EPTAfter taking some time with Morales, I’ve got a guide ready for her. As with my other hero guides, I like to keep them short, touching on a few important points rather than mixing them in amongst a sea of things you already know or can easily figure out.
Things for non-Morales players to know when playing with/against a Morales
* Despite being immobile Morales can (and generally should) talent heavily into survivability. With good positioning this makes her a very effective distraction instead of the easy target she’s perceived as. In SoloQ you probably aren’t going to meet that many well picked, well built, *and* well positioned Morales players, but if (1) you don’t have a heavy dive comp, and (2) Morales isn’t getting picked easily, it’s probably not your best option to go headlong after her.
* Medivac has super long channels on both arriving, and being able to take off after arriving. I really dislike this ability and wouldn’t get it at all for SoloQ. The delays make it impractical for picking a good location for it to land as well. Cheesing with it for keeps might work with Sylvanas or a combination of a few other heroes, but it’s not effective enough to win you games you wouldn’t win anyways.
Talents
Talents on the same tier are in order of raw strength. If they don’t suit the situation, you move to the next listed talent on that tier.
(1)Trauma trigger/Prolonged Safeguard (4) Advanced Block/Bioshield (7) Clear!/Mule/Cleanse (10) Stim drone (13)Couples Therapy (16) Second Opinion/Shield Sequencer (20)Caduceus 2.0
(If you want to know the logic behind talent choices, it will be in the comments)
General things to keep in mind with Morales
* Morales is good at 2 things: (1) pimping out a snowbally melee brawlers like Illidan and Sonya, and (2) countering sustained damage like Raynor and Zagara. Because Stim Drone is her only viable heroic in my opinion, if you don’t have a melee assassin to pimp out, you need to at least have an auto-attacking range carry (or Muradin for perma-stuns) to make Morales pickable. She’s not a versatile pick-whenever-you-want support, but she is highly effective in her niche.
* She is squishy, but that’s to your advantage. With the correct talents she’s durable enough to survive all but the heaviest of dives, and her perceived squishiness is a tool you use to bait enemies in. The key to turning this weakness into strength is proper positioning, which stems from a good understanding of both team compositions, so even the best players need to spend a second during load screen looking at (1) what threats are on the enemy team, (2) what peel/frontline barrier you have on your own team, and (3) how much your carries are going to need your body in front of them providing them with a barrier v. how much they will just need your healing. With all of these factors in mind, you should be able to position precisely relative to all the relevant components of the game, and be an effective Morales player, since this is a main skill to playing this Hero.
* Stim Drone has a channel time and short range, making it easy to disrupt, even accidentally from CC just thrown into the middle of the team. It’s easy to let yourself get kited to death trying to catch up to your melee assassin, so if that’s happening either stim a little early, or say something to them so they don’t go too deep without it.
* As to whether Morales is mana hungry or not, I'd say she maybe struggles a little early but its not really that bad. Other supports struggle more; using mana efficiently is part of good supporting. The much bigger deal is her scaling on the heal. It’s 20 + 20 HP per level. That means it’s 40HP at Level 1, and 80, double, at level 3, then doubles again (160) at level 7, all for the same amount of mana. Keeping that in mind, save your healing early game as much as possible for another level, instead of topping people off right that second.
Morales play
* Caduceus Reactor is good for laning, decent for teamfighting, just remember you have to take damage, then get out of danger to get anything from it. Taking damage meant for teammates, then healing yourself for free with the passive is one way to save on mana, as well as gain value for your team in a fight by soaking damage they would've. It sounds dangerous because it is, but with practice it becomes very doable. The more drawn out fights become, the handier this is, the same way that Muradin and Brightwing benefit from those scenarios.
* Q is a nice way to heal, the range once you've targeted someone is much more than the hitbox actually shows. In practice it’s better sustained healing power than Malf gets because his healing is spread out over many targets with Tranq, and therefore loses a lot of efficiency unless the enemy team doesn’t focus their damage.
* W pretty straightforward- you just have to anticipate where burst damage is heading, and throw it on pre-emptively. Put it on melee allies prioritized by how much damage they deal, and squishies out of position/with a melee on them. Most of the time that means throwing it onto Illidan/Sonya along with everything else.
* E Grenade is why I like medic. The playmaking potential of it is fantastic because of it's range, but the ballistics of it definitely take practice to do so effectively. Mainly it’s good for causing mayhem in the enemy team that your Illidan/Sonya can take advantage of, but you can also throw it to detonate right behind people to knock them back into you to make your own plays for the team. Of course, it's also a good peel tool.
* Stim Drone The channel on this is pretty obnoxious, which led me to go super aggressive to get it on a melee in some QMs and die several times (when first getting used to it) to test the boundaries of how far up to be, and get a better feel for its range/channel time. That way I’m able to be in the right place and not kite myself when it matters. I recommend doing the same thing if you start running into that problem. The cooldown is long, so save it for teamfights otherwise you won’t have it when you need it most, and due to the nature of how it works you’re rarely going to find plays to make with it elsewhere anyways.
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