A full guide to Meepo

Lore

"If you ask me, life is all about who you know and what you can find. When you live up in the Riftshadow Ruins, just finding food can be tough. So you need to cut corners, you need to scrounge, you need to know your strengths. Some of the beasts up there can kill you, so you need a way to trap the weak and duck the strong. On the upside, the ruins have history, and history is worth a lot to some people. There used to be a palace there, where they had all these dark rituals. Bad stuff. If you survived the ceremony, they would shatter a crystal and split your soul into pieces. They made great art though! Sculptures and such. Let me tell you: sometimes you stumble onto some of those old carvings. Take a pack full of those to town and sell them, then get yourself food for a few weeks. If luck is really on your side, you might find a Riftshadow crystal. Get it appraised and start asking around. Someone always knows some crazy fool looking for this kind of thing. If all else fails, sell it to a Magus the next time one's in town. They love that stuff. Still, whatever you do, be careful handling those crystals. You do not want one to go off on you. It really hurts."

Introduction

Who is Meepo?

Meepo is, by far, my favorite hero and in my opinion the most fun to play. People often avoid Meepo due to the substantial requirement for good micro, as the death of any clone spells death for all of them, thus Meepo is seen rarely on the Dota battlefield, most players usually willing to opt for an easier hero. However, this guide is here to teach you and overcome the difficulties concerning Meepo, and if you succeed you will become the terror of the match.

Meepo Pros and Cons

Pros:
- Amazing nuker, potential to deal 1400 damage with 5 clones
- Classified as a carry but can hold it's own early game
- Amazing initiation ability with a 1250 range at level 4, if predicted and used correctly can root opponents in place even when they believe they escaped
- Can split farm very efficiently, as each clone adds to Meepo's entire XP and results in Meepo severely outlevelling the opposition.
- Besides adding an additional clone Meepo's respawn speed is cut down by 10% everytime his Ultimate is upgraded

Cons:
- Substantial amount of micro required, will explain how to overcome this hurdle later
- Early Game last-hitting is extremely difficult with Meepo's 39-45 damage
- Measly strength gain of 1.6, no surprise Meepo is a squishy hero

Abilities

Earthbind

Type: Targets:

Target Point Enemies

Tosses a net at the target point, pinning down all enemy units. Earthbind prevents invisibility, blink, and interrupts channeling.

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Notes:

• Interrupts channeling and disables teleportation.
• Earthbind reveals units who go invisible under the spell, but does not reveal already invisible units.
• Has a cast time of 0.3 seconds and travels at a speed of 857, so moving targets are generally harder to land.

Poof

Type: Targets:

Target Point Enemies

Drawing mystical energies from the earth, a Meepo can teleport to another Meepo or itself after channeling for 1.5 seconds, dealing damage in both the departure and arrival locations.

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Notes:

• Can target Meepo illusions.
• When targeting ground, Meepo will Poof to the Meepo closest to the target point (which can be the same Meepo who casts it).
• Poof deals its damage twice, once at the cast location and once at the destination point.
• Does not work on Roshan and magic-immune units.

Geostrike

Geostrike

Type: Targets:

Passive Enemies

Meepo enchants his weapon to deal damage per second, as well as slow the movement speed of the attacked unit. Geostrikes from multiple Meepos and illusions stack.

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Notes:

• Is not a Unique Attack Modifier.
• Slow and Damage over time stacks per hit.

Divided We Stand

Type: Targets:

Ultimate Self

Meepo summons an imperfect, semi-autonomous duplicate of himself, which can gain gold and experience as he does and shares his experience and abilities. However, the clones cannot wield any items but the boots that Meepo himself wears. If any of the clones die, they all die. Increases the speed at which you respawn.

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Notes:

• Aghanim's Scepter adds an additional Meepo and grants 100% shared attribute percentage.
• Unlike other Ultimates, Meepo's can be leveled at 3/10/17 instead of 6/11/16.

Item Build Explaination

The trick with Meepo is not to build on his damage, but pick up items that have aura effects, in order to support your clones.

Starting Items

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Cost: 515 gold For Meepo, the Iron Branches will buff him up, while the Healing Salve and Tango will help him stya in the lane longer. Note: The Salve may be used on a clone, but Tangos do not work anymore. The Ring of Protection will build into a Ring of Basillius for extra aura mana regen.

