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Welcome to Nikobaby's Book of the Morphling, a hero guide part of the Book of Dota series!
Here you will find all the information you need to learn to play Morph on a high level – from drafting and builds to the optimal playstyle in different lanes and situations. We hope you’ll enjoy this guide and find it useful!
Draft: You are a position 1 hero, so try to pick in the later picking phase. Try to avoid silences and instant disables, but otherwise you are relatively hard to counter.
Early Game: Focus on your farm. Get some sustain items and in the later laning stage start pushing out the wave and farming the jungle to maximize your GPM.
Mid & Late Game: Continue focusing on your farm, but once you get your core items you can join your team to secure some kills with your shotgun. Think about the best targets to use Morph on. Never play too aggressively – secure kills and take objectives if you are able, but don’t be afraid to go into the late game.
Morphling is a hero who has the unique ability to swap his strength and agility which opens a world of possibilities for a player with quick fingers. His stats are also pretty good with a top-tier agility gain. Along with that the hero is interesting to play and is regarded as one of the best late game carries while still being able to contribute early on.
MAJOR
Strong in all stages of the game: While many carries struggle in the early game, Morph can contribute in early fights as well thanks to his high damage and 2 magical nukes. Later on, he scales very well with items and is one of the strongest late game heroes.
Hard to kill: Even though he was nerfed in 7.07 (Attribute Shift can no longer be toggled while disabled), players with quick reactions can still utilize this ability along with Morph (the skill) to survive through an amount of damage that almost no other hero can withstand.
Shotgun: A farmed Morph can one-shot most heroes in the game with Ethereal Blade + Adaptive Strike, AKA the shotgun combo.
Strong laner: If your teammates secure your first 2-3 levels, you can switch a lot of strength to agility and control the lane very well with the huge attack damage. There are opportunities for kills as well.
MINOR
Good farmer: Although far from heroes like Anti-Mage and Alchemist, Morphling is not a bad farmer. His Waveform allows him to quickly clear creep waves and he can morph everything into agility while farming in the jungle.
Attribute Shift abuse: You can abuse cheap healing items like Healing Salve, Magic Wand or shrine to heal to full HP at almost any point in the game. Building lifesteal also has a huge effect.
Flexible and fun: The Morph ability unlocks many different plays depending on the game and the heroes in it. Being able to toy with your health, damage, attack speed and armor is also satisfying.
MAJOR
Item dependent: Even though the hero can be strong from early to late, he needs a lot of items to stay relevant. He also needs a considerable amount of farm before he hits his peak.
Not good against illusions/minions: While Waveform is not bad for killing low HP minions like Eidolons and early game illusions, Morph struggles later on against strong illusion heroes like Phantom Lancer, Chaos Knight, Terrorblade and can’t clear big minions like Chen’s or Lycan’s (the level 20 talent helps a lot with that though).
Weak against early pushes: Morph is not bad in early skirmishes but he can’t deal well with teams who group up and push early into the game.
Requires quick reactions and experience: Attribute Shift and Morph are not abilities you’ll be able to master on your first try.
MINOR
Very slow: 280 movement speed – you will feel like a turtle until you get your hands on Yasha/Manta and Travels.
Short attack range: 350 to be precise – far from good.
MATCH ID 4171459881
Replay
NikoBaby plays an extremely impressive Morph (25-2-20) after a relatively hard laning stage. On the 10th minute mark, he has 36 last hits and is the least farmed core hero on the map. By investing in a quick Mask of Death for farming and by staying alive (he died only once after the laning stage) he is able to catch up and eventually overtake the net-worth graph.
A great replay to watch if you want to learn how to recover with Morph after a bad laning stage.
MATCH ID 4065268827
Replay
Topson plays a flawless mid Morphling against VGJ Thunder at The International, where OG used mid Morph frequently as a counter to mid Alch (likely because of his high armor to mitigate Acid Spray harass and easily sustain his HP, high damage to contest last hits and good single-target harass thanks to Adaptive Strike).
Great rotations from the supports (and NP) allow OG to win their lanes extremely heavily, which secures them a 17-minute victory. Topson finishes the game with a stat of 10-0-6 with the most hero damage in the game – 13.8k, more even than his Ursa (a traditionally much more aggressive hero in the early-mid game).
