Heroes of the Storm - Murky

Did you hear that? That was the collective groan of thousands of Heroes of the Storm players, knowing that they’re resigned to playing with a Murky on their team in the near future. Murky sits as one of those niche characters that you dread having on your team. Someone who is new on him won’t understand what he’s supposed to actually do with the little guy, and they’ll proceed to throw themselves at a wall as hard as possible while the enemies grow fat on his piling corpses. But it doesn’t have to be that way – Murky can be a nightmare to play against. He’s surprisingly survivable and one of the game’s best split pushers. This guide will help you stop fertilizing the enemy’s base with fishy bodies and start dominating with the best unintelligible character in the game.

Slime is your primary source of damage in a teamfight. Not only do you do additional damage on slimed targets, you also can get Talents that let you do more damage with basic attacks and Pufferfish on targets you’ve hit. The 20% slow allows you to stick to most Assassins after they’ve tried to disengage from you and lets you peel for your own squishy targets. Two uses of Slime with the Slime Advantage talent should clear just about any minion wave as well.

Pufferfish does an absurd amount of damage, but it’s tempered by the long build-up time of the ability and the fact that the enemy can shoot it before it explodes. Pufferfish is an incredible wave-clear tool though; at level 10 you can kill the back line with a single W, and later you can use it to clear the entire wave. It is also a great tool when taking merc camps – you can throw it out before starting the camp and do a massive amount of damage to the camps. It also provides area-denial during teamfights, enemies either have to invest attacks in clearing your damage or just avoid it entirely. Throwing a fish into the backline will cut a team in half and might even kill an unsuspecting enemy.

Safety Bubble is what makes Murky such a pain to kill – 2 seconds of invulnerability is a lot of time for his teammates to come and save him. It also allows him to safely wait until his next Slime comes off cooldown. With talents, Murky will speed out of enemy masses while healing himself completely in the process.

Finally, there is the Trait that makes Murky infamous. Murky can place an egg anywhere on the map, and if he’s killed when this egg is present, he has a 5 second respawn timer and is resurrected at the location of the egg. This turns games with Murky into the world’s most frustrating Easter egg hunt, as enemies scour every unused nook and cranny for Murky’s spawning pool. The egg provides you with vision in the area around it, even over walls. When the egg is killed, the enemy team gets the experience points of killing half a hero. It also reveals Murky to the enemy for 15 seconds, and if he’s killed during this time, he has a full-length respawn timer. This makes it important that you don’t just plop your egg down wherever you please. Place it near your forts when towers are up, or in one of the many nooks that are only used to place Murky’s egg, juke as Nova, or fish with Stitches.

Between his two Heroic Abilities, take Octo-Grab if you’re planning on roaming heavily in the early game. The long suppression allows you to make devastating ganks. Otherwise, March of the Murlocs is a strong choice for teamfights and sieges. Be careful though, the spell has a cast time and then you have to wait for the Murlocs to actually reach their targets. Use it during a mobile teamfight and you’ll have a bunch of Murlocs scattering through the countryside as the fight moves away from them, and no one wants that.

>For your talent choices, focus on talents that make your split-push stronger and safer. Pick up Bribe at level one to take mercenary camps early and safely. Envenom at four allows you to duel most Assassins and Specialists. At seven, you have a choice of Slime Advantage and Hindering Slime. If you’re having difficulty hanging onto enemy backline heroes, take the latter, otherwise take Slime Advantage to substantially increase your damage output. Take whatever Heroic you prefer at ten, and then put your talents at thirteen and sixteen into Bubble Machine and Rejuvenating Bubble. With these two talents, your contribution to teamfights will grow and you should safely be able to split push without fear of being killed. At twenty, take Rewind – It allows you to use Safety Bubble twice (giving you effectively three health bars) and also allows you to do double Pufferfish strikes, which melt down all but the toughest enemies.

Playing Murky as a Member of the Team

Here’s the part where a lot of players think "I’m immortal, let’s wrack up the most decomposing baby Murloc record". Just because you can respawn quickly doesn’t mean you should abuse the privilege. The enemy still gets experience for you, even if it’s only 25%, and your teammates might engage with you risking their full lives as well. In the early game, stay back, throw a Pufferfish into the minion wave and build up Bribe stacks. If a lane is empty, go there to throw your Pufferfish and slime up the wave. Once you’ve built up your first two Bribe stacks, try to delve into the enemy Jungle for their siege camp. This is normally a dangerous move, but it is well worth denying your opponent the ogres if you can and your death is a reasonable trade. Stay safe in lane though – you don’t want to give the enemy any advantages towards hitting ten before your team. Place your egg near your Fort and make sure to pick up Rejuvenation bubbles and use the Healing Fountain to keep yourself topped off.

When a fight over an objective starts, find the nearest nook on your side of the map and place your egg there. Then commit yourself to holding the enemy team off the objective, throwing yourself in with a Slime and Pufferfish – once the enemy looks to focus you, use Safety Bubble to survive for a few more seconds. You are going to die, but make it difficult for the enemy, run towards their backline and cause chaos. The goal is to stall for enough time for your team to establish control over the objective. When you die, you’ll respawn close enough to the objective that you can rush back in to assist if your first sacrifice wasn’t enough.

Once you get your Heroic ability, play to its strength! If you took Octo-Grab, roam towards another lane that has a single enemy. The three second lockdown doesn’t do any damage, but throwing a Pufferfish under them before you start the channel should complement any damage done by your ally. Once you get Rewind, you can reliably eliminate one enemy at the beginning of any fight and you should kill someone on Octo-Grab’s cooldown.

If you took March of the Murlocs, you’re stronger as a split-pusher and in teamfights. If you’re on Sky Temple, Dragon Shrine, or Cursed Hollow, use it to control the objective location. A well placed March can prevent the enemy from capturing the objective for around ten seconds. If you’re on Haunted Mines or Garden of Terror, use it to push opposite of their colossus – it will let you shred down enemies who are trying to defend against your push.

The important thing to remember when playing Murky is that you have an incredible amount of staying power in fights and can routinely turn a fight into a 6v5 with your repeated returns. Make sure you get all your abilities off before you first death in a fight, and try to use Safety Bubble to prolong your time in the fight. With that in mind, keeping your egg safe in teamfights or prolonged skirmishes is just as important as getting back to the fight quickly. Don’t always enter the fight from the same direction, an enemy might read your movements and predict where your egg is. Your egg is not very resilient – all that putting it down in the middle of a fight is going to do is result in scrambled murlocs.

Conclusion

The reason that new Murky players die so much is because they don’t understand how Murky can contribute to the team, so they try to abuse what makes him unique. However, they’re not properly leveraging Murky’s immortality – you always want to die for a purpose when playing Murky and you want to avoid dying when possible. Of course, playing Murky also allows you to make risks that would make most other characters blush – quickly invading enemy mercenary camps, split pushing alone with little, if any, vision, and performing suicide rushes to save your teammates. The ideal Murky player leads his team in XP contribution because he’s always somewhere on the map doing something for the team, and often will lead his team in siege damage due to his excellent wave clear as well. So go out there, stay safe, and show them the true power of a murloc.

Tristam Mizak