[Hero] Morphling

I'd like to start this with a disclaimer: I'm by no means a professional Dota player. However, I've been following the competitive Dota 2 scene since inception almost religiously, and have a fair bit of experience playing in inhouse leagues and team matchmaking/captain's mode with a team of my friends that I captain. While I'm not Dendi, I do have some experience putting my ideas into practice in settings other than pub games, and I think my Dota knowledge is deep enough to be valuable to players trying to learn new heroes. With that being said, allow me to introduce...

0. TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. My Waters Rise - Introduction
II. Parting The Waters - Stats
III. The Moon Pulls Me - When to Pick
IV. Go With The Flow - The Mindset of a Morphling Player
V. More Friends - Replicate
VI. Didn't You See Me Waving? - Skills
VII. One Wave Follows Another - Skill Builds
VIII. I'm Spending Money Like Water - Items and Item Builds
IX. Your Own Worst Enemy! - Friends, Enemies and Food
X. I Go - Closing Thoughts

I. MY WATERS RISE - INTRODUCTION

"For dark eons the comet circled. Held in thrall to a distant sun, bound by gravity's inexorable pull, the massive ball of ice careened through the blackness between worlds, made strange by its dark journey. On the eve of the ancient war of the Vloy, it punched down through the sky and lit a glowing trail across the night-a sign both armies took for an omen. The frozen ball melted in a flash of boiling heat, as below two forces enjoined in battle across the border of a narrow river. Thus freed from its icy stasis, the Morphling was born into conflict, an elemental power at one with the tides of the ocean, capricious and unconstrained. He entered the fight, instinctively taking the form of the first general who dared set foot across the water-and then struck him dead. As the motley warriors clashed, he shifted from form to form throughout the battle, instantly absorbing the ways of these strange creatures-now a footsoldier, now an archer, now the cavalryman-until, by the time the last soldier fell, Morphling had played every part. The battle's end was his beginning."

Morphling, since his patch 6.75 nerfs, is a hero who seems to have fallen off the face of the planet. His influence in the professional Dota scene has declined sharply since his glory days at The International 2. However, he can still be an incredibly strong hero in the hands of the right player – his nerfs, despite being quite broad, didn't change much about the way the hero was played, and when done right Morphling is still a force to be feared at all stages of the game. His ability to farm quickly and safely while still maintaining a strong midgame presence is unmatched by most other carries, and a well-farmed, well-leveled Morphling is an absolutely terrifying sight to behold. This guide will hopefully provide players who have never played Morphling before (or never played him well) a good resource to start with, as well as providing even players who consider themselves good Morphling players some food for thought.

Since Morphling isn't an excellent 'beginner' hero, this guide will assume you understand a lot of the basics of Dota already, and you're looking to expand your hero repertoire by learning to play one of the most versatile carries in the pool. That being said, if you don't understand anything in this guide, don't hesitate to ask questions!

II. PARTING THE WATERS - STATS

Morphling's base stats are not altogether that strong. His base Agility of 24 seems quite strong on paper, but when coupled with the base damage nerf from 6.75 it still results in a base damage of 41, which is incredibly low for a hard carry. His base Intelligence is also really low at 17, leaving him without mana for more than one waveform in quick succession at lower levels. His one redeeming feature stats-wise is his mediocre base Strength of 19 – hardly a redeeming feature at all.

His stat growth is where Morphling truly shines. With levels, he can devastate teams, and his Agility gain of 3 per level is immense, matched by only a few heroes and exceeded by two (Phantom Assassin and Phantom Lancer, with 3.15 and 4 respectively). His Strength gain is again fairly mediocre at 2 per level, and his Intelligence gain worse at 1.5, but the agility gain is an immense benefit to a Morphling with levels.

As previously discussed, his base damage of 41 is pretty poor – there are a couple of ways to deal with this covered in the skills and items sections later on, so for now we'll just note that it's a problem.

Lastly, his attack range isn't great at 350 – this will leave you pretty vulnerable to harass against 600 range heroes like Invoker, Windrunner or Drow Ranger (to name a few), and also make it difficult to harass melee heroes without taking creep aggro.

III. THE MOON PULLS ME - WHEN TO PICK

Morphling is one of the most versatile carries in the game, and can fit pretty well into a lot of lineups. His great strengths as a carry, however, lie in his strong (and most of all safe) laning thanks to waveform, and his ability to dominate the midgame while still having an incredibly effective lategame. While his lategame presence won't keep up with an incredibly farmed Faceless Void, Spectre, or the like, the combination of replicate and waveform makes him a dangerous split pusher without sacrificing his presence in the midgame teamfights that he does so much damage in, while still keeping up with or even outstripping the enemy carry's farm.

He also doesn't necessarily need to be played as the hard carry on the team – he can function just as well in a solo mid role, using waveform for excellent lane control and harassment (when positioned properly). A quick level 7 on a Morphling can result in the game snowballing out of control, as a hero with the ability to be everywhere through replicate has the levels he needs to take advantage of weaker heroes. He also has the advantage of scaling (obviously) insanely well into the lategame compared to a lot of mids. When combined with another source of lategame DPS, Morphling can often be the extra bit of damage necessary to beat down an ultra-farmed hard carry.

Morphling has an incredible amount of presence in the laning stage of the game. Waveform can combo incredibly well with almost any support you could think of, as well as guaranteeing lasthits and lane control if you're in middle lane, and morph gives you survivability to allow you to play a little riskier against dangerous lanes. He's a hero who doesn't mind a gank-heavy game – he can escape from them really easily, while participating extremely well on the aggressive side, and his ability to get his farm up quickly and do significant damage with only a couple of core items means he dominates in the period where ganking heroes truly shine. Be wary though – if you're having trouble with an extremely aggressive lane, even though you will be safe, you will have a bit of a hard time getting the early game farm you need, as will any carry.

