Divide and Conquer : The Guide to Meepo
Vjolnir
January 4, 2014
Introduction
~ningyee7
"Originally worshipped by the pagan tribes of Germania and the black forests that encompassed it, Meepo is a mischievous spirit of the earth who enjoys burying his enemies alive in mountains of rock spikes, pinning them down into helplessness as he pummels them into submission with his mighty shovel. The most disturbing of the Geomancer's powers, however, is his ability to separate his being into multiple selves, each as powerful as the original and making him potentially four times the trouble for the unlucky who encounter him."
"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."
Pros & Cons:
Pros:
Nukes: 
Poof can deal a whopping 1070 damage after accounting for natural magic resistance. Not to mention the large burst of the famous "Blink & Poof Combo."(More about the numbers later.)
Disables: Earthbind is a standard snare with a 2 second disable at lvl 1. However the strength lies in the ability to use it with multiple Meepos, potentially keep a character ensnared permanently with nets in the late-game.
Carry Potential: Because of the Aghanim's Scepter upgrade to Divided We Stand the possibility of having over 3k hp per Meepo or 150 dmg per Meepo or both is not out of the question at all.
Split Push: With the power of Poof in conjunction with Divided We Stand it's hard to lose the battle of split-pushes.
Farming: Just as expressed above, whether it be pushing a lane or farming creeps in the jungle, if you can manage the micro you'll never find yourself out of exp range or starved for gold.
Game Presence: Nearly global presence with Poof is one thing, but add Boots of Travel to the mix and you have the largest map presence of any character in the game.
Respect: Meepo is respectable for the fact that he's one of the most mentally taxing and most challenging characters to play.
Cons:
Fragility: Meepo is one of the easiest characters to shut down because killing one Meepo means you kill them all.
Learning Curve/Skill Gap: Meepo's arguably the most difficult character because it requires that the player be map aware the entire game duration to function successfully on a regular basis.
Skill Shots: From Earthbind to Poof both require timing and anticipation of one's opponents, thus they're fairly difficult to use effectively.
Experience Sharing: Each Meepo clone is its own hero, and XP is shared normally. This means that he will inevitably throughout the game be sapping XP off of allied heroes in lane with his clones.
Opposing Disables: It is relatively easy to control Meepo because his clones make for a large target for AoE spells. Within large fights Meepo is often gathered up in single control group.
Skills & Micro
Skills: Mastering Meepo means mastering the use of each individual skill in his arsenal. Earthbind requires anticipation, Poof requires map awareness, Geostrike requires fortitude and Divided We Stand requires micro. Each of these elements require a certain mentality and understanding of the individual skills as well as the opponent. (Details Listed Below)
Earthbind
Meepo tosses a net at the target area, ensnaring all enemy units in a 220 area. Ensnared units cannot move, blink or go invisible and it interrupts channelling.
Lasts 2 seconds.
Casting range: 500 / 750 / 1000 / 1250
Mana Cost: 100 Cooldown Time: 20 / 16 / 12 / 8
Tactical Usage:
- Earthbind is and should primarily be thought of as an offensive tool because of it's long range at level 4. The naturally built-in defensive capabilities of Poof make Earthbind less necessary for this role.
- With the most recent and impactful patch 6.79 Meepo's cast point has decreased from .5 to .3, but what does that mean? It means a lot when each successful Earthbind disables the opposing unit(s) for 2 seconds. With a cool down of 8 seconds and the improved cast time, it is a lot easier to permanently ensnaring the opposing unit(s) where before it was virtually impossible.
- The choice between picking up early levels in Earthbind vs a level in Geostrike is hotly debated because players will often argue that there is a necessity for another disable on the team whereas the other group will consider early ganks to be out of the question because the limited Earthbind range and limited disable time of a single Earthbind by Meepo is somewhat negligible. Using one's best judgement and reserving the skill point until you consider it possible to go for a gank or necessary to hang back and farm can change the course of a game.
- It is extremely important not to forget Earthbind's capability to prevent blinking or keep invisible units revealed. In lane against stealth characters or ones with blink Earthbind makes for a powerful tool when your team needs a bit of auto-attack damage to tip the scales and finish a kill on an otherwise evasive enemy.
The list of enemies this applies to:
- It is extremely important not to forget Earthbind's ability to cancel channeling. During an engagement or team fights Meepo has the potential to break a lot of big channeling items (such as Town Portal Scrolls or Boots of Travel), skills, and ultimates.
The list of enemies this applies to:
For Consideration:
Completely/Near Useless:
Earthbind doesn't work, rarely works, or has little to no impact on the following heroes because their respective skills have a low channeling time thus are difficult to cancel.
Ineffective:
Cancelling these hero's channeling abilities will set off the skill but likely with a lower impact.
