Heroes of the Storm Murky and Counter Murky Guide

Heroes of the Storm Murky and Counter Murky Guide by qkrr

Murky, love him or hate him, you’re going to be playing against/with/as him at some point. As some one who’s played 30 games with him now I’m going to tell you how I feel Murky is best played and how I’ve been shut down.

Your mission as Murky is to cause as much trouble for the other team as possible. You need to be distracting as many enemy players as possible at all times. the farther back into their base you can draw them, the better. Keeping them away from lanes and objectives should be a high priority at all times. Your second objective is to destroy as many of their assets as possible. If they aren’t paying attention to you, you need to punish them for that.

The talents I feel are best.

• Level 1: Bigger Slime, in team fights or chasing some one getting your slime on as many people at once is always important.
• Level 4: Out With A Bang, the dropping a fish when you die is great in team fights and also for suicide bombing.
• Level 7: Wrath of Cod, this makes your Fish do full damage to heroes and creeps, great for getting mercs and in team fights.
• Level 10: March of the Murlocs, no contest the siege ability of this is great enough alone but its also the best slow/poison ever for any team fight.
• Level 13: Hidden Assualt, makes you invis for the first 10 second after you spawn from your egg, very very important for protecting your egg late game when you’re moving it up closer to their base.
• Level 16: Pufferfish School, everyone loves more fish bombs.
• Level 20: Never-Ending Murlocs, the upgrade can take the core alone down to about 50% hp and can totally shut down the enemy in a teamfight if they stand in the march.”

Your Egg is your life. Finding the perfect spot to hide your egg or knowing when to move it up or back is very important. Hiding it behind your walls seems like the obvious thing to do and can work out very well as long as they arnt running a nova or zera that can just sneak in and pop it. Moving it up into enemy territory can be very risky but is generally very rewarding, even if they do end up killing you. The main thing though is finding the perfect hiding spot that isn’t too obvious. I have had games were just leaving it in the grass/vents/horseshoes around the map has worked great. But with more and more players being on the hunt for eggs as their hatred for murkys grows, its become much more difficult to hide. I’ve been finding now that hiding it in plain sight is working wonders. Nesting it up against the trees in the middle of lanes or even inside their main base along the walls and some times even putting it inside of the merc camps are all places where i’ve successfully gotten 5-10 re spawns out of before anyone even notices its there. This clips shows what I mean http://www.twitch.tv/qkrr/c/4326975 Basically if you know they’re hunting for it, putting it out in the open just slightly out of their line of sight is going to work wonders.

Knowing when to be back dooring or team fighting is a bit harder to figure out with Murky. It largely depends on how well your team can be fighting 4v5. if the comp of the rest of your team can actually out fight the other team, you should be backdooring or getting lane xp. On Cursed hollow I generally make it to every fight for a tribute and some times move my egg closer for each trib. Once you get level 10 and get the march of the murlocs, you have the ability to turn the tide of a team fight very quickly as the slow and poison damage is very very strong right now, especially the level 20 version.

Team Fights, you should show up at all or most of them. Murkys poison splash and fish once you get the upgraded damage to them, do a LOT more damage then people seem to think. And the smart people who do know about the damage of the fish will be wasting auto attacks against them in the middle of a team fight while your team is blowing them a part. Using your bubble to body block people is also a very good practice to get into, running behind their team and just setting up to block them if they run is always a great tactic. And as I mentioned before, March of the Murlocs can shut down and entire team if aimed in the right direction. I should also add that Murkys Auto attack damage is rather high and VERY fast, he can auto attack down some one if they ignore him for too long.

Knocking on the backdoor. I’ve been noticing a lot more people are catching on to murkys shenanigans early game and are starting to counter it quickly. Lately i’ve been ignoring the first gate and towers and just going for either the fort directly or in some cases just pushing back to the second gates and working on those before anyone even notices. Getting to level 10 and getting the March of the Murlocs and just blowing that every time the cool down is up is best. The more times in the game that you can use it on a fort/gate/keep/core the better. I love getting a lot of the fish talents and dropping two fish, sliming, blowing the ult and then auto attacking till death and dropping the suicide fish. It can take a fort or keep well below half just from that.

Advice to counter a great Murky. Many people have already pointed out the main counters of using a Mule or having a stealth hunt the egg. Both of those points are great but the biggest mistake I see teams making is over committing to many heroes to stop Murky from back dooring or hunting down the egg. I love destroying forts and keeps but as Murky I feel MOST successful when im drawing more then one hero after me and effectively taking them out of a team fight or a push they were making. You have to send one hero to counter me, not half your team, if you send to many to stop me you’re handicapping your team elsewhere on the map. You need to find that balance of stopping Murkys siege while not over committing to many people to it. Most heroes are able to kill Murky and destroy his fish before they blow up just with auto attacks, but when a teams only healer is left to do that job while there is a 4v4 going on else where, the team missing their healer is going to feel it more then my team missing a Murky. I’ve already gone over the places of where Murky eggs can and will be hidden, which is basically a tip for and against Murkys everywhere.

Some full game recordings from my twitch stream last night for anyone wanting to see my Murky skills/tips in action. I was talking through each game about some of the finer points of murking with murky during the play.

http://www.twitch.tv/qkrr/c/4327199 Black Hearts Bay, we were queuing as a three man with no voice chat.

http://www.twitch.tv/qkrr/c/4326873 Cursed Hollow, same three man. (skip about 2 minutes in for game start)