General DiscussionUpdate Morphling game. (need criticism)

You should ask for help with losses, because that's where we will find your mistakes the most.

42.86% winrate on Morphling, but ask us to give advice on a game where he has his best score on Morphling.
Sounds legit. :D

Well, I asked for criticism on a game I lost in a previous thread, but people also fail to realize that even the best games they play have points that need to be worked on. Cause even when you snowball you do things that weren't that smart and could of benefited the team more. There could of been more ethereal blade kills i could of gotten, there could of been more towers i could of pushed. Just because I do well doesn't mean there was nothing wrong.

"I was wondering if anyone could point out some other stuff I could of done or thought about. Mostly team fight wise"
Even the smaller mistakes in the early game can snowball and have a big impact in the later stages of the game, so me pointing out the early game stuff has it's uses, because it can result in later problems never even happening.

"You should ask for help with losses, because that's where we will find your mistakes the most."
There's nothing wrong with looking for mistakes in wins, since no one plays flawlessly. It may be easier to notice mistakes in won games, because there's less of them, while in lost games where you'll typically make more mistakes, it's harder to spot a specific mistake. Imagine there's 100 dots on a page, blue ones represent correct decisions while red ones represent mistakes. In a won game, you'll have few red dots in between blue ones, so they're easier to differentiate. In a lost game where there's more mistakes, there's many red dots and it's harder discerning one from another.

So in chronological order, all of the mistakes I noticed (but not all of them that you made):

• Bad starting items. 1 Branch, 1 Tango and Ring of Protection, morphed enough stats to have 359 HP and 57 damage. You're against a Kunkka + Venge, Kunkka has strong harass should have harassed you or even attempted a kill with Torrent + Magic Missile with your incredibly low starting HP. It happened to work out in this game, but maybe you're matched up against better opponents, this item build will just get punished.

• Try Tango + Salve + Circlet + 3 Branches. Circlet is better than Slipper for slot efficiency because it gives +4 agi and +2 int compared to +3 agi, if you morph some of your base strength which is cancelled out by the Circlet's stat bonus. If you start off with too much regen, no harm no foul, just keep it for later, saves you going back to base. If you start off with too little regen, that'll easily bite you in the ass.

• You can start off with Ring of Protection instead of a Circlet, but I prefer Circlet because upgrading Circlet to Wraith is 300g, whereas Ring to Basi is 325, and Circlet to Wraith gives a larger damage increase than Ring to Basi,+7 from the agi and damage difference compared to Circlet, but +9 if you morph an extra 2 strength to agi due to having Circlet, whereas Ring to Basi only adds 6. The mana regen shouldn't be ignored, but you don't use mana anyways in the first minute, since you're level 1 and you've already morphed in the fountain.

• There was no reason for you to save gold because the first item you got was a Basi and by the time you got it, you still had 500g to spare, youmay as well have spent it on extra regen before you went into lane, or on stats that would've gotten you more last hits.

You still would have gotten Basi at the same time as you did, but you'd also have more regen. There's not an item that you "need" to rush on Morphling in the early game, so spend your starting gold and make use of your inventory slots, there's no reason not to.

• If you had spent 115g on a Salve or a Tango, it would've paid for itself because you missed more than 3 last hits (average last hit is about 44g) because you were scared of dying and backed out of the lane.

• The times you were at full HP, you could've given your Ring of Health to Lion who was missing HP, since RoH is sharable (allies benefit from the HP regen). Maybe you could've attempted a kill if he was at full HP, him sitting at ~300 HP vs Torrent + Missile probably isn't a good idea. Your lane has 3 disables after all, 2 of them AOE and deal damage.

• Missing a kill on Kunkka at ~7:00. You were at the side shop at one point with 1k gold yet you didn't buy Boots. Prior to that when you killed Vengeful Spirit, you could've gotten extra attacks in if you didn't back off when your teammates went in to stun, or if you had extra damage by spending your gold.

• Practice last hitting in bot games until you can get 60+ last hits in 10 minutes, but ideally more, that's just the minimum. You had 3.5-4 cs per minute at the 9 minute mark. Your lane wasn't that badly contested, your opponents largely stayed back. Some last hits were pointlessly missed because you backed off to dodge Kunkka's Tidebringer when he was already next to a creep. If you want to dodge it, back off before he reaches it, or go to his side. Cleave works by making a circle in front of the attacker like this: http://i.imgur.com/5leWI.jpg. So if you're going to take Tidebringer harass anyways, you may as well get 44 gold for your troubles.

