If you don’t have heroes that can deal with him and he’s played well, Morphling is a carry hero that is infamously hard to kill in the mid and late game. He can deal, or absorb, enormous levels of harm because of his ability to naturally switch between agility and strength. Stats from things cannot be shifted with attribute shift.
To compensate for what he lacks having completely shifted either agility or strength, Morphling typically purchases as many stat goods as possible. First and foremost, you should max out Waveform and Attribute Shift since they considerably increase your mid-game resistance to death and let you enter and exit battles nearly completely freely.
Morphling Item Build
Starting Items
- Tango
- Healing Salve
- Faerie Fire
- Wraith Band
- Circlet
- Iron Branch
- Enchanted Mango
Early Game Items
- Magic Wand
- Bottle
- Ring of Aquila
- Power Treads
Mid Game Items
- Linken’s Sphere
- Dragon Lance
- Ethereal Blade
Late Game Items
- Butterfly
- Eye of Skadi
- Satanic
- Silver Edge
- Boots of Travel
- Moon Shard
Situational Items
- Manta Style
- Black King Bar
- Hurricane Pike
- Diffusal Blade
Morphling Spells Explained
Waveform
Hurrying forward, Morphling injures everyone he comes across and becoming invulnerable. Waveform offers you the greatest early game kill potential, thus you should max it first. You may alternatively max Attribute Shift if your lane opponent isn’t there or if you have a free-farming lane. Waveform can be used to avoid or disrupt missiles like the Homing Missile and Storm Hammer. Aim Waveform somewhat behind the opponent to increase the likelihood of hitting them. In addition, doing this will put you in their escape path and let you to strike them multiple times.
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Adaptive Strike
Depending on whatever portion of the spell is performed and the value of the relevant attribute, morphling targets an enemy causing damage or stunning and knocking the victim back. Agility and Strength make up the two components of this magic. Strength stuns and knockbacks the victim based on your strength value, and agility deals more damage the more agility you have. If one quality is fifty percent greater than the other, the spell has its greatest effect. Together with the spell itself having a 10-second cooldown, casting one of the spells causes the other to cool down for three seconds. Because Waveform is a more dependable and practical spell in the early and mid game and because using this spell successfully requires the stat shift rate from Attribute Shift, it gets maxed last.
Strength’s knockback can be creatively applied to drive pursuing foes over a cliff or to push heroes like Pudge away so he can’t approach near enough to Rot your friends. Continually modify your properties to make your casts work even after they cool down.
Attribute Shift
Whichever stat he chooses to change gives Morphling either strength or agility. As it can provide you more damage to last-hit with in the early game and makes you much harder to kill when ganked, this is typically skilled first and maxed second. While channelling, you can use these spells; but, while stunned, you cannot. But if you were shocked before you performed Attribute Shift, you will keep doing shift, therefore switching to Agility if you are going to be stunned is highly dangerous.
You can effectively heal up and adjust your percentage HP by shifting between full strength and full agility while you’re low on HP. The rate at which this changes characteristics makes it largely only useful at level 4 attribute shift. You won’t be able to turn it off and carry on with Attribute Shift if you become silent during shifting. It is not possible to change characteristics from stat items. Still, they are crucial goods because they increase your HP, armor, mana, and damage—all of which are not lost when changing attributes. This implies that if you are fully morphed strength, you will always have a little more damage or, if you are fully morphed agility, you will not be killed as readily. You can also utilize Waveform more with the more mana, and having more armor is always beneficial against physical harm.
Morph
The basic spells and stats of the target enemy hero are copied by morphling. You get recover your pre-Morphing HP and mana when you return to Morphling’s form. Throughout the spell, you can freely morph between the target and Morphling and use your equipment while you are Morphed. You disjoint projectiles when you return to your own form, hence you can utilize it to avoid many spells and attacks. Seek for heroes in team battles that have powerful basic spells you can utilize to get kills or keep your team alive. When you get low, morph back to ensure you don’t die, but remember that you can always switch back to the morphed target—this is helpful when the spells come back off cooldown. High skill ceiling, although with sufficient practice, this ability may elevate you from a novice to one of the top Dota 2 players in the game.
Talents
Level 10: +350 Waveform Range or +10 Agility
Should you need to chase or flee foes more readily, the additional Waveform Range can be useful. You can get away with the extra agility if your team is loaded with slows or stuns or if you are not in serious danger of dying. Because it is deemed additional stats, this talent’s agility cannot be converted into strength.
