When Techies was first released post-TI4, like everyone else I quickly got sick of playing against the hero. So I decided to try Techies myself, which turned out to be a mistake — the three goblins quickly won me over, and I eventually earned the terrible title of Techies Picker.

Last patch, Techies were probably the worst they’ve ever been, but thankfully they have been reworked as we move on to 7.01. While the way to play Techies has changed, their core concept has stayed the same. They are a hero designed to wreak havoc in a way that is uniquely frustrating for the enemy team. Played well, they can immobilize the enemy team simply by making them too scared to leave the safety of their defensive structures.

I’ve always played Techies as a solo offlane, and this guide will be geared toward playing in that position. Though the best time to play Techies offlane was certainly when they had instant-detonation Land Mines, I think this is the most playable they have been since.

Patch 7.01 Changes

Proximity Mines

Previously, the main utility of Techies was to build big stacks of mines at choke points and get hands-free kills on any hero unlucky enough to wander through without True Sight. In 7.01, this ability is gone. Proximity Mines (Q) can no longer be placed within the area-of-effect of other Proximity Mines, and they’ll also be visible to enemies who are within their blast radius — giving enemy heroes a chance to avoid or kill them before they go off.

Not being able to stack mines isn’t actually a nerf, since individual mines do a lot more damage. At max level, each mine does 750 base magical damage, which is nearly equivalent to three 6.88 mines stacked on top of each other. Mines also do full damage in their entire 400 AoE radius, rather than falling off to half damage the way they did previously. The change to magical damage is noteworthy since it makes them better for clearing lane creeps, who have no magic resistance — Level 3 Proximity Mines can now one-shot a creep wave.

Mine placement is also much more important, both because they’re no longer invisible and because enemies must be near them for 1.6 seconds in order for them to detonate. Planting mines right in enemy heroes’ faces is especially discouraged, since there is a 1.75 second setup timer on each mine before the 1.6 detonation delay starts ticking down. That’s a total of 3.35 seconds from placement to earliest possible detonation, so you’ll have to be a lot more careful about placing mines when people are around.

Everything Else

Not being able to insta-suicide means playing aggressive solo in the enemy jungle is no longer ideal. However, Suicide Squad’s replacement ability, Blast Off (E), is incredibly useful in teamfights, with a 1000 cast range to initiate and an AoE silence that hits enemies for 4/5/6/7 seconds. The new ability also doesn’t immediately kill you, but damages you for 50 percent of your max HP, which means you can use it aggressively to start a fight or finish off someone in lane.

Stasis Trap (W) no longer has a detonation delay when triggered, but rather than stunning enemies it roots them. Rooting is a bit more effective than it used to be, since it now disables escape moves like Burrow Strike or Time Walk, but it’s still not as good as a full stun. Another interesting change is that Stasis Trap’s effect radius (600 AoE) is now larger than its trigger radius (400 AoE), so an enemy that wanders too close could end up rooting enemies farther away.

Techies ultimate, Remote Mines (R), are close to unchanged, though they have been given a detonation delay of 0.25 seconds, so you’ll have to anticipate your opponent’s movement a bit more when triggering them. The tradeoff is you can now plant them faster, with a cast time of 1 second instead of 1.5. Unlike Prox Mines, they can still be stacked and they still require True Sight to spot, so you can be a bit more liberal about mining lanes and jungle paths with them.

Items

Techies has always been infamous for low base damage, making it difficult to farm with your auto-attack. In previous patches, an offlane Techies could last hit with bombs relatively easily, but with the new 3.35s vulnerability time of Proximity Mines, this is no longer an option.

A Mantle of Intelligence gives you an extra +3 Int to get your starting damage up, and a Quelling Blade gives you another +7 damage on creeps to a total of 40 damage towards last hits. The Quelling is also important for cutting down trees to reach good places to hide your mines.

You’ll want a Town Portal Scroll to start, so you can get out to your lane ASAP and place as many Proximity Mines as you can before your opponents show up. Techies is incredibly slow and incredibly squishy, so without a few mines to fall back to in the opening minutes of the laning phase, you’ll be food for the enemy carry and supports.

After my starting items, I build Null Talisman so that I can last hit more easily, followed by a Soul Ring and then Arcane Boots. Lots of people prefer Tranquils over Arcanes, but with the new Proximity and Stasis mines I recommend building for as much mana as possible.

In the past, rushing Aghanim’s Scepter for extra Remote Mine damage was common, so you could one-shot creep waves with Remotes and farm quicker. However, now that you can kill creep waves from full HP with Level 3 Proximity Mines, this is no longer a requirement. I recommend going for a Eul’s Scepter after you finish your Arcanes, since you will need all the mana you can get.

From there I generally also get Aether Lens and eventually the Aghanim's Scepter. Aether Lens damage amplification is naturally good on Techies, and the cast range is a great perk as well. After getting Aghs, Remote Mines have a cast range of 700; with Aether Lens and Techies’ +200 range talent at Level 15, you can boost this to a whopping 1,120.

Late game, Staff of Vyse is a great pickup, as it helps you teamfight better, and Octarine Core will give you essential mana and cooldown reduction. The less time your spells are on cooldown, the more you can be placing mines, and the more damage you can pump out around the map.

Skill Build

By level 7, you want to max Proximity Mines, with two points in Blast Off and one in your ult. This will give you the damage you need to farm with mines and a lot of teamfight utility and gank potential with Blast Off and Remote Mines.