As strong a hero as he is, though, there are some things Morphling struggles with. Seriously push-heavy lineups will cause a lot of pain for Morphling, cramping the space he needs in the early game and leaving him with nowhere safe to farm in the midgame, even for someone who gets away as easily as Morphling. As a carry, he requires some breathing room to get going, and things that put a damper on that are hard to deal with. As a corollary to this point, if your team is focusing on early towers (think before level 8 or 9) Morphling again won't provide as much during that phase of the game as some other heroes would.

If your team is relying on you to turtle deep into the lategame and win the game alone, Morphling is probably not a good option for you. One of his greatest strengths is in how quickly he comes online, and a team that is focused on making tons of space for a lategame carry doesn't fit well with that. Also, he scales pretty weakly into the lategame when compared to an ultra-lategame carry like Medusa, Faceless Void or Spectre, since his only true lategame scaling comes from adaptive strike, which doesn't provide nearly as much DPS with huge numbers of items as something like dispersion or even time lock (not even considering chronosphere!), and replicate, which provides unreliable DPS at best, and instantly-purged DPS at worst.

When to Pick:
-You need a strong midgame carry with good lategame potential
-Your team is going to create space for you to split push heavily in the midgame
-The game is going to be insanely gank-heavy
-You need a midlane hero who will provide a lot of physical DPS in the lategame

When Not to Pick:
-The game is going to have a lot of early pushing from either side
-You need a carry to compete in the ultra-lategame
-Your lane is going to be difficult to farm safely in

IV. GO WITH THE FLOW - THE MINDSET OF A MORPHLING PLAYER

Since Morphling can be played in a couple of different roles, and your role in the game is going to be pretty different depending on where you're playing, this section of the guide will be split into two parts. First I'll focus on the more common first position, or hard carry, Morphling, and then we'll take a look at a second position (solo mid) Morphling. There'll be a little bit of overlap, but I'll make sure to reiterate important points from the carry section in the midlane section, so even if you're not reading this whole guide at once (God forbid! It's such a quick read, I don't know why anyone would bother) you'll be sure not to miss anything major.

Hard Carry Morphling

Early Game (Levels 1 – 6): In this stage of the game your focus should be mostly on your farm. If you're with a good aggressive support, you also have the ability to be really aggressive at this stage of the game, and a Morphling/Crystal Maiden dual lane can score first blood as easily as a Chaos Knight/Wisp can. Judge the strength of your opponents in lane – will you be able to do the damage to bring them down? If they have spells like surge or purification, chill out and focus on farming. If you're against a solo lane Keeper of the Light, murder that old man without remorse. Make sure you're not getting distracted too much by the kills, however. Gold is king, and if you're missing lasthits you'd better make up for it with some extra gold from an assist at the very least.

One important thing to note at this stage of the game is that you should make your choice of first item pretty quickly as Morphling. There will be more on this in the items section of the guide, so we'll let it suffice to say for now that if you want to go for a linken's, the early perseverance can be an incredible laning item (the earlier the better!), but if you're saving your gold for something else big it's just a waste of money. Make this decision preferably by the time you have enough gold to buy the ring of health, if it's possible.

Goals for the early game: Get farm, get levels. Be aggressive if possible.

Early – Midgame (Levels 7 – 11): During this stage of the game, replicate allows you to move easily around the map without sacrificing your farming time. This is such an important skill that it's covered in more detail in its own section below, but I'll talk about it here a bit too. Replicate allows you to find farm all over the map, and waveform lets you do it quickly, so your goals at this point should be much the same as the early game. Gold is your best friend – the faster you can get up your big items, the more effective they will be.

Your extra levels in morph let you be even more aggressive at this point in the game as well. You're almost unkillable as long as you maintain your mana pool well, and waveform is even better than it was when you got first blood on their offlane, making you an awesome ganker as well as an incredibly safe farmer, even in places other heroes would usually worry. Don't lose focus though, since gold is still your primary objective. You have the ability to farm faster than almost any other carry at this point in the game, so abuse it heavily.

This is when your split push ability starts to show itself, too. Waveform can bring down an entire wave of creeps really quickly, and lets you push into towers without too much fear of ganks as long as you have mana for a waveform and a teleport scroll. If you're given the space, don't be afraid to push into a tier 2 tower, even this early in the game.

Goals for the early – midgame: Get farm, get levels. Make your presence known on the map. Push towers.

Midgame (Levels 12 – 16): This point in the game is when Morphling truly shines. You have hopefully had the time to build up a couple of core items, and adaptive strike is starting to do serious damage now that you have a decent amount of agility. Waveform is still a pretty strong nuke, and replicate's duration and cooldown decrease at level 11 lets you be even more everywhere than you were in the early – midgame.

At this stage, you should be focusing more on being a presence in teamfights and tower pushes (alone or with your team) than you have been previously. You have a lot more presence in this stage of the game than most carries do, so abuse that by forcing them to take fights when they're at a disadvantage. Single heroes are food for you now, and you can be all over the map with good use of replicate and teleport scrolls, so take advantage of that ability. Don't lose sight of the fact that you're a carry, however – falling behind on your items at this point in the game will result in a crippling weakness that you can't overcome, and you still need to find farm wherever possible.

If you find yourself with the opportunity, don't feel like this stage of the game is too early to consider doing damage to their tier 3 towers. You're unlikely to be able to take a barracks at this point in the game, but a lone Morphling knocking on your back door is enough to force a good number of teleports back (or risk losing the single hero who came as well as the rax), and opens up a lot of space on the map for you to do other fun things, like farming, killing Roshan or ganking whoever didn't go back to the base. And as we've already been over a few times, Morphling's pretty hard to gank even if you're playing pretty aggressively, so you're a lot safer pushing deep into their base than a lot of carries would be.

Goals for the midgame: Take teamfights, take towers. Abuse replicate to make sure you don't fall behind on farm. Gank where you can.

Lategame (Levels 17 – 24): During this stage of the game, you need to assess your team's lategame strength against theirs. Around level 16, the true lategame hard carries are just beginning to come into their own, and if given enough space during this time they'll get so fat as to ruin any hope of you ever taking their barracks. So you need to think – am I going to be able to win this at level 25? Remember, Morphling doesn't scale as well as other carries do in the lategame, so if you're up against a Spectre who has had even an alright game, the timer is on. You need to end the game before they get too scary for you to finish.

