Free Gold's Guide to a Versatile Morphling

Introduction

Note: Current guide is a wall of text... Formatting was never my strong suit!

Welcome to my guide on how to play Morphling. This guide is intended for users of moderate skill level to use in low to moderate coordination games. This is not intended for advanced (read: Pro) players looking for pocket TI-n strategies. The assumption this guide is based on is that you, the player, are looking to learn to play Morphling irregardless of what the enemy or your team's draft is. Other guides will tell you that Morphling requires a trilane, or a 4 protect one strategy, and that is true - for higher levels of play. Anywhere lower than 5k MMR, however, you can play learn to play Morphling anywhere and in any role. Morphling is a very versatile hero in that sense, as you can quickly adapt your skill and item build to fit your team's and enemy's hero composition.

Often a times you will queue up with Morphling and be sent safelane without a support versus an undying trilane. There's a build for that.

Other times you will go middle and lose your lane, horribly, to that Queen of Pain/Stormspirit/Lina/SF. There's a build for that.

And (hopefully) more often than not, you will have supports in your safelane giving you free farm. Or you will go mid and dominate a player less skilled than you or playing a worse hero than you. There, too, is a build for that.

Most other guides focus on the last scenario; the perfect game. In the perfect game you are playing a position 1 morphling in a safelane trilane, against the enemy solo offlaner. One of your supports is zoning the enemy out while the other is pulling. You have free, uncontested farm. You farm your core items, aiming to farm faster than the enemy carry. You then split push and team fight your way to victory.

This guide is aimed at the other end of the spectrum; your typical solo matchmaking game. Where you're in the solo safelane versus the enemy duel lane/trilane. Where you're middle versus a QOP/Storm/Lina/SF. It is your responsibility to somehow pull out a victory in these circumstances when playing Morphling, and this guide will be your tool-kit in doing so.

Skills

Waveform:

This skill is amazing. Period. It's a blink, nuke, disjoint and invulnerability all in one. For this reason we max in FIRST when we are ahead, and SECOND when we are behind.

Uses:

Farm neutral stacks.
Clear a creepwave.
Harrass the enemy.
Disjoint anything.
Get a few more hits into an enemy when manfighting.

Adaptive Strike:

This skill is unique in the sense that its a nuke that scales with Morphling's primary status. This skill does damage/stuns the enemy on a spectrum of how much agility/strength you have. At max level, if you have 1 strength for every 1 agility, you deal x1 damage per agility and stun for 2.1 seconds. If you have 3 strength for every 2 agility, you stun for 4.2 seconds and deal x.5 agility as damage. If you have 3 agility for every 2 strength, you stun for .25 seconds and deal x2 agility as damage.

Uses:
This skill can be used either a high damage nuke or a long duration stun. The two divergent morphling builds stem from this skill. If you are ahead, you want to burst your enemies down with your level advantage/e-blade shotgun (more on this later). If you are behind, you want to use your stun in conjunction with a blink dagger to stun-lock high priority targets in team fights, or gank the enemy carry.

For this reason, we max adaptive strike either FIRST (strength morphling build, or LAST (agility morphling build).

Morph:

Another signature morphling skill. While this skill seems lackluster, don't let it fool you. This skill is deceptively powerful as it lets Morphling trade Strength (which in turn is just Health Points for morphling) for agility (which translates to damage, armor, and attack speed). In essence, you can give up your health for extra damage per second when going carry or give up your damage per second for health when going utility.

Proper use of this skill involves keeping your health at the proper threshold. If going utility morphling, you want to keep your strength/agility at a ratio of 6:4, respectively. If the enemy has more magic damage, however, add more to strength. When going carry morphling, keep your health at reasonable levels before a conflict begins. To find what health you should have, check the health of your teammates. You should never be the lowest health hero on your team. If your supports have 900 health, you should have ATLEAST that amount.

When in conflict, morph strength to keep your current health equal to your preset level. Example being: You have 1,000 health. You take 4 auto attacks from the enemy carry. You are now at 500 health. You should morph strength back to 1000 health, then stop. Doing so ensures that you maximize effective hit points versus physical damage (armor*health) and maximize your damage during an engagement without falling prey to stray skills that come your way.