• Mid lane tactics can also be used in other lanes e.g. drawing creep aggro. There were times that you just sat in XP range unwilling to get last hits. You could've got some by pulling the enemy creeps closer to you. If you don't know how, issue an attack command to an enemy hero, and any enemy autonomous units (i.e. lane creeps) in 500 range of you will attempt to attack you. You can make melee creeps move towards you by doing this.

• 13 minutes in, your items are Perseverance + Ultimate Orb, still no Boots. Boots pay for themselves if you get ~10 last hits that you would otherwise have missed. Less if they also get you kills (see 7 minute mark).

e.g. Lets say at 10 minutes you have 20 cs without boots. And with boots you have 30 cs. 10 cs = ~440 gold, which means your gold value would be the same, but you also have +50 movement speed for free essentially.

Or, lets say you're jungling, and in 1 minute, you can clear an extra camp because of the movespeed from boots allowing you to start attacking camps earlier (because you arrive sooner). If you get an extra 50 gold per minute, boots pay for themselves by 9 minutes and on top of that, you'll have more XP than you'd have without them.

• So judging from your poor cs (creep score) and that you're rushing a Linken's Sphere I can almost definitely now say that getting Adaptive Strike at level 8 and 9 was not helpful because:
1. Your E-blade is delayed by going Linken's first. You won't get an E-blade in time to use Adaptive Strike with it.
2. Your Linken's timing is delayed because your last hitting is poor (thus causing your E-blade to be even slower)
3. Adaptive Strike damage is based off your agility, which is shit without levels (or items). Level 1 Strike which you took at level 8, with your agi at the current time would deal 20 + 0.5(64) = 52 magic damage.
4. Adaptive Strike's damage at the lower levels is crap even with good agility due to it's low multiplier, and it was still only maxed by level 14, meaning that getting 2 early points in it did not max it out any quicker while also delaying points into Morph.
5. More levels in Morph gives you free damage and health, and also makes Morph's mana cost effectively cheaper, since you morph stats quicker and the mana cost is based on time spent morphing. Less time morphing = less mana used.

• E-blade is stronger the earlier it's gotten, so it might not have been a good pickup at the current time you got it. If you get it by the 15 minute mark you can basically 1 shot most heroes, whereas the 25 minute mark, maybe not. It can potentially still be useful after Linken's, but it's impact is less in relation to earlier E-blades.

• Getting Replicate at 6 was also pointless because you never even used it before level 9. If you went 4-0-4-0 by level 8, you'd have better stats ∴ better last hitting and also dealing more damage from auto attacks, quicker morphs which means morphing later, resulting in extra damage from auto attacks, and you'd still have Replicate at 9 without wasting skill points.

• Teleporting to mid at ~17:30 and not getting anything (kills, assists, assist gold) when you could've stayed bottom and farmed creeps. You still didn't have boots at this point either. You only had ~350 gold, but you could've had more if you got more last hits earlier. (Early mistakes causing later ones)

• 20 minute Aquila. If you were got it sooner it would've had a larger impact and would've paid for itself already. You were already planning on getting it by 20 minutes, was there any reason to not get it sooner, especially as you constantly had unused gold in your stash. If it nets you last hits that you'd otherwise have missed, that's when it pays for itself.

• Missing the last hit on the top lane dire tier 1 tower at 20:22. Venge was in the lane earlier, she appears on the minimap on bottom lane (doesn't mean you saw her though). All 4 enemies who were alive were visible on the map, and already fighting, or about to, meaning no one would be top to deny the tower. Zero reason to miss it.

• 20 minute Treads. This is such a good item on Morph especially when gotten earlier. You're going to have it almost all game, so there's no reason to delay it. The attack speed makes you farm quicker, and the extra Waveforms from switching to int means you can get last hits that you might have otherwised missed without it. They pay for themselves and more. The quicker they're gotten the quicker they can snowball you, which may seem strange because they're only a 1400 gold item.

If you had gotten them as well as Linken's, the extra last hits you would've gotten would've meant your Linken's could have been gotten even sooner than "rushing" it. Getting them later just decreases their benefit.

• On to your only death of the game, bottom lane, radiant tier 1 tower ~25:30. Sniper's bot, shooting at you, you hide in trees. Later creeps start attacking him so he's clearly visible on the map. You get a kill on Naga but die, and end up losing ~400 gold and 5/6th's of a minute's worth of GPM from your 50s respawn timer. If you had items on the quickbuy bar, you might have been able to spend your reliable gold before you die (meaning the only thing you lose is 50 seconds of farming time).

Naga's stunned, so there's no reason you couldn't have gotten closer to her in order to Waveform through her and into the trees. You only attacked her with an autoattack once, and with Sniper near, morphing some strength might have kept you alive if you also Waveformed into the trees for the kill.