However, if their lineup is based around a carry that you can compete with, then you have a bit more breathing room. If you're pretty sure you'll be able to win, it's not a bad idea to just farm up enough items to do it safely, so you don't need to be so aggressive as you would otherwise. If it's going to be close, you need to do something to ensure their carry is weaker than you at the point when you two are all that matters – ward his jungle, gank him lots and pressure his base so he doesn't have time to farm, but don't fall behind on your own items or it's all for naught.

Goals for the lategame: Assess your lategame strengths. End the game if necessary. If not, get farm, get map control. Don't let their carry get fat.

Ultra – lategame (Level 25): At this point, much of the game is going to come down to how much farm you have, and whether it's enough to take on the enemy carry. If you've done a good job in the lategame, you won't get to this point against a 6-slotted Faceless Void or Spectre – so I'll assume you're playing against a carry you can compete against in the ultra-lategame, and you both have around the same amount of farm, no matter how fast you got it.

Your split push becomes a huge deal at this point in the game. The safety Morphling has while split pushing carries even until this point in the game, and a fully farmed Morphling with boots of travel can easily put a ton of damage onto a tier 3 or a barracks and escape from almost anything that teleports back to deal with him. You're probably the only hero on your team who can do this safely, so it falls to you to make sure your lanes are always pushed towards the enemy base.

The most major change in your mindset when you reach this stage is obviously going to be the fact that farm is no longer as important for you. Always ensure you have buyback, but beyond that, your focus needs to be on split pushing and making sure you're there for teamfights. If all has gone well for you, you'll be one of maybe two heroes on your team who's capable of winning fights, and if you're not there you could easily lose a teamfight and not be able to stop them from just ending the game. Getting caught out by something you can't escape (a chain hex from a Tinker, or even something as small as a well-timed orchid) can also mean you're unable to attend a crucial fight, or put your buyback on cooldown for it, which can be just as bad.

Goals for the ultra-lategame: Split push, win teamfights. Make sure you have buyback at all times.

Solo Mid Morphling

Early Game (Level 1 – 6): Like a hard carry Morphling, your focus during this phase of the game should be mostly on your farm. Waveform gives you great rune control without missing out on lasthits or experience, and can also lay down some good harassment at early levels, but without items you're still not much more than a walking, tanky waveform, so unless you see a really good kill opportunity on your sidelanes and you have an opportune rune, use them to dominate your lane and give you the mana to keep spamming out waveform through bottle charges.

Using morph to gain some early lasthitting strength is exceptionally strong in midlane as well. There will be more on this in the skills section, but for now, I'll just say that you're at a lot less risk of dying quickly in midlane, so your HP pool can be a bit lower to grant you a lot of lasthitting strength in the early laning phase. When combined with waveform, you can dominate against anyone less than a very strong mid, and ensure yourself a lot of safe, early creeps.

Goals for the early game: Get farm, get levels. Gank if you see a good opportunity.

Early - Midgame (Levels 7 – 11): With some more levels, Morphling becomes an excellent ganker. Tower diving is easy with replicate, waveform and morph to absorb and avoid tower shots, as well as providing deadly chasing power and plenty of damage when other heroes are still a much lower level than you. Using replicate to be in a number of places at once makes you a strong surprise ganker, and the early advantage you get from successful ganks can quickly snowball you into your first big item.

Don't lose sight of that goal though – as always, you need items to truly be effective, so make sure you're still making money. Farm whenever you don't see an opportunity to gank, instead of spending all your time trying to make those opportunities happen (like a hero like Pudge would in mid). You're perfectly happy to go into the midgame without a huge advantage as long as you still have a good level of farm.

Goals for the early – midgame: Get farm, get levels. Abuse your level advantage to gank aggressively. Don't waste time.

Midgame (Levels 12 – 16): By this point, you should be getting up your first big item, and your ganks are starting to be really scary. Morphling at this point is a force to be feared – where other gankers start to see themselves falling off a bit as their targets gain levels and items, Morphling's damage output at this point in the game can be high enough so as to devastate even high-HP heroes, and completely destroy squishy supports. Abuse your advantage and try to snowball your way into ever more items.

You can also start joining in on pushes more at this point in the game – earlier in the game, it's not as worthwhile since you'll be splitting your otherwise solo experience with other heroes, but at this point continuing to extend your level advantage isn't as amazing for you as getting more and more items. Make sure you're not missing out on too much farm by using replicate well (again, more on this in its own section below).

Goals for the midgame: Get farm, get levels. Take part in teamfights and tower pushes. Gank unsuspecting enemies.

Lategame (Levels 17 – 24): At this point, your role begins to synch up pretty closely with that of a hard carry Morphling. Your presence is a necessity in teamfights – without you, your team is relying solely on your hard carry to deal damage in teamfights, and even if he's got his core items up already he would still prefer to be farming alone, only coming in when necessary. You need to provide that space for him by doing the things he would normally be doing – you do more physical DPS than most midlane heroes at this point, so you can take on that role in teamfights and skirmishes easily.

Your split push isn't going to be as strong as a hard carry Morphling since you want to be present more in fights, pushes and tower defenses. However, this doesn't mean you shouldn't be split pushing, as long as you make sure to be there when your team needs you. Split pushing is quick, easy gold as long as you're safe about it, and in the downtime between fights and ganks you should still be looking to pressure towers by yourself or with a team member or two.

Since your team isn't relying on you to be the sole source of physical DPS, you don't need to be as focused on your farm as you would in the first position, but you need to pay attention to it still. As always, an underfarmed Morphling is (almost tautologically) not nearly as devastating as a well-farmed one, so make sure you're at least keeping up, if not outstripping your enemies' gold per minute.

Goals for the lategame: Play the hard carry in teamfights. Split push. Find farm wherever possible.