MATCH ID 3768972838
Replay
A flawless performance by Pajkatt on Morph against COL. He manages to deal by far the most damage to the enemy team as well as the most tower damage. He goes for a standard item build. Notice how he manages to use his ultimate to morph into the enemy Gyro and use his Flak Cannon to deal AOE damage - something Morph lacks. Another thing worth noting is that Morph and ET have a cool combo – ET can place his Spirit on top of Morph’s shotgun target to remove its magic resistance and increase the damage of the Eth Blade + Adaptive Strike.
Morph is a good carry hero, he’s not bad early and he can turn into a monster in the mid/late game. He’s good in small fights where he can use his Attribute Shift to stay alive and not so much in large team fights (at least not before he gets a couple of big items). His high physical damage and attack speed make him good for pushing as well, so split-pushing and pushing with your team after a successful team-fight is always an option.
If the enemy doesn’t have many disables and they’re not going to group up and push early on, Morph is always an acceptable carry pick.
This is your preferred lane mainly because it offers a safe farming spot for the first 10-12 minutes and Morph usually wants to be supported at least in the first 2-3 levels. You can also land kills on the enemy offlaner if your supports set you up with a slow/disable.
Not nearly as good as the safe lane but still an option. The disadvantage here is that most heroes will be able to harass you with their superior range and your first levels will be much harder. The jungle is also farther away from the lane (compared to safe lane) so you can’t maximize your farm. Nonetheless, the position is viable if your supports help you early on and the matchup is favorable (i.e. your opponent has mostly physical damage and a short range). Morph has high damage and great armor, which means he can often win last-hit wards. Adaptive Strike also helps in single target harass or securing the ranged creep.
Using Adaptive Strike as a long stun and Attribute Shift for survival, Morph can be played as a support and offlaner as well. This guide will only cover the carry builds and strategies, however, as supporting with Morph is much rarer and not well-established.
Good lane supports: Shadow Shaman, Ogre Magi, Crystal Maiden, Witch Doctor, Skywrath, Lion
It’s always good to have supports with slows/disables on the lane so you can try to kill the enemy offlaner with your high attack DPS, mobility and nuke damage.
Space-creating cores: Dragon Knight, Death Prophet, Tiny, Ember, WK
It’s good to have an active second core hero who doesn't need a lot of farm to start fighting and creating space. Morph is a true 1st position hero, having another 1st position in your team will make things hard because you will have too many space-takers and too few space-creators.
In fights, Morph works best with a core who can stand on the frontlines. The heroes above are not only good at taking fights early, but they are very durable and can afford to enter the engagement first. This will allow the Morph to stand back and choose the perfect moment to join the fight and deal damage.
Disables/silences: Puck, Death Prophet, Skywrath, Night Stalker, Lion, Shadow Shaman, Earthshaker, Disruptor, heroes with Orchid/Hex
You will always have to play against some stuns or silences and most of those can be countered with Manta, BKB, Linken or other items. However, you don’t want to play against too many of those – it’s much easier if the enemy team only has 1-2 heroes with disables so you can watch out for them only.
Nuke Damage: Zeus, OD, Techies, Sky, Tinker, Tiny, Ursa, Lina, QoP
Morph starts all fights on low HP and survives by shifting more attributes into STR. This is a big problem if you are playing against potent nukers, because they can bring you down with a single combo without giving you the opportunity to shift attributes. Naturally, such heroes become less of a problem the more survivability items you have.
Ancients Apparition OR a hero with Spirit Vessel
AA stops entirely your Attribute Shift healing, rendering the entire ability useless if you’re hit with Ice Blast. Spirit Vessel is similar as it blocks 70% of the healing.
Illusion heroes: Phantom Lancer, Chaos Knight
While you’re still able to kill their team, you can’t deal with illusions at all due to your lack of AoE damage. Diffusal on PL could also be a problem because you need your mana to stay alive.
Axe has a reliable disable that could be a problem if you don't manage to use Attribute Shift before he disables you. His spins are strong against you in the lane due to your short range. Most importantly, his ultimate could nuke you down close to the beginning of the fight (you usually stay on low HP and a single nuke could bring you in the Culling Blade HP range), which means staying alive thanks to Attribute Shift is harder.
Phantom Lancer: While you’re still able to kill their team, you can’t deal with illusion heroes at all at all due to your lack of AoE damage. Diffusal on PL could also be a problem because you need your mana to stay alive.