Level 15: +30 Attack Speed or +15 S Morph Duration
You can farm in the middle game a little quicker and in team battles do a little more damage with the attack speed. The extra time can be quite potent, though, if there are heroes on the opposing team with powerful spells like Tiny or many supports. Although there are few circumstances when this is the true and the attack speed is nearly always a better choice, it could be beneficial to obtain the extra duration if you are positive that you will select the Morph Targets Allies skill at level 20.
Ultimately, the longer time often prevents you from striking and killing opponents, and it doesn’t really go with Morph’s style. That is, in order to maximize the utility of the hero during a battle, you often Morph to perform a certain spell or combo and then Morph back after a few seconds.
Level 20: Morph Targets Allies or Waveform Attacks Targets
If you have companions with potent basic spells, morph targets them can be a good talent pick. That would be worthwhile, for instance, if you had a Tiny on your team. As you’ll be fighting an enemy, you’ll most likely not be able to duplicate someone from full HP. Furthermore, and this is generally really powerful, you will be able to employ more spells in more circumstances. But if you have enough agility changed, the Waveform talent lets you farm creepwaves quite easily—you can nearly, if not totally, one-shot them. Naturally highly powerful, this raises your farm rate dramatically and also enhances your combat damage, particularly against illusion heroes.
Level 25: +3 Multishot Adaptive Strike or 2 Waveform Charges
The Multishot Adaptive Strike picks two random adversaries in the area and applies the Strike (agility or strength) of your choice. This can be advantageous if you require more control over your team or if the opposition team is more susceptible to magical damage. It is quite impossible to kill you with the 2 Waveform charges, which also enable you to pursue opponents in team battles. You will be able to deal far more damage in battles as well, particularly against illusion heroes, if you selected the skill that allows you to attack foes during Waveform. Because you may use the spell through creep-waves and jungle camps a lot more frequently with the additional Waveform Charge, farming also happens significantly more quickly.
What Items Work on Morphling
Starting Items
- Tango
- Healing Salve
- Faerie Fire
- Wraith Band
- Circlet
- Iron Branch
- Enchanted Mango
Morphling’s damage at level 1 is very low, so in addition to attribute shifting to agility, you will greatly benefit from having more stats. For the same reasons listed under the spell Attribute Shift section, any stat items that you can include into your early game items are beneficial. Going mid with Morphling will require less regen because you can obtain a Bottle. You can shift to full agility and recoup a sizable portion of your HP pool before shifting back to strength, so in most games you don’t need much regen.
Early Game Items
Magic Wand
When you might not ordinarily have the mana to Waveform, a Magic Wand allows you a little more sustainability and mana regeneration. If you have lots of agility, the HP regen it offers is more important because it will restore a bigger portion of your HP pool more quickly.
Bottle
Morphling may spam Waveform to last-hit creeps, push the wave out, harass or maybe kill the opponent with the plenty of mana regeneration provided by a bottle. If you have many points in agility rather than strength as well, you can restore a good amount of your HP.
Ring of Aquila
A Ring of Aquila gives a Morphling a lot of stats, some armor and damage, and mana rebuilding. This is fantastic on Morphling since it gives you really inexpensive and useful early game stats.
Power Treads
Given their stats and attack speed, Power Treads are always the preferred footwear on Morphling. These increase your farming speed, increase your combat damage, and offer extra damage that is not lost to attribute shift.
Mid Game Items
Linken Sphere
With so many excellent stats for every attribute, so much HP and mana regeneration, and the spell block passive, a Linken’s Sphere is an excellent item on Morphling. You are already quite difficult to kill, but the spell block passive increases your survival even further and lets you roam the battlefield, waveforming and attribute shifting as you see fit.
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Dragon Lance
Your attack range is increased and you have extra strength and agility—two qualities that are excellent for Morphling. Not only does this work well against heroes who require more kite, but Morphling’s strike range is incredibly short for a ranged hero.
Ethereal Blade
One of the essential weapons on Morphling, an Ethereal Blade lets you “Shotgun” foes. Your agility Adaptive Strike will function fully if you have 50% more agility transferred than strength. Your agility value from having moved most stats to agi and your plenty of extra stat items will cause the Ethereal Blade to do a tremendous amount of damage. Furthermore increasing the damage of the Adaptive Strike will be the enemy’s decreased magic resistance debuff. Most foes will let you to 2-shot them, and if they survive the first blast, a Waveform will typically kill them off. If the enemy also possesses a magical damage nuke, you can either wait for the Ethereal Form to end and constantly attack them or Morph into them to finish them fast.
