Tidehunter is pretty straightforward. You generally want to run him either as a solo offlaner, greedy (i.e. not 'hard') support, or mid. If you're playing support
Get your first point in
Gush - the slow is the same at all levels, and will help you set up kills. You can also use it to harass the enemy laners. If you're doing a solo mid or offlane
Then there are a number of viable skill builds, but your key skill (particularly if you're 1v1) is going to be
Anchor Smash. Use it when next to your lane opponent, and the damage reduction will make it very hard for them to last hit. If you're taking a lot of harass, simply put more points in 
Kraken Shell. With a couple of points in
Kraken Shell and at least one point in Anchor Smash (for the damage reduction), Tidehunter can farm pretty much any camp including the ancients. If you're not needed in lane (either because your carry is farming well when support or because you're not getting much in lane as offlane / mid), you can farm quite effectively by stacking and farming camps instead. To stack, attack the camp when the timer is about :52-:53 and then run away
The camp will respawn without anything dying first, doubling the number of creeps. Then just stand in the camp hitting stuff, and keep spamming that
Anchor Smash whenever it's off cooldown. This will help you get your bink dagger nice and quickly. Your main goals are level 6 for
Ravage, and a 
Blink Dagger. 
Arcane Boots and (if nobody else is getting it) 
Mekansm are also good pickups, either before or after Blink.
Early game, you can use Ravage just to gank heroes
After that, try to use it only to do something important, like gank their super hard carry, or use during teamfights.
This piece of advice here is questionable, but I recommend against initiating with
Ravage. You want to counter-initiate with it. If you jump in, use Gush and Anchor Smash and force enemy to come at you or run away. This serves three purposes: First, it gives your team time to catch up with you and be ready when the Ravage lands, and second, if the fight happens, you're likely going to have more targets to your Ravage. Third one is that you're keeping the threat alive longer for almost the same price. If the enemy retreats, you haven't really wasted anything and you've forced the enemy team to run away. Preferably wait for enemy to jump on you or someone else, and then blink in to turn the fight
You could
Blink in and just initiate with it if you see some really nice chance to do so, but it's easy to make a mistake with that(your allies can't catch up with you as you've blinked too far ahead, or the initiation is bad and catches two few heroes and the remaining ones will counterinitiate)Later in the game
You're all about laning a good
Ravage - it's one of the best teamfight ultimates in the game. Blink Dagger > Ravage is an excellent initiation, followed up by Anchor Smash to reduce the damage they can deal to you. You're pretty tanky so you can afford to play aggressively and be the first into fights, but do make sure your team are ready to back you up the moment you go in.
Late game, Shivas Guard and Refresher Orb are both strong pickups on Tidehunter
Shiva's Guard makes you tankier and the active is great after you've just blinked into the fight, while 
Refresher Orb lets you use Ravage twice in a row for a ridiculously long stun time.
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