CK: The nuke of CK could be hard to deal with especially in the mid game. More importantly, it's hard for you to clear his illusions.
Gyro: Flak Cannon is arguably one of the best spells to steal as Morph – you have great single target right-click damage and Flak Cannon allows you to deal it in a huge AoE.
Lifestealer: Rage gives you a free BKB. Moreover, Morph is a low HP high armor hero – exactly the opposite of what Naix counters with Feast. Waveform also gives you a good tool to kite him.
Jugg: Similarly to Rage, Jugg’s spin gives you a great source of magic immunity. The Healing Ward is also a good source of HP sustain for your whole team when you’re pushing.
Alch: Morph is a strong lane counter to Alch. First, he has high armor, which mitigates the Acid Spray harass. Second, he has high attack damage, which helps him win the last hit war. Third, a few levels in Adaptive Strike are great for harassing or securing the ranged creep last hit. Later on in the game, having high nuke damage is always useful against Alch.
Sniper: Morph is a mobile hero and he can easily get to Sniper on the enemy backlines (especially with the two Waveform charges and the Waveform range talents). Moreover, Sniper is a great target to Morph into – the high attack range and great attack animation work wonders with Morph's huge AGI.
Terrorblade: Morph has amazing stats, which means he can use Terror’s illusions to their full capacity. Moreover, Reflection is a great spell to have against Terrorblade himself – the mirror images will deal a lot of damage to him and kill his illusions.
Phoenix & Undying: he can easily get to the Tombstone or Egg and kill it with his very high attack speed. With his ult, he can also steal the Tombstone and use it for his own team.
Morphling dissolves into liquid and surges forward, damaging enemy units in his path. Morphling is invulnerable during Waveform.
Cast Animation: 0.25+0
Cast Range: 1000
Max Travel Distance: 1000
Damage Radius: 200
Damage: 75/150/225/300
Number of Charges: 0
Charge Replenish Time: 0
CD: 17/15/13/11
Mana: 140/155/160/165
This ability is very versatile, you can use it to escape, to harass/kill heroes, to farm creep waves/jungle camps.
When you use Waveform, always issue an attack on someone – that increases the overall damage it does to them.
You can also use items like Ethereal Blade or Teleport Scroll while in Waveform.
When you are farming jungle camps close to each other, you can use Wave Form to finish off one of the camps and move to the other one while damaging it. You would usually need to pull the creeps from the first camp to reach the second.
Launches a surge of water toward an enemy unit, dealing base damage plus additional damage based on Morphling's agility times a multiplier. If Morphling's agility is 50% higher than strength, the maximum damage is dealt
Cast Animation: 0.25+0.67
Cast Range: 600/700/800/900
Base Damage: 100
Min Bonus Damage Agility Multiplier: 0.5
Max Bonus Damage Agility Multiplier: 1/1.5/2/2.5
CD: 10
Mana: 80
Let’s talk about the last mechanic a bit. This is important because you can throw an Adaptive Strike and then use Attribute Shift because the damage/stun will depend on your agility/strength at the moment the projectile hits the hero. For example, you chase a hero while you’re at full agility – to catch him you start shifting to strength and throw an Adaptive Strike a second later – all the strength that is gained before the projectile hits will count for the stun. Then you just return to agility to hit him. This is a very nice trick that many Morph players don’t use.
The max stun duration is 3 seconds which means that you can stun a hero who has a disable and then teleport to safety if you’re being chased.
1 value point might be useful early on. For example, at level 8 with Power Threads + Wand, an Adaptive Strike level 1 deals 140 damage – good for killing attempts and the enemies don’t often expect it that early.
Morphling shifts its form, pulling points from Strength and pouring them into Agility. The process is reversible. Additional points in Attribute Shift increase the rate of stat change. Passively grants bonus Agility.
Cast Animation: 0+0
Shift Rate: 1/0.25/0.1/0.04
Points per Shift: 1
Bonus Agility: 4/5/6/7
The 0 mana cost allows you to use the ability in whatever way you like – you can sit at low HP on the lane so you can last hit and deny every creep, to harass/kill the enemy hero, to farm faster in the jungle and it’s basically the source of a huge part of your DPS throughout the entire game. On the other hand, you can heal for 500 (!) HP PER SECOND at lvl 4 Shift.
Take a note that the ability scales insanely well – the difference between lvl 3 and lvl 4 Attribute Shift is a 150% increase. This makes it a strong contender to Waveform in the skill builds.
