MFN

RuneterraFire

Featured Site

Create Hero Build

Join or Log In

DOTA 2 Hero Build Guides

Heroes Guides Skills Members Items

Join the leading DOTA 2 community.
Create and share Hero Guides and Builds.

Account Login

Create an MFN Account

Social Login

Social Register

1 Votes

Morphling is So Slimy!

Comments: 5 | Views: 12124 |

Build Guides Discussion (5) More Guides Report

Linken/Shotgun build

DotA2 Hero: Morphling

Purchase Order

Starting Items

Early Game

Boots of Speed

Ring of Health

Perseverance

Bottle

Power Treads

Core Items Sequence #1

Ultimate Orb

Linken's Sphere

Yasha

Ethereal Blade

Helm of the Dominator

Core Items Sequence #2

Yasha

Ethereal Blade

Ultimate Orb

Linken's Sphere

Helm of the Dominator

Late Game

Satanic

Boots of Travel

Late Game: Situationals/Luxury

Aghanim's Scepter

Assault Cuirass

Black King Bar

Butterfly

Daedalus

Desolator

Heart of Tarrasque

Heaven's Halberd

Manta Style

Hero Skills

Talents

Morphling is So Slimy!

1.	Introduction
2.	Skill Explanations
3.	Item Explanations
4.	Gameplay
5.	Teamfights
6.	Friends and Foes
7.	Conclusion

Top

Introduction

Hey penguins, this is Fire309 (generic gamer username), and this is my second guide on DOTAFire. I'll try not to make this guide sound like a persuasive essay, and I guess it isn't because I'm using first person.

Lore: For dark eons the comet circled. Held in thrall to a distant sun, bound by gravity’s inexorable pull, the massive ball of ice careened through the blackness between worlds, made strange by its dark journey. On the eve of the ancient war of the Vloy, it punched down through the sky and lit a glowing trail across the night—a sign both armies took for an omen. The frozen ball melted in a flash of boiling heat, as below two forces enjoined in battle across the border of a narrow river. Thus freed from its icy stasis, the Morphling was born into conflict, an elemental power at one with the tides of the ocean, capricious and unconstrained. He entered the fight, instinctively taking the form of the first general who dared set foot across the water—and then struck him dead. As the motley warriors clashed, he shifted from form to form throughout the battle, instantly absorbing the ways of these the strange creatures—now a footsoldier, now an archer, now the cavalryman and his mount--until, by the time the last soldier fell, Morphling had played every part. The battle's end was his beginning.

Pretty much what happened is the Morphling thought these guys were ****s and wondered why they were fighting on the day of his birth, so he killed everyone. What kind of ******* wants to leave an impression like that on a baby?

Morphling is one the the most versatile and adaptive (ha! adaptive strike, get it? ... Ok I suck at making jokes.) heroes in the game. Along with Viper and Medusa, he is one of my favorite heroes in the game. This guide will (hopefully) teach you Morphling's complex abilities and play, which won't be so confusing by the end of this guide!

Morphling and his bro, Tidehunter, having chill time together.

Top

Skill Explanations

This is the first of Morphling's set of three escapes. Waveform is a spell that shoots Morphling forward, dealing 325 damage at level 4 to anyone it hits. Morphling is invincible during the Waveform. Waveform is a AoE line nuke, capable of destroying creep waves in seconds. Another very useful use (haha) of Waveform is destroying illusions. If you're up against a hero like Phantom Lancer or Naga Siren, Waveform could kick some serious butt, especially in early to mid game. This skill is invaluable for disjointing lethal and non-lethal projectiles, and as a running/escape tool. Just pop this baby when an Assassinate is about to blow your head off and you'll be laughing at that Sniper noob. Kite like a real man, Sniper!

Adaptive Strike
adaptive strike is a good skill for the shotgun part of the game. Also a bit complicated, but I'll explain it. Let's pretend your adaptive strike is has four points in it and your agility is 1.5x your strength. This means it will do 80 + (2 * current agility) damage. So if your agility was 40 points total (including item additions), adaptive strike would do
80 + (80 * 2) = 160 damage, with a tiny ministun. However, if your strength was 1.5x your agility, adaptive strike would do pathetic damage but deal a 4.25 sec stun, which isn't bad. In both cases, adaptive strike could stop channeling, which is one of it's main uses. It also has a decent 900 unit range. But leveling [[adaptive strike is useless unless we level...