Early Game Items

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The Ring of Basilius will provide aura mana regeneration for you clones as well, in addition to armor for your clones and creeps for pushing. The Power Treads allow Meepo to farm and gank easily, I suggest setting the form to Agility.

Core Items

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The added Mekansm will heal 250 hp in an aura when activated, perfect for Meepo. It also buffs armor for pushing. The Vladimir's Offering gives aura lifesteal, to allow Meepo's to heal themselves in combat. The Aghanim's Scepter will add an additional Meepo, raising your total to 5, definitely worth the extra micro required; The Assault Cuirass will give attack speed and armor in an aura.

Runes

Runes to get:

Good for initiating with your main if you have good micro.

Get this as soon as you see it.

Only get this if needed, be forewarned that it only heals the main.

Same as Haste, initiation with main.

Always get this, unless you see another potential candidate, because the damage buff will be applied to all clones within a 500 radius upon activation. 500 damage? 1000 :D

Can be used for baits, last hitting, blocking, but the main feature of this rune is that meepo can poof to the illusions, opening up a whole new passage.

Basic Micro and Control Grouping

Okay, so you've read up on Meepo's abilities and did your homework. What next? You learn my strategies and tactics I use to become a rampaging god. These aren't only killing based, I will also include farming tactics and how to actually micro Meepo. Read on.

Micro

Micro-management, more commonly known as plain Micro describes (not necessarily)minor, detailed gameplay elements that must be manually addressed by the player, you.
If you did not know yet, each Meepo clone has its own cooldowns for Earthbind and Poof and deals its own Geostrike effect.
To piece it together for Meepo, micro means having to successfully either Earthbind an enemy and simultaneously Poof all your Meepo's in the same area to deal maximum damage toward the enemy, Split-farming either in all three lanes or as a combination between jungling ancients and creeps, Split-Pushing either 2 or 3 different lanes at the same time while making sure you aren't making yourself susceptible to enemy Ganks, basically maximizing the total effort and taking full advantage of your Meepo crew and turning it into your workhorse in order to win.
Okay, I'm going to individually make light on the basics of Control Grouping, a phrase commonly associated with micro.

Basic Micro

As soon as I get my second Meepo at level 3, On default controls, I quickly form Control Groups, binding Meepo no.1 (your original one) to number 1, bind your other one to number 2, and highlight both of them together to bind to number 3. Keep doing this everytime you get an additional Meepo. In the end, you will have 1 original Meepo binded to number 1, 4 other clones binded to number 2, and 5 Meepos binded to number 3.

If you don't know how to bind units to keys yet, I don't blame you. Most Dota players, even experienced ones, usually never need to take advantage of key binding, as there are already presets, with F1 for your hero. I was lucky enough to spending a great chunk of my early gaming life playing Starcraft II, a real-time strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment. In Starcraft II, you commanded huge armies and sooner or later players figured out that highlighting every single troop and right-clicking on another army would not usually work. So you bind certain troops to numbers based on your tactics.
Enough rambling, the lowdown for key binding is highlighting the troop(s) and simultaneously pressing Ctrl + (whatever number).

Essentially, when I group my Meepos for my preferred grouping combination I do Ctrl + 1 for my main Meepo, Ctrl + 2 for my other clones, and Ctrl + 3 for all of them. Why do I do this certain setup? I will explain later in my farming techniques...

Obviously there is an infinite amount of grouping combinations for Meepo, my alternative suggestion is Ctrl + 1 for Meepo no.1, Ctrl + 2 for Meepo no.2, Ctrl + 3 for Meepo no.3 and so forth, culminating with a Ctrl + 6 highlighting them all. This does open up additional possibilities while deducting others, I will explain the logic in the next section. Right now we will call this 1/2/3/4/5/6 grouping "Combination 2" and my favorite one "Combination 1".

