6.86 Morphling

Dragon Lance can be disassembled though, which is something to think about. You can buy it midgame and disassemble it into Butterfly+ Black King Bar later on.

True, but the problem is, that's still 1850 Gold you're spending early on. If this is the 1st Item you're getting after upgraded Boots, you need it to make an impact somehow. Again, going from 350 to 480 is hardly game changing for Morphling, and does not have as much impact as a Ghost Scepter or Blink Dagger, which have similar costs. Even if you're going to disassemble it later, it still slowsdown your Item progression early on.

If you're Rushing a Butterfly similar to Hamster's build, you could argue you're only going 1000 Gold out of you way, but even then, 1k Gold is roughly 2.5 minutes of Farm at an average pace. Waiting another 150 seconds for a big Item can mean the difference between winning a Teamfight and losing 2 Tier 2 Towers. Overall, it's better to focus on getting items that give you what you need the most. If you need +10 Strength and a Butterfly (in that order) to win fights, then Dragon Lance is a solid early investment. If you need something else, it's a pointless delay.

8{D

Xyrus, your shots just Assassinate me...

But I have Eul's.

Thank you for reminding me on that.

I played morphling 2 days ago and I have a feeling that dragon lance doesn't really passes in your items. Because if you are ahead you want to get other items like Ethereal Blade and Eye of Skadi and when you are behind is the Dragon Lance not really helpfull.

Morphling is situational fine but mostly there are better heroes to pick instead of morphling but he is playable if you have a team that can fight whitout you during the midgame.

Raising this thread from the grave... for a specific reason.

Morph now sees some play in pubs so he's probably pretty good now, but I have no idea what to do with that hero. What do they do with him now - rightclick, shotgun? What's the common build and average item timings?

I've tried out some stuff, rally don't want to go Linken's on him in most games since he's almost unkillable anyway but can't find the other source of hp and mana regen. BoT rush left me disappointed too - I rarely got an ally to Replicate and it was very awkward(I played him on my smurf account where I used to go(and still do time to time) for troll builds, throw games etc. and now as a karma I am constantly playing with trolls, feeders and other unpleasant folks there, so no team coordination whatsoever, it's an All Pick lowpriority basically). For the same reason E-blade didn't work since there were no proper midgame teamfights. The best thing I can do is not die actually(which is not always possible since I often get no allies to Replicate and I'm pretty **** with his mechanics so far, sometimes panicking like a scrub and doing silly stuff or not estimating my possibilities right)

So how am I supposed to play him now? I don't want to play him on my main as I'm on my ranked adventure atm, so the only way to learn something is watching replays and asking for advice.

Eye of Skadi. This item solves pretty much all the hero's issues. You buy it as a second item in more or less every game, it's so good that you can even rush it.
Eblade + Skadi or Manta + Skadi. Honestly almost every build on the hero comes down to this.

Morphling doesn't need regen. Regen is actually kind of wasted on this hero because he can use replicate to TP to fountain and come back after healing. HP/mana *pool* on the other hand is super important and skadi gives the best of both in the game. It's also a really good damage item because you go full AGI after you get it.

Completely agree about Linkens, it's very situational for when you absolutely need the active and even then it's an incredibly poor first item since it gives you no game impact on its own. It does become pretty relevant after the 30 min mark though, once sheepsticks and/or abyssals come out and you want to keep ratting, so you can pick it up as a 3rd item typically. It's just a super bad first item unless you're facing Pudge or something.




BoT rush is a greed build if you're freefarming, you don't have to go for that. But going BoTs after your first item is always good. The point is just to not go Power Treads and go for early BoTs in every game. You don't have to rush BoTs, you just need to always have them before 30 minutes.
You need to replicate a teammate from a safe position and BoTs to a lane to rat. That's just how the hero works, he has a rat countdown like Arc Warden does XD



If there are no midgame teamfights, doesn't this mean that you won?
This is Morph's only big weakness really : deathballs. Outside of that he's good at everything.

Just farm and rat. At that point it doesn't matter what items you get, and it doesn't really matter what your team is doing either.