The ability can be abused to increase the effect of any sort of healing, be it a Healing Salve, Magic Wand, Ring of Health or heals by heroes and shrines. You need to use healing effects while you are on max AGI - this way your max HP is as low as possible and healing effects heal a lot of your HP pool percentage-wise. Afterwards, you can shift back to your preferred STR-AGI distribution.
Morphling changes his form to match the targeted enemy, gaining their basic abilities. Can be toggled for the duration of the ability.
Cast Animation: 0.25+0.1
Cast Range: 1000
Duration: 20
CD: 160/100/40
Mana: 50
The skill can be toggled back and forth until the duration runs out.
It is important to understand how this ability works as it is unique and very versatile. Those things are not its only uses but just general tips. The potential of this ability is huge and only your imagination is the limit.
First of all, both morphing and un-morphing apply a basic dispel – this means you can dispel effects like Cold Feet, Track, Drunken Haze, Frostbite, Corrosive Haze and many more.
Second, Morph can also work as a heal – if you’re at 100% HP and you morph into another hero, you will still have 100% HP. Then you can use that hero to fight and when you morph back you will be at 100% HP again. This is why you want to morph at the beginning of the fight so you can be at 100% when you morph back. This also applies to your mana – no matter how many spells you use while morphed, you will return with the same mana as before (minus the mana cost of Morph itself).
Now let’s talk a bit about morphing into heroes to fight – this is generally not a good idea as you copy their stats. In order to use a hero effectively as a damage dealer, you need to copy a hero who has better stats than you and there is no such hero – Morphling has the best agility gain in the game and the Attribute Shift makes his agility even higher.
So, even though you can copy another carry hero and use him rather effectively, you will never be able to deal more damage than your original form. This is why it’s usually better to copy a hero with strong spells – good examples are Medusa (you can use her shield and then morph back with full mana), Omni (you can repel yourself and it will stay when you morph back), Weaver, Razor (you cast Static Link on someone and it keeps draining damage when you morph back) or just heroes with stun/silence you can use.
While you want to always max Waveform and Attribute shift, Morph’s skill build can be pretty versatile, because all of his abilities can be useful from early on. Waveform gives an AoE nuke for wave clear, Adaptive Strike a cheap source of single target nuke and Attribute Shift - stats and survivability.
His ultimate could be delayed until you intend to enter fights.
Maxing Attribute Shift first gives you the maximum possible AGI to increase your right-click damage (and the damage of Adaptive). More importantly, however, the very fast switching of attributes makes you very hard to kill and helps you abuse it to keep your HP up (use HP sustain at minimum HP).
Prioritizing Adaptive Strike over Waveform gives you a very mana efficient single-target nuke. You can use it in the lane to harass very often (or to secure the ranged creep in hard lanes).
In this example, you take your value point in Waveform very late. If you feel you will need the mobility to survive gank attempts, you can get it earlier.
Maxing Attribute Shift provides the same benefits as in the other build.
The difference is that here you prioritize Waveform over Adaptive Strike. The biggest benefit of this is that you will have a good source of AoE damage, which is very useful for pushing out the creep wave and farming camps - i.e. this is a better build for passive games.
The drawback is that you have lower single target nuke damage and harass. That being said, the mobility you get from the early point in Waveform could be useful both offensively and defensively: to escape gank attempts or to get in position to contribute to a kill attempt by your supports.
+3 Multishot Adaptive Strike
2 Waveform Charges
Waveform Attacks Targets
+30 Attack Speed
+20s Morph Duration
+350 Waveform Range
+10 Agility
Lvl10: The agility is pretty good in the early levels, allows you to farm faster and deal a bit more damage in fights. It is also a small boost for Adaptive and Ethereal Blade later on. The bonus range, however, is also great especially if you need to follow up long-range initiations from your allies or escape mobile gankers.
Lvl15: The bonus duration is great if you have good targets to Morph into. The attack speed is the default option if you don't.
Lvl20: Really hard choice, both of them are pretty good. With Waveform we’re talking about +300 damage increase in the later stages of the game. Waveform will kill creep waves easier and is good against heroes with minions like Lycan, Beastmaster or Chen. Also deals significantly more damage to illusions, although if the PL/Chaos Knight/Terrorblade is very farmed it still won’t be enough.