Ultra-lategame (Level 25): At this point in the game, you're again going to act much like a hard carry. You won't have quite as many items as a hard carry would, unfortunately, but that doesn't mean you aren't still scary. You can easily wipe out a couple heroes on their team with ease if you find the right opening, and deal a lot of sustained DPS in long teamfights, as well as being able to replicate their carry (or yours) for a bit of bonus damage . Focus on making sure your carry has room to deal the insane damage he can deal by taking out key squishy heroes quickly, using waveform to get right in close.

Split pushing is even more of a priority for you now as long as you manage to be in all the fights that happen. You can easily put enough pressure on to take a barracks alone uncontested, and you should be looking for opportunities to do this whenever you can. Don't let them push out of their base comfortably. Make absolutely sure, however, that you don't miss a crucial teamfight – if you're trying to take a rax and five of them are trying to take your throne, they will probably win.

Gold is more important for you than it is for a hard carry at this point – you're less likely to have 6 items than they are, and until you reach that point you should still be trying to get as much gold as you can. Finish up as many big items as you can. You scale better into the lategame than almost any other midlane hero does, so take advantage of it if you get this far into the game.

Goals for the ultra-lategame: Take out key heroes in teamfights. Split push. Find farm until you finish all your items.

V. MORE FRIENDS - REPLICATE

As alluded to in the previous section, replicate is one of the most useful abilities in the game. This section will cover some of the many uses of replicate, and show you how to use it to its maximum potential.

Replicate's most useful feature is the ability of Morphling to take his replicate's place at any time. Used correctly, this enables Morphling to basically have a global teleport available for 150 mana, and at max level it's available almost all the time. However, the difficult thing about using it is the built-in delay required for the replicate to walk to a spot – you need to know where you want to be anywhere between 15 seconds and a full minute ahead of time, and also take care the replicate doesn't wander into any weird spots on the way. That being said, making a replicate of a team member allows you to stay with them constantly, without leaving your lane or any lasthits until it's absolutely necessary.

Keeping a replicate with your team throughout the midgame enables you to split push with an instant out if you get caught, as well as an instant in if your team gets jumped, which is what makes him one of the strongest split pushers in the game. You never have to leave your team, but again, you get solo gold and experience from (ideally) an empty lane, while also applying pressure to somewhere other than where your team is.

In midlane, making a replicate of the enemy hero and sending it to scout the runes is a great way to guarantee yourself rune control even if you have no wards, or if the enemy mid is guessing where the rune is – keep your replicate there, and deny the rune if you have to. Even if you don't get it, he won't either, and if it's not where he guessed, you can just go get it after you waveform through the creep wave. Also, that same replicate can be used for surprise ganks, since unless they see it coming they'll think you're still farming midlane while you set up on them unawares.

Especially useful right when you hit 6 is the ability to make a replicate of your lane partner (or enemy), teleport home, regen all your health and mana and replicate back to lane without missing any lasthits or experience once again. Also, if you're mid, as a bonus you can fill up your bottle while you're home.

Somewhat more situationally, replicate is also a good chasing tool if you need a good chunk of extra distance and you have the mana to spare. Make a replicate next to a hero (it has really good range as you level it up!), and instantly jump beside them for a good helping of surprise Morphling.

In a 1v1 situation early game (or in a teamfight later on), making a replicate of another hero who does large amounts of damage can be incredibly effective as a way to get some extra DPS to bring down key heroes. Exceptional targets for this use of replicate are heroes with good on-attack effects like Antimage's mana break or Phantom Lancer's juxtapose, as well as simply heroes that do tons of damage. If you replicate a team member, it can also have the bonus effect of making enemies blow spells on the replicate before they realize it's an illusion, since replicate takes normal damage rather than increased damage (as is usual for illusions).

One last benefit of replicate is that it can provide your team with useful auras from the other team that you don't have, like vlads, assault cuirass or radiance, which can be greatly beneficial to your team in a fight.

VI. DIDN'T YOU SEE ME WAVING? - SKILLS

Ability: Target Point
Range: 1000
Radius: 200
Damage: 100 / 175 / 250 / 325

Mana Cost: 140 / 155 / 160 / 165
Cooldown: 11 seconds

Waveform is Morphling's bread and butter skill. The ability to reposition himself, and be invulnerable while doing so, is invaluable, allowing him to escape from ganks with ease, or chase down a fleeing hero. The damage makes it valuable long-range initiation in the midgame, and also lets him get up close and personal so his 350 range is less of a disadvantage. It lets him clear through creep waves easily, making him a dangerous split pusher and letting him find his farm quickly and safely. Waveform is one of the skills that makes Morphling able to do everything that he does, useful in a myriad of ways.



Abilty: Target Unit
Range: 600 / 700 / 800 / 900
Stun Duration: 0.25 to 0.75 / 1.5 / 2.25 / 3
Damage: 20 / 40 / 60 / 80 + (0.25 to 0.5 / 1 / 1.5 / 2) * Agility

Mana Cost: 100
Cooldown: 10

Adaptive strike is the ability that allows a Morphling with a lot of agility to deal incredible magical damage to a target, as well as providing an interrupt to channeling. Especially in combination with ethereal blade (more in the items section later), adaptive strike and waveform combined with a few rightclicks from a well-farmed Morphling can rip through the HP of anyone who's not incredibly tanky, letting Morphling fatten his targets up from range before diving in for the kill and the subsequent 4v5 teamfight with waveform. On top of this, when you've morphed a lot of strength up (ie. you're trying to escape), adaptive strike becomes a strong knockback and stun, letting you get away much easier if you have the mana to spare (or no more strength left to morph).



Points Per Shift: 2
Shift Rate: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 shifts per second
Bonus (Agility/Strength): 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

Mana Cost: 30 per second

While morph may look like two separate skills when you first glance at it, both of them level up together, and provide their passive bonuses for each level you put into morph. This means that taking morph at level one provides you with 3 agility and strength, granting a much-needed 3 base damage increase, as well as 57 hitpoints, which is no laughing matter at that level. Also, this allows you to morph some points into agility in the pool early on, leaving you a little bit lower on HP but giving you the base damage to compete in lane with someone who's trying to deny you (or completely out-lasthit someone with weak base damage).

