Mid Meepo 6.79 Dominance

Introduction to the Mid Meepo

Hello everyone and welcome to my very first guide on my absolute favorite Hero in Dota. This will hopefully be quite a thorough guide as Meepo is not a hero one can just pick up and play well, so if you have randomed him and came here REPICK NOW. Now some of you are maybe wondering why you would ever take Meepo, a traditionally safe lane hero, to mid. Well the answer lies in Patch 6.79 where Meepo was changed dramatically.

Also, if you are looking to learn to execute the ideas in which I describe in this guide, I have a whole section describing control groups and hotkeys and how to use them. Which should be practiced in bot games until you can do them flawlessly before applying what is taught here.

- Base armor reduced by 1
- Turn rate improved from 0.5 to 0.65
- Earthbind cast point improved from 0.5 to 0.3
- Divided We Stand leveling rebalanced from 6/11/16 to 4/11/18
- Removed 30% stat sharing on non-aghanim Divided We Stand

Here we see that Meepo can now get his clone at level 4, this is huge for two reasons.
First, before 6.79 it was imperative for Meepo to not die before getting his ult at 6, at which point it was much more safe to gank in lane. Now, he gets his ult in HALF THE TIME as was required before, opening up a several minute window to gank other lanes before anyone else has their ultimate's to deal with ganks.

Secondly, and touched a bit in the last paragraph, you can gank SUPER EARLY and be very effective, often times before the other lanes have had a chance to even farm up brown boots. This is important because Meepo REQUIRES A LEVEL ADVANTAGE to be effective in a game.

This brings me to another extremely important but often unknown ability to many new Meepo players or players that have never taken a good look at this difficult to play Hero. One core mechanic that Meepo alone has in Dota 2. Each of his Meepos counts as a hero to the game when calculating XP earned from any source. What this means is that if you have one Meepo mid solo he gets 100% of the XP as you normally would, and if his clone is sitting in another lane leaching XP from 2 heroes in lane, he will be getting an additional 1/3 of the XP there. Or if you have your clones poofing down the jungle, and another in lane, you will get all of the XP earned in lane and in the jungle as well. Often times I will win a game at level 25 when the enemy teams carries are not even level 16 yet.

I will have to say, that my Meepo guide strays far from what most would say is kosher item builds and skill builds, but I will do my best to explain why my choices work.

Pros / Cons

Pros:

Extremely early and aggressive ganking potential
Can snowball faster than any other Hero
Semi-carry
Slow that goes through BKB
Earthbind cancels channeled abilities
Multiple lane farm potential
Best jungler in the game
One of the best lane pushers with great escape
Can roam for kills while jungling/pushing
Extreme GPM without Midas
Can defend tower pushes while counter pushing enemy towers
Can destroy towers quickly
Can solo Roshan in the early mid game
When played well, will earn tons of respect and can pubstomp with high success

Cons:

Micro intensive
Requires well above average map awareness
Must watch the minimap more than a Starcaft player
Unreliable stun with Earthbind
Unreliable nuke with Poof
If one Meepo dies, they all do, so when blink poofing don't miss a Meepo
Vulnerable to AOE stuns and damage
Poor stat scaling from levels
REQUIRES practice and determination to be played well

Items

Starting Items:
It is still important despite us being able to get our Divided We Stand early that we start with one set of Tangoes and two Healing Salve. The reason for this is that we will be ganking early and we don't have a huge window of time for us to be effective, so after a successful gank we may be low and to continue the pressure to mid or another lane we don't want to be walking all the way back to a tower after getting low. So heal up if you didn't need to use them to stay alive to level 4. We get a Ring of Protection to build into Tranquil Boots ASAP.