Morph targeting allies is also very strong as you’re able to better coordinate it with your teammates. You can morph into one of them at the beginning of the fights instead of having to search for good enemies in the midst of battle.
In the end, it’s up to how you feel about the game. If your teammates’ abilities are worth it, you can go for the Morph, otherwise, Waveform is the consistently better choice.
Lvl25: This generally goes in favor of Waveform – allows you to escape ganks easier, to be more aggressive in fights because you know you have another one to escape if needed.
The right-click build attempts to maximize your physical damage output. The idea is to get as much stats as possible early on in order to be able to fight - Dragon Lance, Treads and Wriath Bands is the usual way to achieve this. Mask of Death is your key farming item, and BKB is key for team fights in order to be able to right-click continuously.
Your mid-late game choices are relatively open, but Skadi and Butterfly are standard. Skadi gives loads of stats and helps you stick to your target, while Butterfly is extremely cost-efficient on AGI carries.
Power Treads: the preferred pair of boots in most games because the stats are valuable on Morph. If you’re having a really good game and you’re left to farm as much as you want, you might want to stick with your brown Boots and later build Travels. However, if you have to fight early on, PT is always the choice.
Morbid Mask: Morph has very high right-click DPS thanks to his very high AGI. This means Morbid Mask is one of the most efficient farming items on him - it provides him with amazing HP sustain and allows him to easily farm jungle.
Dragon Lance is a cheap source of attributes and it fixes the attack range problems.
Manta Style gives useful stats and movement speed. Your damage is entirely stats based so your illusions are pretty strong. More importantly, it’s a tool that dispels silence and other nasty spells.
Hurricane Pike gives good stats and provides you with more mobility. Against heroes that want to stick to you, you can upgrade your Dragon Lance right away.
Black King Bar: spell immunity is often needed in the mid/late game. In small skirmishes, you might be able to do well without BKB, but in large team fights, you will be the #1 priority for the enemy team as they know you deal the most damage and you’re also vulnerable if they manage to disable you. BKB is even more important for the right-click build than in the Shotgun build because you want to continuously right-click in fights.
If you need it sooner rather than later, get it before Manta.
Eye of Skadi: it is the largest source of attributes available in one item. You will survive longer and deal more damage. It's crucial for the right-click build because it helps you stick to your target of choice.
Butterfly: good against physical damage cores and boosts your own physical damage a lot. It also provides a huge DPS increase to your Manta illusions allowing you to push towers in no time.
Satanic: usually the last item, it makes you very hard to kill when paired with a BKB.
The goal of the build is to reach Ethereal Blade relatively fast for the Eth + Adaptive Strike (Shotgun) combo. You can rush E-Blade before Linken's, but it is usually a risky option because you need the defensive utility of Spellblock. If you decide to rush E-Blade you won't have the HP/Mana regen from Linken's and you'll be squishier It might be worthwhile to invest in more Wraith Bands and possibly Mask of Death to help you farm.
If you go for Linken's, the extra mana regen will help you use Waveform more often and it might be good to max it for farming purposes.
Your late-game choices are open, but any additional AGI will make your combo stronger.
Power Treads: the preferred pair of boots in most games because the stats are valuable on Morph. If you’re having a really good game and you’re left to farm as much as you want, you might want to stick with your brown Boots and later build Travels. However, if you have to fight early on, PT is always the choice.
Linken's Sphere: has been the preferred first big item for ages, it offers regen on the lane with an early Ring of Health or Void Stone and provides some nice stats. The spell block is also pretty good for Morph – it can block a disable/silence and can serve as an alert for you to instantly start morphing strength. A pretty solid choice.
Ethereal Blade: allows you to quickly burst down an enemy hero and not only supports – many core heroes can go down to a shotgun combo. It’s usually built after Linken and/or Manta. The best part is that it also provides great stats and a ton of agility which doesn’t harm your physical damage potential. It is not 100% mandatory, but it’s pretty damn good. You will sometimes see players build it as a first item (with Bottle for more mana regen), however, it’s not that good of a choice as you want some protection item first and some stats so you can use it more often.
Manta Style: also a great item for Morph. It gives useful stats and movement speed. Your damage is entirely stats based so your illusions are pretty strong. More importantly, it’s a tool that dispels silence and other nasty spells. You can also rush it as a first item if you’re playing against heroes with silence abilities like Drow, Death Prophet, Skywrath. You don’t gain the regen from Linken that way, but it’s better for farm and you need it to survive against those heroes.