Tips and Tricks with Control Groups

- If you have a control group on any unit, pressing its hotkey (binded key) once will change your on-screen UI to that unit's inventory, abilities and health.
- Pressing the same unit's hotkey twice in quick succession will not only change your UI but also zoom the camera to where that unit is currently situated on the map.
- Double clicking and then

Basic Logic behind my Combinations

Combination 1:
This, as stated before, is my favorite combination because it allows you to:
- Quickly send your main Meepo to the Secret Shop, Side Shop or back home in order to pick up an item
- Allows you to farm efficiently in the jungle and the lane without much hassle
- Numbers 1, 2, 3 are closely spaced together on the keyboard
- These groups are easily re-programmable for additional commands, which is somethign I regularly do

The downsides of Combination 1 is that you cannot:
- Easily micro your Meepos to dodge an AOE spell, such as Lich's Chain Frost or Elder Titan's Astral Stomp
- If a clone would need to heal, you would have to find that individual clone


Combination 2:
This is my other "auxiliary" Meepo grouping, and there are pros and cons that set it apart from Combination 1. With Combo 2, you can:
- Easily micro your Meepos away from each other, in the case of a Lich Chain Frost or Elder Titan Astral Stomp (as stated as a downside previously).
- If one clone is focused on by enemy fire you can easily micro that certain Meepo away from the battle while the other 1/2/3/4 Meepo(s) slow and disable the chaser with Geostrike or Earthbind. (You can do this easily with Combo 1 as well, just Combo 2 saves you about 0.5 of a second in micro)

The downsides of Combination 2 is that:
- You would need to have quite a large hand to cover at least 6 hotkeys, more if counting additional farming techniques.
- Failing that, if you kept reprogramming the hotkeys per additional clone to save you the hassle of pressing 1 for your Main and 6 for all, this would sap your precious time. Many a time I was caught fixing my hotkeys by enemy ganks and usually didn't make it out.

IMPORTANT
A big mistake players do is using the icons for each clone in the top-left of your screen for micro. While Valve included this in order to help new Meepo players with micro, I advise you to not use it, as there are several mistakes that could occur, the most common being that doing so takes up WAY too much of your precious time when engaged in a gank or escape. Other symptoms include accidentally moving the camera view and clicking on random units that happen to be near the clone icons.

Strategies and Tactics

Note: I am using Combination 1 for these strategies as Combination 2 is applicable at anytime here. I will say if a tactic is Combo 1/ Combo 2 only. But before all of this, I will elaborate on how to actually maximize Meepo's potential.

How to maximize Meepo's potential skill:
Basically if you didn't know yet, each Meepo has it's own cooldown for each of its abilities. That means 5 possible Earthbinds and 5 possible Poofs, and if Poof is maxed out, turning into a massive 10 second disable and an unbelievable 1400 damage with a 6 second cooldown. Not bad.
How do you do this?

Landing Earthbind
For new players who have tried, landing Earthbinds are practically impossible on moving targets, as there is quite a delay between the cast time and actual landing. But there is a way to bypass this hurdle.

In the picture above, the orange cross pinpoints the area where you should throw your Earthbind. As you can see, Bane is right-clicking me and as I get close to him, like the natural behaviour of Dota Players, will retreat and turn 180 degrees away from me.
But lo and behold! During the time he used to finish his current right-click and is moving away from my golden shovel the Earthbind we earlier threw has been travelling through the air and times it's arrival perfectly, rooting Bane in place for my clones to pummel him. This is a trick I use all of the time throughout the game and lands me many kills, in addition with my teammates saying "Dang son! MLG net!"
Here is another, tougher example:

As you can see here, the Shadow Fiend is running away from me, and is about to enter the Fog of War, which basically means I will not have vision of him until I move on to the higher ground. Instead, I will throw an Earthbind at the orange cross. The red crosses signify where NOT to throw, as if you play it out in Shadow Fiend's shoes, your first priority is getting to safety, as at his current state Shadow Fiend cannot 1 v 1 Meepo. As the closest point of safety is the Mid Tower that is where Shadow Fiend is heading, thus we throw on the orange cross, not anywhere else. Even if Shadow Fiend does try to juke the Earthbind, he will: probably still be caught with the spell's 220 radius. If he does miraculously juke the Earthbind, you still have the Earthbinds of your clones. Just hit Tab to cycle through your Meepos.

Poofing to Kill
So Meepo's AOE skill Poof, as I have stated countless of times before, has the potential to 1 hit certain heroes and severely damage others. The thing is, in order for this to be effective, you have to Poof all of your clones AT ONCE. I see some players just Poofing them one at a time, by this time the enemy hero has already escaped.
If you haven't figured out yet, the trick is to press Tab. That key is Meepo's God. You cycle in between your Clones instantaneously, so the formula to kill with Poof would be: W + Tab + W + Tab + W + Tab
You must do this in rapid succession in order to land kills, as there is a 1.5 channeling time before Meepo actually "Poofs".
Remember these tutorials on Earthbind and Poof, you will use them to full effect in the following strategies!

