Morphling Questions

So I just randomed Morphling... and damn this hero is good! But maybe thats just because im winning :p. But I want to ask you guys...


1. When do we draft Morphling?

2. What are the *optimal* items? Is EB still a good pickpup? Should I go Hand of Midas every game? I went SnY over Manta Style, what situation would this be fine? Should I rush BoTs? *Yes I know linkens is **** guys. Why do i need to buy it anyway. I dont need regen with TP+replicate, the stat bonuses aren't particularly attractive either*

Any item builds you guys would like to share?

3. What to do when I am behind?

4. What is his main weakness that didn't make the pros pick him?

5. What buff is needed to make Morphling return to the scene?

6. WILL EB BE BUFFED


I find him quite an exceptional carry. Really fun hero, tanky as ****, mobile, can survive most ganks, almost Tinker like, etc. I didn't get to try EB in the game though because of the *EB is trash* comments so I went SnY, and I didn't really regret it. It helps the midgame more than an EB could I feel. Comment away!

1. When the enemy team is squishy/susceptible to burst.
When you require a mid with carrying capability.

2. I generally run morph as a mid rather than safelane, so midas is a good SITUATIONAL ( Pre 6 minute ) pickup.
My build : ( Order of item completion )

Bottle, Midas, Wand Treads, Aquila, Eblade, Skadi, Manta

Luxuries :

Butterfly, BoT

Situational :

Drums, BKB, MKB

3. Farm ,
Hope for pickoffs

4. Owing to a somewhat predictable item progression, BKB can be severly delayed, allowing morph to be disabled hard.
Antimage/Mana Burn heroes are favourites in the current meta and thereby a pain to deal with.
Mostly ignored by pros because of constant nerfs (35 mana morph ICEFRAUD!!) and better alternatives.

5. He is pretty balanced as it is, maybe just morph's nerf needs to be reverted.

6. Unlikely.

I could just run Shadow Fiend, Lina, Leshrac, Ember Spirit, Queen of Pain, etc.. here.


Why would Morphling be put mid? He has **** attack range, can't harass and can't flash farm without getting close. All he can do is snatching runes and escaping ganks. Maybe in a dual mid, but otherwise I don't see why should I put Morphling mid. Give me one good reason to put him mid.

Well I think Morphling's burst scales with the more farm he gets. So if you have 200 agility for some reason. You have a 400 damage nuke, plus eblade which also scales with farm, so you basically at this point have 2 400 damage nukes, plus the extra 40% for Adaptive strike which means it does like 450 damage or something, so this is already 950 damage. Plus your waveform for 400~ damage with eblade, and boom. Huge magic burst. Sure lina can do more with Aghs, but you also at this point have very good right click damage as well, which means you can blow some guy up over here and then rightclick the other guy for 300 damage per hit. Plus he can also be very tanky if he wants, so he can survive against burst from other heroes. I think he suffers quite heavily from some heroes in the meta right now though, and glimmer also reks him.

He's basically a hybrid nuker and carry, does good magic and physical damage. Don't play morphling, so i can't give you the details, but this is basically what he does afaik.

Right now, you don't. He takes way too long to come online, his mid game sucks, and he's *terrible* against current meta heroes (Lesh, PL, AM, Storm, Gyro, etc). He's bad at fighting in the mid game and bad at farming as well.

The reason to pick Morphling is because he's the best late game rat in the game. He was really good in the Void patch for example because he could split push against Void lineups and reliably destroy them come late game once he got his items.
Morph is essentially Anti-Mage or Slark in what he does, a mix of split push and solo kills. Except that when Morph does it, there's a stage of the game where he can't be stopped from doing this anymore and the game's over. The downside is, he takes tons of farm to get to that point and he farms *extremely* slowly.

Morph is *not* a nuking carry the way Gyrocopter or Shadow Fiend are. At least, not anymore. Unlike these guys, his mid game is extremely weak, he can't blast his way through it with nukes.




Manta Style and Eye of Skadi in literally every game.


Linken's Sphere or Black King Bar when needed. Depends completely on what they block. Don't be that guy who thinks rushing Linkens is a good build in anything more than ~10% of games...it's not.

Luxuries : Butterfly, Monkey King Bar (you need MKB on every carry these days), Satanic, Daedalus

Don't hesitate to buy Abyssal Blade or Scythe of Vyse if you need the lockdown against guys like AM or Storm. Abyssal Morph maybe sounds a bit awkward but it *is* legit.

BTW don't hesitate to go crit on Morph, it's the best DPS item on the hero by far and it even synergizes with manta.