The most important thing to note about morph is that the strength you remove from agility will not increase your current HP by a percentage, but will instead give you a flat 19 HP per point of strength, meaning that if you have time to start your morph going a bit, you will be incredibly tanky by the time enemies wear through a lot of your health and mana. This works the other way as well – morphing to agility will remove 19 HP per point of strength lost, meaning if you're not at full HP you will drop extremely quickly, so be safe! A nice thing about morph, though, is that it's easy to get started, since you can use it even when you're stunned, meaning without a hex or a silence, it's very difficult to kill a Morphling who doesn't want to die.



Range: 700 / 1100 / 1500
Illusion Duration: 30 / 45 / 60

Mana Cost: 25
Cooldown: 80

Morph Replicate Mana Cost: 150

Since this skill has its own section above, I won't talk too much about it here. Let it suffice to say that it is one of the abilities that truly makes Morphling into the hero he is, and learning to use it well is one of the most difficult things to do as a new Morphling player.

VII. ONE WAVE FOLLOWS ANOTHER - SKILL BUILDS

In this section of the guide, I'll provide you with a fairly standard Morphling skill build, with a couple of variations, as well as an explanation of that build. I'll talk a bit about a few things you can do with his skill build that are viable as well, but aren't usually used quite as much due to a few weaknesses.



Reasoning: At level one, you can take either morph or waveform. Morph is generally taken to boost your lasthitting power to a sustainable level, as morphing six points out of strength and into agility can be enough to get you up to a point where you can compete without risking too much of your life to early burst, as long as you can afford to morph it back when you need it. If you're really feeling risky and you want to control your lane really hard, you can morph even more so you out-damage almost anyone, leaving you with low HP but the ability to absolutely dominate the lasthitting in your lane. This is usually done more in mid, but can be done in the safe lane as well. Taking waveform at level one allows you more survivability from ganks, but leaves you with really weak base damage at level one which can really throw off your early game rhythm.

Waveform is maxed first for obvious reasons – morph doesn't really give you a whole lot at early levels until you're getting ganked by numerous heroes, and even then a couple levels is usually sufficient. Adaptive strike does pretty poor damage until you have a lot of agility, and also doesn't provide the utility of waveform, so we leave it for later, around the time when we're getting our first items up.

Replicate is taken when possible for the sustain it can give you in lane with tp-replicates, as well as the overall potential of the ability.

Variations: Some possible variations you can do on this include avoiding skilling replicate, which is not awful if you don't have anything to use your replicate for at early levels. However, morph doesn't give you a whole lot at that level – neither does adaptive strike. Replicate is usually your best bet, but if you don't feel like you're going to use it even for the free back-to-base it gives you, it's reasonable to skip it.

You can also skill adaptive strike over morph – whether or not you take one level in morph or not is preference. This leaves you with a bit more nuking power in the early-midgame, but a lot less survivability, and adaptive strike doesn't provide you with a great amount of damage until you have a decent amount of agility. Overall, morph is usually preferable, and the single point is almost always necessary for the lasthitting aid, but if you feel you need a bit more burst this is an alternative.

VIII. I'M SPENDING MONEY LIKE WATER - ITEMS AND ITEM BUILDS

Which items you choose to get on Morphling can, of course, vary a lot depending on the course of the game and the composition of both teams. This section will lead you through some of the item decisions you should be looking at making throughout the game as Morphling, and why you should be making those decisions. Also, since Morphling is a hero who becomes exponentially better with items, it's important to note the emphasis on item timings especially in the midgame items section of the guide, as your items are exponentially more useful the earlier you get them, and it starts with getting your core items up quickly enough for you to be effective.


Starting Items: Your starting items as Morphling should be geared towards getting your farm and levels up as quickly as possible, while also providing you enough regen to get aggressive in lane if you feel like you have the chance. As such, most of your first 603 gold should go towards early stats to aid you in lasthitting and (obviously) enough regen that you can stay in lane for an extended period of time.



Early Slippers of Agility provide you with a much-needed boost to your base damage, which is still not great even with your first skill point in morph, and can also be built into a quick wraith band to further aid you in that respect. If you feel you're going to be able to be aggressive in lane (or you're going to need waveform to escape lots), a couple of Clarities will provide you with the mana for more than one or two waveforms, as your starting mana isn't great. If you don't feel you'll need the mana regen and you'd rather go for a more passive lasthitting build, feel free to trade those clarities for an extra slipper as in option 2, or even for a Ring of Protection like option 3 suggests, for a faster aquila or tranquil boots (if you're going to be against a lane that will require them). Obviously, option 4 is a more midlane oriented build, going for the fastest bottle you can reasonably pick up. Be wary though – you will sacrifice some of your early lasthitting if you go for the quick bottle. At least one Iron Branch is almost always necessary at the start of the game, since the early couple of stat points frequently can spell the difference between escape and death, and also provides you a bit more lasthitting damage and mana to use your spells in the early game.


Early Game Items: In the early game as Morphling, you want to focus on mostly the same things as you did at the beginning of the game. Sustain in lane is still extremely important to you, as you want to be sitting and farming safely, as well as have the freedom to use your spells aggressively or defensively if possible, and this point in the game is where you can start thinking about building up towards your first big item as well.




Ring of Aquila is an amazing early-game pickup for Morphling. He uses the mana regeneration incredibly well, and he also frequently already has a wraith band for the bonus stats (which he loves), so the logical choice is, like many agility carries, ring of aquila.

Magic Wand is a great item on almost every hero early in the game. If you're around enemy heroes for a reasonable period of time, you're sure to gain a few stick charges, and if you get ganked they can easily save your life, granting you both extra health to get away and extra mana, with which to morph even more health to aid your escape. If you suspect your game is going to be extremely passive and you're not going to get a lot of chances to gain stick charges, your gold may be better spent towards one of your bigger ticket items, but a magic wand is almost never a bad investment.