Scaling:
1 Meepo: 160/200/240/280
2 Meepo: 320/400/480/560
3 Meepo: 480/600/720/840
4 Meepo: 640/800/960/1120
5 Meepo: 800/1000/1200/1400

Farming

Laning - Jungling
I use this tactic usually in the early/mid game, where Meepo already has 3 clones, from level 10 to level 15. At this point in the game, this is where Meepo's farming really kicks in.

The Basics:
Use your Main Meepo (Hotkey 1) (the one with all the items and buffs) to farm in the safe lane, this is the top lane for Dire and the bottom lane for the Radiant. At the same time, send your 2 other Clones (Hotkey 2) to farm in the nearby accessible jungle.

The pictures above demonstrate how I am simultaneously farming in the jungle and lane. Don't forget to keep juggling your camera view between your Meepos by double clicking on the Hotkeys.


Split-Jungling
I use this tactic after I get my 3rd/4th Meepo Clone, as this will only be efficient at that number of clones. Simply put, the aim of this strategy is to clean out both the Dire and Radiant jungle at the same time before the minute mark. This is not impossible to do, just requires a certain skill of micro.

The Basics:
Split your Meepos up into two groups of 2 each (If with 5 Meepos leave one out) and bind them to Hotkey 4 and 5 respectively, as Keys 1, 2 and 3 are being used. (This is virtually impossible with Combination 2, as you would need a gigantic hand to micro everything). Proceed to farm in both jungles, using Poof to clean out creeps quickly. If you have 5 Meepos, you have several options with that clone (Preferably I'd like the odd one to be the Main Meepo):
- Send the extra one with a jungling group (not recommended)
- Using your Main one as a roamer and an initiator, netting and then Poofing all your other clones to that Meepo (recommended but difficult to juggle between camera views for some players)
- Simply lane (any) with creeps to farm gold and xp (recommended as default choice)

While farming, you can incorporate the Poofing technique ( W + Tab ) in jungling in order to clear out the camps quicker. I assure you, by using these techniques you are guaranteed to out-level your opponents by some levels, which is natural for a Meepo.

Pushing

Enemy Creep Net/Block
As the name suggests, this tactic involves using your Earthbind to postpone the enemy creep's arrival. The concept is very simple. While you are damaging an enemy tower with your creeps, when the next wave of enemy creeps appear, your creeps instantly lose interest in the tower and engage in puny combat with the enemy creeps.

The Basics:
To stop your creeps from attacking enemy creeps, you should Earthbind the enemy creeps in order to briefly hold up the creeps. This allows for your creeps to focus down the tower, and although this may seem insignificant, a few seconds of right-clicking of an enemy hero is all it takes to deny a tower where you could have gotten more gold by destroying it.

Orange cross shows where to throw your Earthbind, red crosses shows where not to. Don't forget, when the creeps are moving you still have to time your Earthbind! In the second picture, note in the red box how the creeps are attacking the tower while my Meepos are holding up the enemy creep wave. This strategy can be done with both combinations.


Split-Pushing
I only use this strategy late-game, when I have already reached maximum level (or close to). I suggest having Boots of Travel for this tactic, as each Meepo has their own individual cooldown for their own Boots of Travel.

The Basics:
Basically, assign each Meepo a lane and just push on all lanes all the way to the Barracks. I suggest NOT to have more than 1 Meepo per lane, as the micro gets quite tough after that, what with all of the hotkeys. Combination 2 works extremely well with this.

Friends and Foes

Friends

This guy deserves a special mention. Chen is Meepo's ultimate buddy in teamfights and pushing, as his ultimate, Hand of God, heals ALL allied heroes 200/300/400. This is a global buffed up Mekansm that synergizes well with Meepo, as if you are going against an AOE hero such as Lich or Alchemist, Chen will save the day. Amazingly, if he gets Aghanim's Scepter, the cooldown is reduced to 30!



All of these Heroes work well with Meepo, as they have their own stuns and disables, allowing Meepo to focus on Poof to land kills.


These heroes will thank you for landing nets on heroes, as it helps them with placement for their own abilities and killing potential.

Foes

Beware of these Heroes! Each of them have in common a devastating AOE that effectively shuts down Meepo and forces him to shamefully limp back all at once back to base to heal.



These Heroes, instead of AOE, can deal a frightening amount of damage and single out a Meepo clone.