Many people here are going to say. Why Tranqs?! Are you insane? They used to be good for jungling Meepos but since their nerf they are worthless on Meepo and you should get Power Treads instead. That would be true, except that Tranqs allow us superior move speed very early and also, they allow your clone to roam without having to go base to heal up for another gank. In the time it takes to set-up another gank you should be at or close to full health. If you poof in your Main Meepo from mid, by the time the gank is over and you walk back to mid, you should be getting close to full health again. If your clone has no ganks he can sit in lane and leech XP while he heals. Ulimately, Tranqs allow you to GANK MORE OFTEN and ACQUIRE MORE XP, which is imperative to this mid ganking play style.

Orb of Venom is chosen because the extra slow helps in chasing down those runners for our early ganks for very little gold cost.

After we complete Tranquil Boots our next big purchase is going to be Aghanim's Scepter, now before 6.79 getting a blink dagger or power treads before Agh's was a legitimate and often superior tactic, as Meepo was a poor ganker before hitting level 11, now Meepo is a great ganker until the other heroes are level 7 or 8 or so. Another reason why Agh's is much higher on our need to get list, is that before Meepos clones shared 30% of stats, meaning that power treads were worth 130% to the clones as compared to the Main Meepo, today that is 100% until you get Agh's which moves that number to 200% plus you get another clone!
By the time you get about half or so of this item bought, your ganking potential has fallen by about half, as all of their heroes should have their level 6 ultimates. This also means our playstyle needs to change to maintain our gold and XP advantage. If you are safe to farm lanes DO SO, but if not or there is a lull in the fighting and no lanes to push out, go poof down a few creep camps and get that gold, otherwise leech XP with your clone and maintain a presence in mid, we need to get this item up ASAP.

Once your Agh's is complete, anytime is a good time to fight Roshan as long as it is safe to do so. You can solo him by moving your weak Meepos to the outside and moving a strong Meepo closer to Roshan as he will attack whoever is closest with priority. Since he is soloable, many people will see enemies on the map and will not suspect that you may be Roshing. If you are on the dire side, you can also blink into the Roshan pit from the secret shop and poof your clones on top of you without having to buy smoke or deward.

After Agh's, our next purchase should be Blink Dagger, this item allows us to have two roles at the same time. One, it allows us to take our 3 clones that we will have to
push lanes, contest towers and otherwise get lots of gold and XP. Second, it allows our Main Meepo to roam and look for ganks or outlying heroes trying to farm. I will have a section in this guide detailing how to blink poof gank, which you can refer too, but for now know why blink is Meepos best item to get after Agh's. With blink, we can have our army of Meepos chain netting and otherwise whooping on our unsuspecting victim in an instant. This also instills caution and fear into the enemy team, making them play either as 5 or more defensively.

At this point, if your farm is going very well rush to Reaver, this is a whopping 475 HP for all your Meepos, and shores up any HP issues you may have been having. If it isn't going too fast or you are still able to gank but lack HP, get Power Treads now, that's 16 STR or AGI for your clones. Either way, get power treads before or after Reaver. Another important skill to learn and utilize, while fighting Roshan and towers always switch to Agility on your power treads, as it is A LOT more DPS compared to STR. Also, once you have a heart or just never die, keep Agi on for bursting down heroes as well, but in the early to mid stages of the game the Str is more important for you.

After Power Treads and Reaver, it is time for an Eaglesong, now some would say that it is better to finish your Heart of Tarrasque, but in my experience a Reaver is enough HP for the time being, that and it is an additional 2200 gold for 15 Str, better spent on the DPS upgrade with Eaglesong, then once that is complete go back and finish your Heart of Tarrasque. Money shouldn't really be a problem at this stage in the game, and after heart and Ethereal Blade there is only one slot left, and that should be slotted with Aegis of the Immortal.

Ideally, the game should be long over before you finish out your item build, but if you follow this path, you will be effective in almost every stage of the game.