Boots of Speed are, as again on any hero, one of the best items you can get in the entire game. The movespeed is incredibly valuable for both chasing heroes and for escaping, so if you plan on being involved in any sort of combat early on in the game at least raw boots are absolutely a must.




Both Ghost Scepter and Perseverance can frequently be considered before finishing your boots, depending on which of their big brothers you plan on building later on in the game. Ghost scepter provides you those few valuable seconds to get your morph started when you get ganked in the early game, and can build into an incredibly quick ethereal blade (which can also often be considered before you finish your boots, but it gets its own paragraph later on so we'll save that for then) to devastate fragile heroes on the enemy team. Perseverance provides you with a ton of that lane sustain you so desperately need on a more farm-oriented Morphling, and should definitely be built at this stage of the game if you're planning on building it into a linken's later.

Bottle is, obviously, great for a solo mid Morphling, with excellent rune control through wave and replicate at higher levels, providing you with more regen for your money than any other item could hope to.

Hand of Midas is a little bit more awkward to build on Morphling. He doesn't benefit greatly from the attack speed (he likes raw stats a lot more), but if he's given the dead time he needs for the midas to become effective, it trades a lot of his early-midgame strength for an incredibly strong 30-minute, game-ending Morphling, and also slingshots you into the lategame pretty well. It does kill a lot of the time when you could otherwise be more powerful, however, and it delays your big items by a fair amount.

Urn of Shadows is a great item on a Morphling who's getting a lot of kills, granting mana regeneration, strength (which can be traded easily for agility at this early stage of the game for a bit of mana), and a ton of HP regeneration. It's not a great item on a Morphling who plans on farming a lot, however, as you won't have the opportunity to accrue charges and there are far more efficient ways to get the stats and mana regen that you want.


The Boots Dilemma: Which upgraded boots to buy is one of the first big decisions you should make in any game of Dota. On Morphling, sometimes you'll want to be thinking about getting one of your big items up before you finish your boots, but there'll be more on that later – most of the time, before you finish anything big, you're going to be finishing your boots. So, which of the five boot choices is most effective on Morphling?




Arcane Boots aren't great for a hard carry or solo mid Morphling. He doesn't require the buff to mana pool and area mana regen that arcanes provide – he can get more than enough mana for his requirements through other sources combined with an arcane boots charge from a support here and there. Overall, the stats provided by the other boot choices far outstrip the benefits provided by arcanes (unless you plan on playing support Morphling – hilariously unkillable, if not insanely effective!)

Phase Boots provide Morphling with something he already has tons of through waveform – mobility is one of his strengths, and it's usually not necessary to build phase boots on top of that. If you feel you really want that extra little bit, or you want the early game damage (usually not a great tradeoff on a mid – lategame hero like Morphling who prefers stats), phase is a viable option, but not usually a great one.

Boots of Travel are great on Morphling lategame, adding insane amounts to his split push ability as well as opening up an extra inventory slot no longer needed for teleport scrolls. However, as a first boot choice they're not usually great, as the investment is a lot bigger than other boots, delaying your big items by a while, and they provide less useful stats in the early game.

Tranquil Boots are a pretty good option on a Morphling who's not having a great time in lane. If you're up against a lot of harassment, tranquils provide better regen than even a ring of health, allowing you to stay in lane and get closer and closer to your next big item. They also have the benefit of being able to be disassembled later on, allowing you to use the boots over for a different set of boots and sell or reuse the rings. Also, they're very cheap, which lets you get them early against a hard lane.

Power Treads are usually the option of choice. The attack speed scales well into the lategame, and the bonus stats are a Morphling's best friend, so overall treads will usually provide you more benefit than any of the other boot choices in the early game, except possibly tranquils. Be sure to trade them in for boots of travel once you have enough items to compensate for the slight stat loss, though!


Midgame Items: Your midgame items are much more situational than your early game items were. While before you were mostly focused on getting enough farm to reach your strongest point in the midgame, now is when you have to make the decision of what you spend your gold on to enhance that strength the most. As such, you need to assess the game state a lot more, and make your choice based on that – what each of your usual midgame choices are best at will be discussed more in each of the item's sections.




Linken's Sphere is, at its heart, an extremely farming- and split-push-oriented item. The incredible mana and HP regeneration allows you to abuse replicate and waveform to their fullest extent, flying across the map and finding farm and tower kills wherever you see an opening. The stats are, as always, incredibly strong on Morphling, and the spellblock provides you with the opening you need to escape incoming ganks you were unable to avoid otherwise. It also provides you with some teamfight strength, though not as much as other items in this section do – if they have a crucial disable that you think is going to be targeted on you more frequently than not, linken's can provide a crucial advantage in teamfights even if you don't want to take advantage of the farming capability it provides. However, the true strength of the item is that it accelerates the rate at which his other items come up – so if you're destined to be the scariest carry on the map and want to get there faster, linken's is an excellent choice to do so. With a reasonable amount of farm, you should be able to get your linken's sphere by 17 or 18 minutes, and almost definitely by 20 pretty easily – any more than that and you're going to delay your other big items significantly. Since it's a farming item, you want to be taking advantage of it as early as possible.

If you want to be more aggressive, ganking and taking out key heroes insanely quickly in teamfights as well as doing insane amounts of physical damage, Ethereal Blade is the item for you. Amplifying your adaptive strike and waveform damage by 40%, as well as adding a decent chunk of damage to your adaptive strike's base damage, provides you with an insane amount of spell damage to dish out, frequently killing them outright, and putting you in position to finish them off easily if not. Ethereal blade can often let you snowball out of control in the midgame, dominating even enemy carries before they get their core items up and keeping them down while you get bigger and bigger. An ethereal blade at about 15 minutes can be truly devastating – if you find yourself delayed to the point where you don't think you're even going to be able to make a 25 minute eblade, other heroes will have more than enough time to get up the items required to survive your combo and destroy you afterwards. Consider leaving your ghost scepter as-is, or even waiting until you have enough for the eaglesong first, if you think you might not be able to get it as quickly as you wanted. Also, this is one of the cases where skipping upgraded boots is a good decision, since a REALLY fast ethereal blade can win a game outright if used well.

