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5 Votes

Support Morphling-Play it beautifully by Loredra

August 15, 2015 by Loredra
Comments: 7    |    Views: 38871    |   


Build 1
Build 2

I want it that way

DotA2 Hero: Morphling




Hero Skills

Accumulation (Innate)

Waveform

3 4 6 9

Adaptive Strike (Agility)

1 5 7 10

Adaptive Strike (Strength)

1 5 7 10

Attribute Shift (Agility)

2 17 18

Attribute Shift (Strength)

2 17 18

Morph

8 11 16

Talents

12 13 14 15


Support Morphling-Play it beautifully by Loredra

Loredra
August 15, 2015


Introduction

No wait, don't close off, I am serious, this is not a trolling guide . Surely support Morphling is not common, out of the norm and might get you reported upon losing, but it is actually a quite legit and solid support pick if you want to experiment an tanky fifth or fourth role.
One more reason is that I love water. Water is love, water is life.

This will be my second guide and I hope you will enjoy it. Sorry for my broken English. If you have any questions, post it here or contact me and I will add it to my F.A.Q.

Pros / Cons

The essence of support Morphling is that you are tanky and have a reliable stun. In that sense, you are somehow like a Ogre Magi

Pros:
+ Tanky, reallly tanky playing as a support compared to normal support.
+ Reliable, instant 4.25 sec stun at lv 7.
+ Have escape mechanism.
+ Water is generally good. Essential for life. Like Aquafina-Make you body happy #productplacement.

Cons:
- ****ty armor when go tanky. That means we cries if enemies are physically heavy or full of armor minus heroes.
- Mana intensive early game,and mid game, and late game
- Get flamed easily by people who do not see Morphling support :(
- Potential damage output is limited

Items

Items for support Morphling, in a sense, is incredibly simple. Besides wards and courier, you only have to buy:
1. Item that boost armor since it is your weakness
2. Item that boost mana since it is your weakness
3. Item that benefits team
4. Situational items a.k.a everything else.

Support Morphling doesn't have a "must" item like other supports, including honorable mention such as Ogre Magi with Aganihm Scepter, so judge your situation as a whole to make a decision. Below are some of my thoughts for:
Early:
- Iron Branch: Nice, not thrilling, but nice
- Magic Wand: Classic
- Ring of Aquila: Quite okay, but make sure your teammates do not buy another
- Arcane Boots: Normally, for a Morphling, society would labels such unconventional decision politely as "******", but this item suits both 2 and 4 categories. Go for it. Core for you.
- Combo of Soul Ring and Tranquil Boots: Work nicely. Like Killua and Gon. You should complete the Sould Ring first btw.
Mid game:
- Medallion of Courage Hmmmm, good, really good, but for a poor support, going for both this and RoA might be too much. Prioritizes this by the way
- Force Staff: Nice, not thrilling, but nice
- Blink Dagger : Normally one would choose between this and Force Staff since it might cost too much for both. Quite good.
- Mekansm: Reallllly great, but only get after you have Arcane Boots else you won't even have mana to activate.
Late game:
- Shiva's Guard: Made to be purchased
- Assault Cuirass : I still in Shiva's team since you won't attack for **** but...well...solid. Also works for rare situation described below.
- Scythe of Vyse: I never reach this stage :_:

Play it beautifully

You are a tank hero with escape mechanism and freaking 4.25 sec stun every 10 second. You want to:
1. Soak up damage for your team
2. Waveform and throw Adaptive Strike everywhere
Early:
Best bet should be having dual supporters. You do the double-stack lure and other keeps enemy offlaner starved. This is where support Morphling sucks a bit. Don't morph to strength yet, auto-rightclick is still important this point. Play just like a Orge Mage for a while.
Try to get mana boots here.

