Murky has always hung on the fringe of viability. Despite a brief (and frankly terrifying) stint at the top of the meta just after his rework, subsequent nerfs and changes to mercenary camps have steadily pushed the fish back down into obscurity. In essence, Murky is only picked when you can't get hold of Azmodan or Zagara, and even then his relative uselessness in teamfights makes him a risky choice. It's a shame, because he's arguably one of the most unique heroes in the game, albeit one of the most annoying as well.

All of this means that much of the community has largely forgotten about the fish—and that’s a good thing, because when you actually look at some of the numbers on him, it's pretty eye-opening. Just as an example, a talented, empowered slime does 325 damage—only 20 less than Kael’thas’s Flamestrike. In addition, it slows for 30%, has half the cooldown, and doesn't cost a boatload of mana. Historically Murky has always boasted some rather insane stats, balanced only by the fact that in teamfights he pops like a fishy balloon. So how do you turn the fish from frail into fearsome?

Synergy with Ana

You can probably tell where this is going. Nano Boost on Murky sounds like a horrible idea on paper because if the fish dies then your ult is instantly gone. However, given the right talents and a quick boost, Murky turns into statistically one of the highest DPS champions in the game, and even more surprisingly one of the harder champions in the game to kill. Ana also boasts the longest effective range of any healer in the game, meaning that when you send in Murky they can't focus her down too easily, especially not with a 30% slow and a very angry fish in the way.

This is far from a meta strategy, of course. It spikes hard in power at level 20 but is slightly lackluster until then...but if you've dreamed of wiping out the enemy team with Murky alone, read on.

The Build

A Fishy Deal Killing a minion with Puffersfish grants a stack of Bribe. Use 8 stacks to bribe a mercenary, instantly defeating them. Does not work on bosses. Maximum of 32 stacks of Bribe.

Slime Time Quest: Slime enemy heroes that are already Slimed. Reward: After Sliming 15 heroes, increase Slime's bonus damage by 125. Reward: After Sliming 30 heroes, increase Slime's slow amount to 30%.

Black Lagoon Increase Slime's radius by 30%.

March of the Murlocs After 0.75 seconds, Murky commands a legion of murlocs to march in a target direction, each one leaping onto the first enemy hero or structure they find and slowing them. Murlocs deal 50% damage to structures. 110 second cooldown.

Fish Tank Murky is healed for 25% of the damage he deals with basic attacks and basic abilities.

Fish Oil The Pufferfish casts Slime at its location upon landing.

Making Inky Reduce the cooldown of Slime from 4 seconds to 2 seconds.

Level 1: A Fishy Deal

Murky's early game is pretty rough, and a fishy deal will help get you through it. It also has a hidden passive that makes enemies ignore you in favour of killing the pufferfish, which makes it a lot easier to build up slime stacks.

Level 4: Slime Time

This is where your damage is. You don't need to stack this as fast as possible since you won't need the extra damage until later in the game, but you should aim to have the damage part done by levels 10-13. Use your pufferfish to bait enemies into taking a couple of slimes while they kill it, and you'll find it relatively easy.

Level 7: Black Lagoon

This is one of those talents you think you can do without, and it's only when you use it that you realize what you’re missing. The biggest advantage is that extra range puts you out of auto range for most melee heroes, which will make stacking Slime Time much easier. In teamfights, it's also a big help in catching multiple enemies.

Level 10: March of the Murlocs

If they're running Tracer, Genji, Illidan or any other squishy diver, then you should still take Octograb. However, March of the Murlocs benefits from Nano Boost more and allows you to contest certain objectives pretty effectively. It also does an insane amount of damage (125 per little murloc) with pretty much no consequence for using it. Murky you can literally run into the enemy team, use March and die immediately afterwards, giving the enemy team a tiny amount of XP and a much larger amount of damage. You can start putting Nano Boost on Murky now, but it's better to wait for level 13 since his survivability at this point is still very questionable.

Level 13: Fish Tank

Here's where the real fun begins. Fish Tank gives you 25% healing from any damage, and this applies to Nano Boost damage as well. When you combine this talent with the extra slime damage and the cooldown reduction (which brings slime down to about 2 seconds), you'll not only be doing frankly stupid amounts of damage, you'll be healing stupid amounts of health along the way. Stand in a group of enemies, mash your face into Q, and watch as they wonder why this fish just won't die. Of course, you do still have a small health pool, so getting CC'd is a big issue, but some clever use of the bubble can help to mitigate this.