If you feel the need to push more heavily and earlier while also providing you with more teamfight presence than an early linken's will, you don't feel like your eblade will be able to do enough damage to be significant (ie. their team is really tanky), or you simply won't be able to get anything else with the big buildups required in the time period you really need them up in, Manta Style can provide what you need. The illusions can give you enough DPS to take down a tower quickly, and if left unchecked in a teamfight can do the same to a hero, while the bonus stats and movespeed give you more survivability and chasing power in sustained teamfights. It also has the benefit of being cheaper than a linken's while still providing much of the same benefit with regards to pushing. Manta is also a great followup to either linken's or ethereal blade, since it combines nicely with both the active on ethereal blade and your adaptive strike, and provides you with more of the teamfight presence you lack a bit of with linken's. Timings on manta are a bit looser than on other items, as you should be participating in fights with even just a yasha, and your GPM can be much more dependent on how your team is doing during the midgame. However, any less than a 25 minute manta is still going to cripple your lategame fairly badly.




Black King Bar can be a great first item on Morphling against a really magic-heavy team – if they don't have much that beats BKB, it's cheaper and more generally useful than a linken's would be, providing you with tons of room in teamfights and a bit of extra strength and damage to play around with. It's a more defensive option than an ethereal blade, but an exceptional teamfight item if you feel the need to go that route.

Drum of Endurance can provide you with some awesome, cost-efficient stats in the early-midgame. While you'd usually prefer to be going for bigger-ticket items, especially on a solo mid Morphling drums give you a ton of early teamfight sustain and damage for very little money, and can let you come online a lot quicker than you normally would.

Necronomicon, as a substitute for manta or in combination with it, can really add to Morphling's split pushing ability, as well as being pretty cool in teamfights if you can micro the dudes well enough. Also has the bonus of giving you true sight when it's upgraded, meaning no more pesky Nyx Assassin ganks surprising you with vendetta and mana burn.

Lategame Items: Your lategame items should focus on making you into the hard carry you dream of being. Stats are your best friend, as they are on any hard carry, since more mana, HP, armor, damage and attack speed are exactly what you dream of having. If you didn't pick up a BKB earlier than this, you should consider doing so again before you start on any of these items, and probably again after every single one of them, since it's almost always a good item even if you didn't necessarily need it earlier on. Also, upgrade your treads into boots of travel at some point after your third or fourth item.




Butterfly is every agility carry's best friend. The damage, attack speed and agility are second to none for someone who can use them well, and the evasion in the lategame can provide you with what you need to go toe-to-toe with another hard carry. As a bonus, it again has really good synergy with both ethereal blade and adaptive strike, which is never a bad thing.

Eye of Skadi grants you tons of those stats we love so well, as well as a bonus boost to both mana and HP, making you really difficult to kill lategame while giving you enough mana to do anything you could possibly want to do and a good chunk of bonus damage and attack speed to boot. On top of all this, skadi gives you an awesome move and attack speed slow on-hit, which when combined with butterfly makes you a vicious anti-carry. It also has the benefit of stacking with lifesteal, which means you can build...

Satanic. When you do this much damage, lifesteal is the last piece of the puzzle you need to be truly unkillable. Pop your BKB, or just wait out their disables, and then hit satanic and anything in sight to return to full HP instantly. Satanic, used correctly, is basically a free cheese on your carry every thirty seconds, which is one of the best actives in the game – however, it's not great if you don't deal a lot of damage, so don't get this until you do.




Monkey King Bar gives you a ton of damage as well as an excellent proc for even more damage. If single-target DPS is what you require, either this or Daedalus should be your first choice. MKB has the benefit of allowing you to seige tier 3 towers without a miss chance, which is great for a hero like Morphling who frequently wants to end the game before enemy carries get truly scary, and daedalus is better depending on how much damage you do, so if you're looking for more midgame strength, MKB is a pretty good option – but if you want to do tons of damage on top of the metric shitton you already do, daedalus will make you eat through enemies' HP.

Heart of Tarrasque will give you tons of tankiness, which you can shift into agility for extra damage and a bit of a buffer when you want to go back to strength. However, be warned that you can't shift any more strength than you have base strength, so strength items won't give you as much potential DPS as agility items will – however, they can give you comparable DPS and more potential strength to go back to, so if you need to survive insane numbers of things and being Morphling alone isn't enough, heart can be a great choice.

Assault Cuirass isn't usually an awesome option on Morphling lategame, as he would rather get his armor and attack speed from agility. However, if there's another carry on your team who'd really benefit from the AC aura (if you were mid, for example, and your Antimage is insanely fat), this can be a great pickup for both you and them.

Pipe of Insight is, again, not the best way for Morphling to get tanky – there are much better options to make him more survivable. If you're not the one that your team is relying on for primary DPS, though, and you really want to break down the base quickly, or your team is facing a ton of spell damage in teamfights, this isn't a terrible choice of item by any means.

IX. YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY! - FRIENDS, ENEMIES AND FOOD

As all heroes do, Morphling has some natural enemies and friends. This section will reiterate a lot of stuff that was mentioned in the when to pick section, but will focus more on specific heroes that are exceptionally good or bad for a Morphling to have in his game.


Friends: Most of the heroes that Morphling loves to have on his team are the heroes that give him the space he needs in the early game, which are great lane supports. Heroes that complement his aggression well in lane are great for Morphling at early levels, as are heroes that provide him with the sustain he needs to get his early farm without trouble. Also of particular note are aura heroes that can make Morphling scale a little better into the lategame, often providing the extra punch you need to win late teamfights.