Morph Agility GainMorph Strength Gain
...morph agility gain and morph strength gain. These skills are are absolutely what makes Morphling, Morphling. morph agility gain converts strength into agility, and vice versa. They allow Morphling to adjust his stats to fit the situation. If the situation calls for burst damage, AS, and/or lasthitting capabilities, tap that agility gain. If you're going to die and someone is chasing you, tap that strength gain and end up with two times your normal health! This is one of the reasons why killing Morphling is a very time consuming and tedious, not to mention painful, process. This is also needed to morph your stats to suit your adaptive strike needs.

Replicate
"Whack a Morphling! Step right on up! *whack whack whack* Hey, how did Morphling go from here to the other side of town?"

There one second, back at fountain the next. replicate, if used correctly, can get Morphling out of very dangerous positions. replicate creates an image of an allied or enemy hero and lets you gain control of it for 25 mana. 25! You can also teleport at any time to the replicate, while destroying it, for 150 mana. That is some **** escape! This allows you to be extremely reckless in chasing down and fighting enemy heroes, because you know you can be out of there in an instant. Just make sure your replicate hasn't died yet or despawned! replicate can also be used in lane or mid to regen. Just grab a Town Portal Scroll, create a replicate of a allied hero and have it follow him/her. Teleport to base, regen, and teleport back using the replicate.

Skill Build
We want a point in morph agility gain/morph strength gain first because while we're at fountain, we want to convert strength into agility until you have about 450 health. This will give you a bit of lasthitting advantage. After that, we definitely want a point in Waveform to survive ultra-early ganks. DO NOT WASTE A POINT ON adaptive strike. Don't don't don't don't plz don't. adaptive strike is absolutely useless at this stage, and it costs 100 mana of your tiny 200+ mana pool, which you should be saving for a Waveform.

I decided to put 1 point in stats at level 12 because Morphling needs stats to morph with, and also adaptive strike still isn't very useful.

The reason why we don't immediately upgrade our ultimate, replicate, at levels 6 is because at level 1, replicate isn't really all that great. Only a 30 second duration, and that point could be better spent on a Waveform. Therefore we level it at 7.

Top

Item Explanations

We start off with 2 Circlets, 2 stacks of 4 Tangoes, and one Iron Branch. The reason why we start off with 2 Circlets is because think about it, we level morph agility gain/morph strength gain first. Circlet provides 2 points to all attributes. So we can morph those 2 points from strength into agility, which means we get 4 points in agility, versus if we use Slippers of Agility or Gauntlets of Strength, we only get 3 points in either one, and 6 if we morph. With two Circlets, we get 8 extra points in agility at the start of the game! (read over this section again, I might have not explained it very well)

After getting 450 gold, we get a Boots of Speed. Morphling starts off with really ****py movement speed: 285. With the Boots of Speed, we can get it's movement speed up to semi-normal level. Next, we build a Perseverance, getting Ring of Health first. I realize this might be a heady investment in early game, but we need the Perseverance to somewhat alleviate our **** mana regen. Also, Perseverance builds into Linken's Sphere, which will give us spellblock and solve our mana problems permanently. Here, you can decide if you want to build a Helm of the Dominator early. I usually don't do this because it pushes me back a lot, but sometimes just getting the Morbid Mask is a pretty good idea. If you have a Helm of the Dominator, you can go ahead and dominate an alpha wolf for +30% attack damage.

Next, we build a Linken's Sphere, by getting an Ultimate Orb first. If you see your teammate about to be pwned by a stun or, for example, Laguna Blade, use the active to transfer that spellblock and save your teammate. After this, farm like **** and kill like **** to rush an Ethereal Blade. You need this SO badly. You can morph all your strength to agility, and use the active. That person takes (at this stage) about 300 - 350 damage. Then you Waveform and adaptive strike, which is about another 700 - 800 damage, because of Ethereal Blade's +40% magic damage. This is because normally, a maxed Waveform would do about 250 damage (calculating universal standard 25% magic damage). 250 * 1.4 = about 360 or so damage. (or 100 - 25 = 75% normal magical damage * 1.4 = 105%) Ethereal Blade's debuff is applied before it's damage, so the active does 105% damage. In total, that's a fricking 1000 - 1100 damage. Holy ****, this wrecks any squishy hero (like Sniper), because after you do this, just right click a couple of times and they're dead.