Another advanced tactic to use with morph: Morph tapping. If the enemy has a Doom/Batrider/Enigma/any silence/any hex initiator, and you don't have a counter to it (Linkens/Manta), you should be Morph Strength tapping when the enemy is off the map. How it works is this: you spam press Morph Strength, making sure it is not toggled longer than .2 seconds (the amount of time it takes for any morph strength to go through). So long as you do this, even if you are caught unaware and are silenced/hexed/doomed, theres a 50 percent chance that at that point you have Morph Strength activated.

End result: Before; Doom Blinks, Stuns, Level? Deaths, Dooms you. You have 1k hp. You die.
After: Doom Blinks, Stuns, Level? Deaths, Dooms you. Because you were tapping Strength Morph, the moment the Doom goes off, if at that moment Morph Strength were toggled, it begins morphing strength WHILE doomed. You morph ally our agility into Strength while Doomed, you gain 4k HP and live.

Using Morph tapping you give yourself an insurance against Morphling's greatest enemy: Unsuspected Silences (through invis or otherwise).

If there's a Riki on the map, prepare to do this for the rest of the game if you want to live.

Replicate:

Allows morph to replicate an enemy or allied hero. Can be cast again for 150 mana to teleport to the illusion.

Uses:

You can replicate a hero and send it to your fountain, then Boots of Travel tp to a lane to farm. The moment the enemies show up, you press R and you're back in the safety of your fountain.

You can replicate an allied hero and bait the enemy into initiating on it. Tell the real hero to stay hidden, and tell your allied to cast buffs on illusion (such as Linkens Sphere, Ogre Magi/Invoker buffs/etc). Move the hero into the creep wave and proceed to last hit with it. If the enemies are greedy/uncoordinated they will initiate onto the illusion. Since the illusion takes NO additional damage compared to the replicated hero, it is impossible to tell whether or not the illusion is real without purging/waiting for spell casts. Therefore, the moment the enemy initiates on the illusion, have the illusion run away. This gives the enemy only one piece of information: The illusion did not take additional damage, therefore it is either the REAL hero or a Morphling illusion. Because the illusion is running away, without casting spells, the enemy must decide whether or not to commit based on little amount of information. In uncoordinated pubs, the enemy will usually engage on the illusion.

You can replicate your allied hero and send the illusion to follow the team. You can then proceed to farm jungle/safelane. When there is a gank/teamfight, you can simply replicate right in to the heat of things.

Teleport: You can cast replicate on an enemy and immediately teleport to the enemy, closing the distance. This acts as a long cooldown/high mana cost blink dagger.

Gameplay: Everything is going great! (Agility Route)

Starting off: If you're safe lane, you want a ring of protection to build into a ring of basili immediately. This gives you +6 extra damage and .65 mana regen early on.

Two sets of tangos (8 in total) provide the most cost efficient health regen, while not taking up as much inventory space as salve +tangos.

Three Iron Branches are there for the stats, which Morphling Loves.

If you're going middle, either get tangos from a support, or buy two tangos, four branches, and one circlet, for a total of +6 agility, +6 int, and +6 strength. With morph, you can treat it as +12 agility, or +12 damage/attack speed.

Take Morph first, and morph to either 320 health or 480, depending on the lineup. If you're mid versus a magic nuker such as Lina, QOP, or Storm, you need 480 health. If you're mid versus a melee like Pudge, or a last hitter such as Invoker, you want 320 health and max attack damage in order to contest creeps. If you're safelane, Morph to about 430 health.

Exception: If your team needs you to contest first blood, don't max anything. Proceed to rune. If you need to use waveform, level it up then, waveform, and auto. If nothing happens, take morph and morph to your regular base damage.

Note! Don't ever contest rune if you're going middle! Morphling has very low base range, and NEEDS to body block creeps or else he cannot last hit properly/will get harrassed out of the lane.

Early Game: Morphling's power grows exponentially early game with levels. Level 3 is your first big 'power' spike. If you're middle, you should level Morph at level 1 and 3, since a level 2 Morph effectivly doubles the amount of health/second you can heal with morph. This lets you trade hits/manfight the enemy middle for supremacy, and morph your strength so you're always out of lethal range.

If you're side lane, you get Waveform level 2 and 3. At level 3, Waveform delas 175 damage, (a 75% increase off level 1) which lets you, in conjunction with your support, burst the enemy offlaner into oblivion. By now you should have a Ring of Basi, so you should never really be at full mana. If you want to harass an enemy with waveform, but dont want to waveform INTO them, simply go into the woods, come out on the other side, then waveform through the enemy into your own tower.

