destroy your laning completely. Just don't pick Tiny against him, it kills the whole fun of this hero. Fuck these guys. They don't counter Tiny directly, but they'll get Hood and have mass hp, turning your awesome nuking combo into nothing but a waste of time. Toss can still be cool, but they're just a pain to gank. Try to avoid them, they're just not your type of enemy. Concentrate on their little agi and int-fellows and mainly ignore them. Like Silencer is to you, so you are to Meepo. You can't play Meepo when Tiny is around. He'll just die again, and again, and again, and again. Tiny doesn't die in one Poof combo, can't be beaten up in melee and actually the last thing Meepo wants is beeing in melee range to Tiny, because that usually means Meepo is plain dead.Competetive Gaming
Tiny is (imo) a very valid pick in this version. He's seen only occassionally, but given enough space and farm in the early stages he can become the dominant midgame ganker you want him to be, scaling very well into lategame. The sheer numbers of his nuking damage stay impressive all game and he doesn't suffer from terrible hp like most heavy nukers (lion, lina, leshrac, zeus...). Craggy is also fairly underrated, beeing the bane of every melee carry without bkb. Developing mapcontrol for a roaming Tiny is crucial as well as giving him the possibilty to farm his dagger in time (20-25 minutes, not more).
Blight.Int vs. CNB
Kuroky plays Tiny solo mid, struggles in the beginning (laning against potm isn't exactly fun) but then shows the power of Ava/Toss. Also uses pretty much the exactly same build-up as i promote in this guide. Really good game, Puppeys Furion is also always a great watch. If you want to see how Tiny can work in a competetive environment, this is a good watch.
Kingsurf vs. Blight.Int (DP Asia)
The game itself is a bit weird, since some of the players suffer from lag (especially Azen), and the ks-guys start to flame pretty hard, but Ks.Sakuras Tiny is imo one of the highlights in this game. Very solid play, some brutal Ava/Toss combos, good farming, although a bit lacking in the "creativity"-department. The counterpart on the scourge side is Demons Sand King, so unless you enjoy Yamateh and Kuroky ricing all day, focus your attention on (of course) Tiny and SK.
Closing
This guide got a lot longer than i wanted it to, but i realized again how much information grow when you wanna be precise and still don't resent to tables and listings. I hope it gave you a brief idea on how to play this not only powerfull, but even more important really fun hero. In the beginning especially the Toss-stuff won't come easy, but after a few games you'll get the grip.
Thank you for reading. Leave a comment for discussion, praise, critizism and cookies.
Edit: 07/05/10 Fixed some typos, added a part about Soul Ring, bumping.
Also i wanted to say thanks to all the nice comments i've recieved so far. I really appreciate it
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