Skills

This is a big change over 6.78 and previous patches, before 6.79, maxing Poof was the ideal thing to do, as it allowed you to "poof" down an enemy once Meepo hit level 6 and 7 very quickly, and usually by this point enemies had more items that increased their health to warrant a poof approach. But since 6.79 the whole dynamic of Meepo has changed, if you do not take advantage of Meepos Divided We Stand in the window that is presented to you, then you might as well never pick Meepo at all. because of this Poof is not as important because it doesn't do the damage necessary to kill early reliably. For this reason we take one in each skill, and then begin to max Geostrike. The reason for this is clear. At level 4 a Meepo clone can go do one of three things:

Stack creeps for later poofs.

Go to another lane and set up a poof into gank.

Immediately attempt to kill mid as soon as you hit 4.

The best thing to do is to immediately attempt to kill mid. If you are patient and executed this well, the creeps should be pushing into your high ground. If the enemy hero is anywhere close, immediately walk towards him with what should be brown boots in your inventory, cast Earthbind, skill your ult (Ctrl + R), and then earthbind him again after 2 seconds with your new clone. With one point in geostrike, even if he is not dead after 4 seconds of being netted, the slow and DoT should give you enough time to first blood before they have time to reach their tower. This is especially effective against heroes that have no escape like Pudge, (who does more damage to himself than to you with Rot). If you are feeling especially cocky, try to throw in a level 1 Poof, but in my experience that can cause enough time for the enemy hero to escape if not executed perfectly.

As soon as your gank in mid is over, whether it failed or succeeded walk your CLONE alone to the your safe lane or to the hard lane if it is pushed all the way to your tower (this is why we have salves remember!). In the safe lane you wait and leech XP or immediately set up a gank on the enemy support or whoever is low or has no escape ability. Make sure your team knows what is happening. At this point walk your clone to the enemy, poof in with your main and cast a net with your clone. Net again with your main 2 seconds later and kill again if it worked. The reason we are skilling geostrike in this situation is because of the slow for one, and because of the extra DoT that will do a relatively larger amount of damage to a hero who at this stage in the game may only have 500 to 600 HP. Also, poof does not have the hitting power at these lower levels and we are having to use it to poof in for the kill, negating half of its damage, meaning at best we are doing only 75% of the poof damage available to us at the time if we get it instead.

Poof however is very very good in the mid game and should be maxed next. It allows us to push lanes out extremely quickly, clear the jungle as fast as we can walk through it and burst down heroes who have clumped around us.

Earthbind is OK at level one, but really shines at level 2. So if you find yourself needing the extra range sacrifice one point in poof or geostrike, depending on the situation. Anything after level 2 isn't needed until the later mid game and past, especially since you will be blinking on top of enemies where the range is irrelevant, and no one has the HP to be perma-netted with the lowered cooldown of higher skill points into the spell.

Everything in this game is situational however and your play style is important too. If you like poof over geostrike and it works for you, do that instead,

Control Groups and Hotkeys

Control groups:

This is extremely important and must be understood to play as Meepo.

There are two ways the majority of Meepo players set up their groups. The first way and the way I play is that my Main is set alone to Control group 1 (select the Main and press Ctrl + 1) and all my secondary Meepos are set to group 2 (select all your clones and press Ctrl + 2, alternatively, you can press Shift + 2 to add new clones to your existing ctrl group). ALL my Meepos are then set to control group 3.

Another way which has its own advantages is to set each Meepo to a ctrl group (1,2,3,4,5 and 6 for all). Whichever or whatever way works best for you, do it and stick with it.

Controlling your Meepos to Earthbind and to blink poof:

First things first we need to change at least one hotkey, and that is we need to make Poof a quick cast. What this means is that instead of pressing W and then clicking an area to poof to, a quick cast will just cast the ability to wherever your mouse is on the screen (this means the field of play or the minimap) without having to additionally click with the mouse. This is EXTREMELY important to getting off poofs quickly and makes blink poofing trivial once mastered. To do this go to Options -> Abilities -> and change Quick Cast ability 2 to either W as poof normally is or as I do, to the number 4 or some appropriate key as not to mess with other heroes you may play. We will come back to this and poof a few paragraphs later but do this first. You can do this for earthbind as well if you wish, although I do not.