Morphling should aim to be played as a carry. As such, keep farming. Don't miss last hits, try to kill the enemy when possible, but don't over-extend. Look at Advanced Farming Techniques on tips on how to get thet most of out your already-won lane.

Mid game:

Mid game starts once you get your boots of travels. Until then, you shouldn't leave your lane unless the enemy is diving your teammates at their tower, and you can secure EASY kills with NO effort just by Tping in and Waveforming through them. Otherwise, you should stick to your lane. There is nothing worse than tping to try to save allies and having the enemies run away, or worse, kill you.

Once you have your Boots of Travels, its time for you to set the pace. Key question to ask right now is: Are we ahead, or are we behind?

If ahead: Keep farming and applying pressure. Whenever a possibility for a gank/team fight occurs, TP in with Boots of Travel and secure kill gold. Then IMMEDIATELY proceed into your jungle/enemy jungle/lane. Do not stick with your allies trying to contest the few creeps in the lane. Once the fight is over, you should be farming elsewhere. If your allies are pushing a tower after the fight, you should be in another lane, farming that wave and pushing that tower instead. Maximize farm, play like a smart carry.

If behind: Don't TP to fights, you'll get yourself killed. If you're behind, you need for your team to play defensivly while you apply pressure to the enemies other towers (split pushing). Best scenario is that one of the enemies tp in order to contest the tower, in which case you replicate away and initiate on the enemy 5 vs 4 (where you now have the 1 man advantage).

If the enemy ignores you, and your team mates initiate 4 vs 5, you should at the very least get a tower for your team's deaths. The enemy had to dedicate 5 people to win the team fight, while you were off free free farming. The more this happens, the more farm you get, the more likely you are of winning this late game.

Eblade Note: If you went for the eblade build, your playstyle shouldn't deviate much from this farm maximization strategy. The only difference is during teamfights you can blow up a support. Likewise you force an enemy CORE to defend the towers instead of their supports (which would simply melt to your eblade if they come alone)

Late game:

By now you should have a couple of your core items. If your still behind, keep split pushing. Keep replicate with your team and keep applying pressure to the enemies towers (which should be their last ones by now). If the enemy gives up on pushing and attempts to farm, smoke with your team and pick them off, then push their base in.

Gameplay: What have I gotten myself into? (Strength Route)

Starting Off: Same as above. Most of the time you don't know you're screwed until you get into the lane...

"I'm SCREWED~!" Safelane

Rush Morbid Mask, Morph Agility, isolate a creep in a jungle, and farm him. Keep farming isolated creeps Tip: (You can isolate creeps by cutting down a tree and standing in between the forest, only letting one creep at a time attack you.

Once you have a helm of the dominator, (at around 8-10 minutes in), you should either do Advanced Farming Technique #2 (found below) or march you and your creep back into the lane and try to re-contest it. If you found a Hill Troll Shaman (heals 30 health per second, gives 2 mana regen passive), you can easily contest the lane by moving the shaman 350 units away from any targets other than you. A wildwing harpy (15 damage per second with tornado) or Harpy Stormcaller (150 damage chain lightening, every 4 seconds) are good candidates in helping you win your once lost lane.

If you manage to reclaim your lane, proceed to build as normal (Agility Route). If however, your are still losing, Morph Strength and finish your Scythe. Go on a stun-lock rampage until you have your second core item build up, then transition back to carry.

"I'm SCREWED~!" Midlane

Stay in experience range and try to get bottle +boots from passivly farming creeps under your tower. Once you have those two, and either level 5 or 7, you should roam the map looking to get kills. A 4.2 second stun with a 10 second cooldown lets you have an effective 8 seconds of lockdown on any lane, netting your team easy kills. Use the reliable gold to buy yourself a blink dagger, and keep the onslaught up. It's hard to transition into a position 1 from a lost mid lane, so consider going for utility items and let your position 1 in the safe lane carry you to victory.

Offlane: Plays like a lost midlane.

Team & Your Role

Rule of thumb for morphling: If your team cannot win a 5 vs 5, you should be split pushing and applying pressure to the enemy's towers. IF your team can win a 5 vs 5, you should be with the team/have a replicate with the team, forcing team fights.