Morphling into strength should only be done at fountain. You won't be switching back and forth any time soon. My advice is to morph slowly, you would love to have some right-click damage at the early stage. Full strength Morphling is done when early-mid stage is in action.
A note here is right Morphling's Adaptive Strike has knock back effect, so if you go for a gank, the best scenario would be : Waveform-->get behind enemy hero--> Adaptive Strike to knock them closer to your friends
Mid-Late:
Now you should morph every bit of agility to strength already. You are excellent at ganking, counter ganking and soaking damage. A support morph can easily reach 1k7 healthpoint at level 8. Yep. 1k7. It is basically someone who can tank the whole eclipse+ plus 1 skill from Luna at lv 8. Doing the front line job, distracting enemy rank, setting up kill ,protecting your carry, cancelling channeling spells are stuff you can do well. Just keep these 3 in mind:
1. Deal damage mainly by using Waveform. Distract enemy also. People tend to act funny if there is a enemy hero running along side with them in combat :)
2. Use as many stuns as possible. Pay intention to enemy's channeling ultimate.
3. Make the enemy focus you. You are tough. More skills you tank, better you team is

Forget that you are human. You are a walking stun gun.

And even more important, play like a support. Keep wards up, spend time predicting the flow of the match, potential gank and potential counter gank.


BUUUUUUT
On a very, very rare occasion that the game last long enough that you have money for luxury items. Slowly turn back to physical DPS Morphling. Adjust the agility and strength ration so that your right-click now noticeable. But this rarely happens.

Friends and Foes

Actually you should try to be friendly with everyone. I mean of course there are people who you can't get along no matter what in school,but ,well, just try to be polite.

Back to the topic, Morphling supports best with:
- Support hero that tends to stay back and deal lots of damage: Witch Ph.D, Lion, SkyWraith
- Damage dealer (because your provide long duration stun)
- Honorable mention: Juggernaut. Percentage heal for you. Strong early kill potential for your early short duration stun.

We are scared of :
- Healthpoint-percentage damage hero: Mother of Necrophos,etc...
- Negative armor: Shadow "Friend", Dazzle the disease, Sla********dar, etc...

We love to get hit, or bait enemy using(no, not an S):
- Omnislash, Eclipse, Laguna Blade

We love to cancel:
- Black Hole
- Faceless Void inside his Chronosphere
- Death Ward by Witch Ph.D
- Let it go ultimate by Crystal Maiden

F.A.Q

- Do you play support Morphling a lot?
A: Sure. No :)

- What if enemy team ignores me and focus my team?
A: Dance in front of them in combat.Expose yourself in a semi-safe way. In the late stage, turn back a bit to DPS Morphling. If they are really good like even that not working, you are gonna to lose anyway.

- What is your MMR ?
A: 4k9 Solo andddddd well,... 4k team :(

- What should be skilled first? Waveform or Adaptive Strike?
I personally do the following for every hero: Never skill anything until the situation comes. So it would depend a bit on my situation to skill the first one. For example, you go to 3,4 men rune fight, then when the fight breaks out, may be level up Waveform so you can deal massive damage to multiple heroes. I don't think that matter much anyway:). Since he still sucks early.

- Should I max Waveform or Adaptive Strike first?
I would think this as matter of preference. I normally level them hand-in-hand. But let's say you team has Pudge ( or any heavy 1 man killer that does not have lock down), you of course love to max Adaptive Strike first. 900 range, 4.25 sec stun and free Hook, Yay!!

-Should I used him as offlaner?
DK.Phobos did it. However, I don't think it is a good idea. Too costly to escape with Waveform. No big ultimate for team unlike certain somebody Faceless Void. I wouldn't risk it. But who cares? Go for it :)

-What is your next project?
A: I am planning to do experiment with Dota2 video communnity.
If you are interested, you can help me review my first Dota2 vid here:

Summary

Support Morphling is certainly fallen in the category of : "YOU CAN DO IT BUT OTHER CAN DO BETTER". He has no real strong combo in this sense and I doubt we will ever see him like that in competitive dota. But hey, I'm no prophet. And somewhere, at sometime, there are people who is fascinated by the unexpected potential of our beloved Aquafina hero.

Good luck and Have fun
29/3/2015
# Special thank for michimatsch of Dotafire for providing me with formatting guide:)
31//3/2015
# Added new build, items discussion and F.A.Q thanks to contribution from YellulzQuiet, TheSofa, Sanvitch ,MisterBigtoy and Phalanx300 from Dotafire

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