Maybe all these small mistakes mean you get E-blade 5 minutes quicker, and because of it, the enemy is ~2 levels lower and so 2 levels (and gold) worth of strength (and therefore HP) lower, resulting in a kill.

• Teleporting to defend your bottom tier 3 tower at ~34:00 although you were at the enemies. By teleporting back, you played into the enemy's hand. They simulatenously damage your towers while defending theirs, not to mention Lion didn't have a tp scroll so he ended up dying.

If you were patient and checked the Naga items (by looking at her illusions) you'd see that there was no teleport scroll, so you had the 4v5 advantage top lane, and by fighting right then, you'd have a number's advantage as Naga would either arrive late, or not at all.

• Not being nearly as aggressive as you could've been with E-blade. Considering the fact that you were just replicating out as soon as you took damage or did your combo, there's no reason to keep your HP so high. Morphing to agility means faster farming and more shotgun combo damage.

• If you are going to do the combo that way (combo then replicate escape) rather than using the replicate to roam the jungle while you farm, then you shouldn't be sitting in lane and farming. That's where you send your illusion, while you have your hero in the enemy jungle looking for kills, then replicating out and continuing farming.

• By the time you performed your first shotgun combo at ~37:00, you had 1900 gold , which could've almost been a Yasha, and if you had went Yasha > Ghost > E-blade instead, you would have ended up with more gold at the 37 minute mark than going Ghost > Eblade > Yasha, due to the faster moves speed meaning possible last hits not missed by not being at the creep wave in time, and the period of time where you have Yasha and Ghost compared to Ghost and 2050-3299 gold (∴ no E-blade), so you'd still get the E-blade in time to use the combo at the time you did, though you went Ultimate Orb afterwards anyways.

• After you used your combo and then replicated out, that gave your opponents a timing window where they were 5v4, which they used to their advantage, killing Sand King. By the time you got to the fight, your rax had been destroyed. The rax were destroyed at 38 minutes, and the game ended at 59, so that's roughly 20 minutes of reduced GPM from spending more time killing mega creeps than normal ones, and earning less gold.

• If you had teleported to your rax instead of to the fountain, you would've got to the fight sooner and gotten kills since several were low on HP (MoM'd Sniper). The decision making in this fight was probably the biggest mistake so far.

• Ultimate Orb instead of Yasha. Assuming you morph 10 base strength to agi to cancel out the Ultimate Orb's stat bonus, the Ultimate Orb effectively gives 20 agility and 10 int, so 20 damage and 20 attack speed. However, if you go Yasha, that gives you 16 damage, 31 attack speed and 10% movespeed (in the case of Morphling with Treads and 335 ms, it's +33 ms). You'll miss more last hits due to not being at the creep wave in time than missing it because you lacked 4 damage.

• Team fight at ~42:10, radiant tier 2 mid lane. After you attempt your combo, you walk backwards. Why? The big initiation spell, Tornado was used as you were Waveforming, and the EMP looks like it wouldn't have hit where you were replicating. Had you been closer, you would've started attacking sooner and possibly saved the Timber.

Adaptive Strike was on cooldown while walking towards the Sniper, yet goes unused until as a finishing blow. Looking at the combat log, it did more damage than you needed to, resulting in more auto attacks wasted that could've been used to kill Venge.

Then you spend time walking away from Venge, the only enemy on the team who has 0 chance of killing you, and that also results in time spent not attacking her. After she Force Staffed away, you didn't even make an attempt to chase her. Waveform was coming off cooldown, you could've used it to Waveform down and tried to cast Adaptive Strike. Venge's move speed is only 345, going back to the point on Yasha, you would've gotten the kill if you bought it instead of Ultimate Orb.

Any one of these mistakes (Yasha not Ult Orb, walking away, spending time turning around, wasting attacks), if corrected, would've gotten the kill on her.

• Arguably taking Aegis instead of letting Ember. Ember was dying more often than you were, and you were just replicating out at the first sign of trouble anyways. I'd consider Ember's escape weaker as it's duration is lower, it's cast range too, and Morphling's is more survivable without his ultimate (through Morph). Also, Ember had space for the Aegis + TP, while you did not. TI3 finals an example of where Aegis + no TP can play a part in a loss.

• Not using the Aegis. ~47 minutes in, enemy team takes mid tier 2 for free. You have a level advantage (10k XP) and a small gold advantage (3k), plus the Aegis. Venge is low on HP. There's no reason you can't just Waveform in and kill her and force the enemy to use all their spells on you (instead of on your teammates).