If you have supports buying you wards, great. If not, buy your own wards and place them where YOU need them, to prevent the enemy from ganking YOU. Sure, that 75 gold ward down middle lane would help your middle laner, but ultimately if you as a carry have to buy a ward, its best to place it where you would get the most benefit out of it. 75 gold to spot an incoming enemy gank on you that would have succeeded otherwise is a small price to pay compared to the 400+ gold you'd lose in TP/Death gold loss as well as the time spent dead.

Mid game, if you've gone the shotgun build, you should consider buying a few wards to place DEEP into the enemy Jungle. With the shotgun build, and a replicate up, you should be camping the enemy safelane/jungle, taking their farm and killing anybody that walks through before replicating away. Having wards, once again, makes things easier for you, so buy them.

In team fights, Shotgun the squishies (underfarmed carry, supports) and manfight the rest. Go for high priority targets that deal the most damage the longer their alive, then proceed to the less important targets. If you've gone the strength morph build, stun their high priority targets.

Advanced Farming Techniques

This guide advocates having an eblade and 12 levels by 14~17 minutes in. Normal, passive, farming is not enough to achieve this. When you have uncontested farm, you must apply advanced farming techniques to achieve this timing.

When you've lost your safelane, you must play 'catch-up'. Once again, passive farming, or even worse, sitting in EXP range, is not the optimal strategy.

Technique 1: Flash Farm into Jungle.

Once you have your 6 minute sustainer +ring of basi, you're ready for flash farming. Attack creeps in your wave until they are ~250 health or so, attack the ranged creep once, then wave through the wave. Immediately run to the nearest jungle camp and..

1) Stack it
2) Or farm it.

Whether you do 1) or 2) depends on the timing. If you clear the :00 second wave, you should kill/waveform through the camp. If you cleared the :30 second wave, you should stack the camp.

Early on, you will not be able to kill all the creeps inside the camp without missing creeps in the lane. As such, just kill 1 or 2 creeps before heading back to waveform the creeps in the lane. Once you level up (and get more stat items), you will have the mana to waveform both the jungle and the lane for even faster farming.

Once the tower is down, your farming pattern changes. Kill two waves, then farm the jungle for the next two waves (before they're back at your tower), then kill two waves again. Push the wave out again, repeat.

Technique 2: The Helm of the Dominator Shenanigans

With a HotD, you gain an 'extra hero' with 1600 hp, a passive, and moderate auto attack damage. Most people use this 'extra hero' to either stack ancients or help them kill the jungle faster. Yet there is a less utilized method, that provides far more gold...

Use the dominated creep toc LAST HIT the creeps in the lane, while you AFK farm jungle!

Properly executed, you gain both the gold in the jungle as well as the gold in the lane, increasing your farming speed tremendously.

Because the creep you dominated has 1600+ hp, as well as his own damage abilities/ranged attack/auto attack damage, any enemies in the lane would have to trade hits with it/give up their own farm to harrass it out of the lane. In effect, you gain a presence in the lane without actually being there. Some jungle creeps, like Storm harpy, can harass the enemy out of the lane with their constant barrage of 150+ damage. Other creeps, like Troll can safely last hit from a distance. The Wind harpy creep can stack neutrals and then farm them with the tornado. The Minotaur/Hellcat can set up ganks in the lane.

All while your main hero, Morphling, is quickly farming through neutrals in the jungle.

This, as you can tell, requires a bit of micro. There are two tricks, however.

First is Tabbing. Select Morphling, ALT-Right Click on a camp you want to clear, then immediately Tab back to your jungle creep to last hit. Once you hear the sound of the last jungle creep dying (sound is always linked to your main hero), tab once again, Alt-right click on a different camp, then tab back to the jungle creep.

Pay close attention to the mini-map/sound! If the enemy is trying to gank you, morph strength and run!

-But I died!

Good thing you have another hero...creep farming the lane! While your dead, your jungle creep should keep farming/stacking the jungle for you. There should never be a second wasted where the your not actively boosting your GPM.

Technique Three: Boots of Travel Split Pushing

This is probably the most simple of the three. Copy a hero with replicate and send the illusion either to the fountain or to follow a hero on your team. Then use boots of travel to teleport to a lane and farm it with waveform. Keep farming until enemies show up, then replicate away. You can also farm the enemy jungle using this trick.

Once you have an e-blade, you can use the boots of travel replicate trick to farm lanes, force tps, then pick enemies off. Farm their jungle looking for kills, shotgun an enemy, then replicate away.