Either rush Ethereal Blade (and I mean rush. Like plain boots + wand + wraith band into naked eblade, and go travels just after), join early fights once you have your <15 mins eblade and snowball from there.
(and yes, you have the mana for this, largely even since the patch. Also leave your ult at level 1 to be 4/4/4/1 at level 13, and go almost full AGI like a man because morph strength gain is stupidly fast right now anyways so you won't feed)

Or go Manta Style + Eye of Skadi + Boots of Travel (order situational, and linkens ultra situational), and be pretty much Anti-Mage. Rat to make your own space in the mid game, and spend the entire game pressuring lanes, solo killing defending heroes, and abusing replicate on cooldown to be at two places at once.

Who should I Replicate from if I am playing a rat Morph? Should I go and search for teammates to replicate even if they are far away or is it better replicating enemy heroes when ganked, wave in trees + TP out and then return to him? Both variants sound sub-optimal for me. first is wasting a lot of time, the seconds is risky as you can't instantly escape, your TP can be cancelled and replica can be killed is I am ganked by multiple heroes which is quite often.

And what's the Eblade timing in the Ethereal rush build? nvm, I see you added that. I doubt I will be able to get it in time on that account, I should try it on my main hen I'll take a break from ranked.




In one game I was against Techies and at the most crucial moment when I needed gem, it was bought and my team refused to give it to me. When I managed to finally get it, the game was basically over plus Techies stalled me a lot at highground with remotes.

In another one there was Tinker who just TPed to a tower and nullified my push while Omni+Pudge raped my team 2 vs 4(don't ask me how, I don't know). Later Tinker got Vyse so I couldn't even push when I had no Replicate up. Here it is, actually: http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2106343865

Plus, as I said, I ****ed up sometimes and died when I shouldn't have. This hero is actually much harder than Arc Warden, at least for me.

You don't really have to "search" for teammates to replicate. The universal truth of pubs is, wherever there are creeps, there are people to farm them. So since you're looking for creeps, your teammates are as well so you'll end up seeing them probably more than you want actually.
(how to use pub greed to your advantage XD)

Harassing teammates with Replicate > Ready also works, and if they don't want to listen replicate has a really long cast range especially with Waveform.

Replicating enemies like you say is great for skirmishes with few heroes. If there are too many you can't really do it. But you don't do this to rat, you do this in small-scale engagements with your team. Replicating teammates is really the main way to rat with Morph.




Playing Morph against Tinker kind of sucks I agree. How can you rat that which is unrattable? Best bet with these picks would probably be to play teamfighting Morph with BKB. Linkens was kind of wasted here IMO, even with the Pudge. Normally I'd say that you had much better teamfight but then your support (?) Necrophos went Dagon and your team was feeding...seems there were internal issues anyways FailFish.
I don't think I can make a full guide on carrying uncarriable teams with Morph. I'm really not there yet, I need more practice :)

Still in general counterpushing/delaying the game and avoiding fights favors you, so heroes like Techies should be ez matchups.


Unrelated, you can also try Hand of Midas in the Ethereal Blade rush build. Morph really needs fast levels in that build and the build is about constant fighting so keeping your farm up while you're doing it helps a lot. It's either this or rushing a naked eblade. Going linkens into eblade is a really outdated build that makes you miss all your timings, linkens is an item to rat and eblade is an item to fight...makes no sense.

By the way if you want to learn Morph watch this guy
http://www.dotabuff.com/players/83203901
It doens't matter that he's playing Morph mid with a Mirana babysitting him all early game and freefarming (if you're solo queuing that's just not gonna happen). But the guy's mechanics/outplays are really amazing.

^^ a guide how to play pubs. Straight on Point. More of this pls!

I have these games almost 90% of the time, though actually this means that matchmaking works at least in some regard - a troll and a feeder is placed with trolls and feeders as intended xD I don't mind, after all winning isn't a priority for me at all, but the way games go there makes learning or practicing heroes kinda hard. Necro actually spoiled my lasthits and lane equilibrium on purpose so I wouldn't call him a support(though he bought some sentries and observers which were dewarded by Omni). Just gotta deal with getting to 4.5k on my main and then I can play at least semi-reasonable games.

I doubt BKB would help there, like even if I went Diffusal-BKB I still would deal no damage to WR, would have a hard time fighting PA and Pudge has 2k HP 20 mins into the game (I think?) so there was really not much sense fighting into such a fed lineup.

I think I'll go Midas if my lane goes bad ad I won't be seeming to get Eblade in any decent time. Would bonus exp from Midas compensate for a much later Ethereal timing though?

I'll watch this guy, thought he was just a very successful 5-stack unranked abuser, but yea, even if that's the case mechanics still stay and that's one of my major problems with he hero.