Level 16: Fish Oil

This seems an odd choice, especially when on paper it offers the least outright damage of the three. The reason you take this is to allow you to apply slime at range, since realistically the pufferfish itself is too unreliable without Octograb to guarantee its damage. Nano Boost lowers the cooldown of Pufferfish enough to cast it twice, which is two extra splats of damage.

Level 20: Making Inky / Big Tuna Kahuna

Here's where you need to pay attention to the enemy team comp and how much burst they have. Is all of their damage front-loaded? If they've got heroes like Nova or Li-Ming (or god forbid Alarak), then you'll need Kahuna to stop yourself from getting instantly blowing up. However, if their damage is more sustained (Valla, Raynor, even Greymane to an extent), then you can afford to go for Making Inky, which drops your Q to a 0.75s cooldown under Nano. Coupled with the healing you also get from Ana's level 20 Nano talent, and you can heal to full health from one Q alone. If they can't kill you in that window, then you can proceed to laugh at their slimy corpses.

The Strategy

As tempting as it may be to stick a syringe in the fish and yeet him at the enemy team, Murky is far from invincible. Yes, he's a lot tougher to kill than most mages with nano, but he's still...well, Murky. Keeping Ana nearby helps immensely, but that doesn't mean he should try to 1v5 all the time.

The age-old question remains: isn't Nano better on literally anyone besides Murky? Besides it being insanely funny to watch, there is actually a legitimate reason why this works. One of the biggest advantages of Nano on Murky that you don't necessarily need a second healer supporting. Most "hyper Nano carry" comps tend to draft a second healer on top of Ana (typically Uther or Whitemane), but Murky's survivability means he's fine with just Ana on her own, and against three or less enemies he can even hold own without any healing darts.

He also functions as a pseudo-taunt. The moment anyone sees a Nano Boosted Murky, they are instantly gripped by an irresistible urge to kill it. It's the same with most heroes but amplified to the point where ranged carries will be happy to trade autos with you until they die.

The biggest advantage is surprise. Simply put, nobody ever expects Murky to be useful in a teamfight or even hard to kill. That alone will allow you to straight up win late game teamfights, even without the support of your team. At the very least, you'll do a significant chunk of damage for no more investment than a single ult, since killing Murky brings more pleasure than experience.

Other Synergies

There are some heroes that go better with the fish than others, especially ones that cover his weakness to being kited.

ETC

To be honest, you could put the bulky tauren on any strategy. Mosh Pit aside, he is excellent at sliding in and bouncing enemies about and makes for a very good distraction while you set Murky to work.

Zarya

Mother Russia can be a potent addition to the right team. The bubbles are very welcome, and a good Gravitron will have the enemies wondering where their health has gone. She also offers some pretty respectable damage for an off tank when fully charged.

Maiev

Maiev tends to be one of those hit-or-miss heroes. Tether into Cage can be game over or it can just make an enemy tank very annoyed as they bounce around...it depends on the player. But hit that juicy cage one time and you'll understand why she’s on the list.

Garrosh

Believe me when I say that throwing Murky into the enemy team is hilarious. He's also similar to ETC in that he's good at wading into the enemy team and being as distracting as possible.

Zeratul

This sounds odd on paper, but Zeratul brings a lot to the table in conjunction with Murky. Void Prison is a fantastic setup, but more importantly, he helps immensely with getting through the earlier stages of the game. Wait for the enemy to commit resources to killing the fish and lurk around the other side of the map to force some easy 3v4 situations.

Uther

I will say that this is complete overkill, but if you’ve made it this far, I imagine you're not too fussed about that by this point. You thought an invincible Genji was bad? You ain't seen nothing yet.

Kael'thas

The original KT loves slowed enemies and will happily take the opportunity to lob a few bombs and spells into the pack of heroes focused around Murky. It also gives the option of a Nano-Boosted Pyroblast for when you want to make people quit the game.

Conclusion

Is this something you should rely on in ranked? No, probably not. Assuming you make it to Level 20 with Murky on your side, you do have some very hard counters (looking at you Alarak). Is it something you should do? Absolutely, if only for the comedy factor. It's one thing to win a game, but when you do it by team-wiping them with a Murky...believe me when I say it makes victory that much sweeter.

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