Items Justification:

Boots Of Travel. Despite what everybody else says, Boots of Travel are CORE on Morphling. A Morphling with treads is a glorified Super Creep unable to exert pressure on the map. Sure, the build lends itself to higher damage per second, and sure, you can use waveform for 'mobility' in teamfights. But the problem is 335 MS is absolutely horrible on a hero that needs to be flash farming his items. The reason we rush Yasha + boots of travel in both the Hard Carry and the Mid Lane build is that the movement speed is critical for picking off fleeing enemy heroes, positioning yourself properly away from all the damage in teamfights and farming jungle camps in between pushed lanes. Boots of Travel + Replicate allows you to be in two places at the same time, which gives Morphling a higher rate of farming. Boots of Travel should thus be considered in the same vein as a Midas. For 2k gold, you accelerate the rate of acquisition of your other items. The difference, however, is that Midas gives 30 attack speed whereas boots of travels give an addition 50 movements peed. In short, Boots of Travel gives Morphling his first 'Power' spike, letting him exert pressure everywhere on the map.

Bottle: You're mid. You have waveform. You need bottle.

Ring of Aquilla. A good item overall. It is usually delayed, however, as other sustain items such as bottle/sustainer are better. A Ring of Basi is usually enough until you have your boots of travel, in which case you upgrade the ring for more stats.

Wand: Morphling turns Mana and Agility into Health. If you don't have mana, you die. If you don't have mana for replicate, you die. A wand gives +4 to all stats, and gives you bursts of health + mana. It's everything a Morphling could ask for.

Sustainer: Lets you flash farm 6 minutes in. Nice.

Linkens: This + boots of travel + replicate turns you into an unstoppable split pushing monster. No tower shall be left alive with this combo. Natures/Weaver/Lycan are at least killable when they go to split push. Not Morphling. With enough Strength morphed, even if silenced (using the Morph Tapping), you will most likely get out alive.


Yasha: Speeds up your farm. Not as much as Boots of Travel, but still does an amazing job. Can be built up much easier, too, so the bonuses are seen sooner.


Helm of the Dominator: As seen above, this lets you 'comeback' whenever you lose your safelane.

Eblade: The shotgun isn't dead, despite the nerfs to the eblade/adaptie strike. See the E-Blade section for proper usage.

Satanic: A great late game item. Build it when you need to man-fight the enemy enemies for prolong amounts of time.

Scythe of Vyse: Do not underestimate this item. This item is amazing, so long as you can find your health sustain elsewhere. A 3.5 second stun on a carry that already has good base damage is great. Morphling, likewise, can use all the stats the item provides. The reason we get this item after the Helm of the Dominator in our comeback build is to quickly turn the tide of the game. If your safelane is lost, your other lanes are probably not doing too hot either (due to bad drafting on the part of your team), so a quick pre 20-minute sheepstick is needed to ensure any snowballing heroes on the enemy team are locked down and farmed by yours truely.

Eye of Skadi: +25 to all stats and then some. Comes with an amazing slow. This item is Morphlings Third power spike item behind Boots of Travel and Eblade.

Manta: Illusions love Agility. Morphling is more than happy to give it to them! Use it to split push/remove silences/kill the enemies/kill their towers/tank roshan.

Butterfly: Can be built through a disassembled E-Blade (if all the enemies have BKB's/Pipe). Otherwise is a great item to build if you ever need to man-mode the enemy carry.

Unconventional/Situational Items Justification:

Diffusal Blade: With the recent buffs to Diffusal Blade, (no longer an attack modifier, ranged illusions get partial mana burn) this item is worth considering if the enemy has multiple silences or Golems or Omniknight. 35 agility and mana burn is really good for 4.3k. The item itself has a great buildup, with nothing over 1k gold. The slow itself is quite useful for ganking, as well. One might argue that the item gives no health bonuses, yet it gives +35 'total' stats (all consisting of agility) that Morphling can choose to pump into strength.(Morphling can only morph base stats, but can morph additional agility into strength to make up for getting a pure agility item)

Sange and Yasha: Yes, we get Sange and Yasha ONTOP of Manta Style. Illusions can use the attack speed bonus from Sange and Yasha as well as the attack speed bonuses from Manta Style. In effect, Sange and Yasha gives you an additional 32 damage + 32 attack speed, and gives your illusions 16 damage, 32 attack speed. You also get a marginal increase of 6 percent movement speed over plain Manta Style. In effect, Sange and Yasha is a great item to get alongside Skadi + Manta if you need to kite your enemies to death and cannot risk a direct confrontation at any stage of the game (against any basher carry/ursa/etc).

