maderschramm's Mortred

Introduction

Hello,

I made this guide so I could visualize my item and skill choices. If you like the build, by all means use it. I'll be changing it based on how I play with the hero, so please add whatever comments you may have.

My playstyle with Mortred heavily utilizes the Blur ability. With it you have a lot more staying power than you might think you have.

Teamfights mostly include me hanging back, pecking away with Stifling Dagger since it has such a long range and low mana cost. Once enemies begin to try to flee you Phantom Strike them for the kill.

As stated this is a Gambler build, so if you're scared to roll around with low hp and engaging in white-knuckle fights where a flip of a coin will either win or lose you the battle you might want to look elsewhere.

Also, please forgive the sloppiness of this guide. I'm still learning BB formatting and will update the guide and hopefully make it more concise and readable.

Statistics of Blur

So why is Blur so good and why do we max it first? The reason is because it scales so incredibly well per level. Just how well? Well, let's do some basic statistics to find out exactly how much staying power it offers you.

The probability of an event is the proportion of times it will occur if we repeated a random trial over and over again under the same conditions. For evasion with Mortred, we see that with level 0 Blur you have 0% chance to dodge, level 1 provides a 20% chance to dodge, level 2 gives you 25%, level 3 offers 30%, and 4 gives you a 35% chance to dodge incoming attacks.

If we classify [Evading an Attack] as a success in this trial and [Not Evading an Attack] as a failure, we can deem that [Evading an Attack] is both mutually exclusive and independent of [Not Evading an Attack] as they cannot both occur simultaneously and the first does not change the probability that the second will occur.

With that knowledge in mind we know the basic statistical formula to follow for our study:

Pr[ A and B ] = Pr(A) x Pr(B)
Pr[ Evading an Attack AND Not Evading an Attack ] would be Pr[ Evading an Attack ] x Pr[ Not Evading an Attack ]

This means that with level 1 Blur the probability of evading 1 attack in a trial of size 2 would be .2 x .8 or .16 or 16%

But Mortred doesn't die in two attacks. For the sake of sanity I'll limit our trial size to a size of 5. With this constant, 5 consecutive attacks against Mortred will provide 32 outcomes, 6 of which are unique.

SSSSS
SSSSF
SSSFF
SSFFF
SFFFF
FFFFF

We can visualize this with the following probability tree:

So how do we interpret these data? The probability of 5 avoidances in a row is the same probability at level 4 as 3 successes is at level 1, and your chance of being hit all 5 times drops from 32.7% to almost one third of that at 11.6%! Visualizing data can be difficult with hard numbers, so below is a bar graph comparing level 1 to level 4 Blur.


Finally, if we go back to our original example of 2 attacks, Mortred will have:

.35 x .65 or a 22.75% chance of dodging one in two attacks,
.35 x .35 or a 12.25% chance of dodging both, and
.65 x .65 or a 42.25% chance of being hit twice

This is as opposed to the 16%, 4%, and 64% of level 1 Blur, respectively.

That's a lot of missed attacks!

Mortred Base Stats and Pros / Cons

Health: 530(+19)
Mana: 169(+13)
Strength: 20(+1)
Agility: 23(+3)
Intelligence: 13(+1)
Damage: 47(+3)
Movespeed: 310
Armor: 4

+extremely high damage output
+good agility gain
+good movement speed
+good starting armor
+ Blur provides extra staying power
+can carry extremely hard after Manta Style

-high skill threshold
-low starting HP/HP gain
-susceptible to disables
-susceptible to nukers
-slow early game

Skill Lowdown

Stifling Dagger
Ability: Target Unit
Affects: Enemy Heroes
Damage: Pure
Range: ~1100 (not listed but slightly langer than Phantom Strike)
Cooldown: 8 seconds

Deals minor pure damage and slows enemy movement speed. Deals half damage to enemy heroes.

50% Slow On Strike
1/2/3/4 Second Slow Duration
50/100/150/200 Damage
30/25/20/15 Mana Cost


Phantom Strike
Ability: Target Unit
Affects: Friendly or Enemy, Non-Magic-Immune Unit
Range: 1000
Cooldown: 14/11/8/5

Teleports to a unit, friendly or enemy, and grants bonus attacks speed while attacking if it's an enemy unit.

Bonus attack speed: 100%
Max attacks: 4
50 Mana cost


Blur
Ability: Passive

Phantom Assassin blurs out when enemy heroes come near, becoming increasingly evasive to enemy attacks and disappearing from the enemy minimap.

Bonus Evasion: 20%/25%/30%/35%


Coup de Grace
Ability: Passive

Mortred refines her combat abilities, gaining a chance of delivering a devastating critical strike to enemy units.

Critical Bonus: 250%/325%/400%
Critical Chance: 15%

Skill Sequencing

Start with one point into Phantom Strike. You will use this ability to escape danger and possibly pick off a hero kill. The cooldown is 14 seconds with 1000 range. Get used to these parameters as I opt to max this last. You'll need to know them in order to avoid dying.