No.
EBlade Morph sucks since the projectiles can be disjointed and more than half of the heroes in the game WILL disjoint it. Items as common as Blink Dagger, Eul's Scepter of Divinity or Manta Style WILL make your combo completely useless. And the other heroes without a disjoint mechanic will just use Glimmer Cape to make it useless anyways. That's a major **** move nerf of Morphling by Icefrog, since the point of it was to nerf Tinker.




You should never go midas every game on any hero, ever. But Morph *is* a really good Midas hero, since he needs tons of farm to be useful and he farms really slowly. Besides, he's pretty level-dependent.

The choice is essentially between going Midas and going early Boots of Travel.



Never. Morph is one of the best Manta Style carriers in the game because he has literally twice more AGI than any other carry. So even if you forget that manta/skadi is straight up better than SnY on agility heroes, you're missing out completely on high DPS illusions that allow you to farm and rat all game long.
Besides manta/skadi has a really good buildup and Yasha + Point Booster is just better than SnY in every possible way.




Rush Bots if you feel that you can split push and apply tower pressure early. Essentially if the enemy team has low catch and/or if you're playing against a heavy 5-man/pushing lineup and you want to outmaneuver them.
Again you have the choice between rushing travels and going midas. Midas gives you more cash but travels allows you to apply pressure early while you're farming.

Treads sound good on paper on Morph but generally speaking Morph doesn't need to upgrade his plain boots, just wait until you can afford travels. You don't have to 'rush' travels, but having travels before 35 mins is highly recommended.




Linkens is not ****, it's just very situational. Like 20% of games kind of situational.

The regen is indeed a bit wasted (although it allows you to spam Waveform and farm a bit faster)...but the only reason to ever buy a linkens in the first place is the active. The active allows you to farm and rat in remote places, and feel safe about it. The active fits the hero really well against the right lineup.

Just don't buy it if the active isn't game changing. Ever. It just slows your usefulness by 5K gold.

Never ever buy linkens for the mana. If you want mana buy a skadi.




Yasha -> Point Booster -> finish skadi -> finish manta. That's essentially his best item progression in every game.
And seriously skip Ring of Aquila. The item sucks, you'll get mana from skadi anyways.



A bit like when playing Anti-Mage. You try to make space for yourself by split pushing. This delays the enemy team's push, and prevents them from getting Rosh and ending early. Force TP's as much as you can. Only fight under your towers. When your team manages to bait the enemy team to dive your T3's like the scrubs they are, TP in and get free kills.

I repeat, DO NOT teamfight unless it's straight under a tower. Morph is really bad in midgame teamfights. He's better off farming on his own and pressuring sidelanes.

Also, abuse the hell out of replicate. This skill is essentially a get out of jail free card, so you can always be out of position when you have one up.

Essentially you need to make space to delay the game by ~15 minutes, and prevent pushing during this period, in order for you to come online.



Zero midgame. I mean, literally zero. Medusa in the midgame can counterpush. Morph in the midgame can do...nothing.

He's actually pretty good in early game engagements because Waveform is awesome and he can't die because of morph. But as soon as Waveform starts falling off as a nuke, he has this period between 15 and 35 minutes where the hero is literally completely useless. He can't farm. He can't gank. He can't counterpush. He has no burst damage because eblade is not viable and adaptive is only 350-something. And his ability to split push is only semi-decent.

Of course in the meta of permanent fighting and Lesh deathball...GG. You can't afford to have heroes with a window of uselessness when the game is usually decided.



Lots of things can be buffed about him, and as long as they're actual buffs they'd all be fine.

Personally I'd like to see his shotgun be viable again. Make adaptive strike and Ethereal Blade impossible to disjoint. Increase the base damage from adaptive strike from this pathetic 80 at max level to 200-something. Essentially make adaptive on AGI Morph a decent skill...right now the skill sucks, you can even not skill it beyond level 1 to cancel TP scrolls and take stats instead.



Very likely. Although he may or may not still receive the Terrorblade or Clinkz treatment of eye candy buffs that change nothing followed by hidden nerfs that Backstab the hero far lower than where he started off.

Kyfrog is a sneaky bastard...

1st, if you bothered to read the wall of text, here I quote "Because of better alternatives" , what he does, someone else does a specific thing better.

You put him up against melee mids, where he CAN haras.
OR , you learn to output haras despite your range by abusing creep agro mechanics (Ever heard of how to lane a melee mid? )
As you say, he essentially won't die in the midlane, so it's steady farm.
The same reason you sometimes run carries such as antimage or a PA mid, where their elusive nature is abused to provide a steady farm rate and increased exp.
As a morphling you are EXTREMELY level dependent in addition to being farm depedent, more the levels, more will be your mobility, morph rate, nuke damage etc.

Morphling needs a good buff before he becomes viable again. There are just so many heroes that require less time to become online on the map than Morphling