Eye of Skadi: usually built after Linken/Manta/Eblade, it is the largest source of attributes available in one item. You will survive longer and deal more damage.
Butterfly: good against physical damage cores and boosts your own physical damage a lot. It also provides a huge DPS increase to your Manta illusions allowing you to push towers in no time.
Satanic: usually the last item, it is great for man-fighting enemy carries when needed.
Infused Raindrop: is a cheap item that helps with mana regen and offers some minor protection against spells.
Blink Dagger: a situational item that can be used to get a better position or to surprise the enemy with a shotgun combo.
Daedalus: another good end-game item, it offers an insane DPS boost which complements your high damage and attack speed.
Monkey King Bar: you usually don’t want to buy it because it slows down your other items but it’s sometimes the only way to deal with evasion heroes like PA. Even against such heroes, however, you might still want to build better items and focus on killing the rest of the enemy team.
The early game of Morphling revolves around farming his core items, bullying/killing his lane opponent whenever possible and eventually picking up small fights where you can use your damage advantage to score some kills.
You’re playing like any other carry with the exception that you can be a bit more aggressive thanks to the mobility of Waveform and the survivability from Attribute Shift.
As we already mentioned, you want to morph some agility so you can last hit and deny better on the lane. If there are no heroes who can burst you down, you can sit with 400 HP on the lane and simply last hit/deny everything. There aren’t many offlane heroes who can contest your creeps.
Later on, when you get to level 5-7 you can start going into the jungle to farm the big + small camp close to the safe lane. Use Waveform to clear the creep wave and then farm the jungle camps while the enemy tower kills your own creep wave. If you do it correctly, you won’t lose many lane creeps and even if you do, you’ll still make a profit. The downside to this strategy is that you don’t control your lane and the enemy offlaner will get farm and levels as well.
You need your teammates to support
you in the first 2-3 levels when you still have no items and your Waveform and
Shift are only level 1.
Once you have level 3-4 with Aquilla you want to maintain a very aggressive position, stay between your enemy and his own creeps so that he can’t take last hits. If he decides to fight you, try to move away from his creeps before you start hitting him so that you don’t break your creep equilibrium. You will usually have more attack damage than him and come on top if you trade hits. Your tangos or salve are more effective as well because you can lower your HP before using them.
If you have a teammate with slow/disable and your enemy is staying close to the creeps, call him for a kill attempt.
Once you get Attribute Shift level 2
(at 3-4 hero level) you become fairly hard to kill if you’re quick with the
fingers. The only way you can die is if the enemies disable you before you can
use the Shift. Even the best players can be killed if the enemy stuns them from
the trees during night time for example and there are many disables with a low cast time and quick projectiles.
This is why you want to consider those things before they happen. Follow your minimap, check for missing heroes. If 2 heroes are missing, think about their potential disable time or damage. If a Lion is missing, for instance, you know he has long disables – that means you want to stay with higher HP than usual.
Don’t forget that you can manipulate your HP for free. It doesn’t cost you anything to morph some strength just in case the enemy tries to gank you. Going into dangerous areas like the enemy shop, cliffs where you have no vision on the high ground or enemy jungle, always try to maintain a high HP pool, even for a short period of time. You can always turn it back to agility very fast and for free. And the risk of death will be minimal.
You
generally don’t want to move from your lane or the jungle until you have Linken
(or Manta in case you’re playing against heroes with silence). Even after that,
you want to continue farming unless your team wants to group up and push a
tower.
You can teleport to help your teammates if the enemy is diving them under your tower. Other than that, unless you’re sure you can kill someone and take their tower, it’s usually not worth it to move from your lane as you will lose a lot of farm. If you kill a support and then have to walk back to your lane – it’s not worth it.
Morph turns into a monster when he has an Ethereal Blade. You want to reach that point without many delays. If you have chances for easy kills and/or towers – claim them, but otherwise, keep farming.
In this game, we will observe Vici Gaming’s Paparazi.
He starts with the fast Wand build and morphs his entire strength into agility. That allows him to start with 63 damage at level 1.
The enemy Dark Seer (piloted by Fata) received some help from his Earthshaker who blocked his creeps with a Fissure, so the creep wave meets pretty close to the Dire tower.