If you've gotten this far and it's not lategame yet, you're doing great. Just pick the situationals that match the situation and buy them. Definitely get a Desolator if the game is going downhill. If I get this far, I go for a Satanic first because of it's lifesteal, which if you're morphed completely to agility, gives you pretty much a "second life". The extra 25 strength is helpful too. Assault Cuirass is nice because of it's armor, but more so because of it's aura, which helps your team SO much. Get a Black King Bar is the Linken's Sphere just isn't cutting it. The Butterfly is great for it's evasion, which Morphling needs to stay in agility mode as long as possible, because if you morph everything to strength, you do like 30 damage. Get a Heaven's Halberd for even MORE evasion. This just makes it unfair if you have both Butterfly and Heaven's Halberd. Definitely get a Manta Style for it's stats and illusions, mostly the stats. (though Ethereal Blade gives pretty much the same stats)

A fun thing to do is if you get a Silver Edge and a dagon along with Ethereal Blade, you can instakill a lot of heroes with bonus Silver Edge damage and debuffs, with dagon damage AND Ethereal Blade damage, added on to your Waveform and adaptive strike. That's like 2000 - 2500 total damage. So unfair. (calculating magic resistance)

Top

Gameplay

Early game, farm like a beast. Either go mid or safe lane (bottom for Radiant, top for Dire) for easier farm. Make sure to maintain lane equality. Lane equality means making sure that enemy and allied creep waves always fight at the same spot in the lane. In other words, don't push. This means denying and ONLY getting last hits. You need the safe farm. If you see an easy kill (low health, like below 350), go for it. ... Waveform... Even if he's hiding behind a tower, Waveform that noob and tap morph strength a few times to replenish a bit of health after that tower dive. (or use a Tango) Early kills help Morphling a lot.

Mid game, start heading into teamfights. Keep yourself morphed to agility. At this point, you should be morphed so much so that your health is about 500 or so. Don't worry, enemies tend not to target Morphling players. If they do, use the time bought from having all that extra armor (from the extra agility) to Waveform to safety, or use the replicate. Make sure to get those kills.

If you're into late game, and don't feel like quitting Dota yet, that means you're doing fairly well. Get those items, and kill those ****ers! However, as a Morphling player, you should try to end the game before the 50 minute mark, because that's when the enemy hard carries like Faceless Void start making **** go sideways. Morphling was nerfed a while ago, so you can't take it into super-lategame.

When you feel like this teamfight is gonna get a bit ****ty, be smart and replicate one of your teammates and send that replicate in the direction of your base. This way, if you're in danger, just replicate out of there. Make sure the replicate hasn't expired yet though! Note: replicate cannot be used if you're stunned or disabled. However, morph strength gain can, so if they chainstun you, morph strength and Waveform away like a boss after the stunning stops.

Another great use of a replicate is to use it on a fleeing hero, immediately teleport, then kill him/her. However, this shouldn't be necessary, as Waveform should do the job for you. adaptive strike can be used to do this as well, if they have extremely low hp.

Top

Teamfights

You generally want to use Ethereal Blade on the most hard hitting carry but also one of the squishier ones. That way you can Waveform and adaptive strike to finish him immediately. You can definitely stay in agility mode, because if you were being a smart person you would have sent a replicate. Hit like a boss. You have to dive right into the fray because your range is so ****ty, but give an effort to stay away as far as possible. So... here's the rundown:

1. Send a replicate running into the direction of your base.
2. Use Ethereal Blade on the squishier but hard-hitting hero. Waveform and adaptive strike to finish him off.
3. Wait for Waveform to finish cooling down, then Waveform into a lot of enemies and ... just hit. Make sure you're fully morphed to agility.
4. If they stun you and your HP is looking dangerous, morph strength and keep on hitting for a bit.
5. When your HP is very low (even) after morphing to strength and/or your replicate timer is running out, replicate teleport out of there.
6. MAKE SURE THAT THE REPLICATE TIMER STILL HAS TIME LEFT AND THAT YOU HAVE ENOUGH MANA TO REPLICATE OUT. Always leave 150 mana to teleport. ALWAYS.

Of course, this is assuming your teammates are all idiots. But that usually is a good thing, because you don't want to expect too much from ****py teammates when you're in trouble. Adapt to the situation and tools available.

Top

Conclusion

OH MY GOD it all makes sense now MINDBLOWER ANCIENT APPARITION IS MORPHLING !!!!! :O

WAIT... The "M" in Morphling is drawn with FOUR straight lines. There are total NINE letters in Morphling. And I'm wearing a watch. There are FIVE letters in "watch". FOUR + NINE + FIVE = EIGHTEEN. EIGHTEEN is double NINE. And NINE is the square of THREE. 9 = 3^2. Three to the power of 2... power of 2... TWO THREES! So Morphling is not part of the Illuminati... no, no... two times three = 6... there are six sides in a hexagon... *GASP* HE IS PART OF THE HEXA-CATI!!!! OHMIGOD I HAVE SOLVED THE MYSTERY OF THE UNIVERSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, ignoring my GENIUS thought up there, Morphling is a extremely versatile hero with amazing survivability skills and amazing playstyle. He is also part of the HEXA-CATI!!!