The reason I don't max the Phantom Strike right away is because although the cooldown decreases everything else remains the same, the damage output of the ability doesn't change and we'd get diminishing returns as compared to our other abilities, which includes the first ability we max:

Blur. It's amazing. Note that lvl 2 is equivalent to a 1800$ Talisman of Evasion, level 3 is equal to the evasion offered by the Butterfly and level 4 is even higher than that, making it so you dodge almost 2 out of every 5 attacks. We max this asap as it improves our survivability exponentially. If it's your first time playing Mortred you won't know exactly what you can and can't do, but stick at it and you'll see just where this ability can take you. Also don't underestimate the 'disappearing from the minimap' portion of this skill. Combined with Phantom Strike, Mortred can be quite evasive.

Stifling Daggershould be maxed secondly. The mana cost decreases per level, and damage and duration go up. That's a way better return than Phantom Strike. At level 4 it costs 15 mana, which you won't even notice. While it's at level 1 use it for it's slowing if there's a fight going on, otherwise wait until it's a higher level before you start spamming your enemies with it. Late game and during team fights this ability should always be on cooldown. You should be slowing and damaging enemies left and right. I like to pick on low HP heroes such as mages and carries, once they've been damaged by this ability (or your teammates) enough they'll make a run for it, separating themselves from the rest of their team, allowing you to quickly pick them off with even your level 1 Phantom Strike.

Coup de Grace - what can I say. The most baller crit ever. Looks ****ing sweet too. 6-11-16.

Starting/Early Game Items

*Caveat - someone needs to buy a courier. Offer commends if you have to, it needs to happen.

Starting items are fairly simple. We begin with:

Tango - you'll be dipping in trying to last hit, you'll need this
Stout Shield - reduces damage you take and builds into a key item later. Also stacks nicely with Blur.
Slippers of Agility - increases your low early damage
2x Iron Branch - small stat boost and goes into your key healing item

In the beginning of the game play cautiously. You only have the 3 tangos and you're fragile right away. Don't be afraid to use your Phantom Strike to escape if you need to. Don't get frustrated if you don't get any last hits in the first few minutes. Just be patient and ease into it. Your damage will go up shortly with levels and the all important first courier runs.

As soon as you can, get the following items:

Slippers of Agility - as soon as you can afford it, have the courier bring you this. Adds 3 more agility for your damage and will improve your Stout Shield into a Poor Man's Shield which gives 100% chance to reduce hero damage which is important for the low HP Mortred.

Second courier run:

Iron Branch
Magic Stick
Magic Wand Recipe

The Magic Wand is vital to your success as Mortred. Your HP is very low, so don't underestimate how well this item will work even into the late mid game. It restores your health and mana, so you can spam your Stifling Dagger worry free, and also hopefully keep your HP above 50% or even save your *** in a fight. Enemy heroes will engage a low HP Mortred thinking they'll win even against blur, but if all of a sudden your HP jumps by 30% it's a whole different story.

After the Magic Wand I like to grab a Belt of Strength. Mortred is already pretty fast and gets around well with her Phantom Strike, so the HP boost offered comes in more handy than a speed boost, but pick up the Boots of Speed next.

Mid Game Items

How are you doing at this point? Is the Magic Wand enough to keep you around? If so, complete your Power Treads by buying Gloves of Haste. If you'd rather get more HP then opt for your Ogre Club at this time.

At this point you should work towards getting a Yasha. It increases your attack speed, movement speed, damage, and also will make you output more damage with Coup de Grace due to the agility and attack speed boost. However; if you're getting magicked down then you're probably going to want to try to finish your Black King Bar asap before you move into your Manta Style

End Game Items

Manta Style - sell your Poor Man's Shield if you need to to afford the Ultimate Orb as this item just really isn't fair. It's outrageously good, especially on Mortred. Once you've got this item you can pretty much cash out any hero you'd like to. After buying this item your playstyle will change to the following:

Stifling Dagger from range enemy hero.
Phantom Strike enemy hero.
Manta Style activate.

You'll split into three images and just run train on whatever poor sap you just owned. If somehow they don't die just hit them with your Stifling Dagger again and there's no way they'll escape. Phantom Strike them again if you have to at this point, but you'll preferably be switching to a new victim instead. Don't forget to micro your images as they output lots of damage and are hard to kill as well because they also have Blur, and don't forget how large of a range your abilities are, making it quite easy to surprise your enemies with three crit-stacking Mortreds from out of nowhere.

From there I jump right into getting a Skull Basher. The HP Boost it offers you is nice and if you land a bash on an enemy hero after you Phantom Strike and Manta Style it there's no survival. From there upgrade the Skull Basher into an Abyssal Blade for the instakill it provides with its active ability, additional HP, and an incredible damage boost that is pretty sexy with Coup de Grace in mind. If you're somehow still dying opt for a Helm of the Dominator that you can then turn into a Satanic later game instead.

From there the sky's the limit I suppose. You'll want to get as much HP as possible just to stay around longer. A Heart of Tarrasque is nice for that. A Satanic would be extremely handy as well. From there anything that increases attack damage and attack speed would be perfect, like the Monkey King Bar.

Summary and Thanks

-Start slow if you have to
-Use courier a lot early
-With high level Blur, low HP is okay.
-Watch out for magic damage
-Spam Stifling Dagger
- Phantom Strike + Manta Style = GG


If you looked at this guide, thanks for reading. I will continue updating this guide as time progresses.

Best,

maderschramm