We see some passive first 2 levels, but during that time he manages to last hit and deny almost every possible creep. At this point, his teammate leaves the lane and lets him stay 1v1 against the Dark Seer.
Even though Dark Seer is not a weak offlaner, he can’t pressure a Morphling as we see 39/23 cs vs 14/1 at minute 6.
At 6:30 we see how much damage a few hits + Waveform can deal, forcing Dark Seer to go base.
At this point, the lane is pretty much won. The Dire are unwilling to let their tower fall and defend it every time Radiant try to push, so Paparazi starts farming the big jungle camp as well as the creep waves in order to maximize his farm.
We can also see him die to Dark Seer and Rubick who stole his Waveform and managed to burst him down while he’s lifted – this gets to show you how vulnerable Morph can be against heroes with disables and burst damage.
Notice Topson's playstyle on low levels: he knows that he has higher damage and higher armor than Alch. Because of this, he harasses him with attacks a lot, even when it means tanking the creep wave or even staying in the Acid Spray for a couple of seconds. Even when he remains on low HP, he can always use a Salve with min STR to recover all of his HP - this is more cost efficient for him than for Alch.
Pushing the Alch away allows him to secure a lot of last-hits and denies, which is important because he starts to steadily out-level him. On lvl 4, when the Alch walks a bit too far forward (03:35 in the vid), Topson manages to solo kill him. Notice how he right-clicks him for as long as possible before using Waveform in order to deal the maximum right-click damage.
In this example, Topson buys Morbid Mask even before Boots. This is because he values HP sustain against the Acid Spray very highly (later on it is also very useful when the Underlord comes with his Fire Storm harass). Morbid is also great for farming the jungle especially when you are going for the Attribute + Adaptive build because you don't have high levels of Waveform to help you clear camps - you have to right-click them down.
Morph
is a very strong late game carry. Consequently, farming is still your top
priority. Of course, if you can you should fight with your team and take
objectives. Don’t take too big risks, however, and don’t be afraid to take it
to the late game.
With an Eblade, you can solo kill some of the enemy heroes. If you have the advantage, try to pressure the enemies, don’t let them farm on the lanes, force them to play cautiously. Push their towers with your team, force them to fight if possible and claim Roshan. After that, you can pressure their barracks. Even if you don’t manage to push high ground, just forcing them to stay in their base is good – they will farm less while your team is farming the entire map.
If the game is relatively even, you can try to find kills or initiate team fights with Smoke of Deceit. If you come out on top, you can push towers or kill Roshan as well. Get Manta, eventually BKB.
BKB is important for team fights when you don’t have a huge advantage because the enemies will always try to focus you with their disables.
In the worst case scenario where your team is losing and you can’t win a fight, you want to keep farming. Fight only when the enemies are pushing your high ground, otherwise only execute smoke ganks when you’re sure the enemies are not grouped up behind one hero. Try to split-push whenever possible.
Depending on how the game goes,
team-fights can be pretty tough.
If you don’t have an advantage you can be pretty easy to kill if the opponents manage to disable you. If you don’t have a BKB, try to be the last one to join the fight. If possible, just burst down an enemy hero with Eblade and then back off until your enemies use most of their spells.
This is where the Morph ability is pretty useful – after you’ve used your shotgun combo, you can choose a hero to copy. Depending on the hero you chose, you can use his abilities to disable the enemies, buff yourself or fight for a while if it’s a suitable damage dealer. Agility heroes can be pretty good as your items are mainly good for agility carries. Once the enemies bring you to somewhat low HP you can simply morph back to your 100% HP hero.
Video from Epicenter XL created by Put Tank in a Mall.
Ame wins a 1v4 fight while his team is behind in resources because of his smart itemization in combination with stealing Gyro's Flak Cannon.
Morph is a good pusher but you want to pick off some enemy heroes before you can siege high ground. The low attack range makes him an easy target if the entire enemy team is alive.
This is where Morph shines. If you don’t have an advantage (in which case you can’t just group up and end the game), you can simply pressure the towers whenever the enemies group up to push. In some situations, you’re even able to push faster than the entire enemy team while your team is defending as much as they can without dying.
If you’re not behind in terms of farm the enemy will need to send more than one hero to stop your push which basically kills their own push.
A common strategy is to wait until 1 or 2 enemy heroes teleport back to defend and then you teleport to fight with your team when you have the number advantage.