Scythe Of Vyse: In any game, through the magical effects of probability, there is always one person who is the best relative to his or her team. This item slaps a 3.5 second hex on that person, letting you and your team knock that person into submission. This item, however, no longer dispels enemy passives. So it is no longer a substitute for Monkey King Bar against PA.

Aghanims Sceptor: Only get this if you're Strength Morphling. Your combo is to Blink in, Stun, Waveform, Replicate out. Copy a teammate, and use your teammates stuns/abilities. Only get it if there's a good target to copy on your team: read: Zues/Undying/Pugna/Lion/ any sort of hero with great team fight changing abilities.

Abyssal Blade: Use it if you need to stunlock the enemy carry through his BKB.

Monkey King Bar: Enemy has evasion? Not anymore. Don't get it otherwise.

Daedalus: Does the enemy have a lot of high health heroes that don't deal that much damage? This is a solution to that problem. Its also a solution to one carry that you just can't quite kill but your allies can keep in place long enough for you to smack him.

Dagon: Only real reason to get this item is if you're pulling ahead so fast that you need to keep the enemies in the fountain while you push their rax 20 minutes in. Another reason, albeit more rare, is if the enemy has a high health, non BKB carrier. For example: Medusa, Spectre, Lone Druid. Lets your Shotgun do even MORE damage.

Silver Edge: A good item for manfighting heroes with nasty passives, such as Ursa.

Mjollnir: Should be gotten on two occasions: The enemy has a high amount of damage over time spells or illusions such as Pudge's Rot, Dark Seer's Ion Shell, PLs illusions. The other occasion is when you need to split push but can't do so without less than 3,000 health. This occurs if the enemy has a storm spirit or other form of nastiness such as doom. This lets you morph that 3,000 hp and still be able to split push the lane equally fast as when you were with but 1,000 hp. Note: You can still use the Morph tapping trick, but there would still be a 50 percent chance that you get stunned in the non-morph phase.

Black King Bar: With the abundance of pure damage, you're better off only getting this item if the enemy can stun/silence lock you. Don't get it to negate AoE damage, it's not worth it. Items such as Skadi are much better at filling that role.

***ualt Currais: Does the enemy have an Elder Titan? Get this or prepare to melt.

Bloodstone: Probably the second most controversial item listed. Should only be gotten if you're middle and after your eblade. The logic behind this item is as follows: If you're middle and farmed up a quick eblade, you're now majorly ahead in levels and are carrying your team to victory. What you need now is to hedge your bets against an enemy comeback, or in other words, insurance. A bloodstone is quite possibly the best steam-roll item on heroes than can use it, such as Storm. It is likewise probably the most under-rated item on Morph for when you're pulling ahead. Lets further see why:

1) It gives you infinite mana regeneration. You never have to go to base for mana again. That means you can keep a replicate with allies/farming another lane at all times.

2) It gives you Pocket Suicide. When you're Godlike on e-blade kills, the last thing you want to do is give the enemy Anti-mage 1.5k comeback gold. Pocket Suicide lets you avoid those unfortunate situations.

3) It's cheaper than it looks. Each charge on a bloodstone reduces your time spent dead by 4 seconds. It comes with 8 charges, so newly bought bloodstone reduces your downtime by an entire HALF A MINUTE. In that half a minute, you can farm 250 gold in two waves with your boots of travel. Even assuming you never get ANY charges on Bloodstone, you would get 32 + 24 + 16 + 8 +4 = 84 seconds or one and a half minutes of extra uptime. As a carry, you should be averaging 500 gold per minute, so the actual cost of Bloodstone is only 4.9k - (500x1.4) = 4.2k. But wait! There is more. Bloodstone reduces the gold lost from deaths by 25 per charge. So even if you lose all eight charges, you've saved 21 x 25 = 525 gold. So the new price of Bloodstone is 3,675 gold. And the amount of money saved = amount of money earned only increases with the amount of deaths around you.

4) It acts as a free Aegis at higher amount of charges. Respawn time is equal to Hero level x4. So at level 25, your respawn time is 100 seconds. This is the maximum, without buyback costs. A rule of thumb is 1 charge for each level makes you respawn instantly. Thus a bloodstone with 25 charges will make you respawn instantly at level 25. At level 16, you only need 16 charges, however. In a team fight, you can die early on, instantly respond, then use your boots of travel to TP back into the fight and clean up any left over enemies before heading for their raxes. With Buyback, Aegis, and Bloodstone charged Bloodstone, you have FOUR lives on Morphling. This is the insurance you need so that your 12 e-blade kills doesn't turn into 1.5k gold + team wipe for the enemy carry.