Crystal Maiden is the classic friend of a carry who wants to be aggressive at very early levels. Earthshaker fills a similar role, though more of a niche since he's a melee hero and laning him with a melee carry can be tough – however, Morphling complements that weakness nicely and it can be an excellent lane. Omniknight is covered in the same way for his range deficiency, as well as providing an awesome addition to your waveform nuke damage since it brings you right up close. Purification is obviously excellent regen as well, making Omni an awesome choice to pair with Morphling.

Wisp and Keeper of the Light won't allow you to be quite as aggressive, but they will provide you with everything you need in terms of HP and mana (or just mana, in the case of Keeper, but it's still a great farming aid, and blast + wave can be enough to instagib a hero at level 3 or 5, which more than makes up for it). On top of that, their ultimates will let you be even more present on the map earlier than replicate would (since it's difficult to use precisely before level 11), and add to your midgame presence as well, which is an amazing complement for Morphling.

Beastmaster falls under the aforementioned 'aura heroes' category. The extra DPS from his aura can add to your lategame damage enough to tip the scales in your favor. Vengeful Spirit fills a similar niche, but can be laned with Morphling and provide the aggression that he so loves in spades, which makes her an excellent choice for a laning partner where Beastmaster kind of needs to be played somewhere else (though it's not impossible to lane them together).


Enemies: Strong gankers with a long-lasting silence can cause a lot of pain for a Morphling. If you manage to get your morph started before the silence hits you, it will continue, though you won't be able to turn it off. However, if you don't get it started, you won't be able to start it until the silence ends, by which point it's possible you'll already be dead, with neither morph nor waveform to save you. Also of particular difficulty to deal with are strong early-game pushers, if they're trying to take towers as early as they can, since Morphling doesn't really have what he needs to deal with them yet. Finally, carries that are made to be true lategame forces will dominate Morphling at that stage if they're given the space, and there will be little you can do to stop it.




Clinkz and Riki will find you wherever you try to farm, silence you, and kill you before you can escape. Both of them are extremely potent with even less items than you, and during the stage of the game where they want to be picking off lone heroes, you want to be alone lots, split pushing and finding the farm you need to dominate them minutes later. Silences are the only disable that will give you serious trouble at this level since you can morph through most stuns, and sheepsticks are unlikely to be a problem for you at this point, while built-in hero hexes are much easier to see coming and avoid than the inevitable orchid from Clinkz.

Death Prophet's silence may be easier to dodge than Clinkz' and Riki's, but she also has the advantage of being able to take towers as soon as she hits level six, and either force Morphling to leave his lane to deal with her and her team properly or completely destroy all of his farming space. Leshrac, while not having a silence, is another great example of a hero who makes you do things earlier than you really wanted to if he's played properly.

Faceless Void and Spectre are, quite simply put, the most exemplary of the heroes that will be able to truly dominate you come lategame if they get any space at all. Chronosphere will either kill you or force you to morph away all your agility before you manage to even get a hit off, and dispersion will reflect huge amount of damage back on you – potentially too much for you to kill her before you die. Tinker gets a special mention here because he's one of the heroes who's best able to create that space for the heroes that need it, with march of the machines stopping you from ever taking the base until they're well and truly ready to fight you head-on.


Food: Heroes that you love to see on the enemy team are a bit more difficult to pick out for Morphling. One of his great strengths is how many different things he can do, meaning he doesn't really mind what heroes are on the enemy team as long as he has space to do his thing. However, some heroes stand out as particularly nice to play against, and the most prominent of those is squishy supports, especially those without hard disables, as they're unable to stop you from dominating them over and over again, and make building an ethereal blade an amazing option that can just continue to feed you gold and levels. Also easy for Morphling to play against are other midgame split-push heroes, since he can at least match them at their own game (if not outstrip them) and provides more lategame advantage than most of them do. Finally, in mid, heroes with weak rune control provide Morphling an awesome advantage that he can capitalize on really easily and either dominate his lane or all the other lanes.




Venomancer and Lich are both exceptionally squishy heroes with no hard disables, which means Morphling can take advantage of the slightest misstep in positioning to absolutely destroy them without consequence. Also, since it's easy to waveform away from them, they're not particularly effective in ganking him either, meaning they provide little difficulty in a game.

Nature's Prophet is a hero Morphling can trade pretty well with. While it's impossible for him to outpush the Nature's Prophet without some help, it's way easier for Morphling to gank than it is for him to be ganked, with adaptive strike to cancel teleport and simply overall more damage than Nature's Prophet is capable of doing. The fact that Morphling can hold his own in the pushing game and win in almost every other respect means Nature's Prophet is simple for you to deal with.

Invoker, as mentioned above, won't be able to contest you for runes in midlane at all, and his early weakness will let you score a lot of first bloods with the rune control afforded you by waveform. Unless he goes quas wex, he won't have ghost walk up in time to deal with an early double damage rune combined with a waveform on top of him, giving you a nice little advantage in lane early on.

Luna and Drow Ranger are very similar in that they're both again very squishy, while also providing awesome replicates with their auras and straight physical DPS. With your superior spell damage, you can shred through well over half of their hitpoints before they're able to attack you, and then steal half of their damage as well as their aura to finish the remainder. Though you do have to be careful of Drow's silence, it's usually easy to avoid as long as you have vision of her coming in, and it'll only be enough to kill you for a short while, while you destroy her in the lategame. Also, she suffers the same problems as Invoker if you face her in midlane, which makes it a simple lane for you to win.

X. I GO - CLOSING THOUGHTS

Though Morphling has fallen a bit out of style in professional Dota lately, he's still an incredibly powerful hero, and on top of that, he's one of the more enjoyable ones as well. Learning to play Morphling well is a really fun challenge should you choose to undertake it, and if you're a more experienced Morphling player reading this guide, hopefully you learned something from it as well. If you managed to make it this far into this lengthy a document, props to you! And thank you for reading. May you be a better Morphling for it.

Note: A replays section is coming soon, I played a lot of games of Morphling to get back into playing him for this guide but all the replays from that I meant to use are outdated now because it's been so long since I started working on it =P I will have replays of both myself and pro players soon, stay tuned!