Apart from the extremely powerful active Ethereal Blade, it also offers +10 strength and intellect and +40 agility, which is a huge amount of stats and damage. Not to add that this item makes Morphling among the most difficult Dota 2 heroes to defeat.
Late Game Items
Butterfly
Having the Ethereal Blade already provides you a great deal of extra damage and agility. The movement speed will enable you to reposition yourself after using Waveform aggressively or you may just utilize it to help you escape. The evasion tanks you up against physical damage dealers.
Eye of Skadi
A Morphling’s strongest late game item is an Eye of Skadi. More stats than any other weapon implies that, no matter whatever attribute you have shifted more of, you will have greater HP, damage, mana, and armor. The MS/AS slow also facilitates easier pursuit of opponents and 1v1 combat with opposing carriers.
Satanic
An additional excellent choice for strength stats is a Satanic. It will restore your health by lifesteal and grant you extra 500 HP and 50 damage. Because you’ll lifesteal from the enormous amount of right-click damage you do, you may have a lot of points moved to agility without worrying about being burst down as easily.
Silver Edge
On Morphling, a Silver Edge may be a highly powerful item, particularly when up against heroes with potent or obnoxious passive abilities. It offers you excellent statistics together with a lot of damage and attack speed to boost your DPS. With an ethereal sword prepared to seek for victims to your “Shotgun” combo and score numerous easy kills, you can Shadow Walk across the enemy jungle while Attribute Shifting a lot of points in agility.
Boots of Travel
Given that you can easily Waveform creep-waves, Boots of Travel can be a useful late game item to get on Morphling. Mostly, you should pick them up when your inventory slots are getting low. Its faster movement speed is also really helpful on Morphling since it makes it easier to place Waveforms and escape with Attribute Shift.
Moon Shard
Picking up a Moon Shard as your seventh item will boost your DPS when you run out of room in your inventory and don’t need to switch out any more stuff.
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Situational Items
Manta Style
If you need to get rid of silences, a Manta Style is a great tool. It is straightforward to build into and gives you a wealth of statistics for every quality. You prefer to acquire a lot of stat items, hence the illusions will also be very powerful because you can change your attributes to create some really damaging illusions. Pick of the highest caliber for Morphling and most other Dota 2 heroes.
Black King Bar
You will occasionally require a BKB to get through magic damage nukes, stuns, or slows. Most games let you get away without one because Attribute Shift, Waveform, and Morph make you extremely difficult to kill. You will most likely require a BKB, though, if you notice that you are losing too many battles.
Hurricane Pike
Great stats, increased attack range, and a highly powerful active against heroes you might not be able to defeat 1v1 without a Hurricane Pike. Though Waveform normally makes it unnecessary to force oneself out of danger, there are times when hitting a farmed carry from a distance can be rather beneficial.
Diffusal Blade
If you require the mana-burn versus heroes who depend on mana, like Wraith King or Medusa, a Diffusal Blade can be a respectable item on Morphling. One can also have great success slowing down heroes who move quickly. Diffusal Blade gives you great agility and a little intellect, which increases the frequency of spell casting.
Difficult Match-Ups for Morphling
Ancient Apparition
Ice Blast will stop you from accumulating any HP, which is quite bad for Morphling for two reasons. First off, when Attribute Shifting, you won’t be able to recover any HP, thus you’ll basically need to be really strong nearly the whole time. If you ever have a lot of agility transferred, you will also need to be careful because AA could hit you and possibly kill you very easy if you are scouted with a ward when farming. As it keeps you from regaining any HP when you return to your original form, AA also somewhat negates your ultimate.
Silences
The spells Morphling depends on to survive ganks and team-fights are all unavailable to him when silences fall. It is possible to silence you when Attribute Shifting to strength, though. You will be forced to keep increasing HP as a result, and you will eventually still be difficult to kill. You should grab a BKB or a Manta Style, or in certain games both, if you are encountering multiple silences.
Squishy Heroes
Every floppy hero without above average magic resistance is a prime target for Morphling. Mid- and late-game combos of Adaptive Strike and Ethereal Blade can quickly eliminate them.
NYX Assassin
You can take a lot of damage back from NYX Assassin with Spiked Carapace. It can also throw off your ‘Shotgun’ combo. In team-fights, his Mana Burn also does wonders at keeping you from using Waveform as much.
Burst Magical Damage
Spells and weapons like Dagon or Laguna Blade that deal burst magical damage work wonders against Morphling. This is so they may burst Morphling down before he has a chance to attribute shift power and survive. Particularly true in conjunction with silences or hexes.