• When you have the Aegis (or buyback), and the enemy team is on your side of the map, this is when to force a fight and make it in your favour. Glyph is up, so sacrifice your life and force all their spells on you while your team cleans up, and you're teleporting back in to the glyphed tier 2.

• You also whiffed your combo, and that could've killed her. If you attempt to cast a spell / use an item and you are not in range, your hero will move into range and immediately do so once the range requirement is met. So if you pre-casted on the Venge, your Ether Blast would not have hit Lion. This is how people can instantly disable initiators (if they have instant-cast disables) and seem like they have insanely fast reaction times.

• Positioning error. Meatball lands, and soon after, Ghost Ship. You have Aegis, you should be forcing a fight, but you don't. Instead of backing off, since Lion had used his ult (therefore your team has a HP advantage), you should've just taken the meteor damage or Waveformed through it. This will have blocked the boat damage (since it only damages and stuns where it lands), and also given you a positional advantage to fight from. If you don't get kills at the very least you'll force them to spend time healing while you push lanes.

• Leaving the fight on the mid lane without using Satanic, and replicating when there's still ~30 seconds left on the Replicate illusion. You had no reason to leave and you could've helped your team. The opponents actually got both your mid rax to about a third of their HP. Had the game been closer they'd be 2-1 for rax.

• Prior to 52:52, I don't think you actually did a full shotgun combo. The handful of times you used the E-blade was on Sniper who promptly BKBed afterwards.

• The choice of Satanic over Skadi is in my opinion a mistake, as Skadi gives you a much needed slow, and also agility that boosts your combo's damage. Satanic is like a second chance if you're caught out due to it's active, but it was damage that you were currently lacking, not survivability. You didn't need more survivability because of how safe you were playing. Not that Skadi doesn't give survivability, it's just not the sole reason you buy it.

• The slow from Skadi would've gotten you the kill on Venge. After all, she already used her stun on you which was blocked by Linken's and Force Staff's burst mobility is cancelled out by Waveform. In addition to the fact that she just used buyback, that should've been enough incentive to chase her. With the E-blade you could have even fountain dived.

• If you had killed Venge, she'd be down for another 55 seconds (44 x 1.25 due to buyback). The opponents are fighting at your mid rax, and that would be enough time to at least take the mid tier 3 tower uncontested, since backdoor protection to all lanes on high ground is removed if there are creeps in the base in any of the lanes.

Got up to ~55 minutes, finally got bored. Might complete the replay later.

wtf androgynous how do you get time to do that.

"Got up to ~55 minutes, finally got bored."

how do you have the patience to do that*

I watch my own replays, watching someone elses doesn't make a difference, I still learn from them.

[size=1]but I still suck at this game[/size]

Well thank you for replying, I'm actually pretty impressed that you did that. However Ill answer some, not all so its not a story to story conversation. The skipping brown boots idea is something I saw meracle do because he goes basi and perseverance and skips brown boots to get linken sphere first. Ive noticed in normal pub games like that, that people love to harass you and the faster you get it the more window of time you have to get out of there in bad situations or kills. (If I did that in a captains mode games with people i respected. I would go basi, boots, ring of health, powertreads ultimate orb, persaverance, recipe.) He goes, usually basi, perseverance, ultimate, orb linkens, and then power treads in the side shop and Aquila. I prob could of gotten more regen in the start of the game, but I also didn't expect to see such a weird ass lane like that kunka. But not only that, I was hoping my two supports with me would zone him out better so I wasn't so afraid to get wasted. The only reason I ever get adaptive strike is cause its the longest ranged spell that does damage at a safe distance and I use it to cancel tps if I chase someone down or kunka goes to the sideshop to buy a tp and leave, which some offlaners do.

So 1 early adaptive strike for Attack, Attack, Attack, Waveform, Attack, Attack, Attack and if hes almost at the tower and has like 4 health left throw in a adaptive strike.

Also, the ghost scepter, boots of travel item combo really helps against sniper cause his headshots on morphling are absolutely annoying. I got ethereal blade when he got bkb and I used it on him every time so he could waste his bkb and replicate out so we could fight while he had no bkb.

And This (Positioning error. Meatball lands, and soon after, Ghost Ship. You have Aegis, you should be forcing a fight, but you don't. Instead of backing off, since Lion had used his ult (therefore your team has a HP advantage), you should've just taken the meteor damage or Waveformed through it. This will have blocked the boat damage (since it only damages and stuns where it lands), and also given you a positional advantage to fight from. If you don't get kills at the very least you'll force them to spend time healing while you push lanes.)

I agree with , I will go back to the replay and see what you mean, I'm a slightly defensive player and I just wanted the tower more than a fight. But I will check it again.