Whatever you do with control groups it is best to practice earthbinding indefinitely to get the hang of using all your Meepos as if it were just one Hero. The best way to practice this is to start a custom game with no bots and cheats enabled.

When in a solo bot game with cheats enabled type -lvlup 25 and -gold 10000, buy your blink dagger and Aghanims Scepter so we can now practice executing what is involved.

To practice tabbing (when you hit tab, it will go to your next selected unit that is currently selected) and netting go to any creep camp and net them all and press tab with all your Meepos selected, time it so that in about 2 seconds they will get netted again by your next Meepo and keep going through ALL your Meepos so that at no time will they ever be not netted. Do it so you can net them infinitely or until you run out of mana. This will take time but it will give you a good feel for the timings of net. Do this at different distances to further understand the timings of this unreliable yet super effective ensnare.

Now to practice the fun part. The part that makes playing Meepo fun and makes you a god to pubs who don't have a clue as to what you are doing. The blink poof. The idea of the blink poof is to select all your clones and to begin casting poof and tabbing quickly so that they will poof to your main who is in another location (with quick cast enabled, simply hover your mouse over the location your main Meepo will blink towards, there is no need to actually target the main Meepo, and you do not need to be looking at your clones, only have then selected). When done properly, a player can start poofing, select their Main Meepo, blink him to an enemy and then have all your clones poof on top of the enemy. This is easier said then done as poof only has a 1.5 second cast animation and you have 4 Meepos to poof and then a main to select then blink to a location. So from start to finish you have 1.5 seconds to do it. Also, a very good habit to get into is, as soon as your main Meepo blinks in cast net on the hero (devastating Anti-Mage players) then start your infinite net loop on them with all your heroes.

Once you can blink poof consistently, practice blink poofing on creep camps while netting with your main to get the hang of it.

Here is a video that breaks it down fairly well. It is not my video but it may help those that are visual learners as well. You do not need to use his or my hotkeys, but do use something that can me done quickly and seamlessly.
Play Video

When NOT to pick Meepo

It is said there are many heroes that counter Meepo but in my experience there are really only a few that really really give him a hard time.


This bastard is built to kill you, his ult Echo Slam coupled with Fissure will wreck your world. It also means you cannot team fight while Earthshaker is alive and has his ult or he will Rampage your team in zero seconds flat. While he is easy to kill before he hits 11 and especially 6 be careful to go against this hero unless you have a reliable silence and great communication with your team.


His ability Storm Hammer is really devastating to a Meepo as it will stun up to the entire Meepo group and his Great Cleave coupled with God's Strength can take you out pretty quick unless you are seriously farmed out with hearts, even then be wary.


Everything about him counters Meepo in a small way. Timber Chain can be used while under the effects of earthbind. Reactive Armor builds up very quickly with multiple Meepos attacking him. Whirling Death reduces your damage to all the Meepos and Chakram slows you and deals a lot of damage to all of your clones as well. He can be killed, but it requires game knowledge and patience and a bit of farm to bring him down.


His Ice Path is very strong against early ganks and late game pushes, other than that he isn't to bad.


He counters you, but not so hard as to not pick Meepo, just requires you to pick your battles. Fatal Bonds is what makes him tough and his ult is pretty nasty to Meepo in the mid game. Pick him off while solo but watch for him in team fights.

Other than that, watch out for AoE silences or heroes that can make single clones vulnerable like Kunkka or Disruptor. Outside of these, you counter everyone hard.

Summary

This concludes what I hope is a guide that will help Meepo players of varying success better adapt to the new patch that drastically changed my beloved Meepo. If you are new to Meepo looking to learn I hope this will at least be a good to thorough primer on how to start being successful with him. Best of luck!