Poof
After channeling for 1.5 seconds,
Meepo instantly teleports to the
Meepo or
Meepo clone nearest to the targeted point, dealing damage both at departure and arrival locations in a 375 AoE.
Damage :
50 /
80 /
110 /
140
Range : Global
Mana Cost: 80 Cooldown Time:
12 /
10 /
8 /
6
Tactical Usage:
- Potentially one of your best farming tools. This is because lane creeps as well as jungle creeps will take the full force of poof because of their lack of magic resistance.
- During the laning stage of the game it is often better to start with a point in Poof rather than Geostrike for farming. The justification for an early level of Poof is that it more easily secures creep kills in lane as well as provides a decent nuke harass to melee heroes who want to bully Meepo out of lane.
- This skill is one of the few if not only skill that does not go on cool down when cancelled by you or an opponent. In fact it will continue to re-cast immediately after leaving the stun duration. This is advantageous because it eases the stress of micro-ing a mini-stunned Meepo who needs to escape. Despite the fact that stuns do not cancel it completely, other channel cancelling abilities such as Crystal Maiden's Frost Bite will cancel the skill's cast completely. Meepo will have to manually re-cast Poof if desired.
- The utility of Poof exceeds AoE damage effect. In lane it can be a good idea to threaten to Poof within a melee character's vicinity; most characters are not prepared to constantly trade the nuke's damage for a last hit or deny. These mind games can secure much better farm for Meepo without necessarily using mana or heavily harassing the opponent.
- The defensive utility of Poof is one that may require a bit of map awareness and familiarity with characters as well as items to master. Most important to properly gauge situations requires one to remember the channel time is 1.5 seconds.
- Character Knowledge: It is extremely important to know the damage and disabling potential of each opposing character so that you can gauge how early or late you can Poof against certain enemies.
- Disablers: Attempt to use Poof early against certain heroes to bait out the use of a disable if it is possible to tank the skill then survive the disable plus 1.5 seconds to Poof out of the fight. Some of the most deadly disables to come up against are silences. When that is the case there's not much to do except poof in all Meepos and commit to the fight because a silenced lone Meepo is likely to die.
- Nukes: If ever the threat of being killed within 1.5 seconds is there, it is best to simply abandon the situation and Poof out of enemy vision.
- Both: The best philosophy on using Poof as an escape is to Poof out of the vision of the enemy.
- Item Knowledge:
- Stuns: Beyond all other items be very careful around Abyssal Blade because of it's active stun. Abyssal Blade, Monkey King Bar, and Skull Basher have passive stuns and typically are paired with high damage per second meaning it is best to avoid characters holding this in almost all cases except in committed team fights.
- Spell Immunity: Black King Bar is by far one of the most dangerous items to be posed to overcome. Going up against heroes holding Black King Bar requires that Meepo can time out the Black King Bar or commit to a fight and hope that the auto-attack and/or ability to out-tank the opponent will be enough.
- Evasion: Items like Butterfly, Heaven's Halberd and Talisman of Evasion
are difficult to deal with and there is no strategy to counteract these items because Meepo does not benefit significantly from Monkey King Bar as other characters do.
- Silence: This is a very particular case because Orchid of Malevolence strategically forces Meepo to, in almost all cases, commit to a fight.
- Map awareness: No matter what the threat may be any solid player must understand that it is wise to force fights when the enemy is alone or out of position and avoid fights when the enemy is missing, playing aggressive, or has a difficult disable or nuke to deal with. That being said, the threat of silences or re-positioning tricks such as Meat Hook(Pudge), Nether Swap(Vengeful Spirit), Boulder Smash(Earth Spriit), or Force Staff may force fights. Not being capable of choosing when to fight is oftentimes detrimental and forces players to position themselves cautiously which potentially allows the opposition to have more map control. Ever since the patch 6.79 night vision for Meepo has been changed to 800. This means Meepo can no longer be as daring during the night cycle.
Geostrike
Meepo's basic attacks will slow enemies and deal damage over time for 2 seconds.
Meepo's attacks cause a debuff that slows the enemy and deals damage over time that lasts for 2 seconds. This debuff stacks for multiple
Meepos.
Slow:
5% /
10% /
15% /
20%
Damage per second:
7 /
14 /
21 /
28
Tactical Usage:
Divided We Stand
Meepo summons clones of himself. These clones can gain gold and experience as he does, but the clone cannot equip items, although they will always have the boots that
Meepo has equipped.
Summons
1 /
2 /
3 (*
2 /
3 /
4) clones.
*
SCEPTER UPGRADE : Clones receives 100% of
Meepo's stat bonuses instead.
Tactical Usage:
Quick Comment (1) View Comments
You need to log in before commenting.