When you first saw Tinker did you—what? You haven’t really analyzed Tinker Timbletin yet? Well, take a good look.

“Do you feel like being a sheep today, for a long time? Cuz I can make that happen. I really can.”

—Tinker Timbletin

At 8 honor, Tinker is an incredibly expensive Mage. His attack is solid, but that alone is not what makes him worth that big ticket price. He isn’t exactly a defensive Mage either, so that’s not what you’re paying for. Where he excels is with his crit. The crit both gives you +1 damage, and Tinker’s Arcane Bounty readies one of his cards. Well, if your attack was an arcane attack that is! Good thing his built-in attack is arcane.

Currently the only arcane attack Action Bar card is Arcane Blast. Considering its similarity to Tinker’s built-in attack, this card won’t make our list.

But there is an arcane ABC that Tinker will want. In pretty much every game, Tinker is going to want to crit as often as possible. Thus, Arcane Flux is looking like a card that Tinker is going to fall in love with.

 

“Try, try again. That’s what ma always said.”

—Tinker Timbletin

The first obvious use of Tinker is to pair him with a Mana Potion. With a Mana Pot you can attack every tick. But, with a Mana Potion (and Arcane Flux), you pigeonhole your 8-honor Mage into doing just one thing, all the time: attack 2 for 5.

“Ho! Ho! Laddie. Here’s how you do it.”

We’ll come back to Savin in a moment, but I just wanted to point out that Blessing of Wisdom works very similarly to Mana Potion, with the added benefit of always being available—and opening up an ABC slot for Tinker.

So, what should Tinker bring for his other two cards (or is it three)?

Well, if we assume that Tinker is going to crit on most of his attacks, you’ll probably want to use ABCs that are fairly cheap in cost. That way, we’ll be attacking more and readying those cards even more often. Savvy?

In this vein, Polymorph is always solid for crowd control and isn’t as tick-intensive as Flamestrike. I’d probably include it, as you are likely to see many epics on today’s battlefield. If you can Polymorph Vashj or Velen two or more times every ten ticks, you are really going to entangle the opponent.

Counterspell can be used to control when and where enemies attack/heal. However, I’m not sure if 3 ticks to Counterspell is the way to go with an 8 honor character. Blindlight Murloc is the Counterspell king. Tinker is not.

There are, luckily, a few very interesting 0-1 cost ABCs that Tinker can put to amazing use. First is Fire Blast. Fire Blast is an interesting way to dramatically increase Tinker’s DPS in many fights. If you find the enemy is composed of 2 resist characters, and you can find a hill for yourself, you just might be throwing a Fire Blast every single tick! Even if they have 3 resist, a hill is still likely to net you a point or two of damage. And every damage is important. Sometimes leaving an enemy alive with 1 health is the difference between good tempo and bad tempo, winning and losing.

A reusable Ice Barrier is also an inverse-healer’s dream. Granted, you won’t be able to use it every tick, as Ice Barrier ticks you up one, but 1 tick for 2 guaranteed “heal” is pretty solid. With Ice Barrier readying like crazy off Arcane Flux and Arcane Bounty, Tinker is going to be around for a long, long time.

Spellsteal (against Savin-Wall) is pretty interesting. It both allows your Mage to become the armor king of Gnomeville and let’s you actually bring a Hunter against Savin. Both are neat tricks in the current environment.

Coming back to Savin, I think he’s going to carry the usual suspects: Bulwark and Flash of Light. I really think that Savin can get away with just two ABCs for this build. He is always going to want to protect Tinker, and Flash of Light is a minimal tick heal that has the potential to explode if it crits multiple times.

Finally, when looking for a solid third character to round out this build, we have a few things to consider.

• Another Magic attacker to benefit from Savin’s Blessing of Wisdom.

• Since Arcane Flux readies on 5, we might want to pick out a character with a valuable crit ability.

• Another fragile character will benefit from Savin’s Bulwark.

• If Savin isn’t attacking often, we will need more DPS.

• If we want Frost Nova to work, we need to have as much clock control as possible—in other words, we want a pet.

• We want to punish enemies for being locked down or unable to attack around the Bulwark—an automatic damage channel might work very well.

• Ryno’s awesome!

 

“I’ll take succubae for the Win, thanks.”

Ryno seems to fit the bill here quite nicely. He takes advantage of Blessing of Wisdom and becomes a secondary target for Arcane Flux when it recharges. Working on the Frost Nova plan requires a little thinking outside the box, however, and ignoring what Ryno’s spec lets him do: Summon Jhuroon.

Why? Because the pet of choice here is the Succubus.

This pet allows you to both control the clock and tick up the enemy. So, when the first enemy moves closer to you, you tick them up with Santuria. After that, they should be two ticks ahead of you on the master clock. Savin can now step up into defensive position while Tinker spams some damage on a far away enemy and Frost Novas the enemies right next to him.

Finally, Ryno steps up under the cover of the Bulwark and to unleash this madness: