Carry Morphling And Its Applications

I am quite intrigued by this hero. Last patch Morphling was picked as a support for his stun. But I havent seen much carry Morphling.

I've heard that he was popular at.. TI2 or TI3? Can't remember. Then they said he was nerfed very heavily.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of a carry Morphling?
When should one draft a carry Morphling?
Where would he lane best?

Any solutions to bring him back into competitive play?

+ Lots of escapes
+ Replicate strong for ratting
+ Hits with very hard with levels/items
+ Can Replicate enemy carry at 50% damage output (100% incoming)

- Short attack range
- Weak against harassment / laning
- Needs a lot of equipment to really get going
- No particular farming steroid

As you can see, the current carry builds aren't particularly great for heavy early/midgame skirmishes, but he's still a powerful hero, and very hard to deal with without lockdown.

Like many other heroes before him, carry Morphling has fallen to the typical Icefrog **** move of "I'm giving you the impression of buffing a hero, but behind your back I'm actually nerfing him despite the fact that he's already considered underpowered and nobody picks him"

Carry Morphling has a major weakness : he has no mid-game.
He can have a really good laning stage and get a lot of early kills ( Waveform is just that good, it's literally Blink + Scream of Pain all in one with even more damage, what a skill!)
He's really good past 35 minutes with 3 late game items...
But what does the hero do between 15 and 35 minutes? Yeah...nothing. He's useless in teamfights, he doesn't have the DPS or the waveclear to rat, he can't solo kill anything without an eblade or a skadi... Only thing he can do is desperately try to get farm...without a steroid.
So during this timing window you really have "please push my base" written on your forehead :)

I think the Ethereal Blade nerf killed him. Getting an early Eblade was the only way to give a good mid-game to this hero by allowing him to grab kills. Now that his shotgun has a projectile...morph can't shotgun any hero with a bkb, a manta, a euls, a forcestaff, a blink, or an escape skill. So essentially any hero in the game :)
So that's why it's a **** move from Icefrog : to nerf Tinker, he nerfed Ethereal Blade, which made Morphling much weaker while he already wasn't picked much in the first place.
Oh wait...the introduction of Glimmer Cape just put the nail in the coffin on shotgun morph which is now officially unplayable.

So yeah, the reason he's not picked now is because he has no answer to deathball strats. Before he could just eblade combo a support here and there to stop pushes...now he can do nothing.

He's still semi-playable in pubs...but you need to play right-click morph without eblade which is kind of a letdown. So early travels or midas into manta/skadi/bfly. Best way to play him IMO is to combo him with Keeper of the Light. Good early kill potential in lane, morph really needs counterpush in his team because he has no answer to push strats. And then later in the game, abuse the hell out of Recall and Boots of Travel to rat like you've never ratted before :)

So yeah Kyfrog if you read this...buff Morphling's magic damage (raise the AGI multiplier to 2.5 or something, either on eblade or on adaptive and/or increase the base damage as well), buff Morph's movement speed because water moves faster that crystal maiden...and remove glimmer from the game (or at least rework it completely). Please make Morph viable as a nuker and not just as a ricing antimage rat.

While I certainly agree with your assessment, my suggestions for Morph buffs are as such:

-Base damage increased by 2.
-Base attack time improved to 1.55.
-Strength gain increased to 2.5.
-Agility gain increased to 3.5.
-A Morphling with Aghanim's Scepter can now cast Hybrid on himself, which will create an illusion of Morphling that does 25%/50%/75% of the Hero's damage. The illusion takes 300% damage.


Before you look at the stat gain and go 'WHOA DUDE WTF' this only works out to an extra 12 strength and 12 agi - 24 if morphing for full DPS. The alteration to Aghanim's give Morphling an extra steroid and allows him to split push and farm better, Terrorblade-style, albeit on a much worse uptime. Everything else is just candy.

Buffing his movespeed is the wrong move I feel - he already gets a fast BoTs and Yasha which brings him up to 423 movespeed - an acceptable speed, and he has Replicate + Waveform.

This.
Tell me your address hamster. Imma send you cookiies.
Oh so much reps for you man. Take it....+rep

Late game buffs? Why? You just gave him +24 damage and attack speed as well as more BAT? He's already a freaking machine gun in the late game, why buff that?
Late game Morph is ALWAYS full AGI, because he still sits at a comfortable ~2200 HP thanks to skadi and more like 3K with Satanic.

You're pretty much saying "Morph can't get outcarried anymore". But why? He'll still be the same ricing carry with his team making space for him for 35 minutes and then he just becomes Schwarzie and rapes everything with his 5000 rounds/minute minigun...where's the fun in that? :)

The problem of the hero is his lack of a proper midgame...the whole point of Morph is that like SF or Luna he's both a nuker and a late game carry...if you go full right-click then might as well remove adaptive strike from his kit because the skill does literally nothing besides cancel TP scrolls at that point.

It's not WTF, it's just that well going hard late game right-click doesn't really fix the hero concept.
Why make a carry-oriented Morph Aghs? Aghs is for support Morph, carries don't buy aghs.

OK for the movement speed...after all the point is to limit his escape ability.


Ok so let's make my own :

6.85 Morphling (nuker) :

- Skilling morph agility gain now passively grants 3/5/7/9 of every stat (strength, agility and intelligence) instead of just strength and agility

- Waveform now has hero targeting. When cast directly on an enemy hero, Morphling will follow the enemy in waveform until he reaches him or travels 1400 units.

- adaptive strike base damage increased from 20/40/60/80 to 60/100/140/180

- Morphling can now cast replicate on himself. However, when doing so, the replicate cannot attack.

- Morph Replicate cast point increased from 0.25 to 0.6

- Glimmer Cape :
* Cast range reduced from 900 to 600
* Now has a 1.5 second delay before magic resistance is applied
(complain all you want you imba cape abusers and wyvern pickers, this ******ed item breaks dota and makes single target nukers like shotgun Morph unplayable, so something like this has to be done)


So I just gave him a free Drum of Endurance worth of stats over just a str and agi boost so he has mana to cast his eblade (so people will stop rushing linkens even when the item does nothing because waaa i need mana, and rush eblade like real men do), I gave him a reliable way to initiate his combo and to avoid kiting, and a way to create "save points" by ulting himself for the positionning without needing allies nearby.
And I nerfed Morph Replicate cast point to compensate because regardless of the other underpowered things about the hero, the "instant press R escape skill" when ratting is ****ing broken.
Seriously we want people to go Ethereal Blade-dagon on Morph mid not AFK rice for 35 minutes with midas linkens into a boring right-click build Kappa.

Standard dota logic...when a hero sucks at farming creeps, build him to farm heroes :)

COOKIES!!!

Hi, Tiny. Didn't see you there.

Yes, Aghs sucks for carries because of stats. But Morph is a stat Hero, so it's better on him than it is on some others. Plus, if the upgrade is powerful enough, carries WILL get it and that's what I'm aiming for there.



I like all of this and had a similar idea for Glimmer ********.
Glimmer Cape range reduced to 600.
Fade bonus magic resistance reduced to 30%.

But realistically, the most likely buff there is the increase to Adaptive Strike damage. But since Eblade is so easy to avoid now, it still doesn't solve the core problems of the hero. Eblade is also a mediocre stat item that's very one-dimensional, despite 40 agi being pretty damn nice. Compare to Manta, for example.

I think a small buff to Adaptive Strike and his stat gain WOULD improve the hero's midgame - .5 per level is rather significant, and since the hero works so well with Midas it'll rack up rather quickly.

I don't see why the hero needs to have mid-game presence. Like sure, that makes him a trashy hero right now, but I mean you give him mid-game presence, and suddenly he's a strong hero at all 3 stages of the game, which is kinda wrong. Like, he's a sodding hard carry they aren't meant to have all 3, none of them do; Dusa has a great lane, but has a really big down-period, Spectre is one of the worst laners in the game, CK can't farm for ****, Tiny needs time to get attack speed items once his combo drops off without an Io, (Admittedly he's the strongest all around of them but still)

He's not been picked in multiple consecutive patches as a core because they've all been terrible patches for core Morph; 6.81 was the patch of deathball and pushing, not something Morph can excel against, 6.82 was too short to get a defined meta, 6.83 was the patch of Troll Warlord and Sniper, which whilst in theory would be good for him because of how games stretched, those two heroes both came online sooner which punished him hugely. Whereas support/offlane Morph was at a point of being silly, and could never be punished for a poor lane due to game length. And 6.84 is a brawling patch where you can't afford to have this down-period. Even if say shotgun Morph was entirely unnerfed, you wouldn't see much of the hero

So it kinda has little to do with the hero being weak or not, and has had a lot to do with patches. As is the case for hard carries in general. You can't compensate for that unless you for the patch to shift really, or unless you make the hero overpowered to the point where he excels in patches he has no right being in.

Now, I won't argue that shotgun Morph is much weaker due to Glimmer Cape (The E-Blade change less so, because remarkably E-Blade is a) A solid item in and of itself due to it's utility in most games, and b) was stupid back when it was instant. Saying that having a projectile makes it impossible to kill any hero with X is far too generic a statement. Because it then comes down to the timing of usage, rather than being able to yolo in, kill a support with your instant combo, and then R out without them having a say in the matter.), but once the items been nerfed, the heroes still not as trashy as you are making it out to be, he's just situational. There is nothing wrong with heroes being situational, they don't have to excel at all things.

And if you are saying that the idea of him just being this right-clicker in the late game and needs changing to make him 'fun' instead, that's really bad reasoning because fun is a subjective thing.

http://www.dotabuff.com/players/83203901
http://www.dotabuff.com/players/83203901/matches?date=year&hero=morphling&skill_bracket=&lobby_type=&game_mode=&region=&faction=&duration=&timezone=Etc%2FUTC

I don't understand why people say that the Ethereal Blade nerf ruined the hero. Dotabuff's top 100 players still get Ethereal Blade on him as a core item. Thoughts?

It is still a core item on him, even though it sucks. Because it's the only way to play him. :)

I used to spam Morphling before 6.84. Then I had to stop, since I couldn't do what I wanted to do anymore.

Buffs:

Remove Adaptive Strike projectile.
New Adaptive Strike:

50/100/150/200 + (1/1.25/1.5/2 x Agi)

If Strength is 50% greater than Agi, then the target becomes ethereal
If Agility is 50% greater than Str, then target becomes 100% immune to physical damage but takes 50% more magical damage

Can be casted on allies, including Morphling himself