5) The 500 health is the same as 27 'strength' for Morphling. By getting Bloodstone, you raise your Health minimum, which lets you morph more into agility early on. Thus Morphling is one of the few heroes that can turn an early Bloodstone into damage. The others being Storm, Timbersaw, and Leshrac.

Overall. If you get an E-blade and are winning the game, consider getting a Bloodstone.

Ocarine Core: Bloodstones less effective brother. This item is like Dagon, and should usually be gotten to troll people. Lets your replicate have a constant uptime, and reduces the downtime of your eblade combo to 22 seconds. Other than that, its effects are not worth mentioning. If going for a troll build, consider this item + radiance + full strength morph. You have a 4.2 second stun with a 7.5 second cooldown doing this. If you get hex, and euls, you can keep the enemy stunlocked for 4.2 + 2.7 +4.2 + 3.5 + 4.2 = 18.2 seconds. You horrible, horrible, person.

Hands of Midas: Not recommended. Sustainer/Boots of travel lets you farm equally fast for the same cost. Both add sustain, hands of midas does not.

Shotgun who? What? A guide to Ethereal Blade.

Perhaps no combo is more sinister than Morphling's. A scaling nuke on an agility carry is nothing to laugh at, and for perhaps this reason is the combo continuously nerfed. The current iteration of the combo is far, far, less powerful than its initial version (instantaneous, deals x6 amount of agility as damage +waveform). Yet, it is still powerful.

Using the Safelane Eblade Rush, at level 12, Morphling full agility will have roughly 150 agility to work with. The combo thus deals as follows:

E-Blade: 75 damage base + x2 (150) = 75 +300 = 375 amplified by 40 percent = 525 Magic Damage

Adaptive Strike: 80 base damage + x2 (150) = 80 +300 = 380 amplified by 40 percent = 532 Magic Damage

Waveform: 325 base damage. Amplified by 40 percent = 455 base damage

TOTAL DAMAGE: 1512 MAGIC DAMAGE. Or 1134 Pure Damage (factored for 25 percent magic resistance) This is over 1k pure damage on a scaling agility hero. For this reason alone we try to rush Etheral Blade. Gotten early enough, it shuts down any hero on the map, letting Morphling snowball out of control.

The Combo:

With the recent nerfs to adaptive strike and e-blade being disjointable projectiles, there are only three real variations of the combo.

One: Waveform > E-blade > Adaptive > Replicate Away

By the time Waveform hits, you should be in the safety of the fountain, and your target should be dead. Note: This combo requires you to aim your waveform on a relatively fast moving target. The downside is that the enemey could dodge the waveform damage! The upside is, because your Eblade and Adaptive go off at short range, there is no travel distance for them. Therefore there is no room for the enemy to disjoint with euls/blink. Another downside, however, is the waveform damage is NOT amplified by the E-blade/Adaptive combo. Since the surge speed for Waveform is 1250, but for Eblade is 1200, waveform damage instance will ALWAYS hit first. Therefore, the you must reduce the total damage output of the combo by 130 Magic Damage or 97.5 pure damage. This, still, is over 1k pure damage regardless.

Two: E-Blade > Waveform > Adaptive

This deals the full damage, the Waveform is much easier to hit. The downside is that this is disjointable by glimmer cape/blink/manta/bkb. etc. If the enemy is alone, and doesn't have any disjoint abilities, use this combo for that extra damage.

Three: Eblade > Adaptive. Only use this in a heated teamfight to instagib a support in the backlines. This is usually only done later in the game once you have 200+ agility. Still, be sure that the enemy you're targeting doesn't have disjoint. The travel speed is really, really slow, so disjointing it is easy.

Conclusion!

Hope you enjoyed the guide on how to play Morphling. I currently have 600+ games with him, and am ranked top 80 on Dotabuff (which isn't much really). My Ranked Solo Queue MMR with morph is in the 4.6-4.8k range, and has been increasing slowly.

I plan to reformat the guide at a later time as to make it easier to read. Morphling is a fun hero to play and an even funner hero to master, so all you aspiring Morphling'ites don't give up!