There’s an argument to be made for skilling Stasis Trap at level 7 rather than maxing Proximity Mines. Level 3 Proximity Mines deal 575 magical damage, and because lane creeps have no magical resistance, this is enough to one-shot the wave. That means a fourth level isn’t necessarily needed, but I find that Stasis will rarely be useful if you’re solo laning, as you should be.

After level 7, finish maxing out Blast Off, and finish Stasis last.

Talents

Techies’ new talent tree gives them several farm-focused options like extra XP and gold gain, but if you’re using your mines to clear creep waves effectively you don’t really need these to scale. I much prefer the utility options like extra cast range and reduced respawn time, which make you more effective in engagements, particularly if you’re defending high-ground.

Level 10: While Techies is a very slow hero and does benefit from +20 movespeed, it’s useful only in certain situations like trying to escape a gank or chasing someone down with Blast Off. You will always be suffering from lack of mana, so I usually choose +2 mana regen.

Level 15: Both +25 percent XP gain and +200 cast range are very good, but by level 15 you’re nearly to level 3 Remote Mines anyway, and I think the XP gain comes too late to be useful. The +200 cast range is incredibly useful for teamfights, allowing you to place mines (especially Remotes) without being directly in danger. It also boosts your Blast Off to 1,200 range, which helps with chasing down stragglers.

Level 20: At this point in the game, one-shotting creep waves with mines shouldn’t be a challenge, which means another 120 gold per minute isn’t a huge deal. However, if you die at this point in the game without the high-ground being mined defensively — especially since you can’t halve your respawn time by suiciding anymore — your game is over. Take -60s respawn every time.

Level 25: Taking +400 Blast Off damage gives you 800 magic damage in total, but by this point you’re likely doing more damage than that with Remote Mines. The 25 percent cooldown reduction means you can be setting up more mines and traps, which is almost always more useful.

Strategy

The Laning Phase

Old school Techies players will be used to leaving their lane around Level 6 or 7 to start mining around the map. Now, your top priority is to keep control of your lane. New Techies plays a bit like Broodmother, in that you set up in a lane and stay there farming and making your opponent anxious until the enemy Tier 1 tower goes down. The exception is if the enemy team is pushing your towers too hard, in which case it’s better to abandon your lane and start mining up your structures defensively.

Mining your lane is all-important, since you’ll be using mines simultaneously to clear creeps and weaken enemy heroes so that you can finish them with a rotation gank or a Blast Off. However, mining effectively is also much more difficult than in 6.88, since you have to hide your Proximity Mines out of enemy sight.

The most important thing to remember when picking your mine placements is that all enemies can see them if they’re within the 400 AoE blast radius. If enemy creeps see a mine in the middle of their path when none of your creeps are around, they will quickly dispatch it, so you will mostly be placing mines in trees and attempting to pull creep waves into their range.

You may notice that there are no Prox Mines on the right side of the Radiant offlane. Due to the path that creeps take and the visibility range, there are no good places to place Proximity Mines on the right side of the lane (at least without going fairly far north toward the enemy tower). For this reason, I believe Techies is more difficult to offlane on Radiant than on Dire.

Playing Dire, on the other hand, has some great places to put mines. This also creates a greater danger zone for enemy heroes, as neither side of the lane is safe.

Place a high priority on replacing your mines as they detonate. Your opponent may figure out some of your spots eventually, so this will require some sneaking through the jungle or Side Shop to make sure they can’t interrupt you while you’re setting up.

Because mines can’t be stacked, you likely won’t be able to one-shot your laning opponent with one big blaze of glory. Your goal should instead be to get them low and then finish them off with Blast Off. If you succeed in this a few times, they will get nervous about coming near enough for you to Blast into them, which will give you command of the lane.

The Mid and Late Game

Techies may no longer be a solo-killing machine, but you still have a lot of ways to make your opponents’ lives miserable.

Max-level Proximity Mines do 562.5 damage to enemy heroes, assuming standard 25 percent magic resistance. While you’re likely not killing anyone with that, taking 560 HP off your opponent makes it harder for them to make an impact in the next big engagement. Therefore it’s a good idea to drop mines in trees everywhere you can in the enemy jungle, to catch anyone trying to farm camps or rotate through.

Since neutral creeps won’t attack Proximity Mines even if they can see them, you can use them to one-shot creep camps. Camps only respawn every odd minute now, so this will wreak economic havoc on an enemy carry who wants to secure jungle farm.

Since Stasis Traps no longer expire, I also recommend dropping some traps while you’re near any place on the map that has a high potential for a teamfight occurring. One stasis bomb in the right spot can completely swing a teamfight, even if you’re not there, and that is truly what Techies is all about.

Remote Mines have always been the bread and butter of any good techies player, but with the changes to Proximity Mines their placement is even more important. Where before you could use Proximity Mines to make chokes dangerous, you now have to rely solely on Remotes, so paying attention to the minimap is far more crucial than ever before.

There is no one “great” place to plant Remote Mines, but you should always keep a few things in mind. What do you think your opponents will be doing, and where will they have to walk to accomplish it? Setting up traps takes time, so you will need to predict enemy movements around 90 seconds before they decide to make them. What will their carry be doing? What lane will they push next, and when? These are the important questions to ask yourself.

As far as figuring out how many mines are needed to secure a kill, I always have a calculator app open. You may think I’m joking, but it’s actually the best way to figure out how many bombs exactly it takes to kill their farmed Anti-Mage who has well over 25 percent magic resistance. You never want to have one bomb less than you need to wipe out an opponent.

Good luck, fellow Techies Pickers. Let’s blow something up.

Corey "CartDota" Hospes is a freelance writer, Dota 2 addict, lover of numbers and Techies Picker.​ You can follow him on Twitter.