Dota 2’s roster of heroes is strong and hard to take down if the player is skilled— especially Morphling. Morphling is a sentient comet that crashed into the world. He’s a special hero because he can shift his strength and agility as he pleases. His entire kit revolves around a kind of “shifting” that paints a traditional carry hero. His game demands perfect control of his stats, making the learning curve high.
But if that isn’t enough, you must also know other hero abilities. His ultimate turns him into an enemy hero, giving him access to basic abilities. Despite being easy to kill, Morphling punishes low burst damage gank attempts.
Before you know it, his health will shoot upwards of 4K HP. An agility-ranged hero with high usage in professional games, many want to know how to beat him. How can your team go around countering Morphling?
Sufficient Burst Damage
Morphling at baseline is a low-HP hero thanks to his primary stat of agility. He is most vulnerable during the early game when his Morph skill isn’t fast enough. This is more challenging to achieve in the late game, with defensive items in the mix. But if you can prevent him from morphing strength, he should be a free kill. There are plenty of heroes that fill this role, but magic damage burst is the best approach.
Skywrath, Techies, Lina, and Lion among others can supplement the needed damage to take him down. When he begins shifting to strength, you now require HP shred damage to keep up. Underlord, Zeus, Doom, or Tinker work well toward this issue with their high shred mechanics. But burst damage may not be enough to kill him, you might need to slow down his shifting altogether.
Anti-Regeneration and Armor Pierce
Due to the swiftness of his attribute shift, Icefrog looked into means of balancing that out. Two of these counters are the anti-regeneration and armor pierce mechanics. Morphling’s attribute shift is indeed a form of healing, and he enjoys high base armor. Drow Ranger encapsulates both these mechanics in her piercing ultimate and her anti-regen Aghs shard. In the late game, an uncontested Drow can mow down a full-agility Morphling with little effort.
Next is anti-regeneration, which comes in easy access since implementation. Spirit Vessel is the best pickup against this hero if your team lacks anti-regen. The best hero for this kind of counter is Ancient Apparition and his iconic ultimate, Ice Blast. If Morphling gets touched by it and morphs to Agility, he won’t be healing off his morph. Bane works too, as well as cutting Morph’s cast range, and attack damage with his Enfeeble skill. The final solution is to prevent shifting altogether.
Hard Disables and Mana
The real weakness of Morphling is its player’s reaction time and discipline. But in truth, it’s instant hard disables like stuns, hexes, and other similar debuffs. But Morphling’s shard allows him to shift attributes, even if disabled—what now? The answer is to eliminate his mana pool, something that only a few heroes are capable of. Heroes that come to mind are Anti-Mage and Phantom Lancer. Lion and Shadow Shaman have powerful instant cast disables.
If hard disables aren’t on your team, you could go for silences instead. Skywrath and Drow Ranger fit this role well, but be careful once he gets Manta Style. Once you have a stun on him before he morphs to strength, hope your damage is enough. You can also take initiative and buy Scythe of Vyse yourself—hope he doesn’t buy Linken’s Sphere.
