Valve’s 7.40c patch did hit Clinkz hard enough to change how the hero is discussed, but not hard enough to erase him from Dota 2. The bigger truth is that the patch killed off the most abusive part of his kit rather than the hero itself. Clinkz lost the version that could shred buildings too quickly and snowball lanes through skeleton pressure, but he did not disappear from the meta overnight.
That distinction matters because the early reaction to the patch was shaped by how frustrating Clinkz had become before it landed. He was one of the obvious outliers heading into 7.40c, strong enough that Valve targeted him directly in a patch mostly built around trimming top-end performers rather than reinventing the game. The question after the update was never really whether he would stay identical. It was whether enough of the hero would survive once the most broken parts were stripped away.
The clearest change was to Burning Army’s interaction with buildings. Multiple patch breakdowns highlighted that Valve reduced the skeleton army’s building damage from 100 percent to 25 percent, which directly attacked one of the ugliest parts of the hero’s previous game flow. Clinkz was not only winning fights. He was turning a small opening into structural damage too quickly, sometimes ending lanes and barracks before teams had real time to respond.
That nerf was paired with other meaningful hits. Coverage of the patch also pointed to the removal of the double-shot talent and reductions to the broader skeleton package, which lowered both his overall pressure and the way his damage scaled through the mid game. Valve was not being subtle here. It was pulling him back from a state where he could overwhelm games through tempo, map pressure, and tower damage all at once.
The result is that Clinkz no longer plays like a hero who can casually convert one clean fight into a lane of buildings. That is a major downgrade, and it explains why some players immediately read the patch as a death sentence. If the most oppressive part of a hero’s identity is removed, it can feel like the whole hero has been gutted, even when the rest of the kit still functions.
The data after 7.40c does not really support the idea that Clinkz became unplayable. Dotabuff’s safe-lane table still lists Clinkz at 45 percent pick rate share for the lane sample shown, with a 51.88 percent win rate, which is not the profile of a dead hero. It is the profile of a hero who remains viable but no longer looks outrageous.
Other tracking and analysis sources tell a similar story, even if the numbers vary by sample and timing. Cyberscore’s patch meta report, published a few days after the update, still had Clinkz among the top carry performers on 7.40c with a 54.6 percent win rate, though picked less often than some of the other top names. Hotspawn’s later patch writeup also argued that Clinkz remained a strong ranked hero even after the building-damage nerf, simply because the rest of the kit still gave him enough to work with.
The more convincing read is that Clinkz stopped being oppressive and started being situationally strong. That is a big change, but it is not the same as death. Heroes that truly disappear after a patch usually lose both relevance and win rate. Clinkz mostly lost his ability to take over games in the exact same abusive way.
Before 7.40c, Clinkz could often threaten a game through pressure alone. The fear was not just his hero damage. It was that one mistake could cost towers, map control, and eventually barracks because Burning Army punished structures so brutally. That made him feel larger than a normal carry.
After the patch, that identity is weaker. Clinkz still offers pickoff potential, tempo, and dangerous mid-game fighting, but he no longer ends games through structure damage at the same rate. That means players have to get more from positioning, target choice, and map movement instead of relying on the old “one won fight equals half your base” pattern.
That is why the hero feels worse even when the numbers stay decent. The old Clinkz was easy to fear because his payoff was obvious and immediate. The new Clinkz asks for more discipline and gives less instant punishment on objectives, so he feels less broken even if he is still strong enough to win games.
The cleanest answer is that 7.40c did not kill Clinkz. It normalized him. Valve cut away the version of the hero that was warping games through skeleton siege and over-tuned pressure, and what remains is a carry who still has tools but now has to earn more of his impact the normal way.
So if the question is whether Clinkz is dead, the answer is no. If the question is whether the old nightmare version of Clinkz survived 7.40c, that answer is also no. That is probably where Valve wanted him.
