I am more than a fish: Murky Combo Guide

Ever since his release, Murky has been my favourite hero. Despite being the lowest winrate at times, I have constantly played Murky, and have experimented with many different builds. In this article I will show you what I use to dominate hero league with Murky, and why I believe murky is a contender for being the best specialist in the game. 

 

Passive/Playstyle

Murky is unique as a hero because of his passive, "Spawn Egg". Spawn egg is self explanatory in the sense that it spawns an egg, but what makes this passive (D) ability so strong is that if the egg is alive while murky dies, murky gets a give second respawn timer, which is what plays into the core gameplay of Murky. The main job of a murky pre patch was to deal as much damage in teamfights as possible before dying, or to try to use a combo to one shot their squishiest player, die, and run back in to be a distraction in the teamfight. During the most recent patch, Murky was buffed with instant w cast, and a new level 4 ability called "Living the dream". 

 

Living the Dream

Living the dream is one of the best things to ever happen to Murky, and here is why. In just pure numbers, Living The Dream gives you a starting  10% flat bonus ability power, and every 5 seconds that you are alive, you gain 1% more to a maximum of 15% extra. This means that at 75 seconds of life, or one minute and fifteen seconds, you will have 25% bonus ability power. Because of this change to murky, it promotes a much more healthy gameplay style, as it encourages him to die much less. I have found that I have more than halved my average deaths from last patch to this patch, and I give most of the credit to playing around Living The Dream. 

 

Previous Builds

Recently, I have changed my build from a more poke style murky to a puffer fish wombo combo. Both builds have their strengths and weaknesses, but I find the new pufferfish build to be much more viable than jumping in and out of fights poking with slimes, hoping for a lucky pufferfish explosion. The current pufferfish wombo combo build relies on  fast fingers and good positioning, but when done properly will absolutely destroy any assassin, and nearly and support. This combo involves using slime, pufferfish, rewind, slime, pufferfish again, and then your octograb. Once you have learned to master this, you should be able to do the entire combo in less than a second, which will give the target no time to react to this 100% damage 

 

The Build

The build that I choose to use in a large percentage of my game looks a lot like this. The only thing that I change is the first ability, which can be block if I am against somebody who will one shot you early on (Nova, Occassionally Zeratul), or Bribe if I think I will be split pushing on a map with a lot of easy camps.

 Bubble Breeze:  Gain 20% movement speed while in Safety Bubble 

 Living the Dream: Passively grant 10% ability power. Every 5 seconds Murky is alive he gains 1% more ability power, to a maximum 15% extra. These stacks are lost on death. 

 Compressed Air: Area of effect of Pufferfish increased by 50% 

 Octo-Grab: Summon an octopus to stun target enemy Hero for 3 seconds while you hit them for 1 damage a second. 

 Wrath of Cod: Increase pufferfish's damage by 35% against Slimed targets. 

 Slimy Pufferfish: The Pufferfish casts Slime at its location upon landing. 

 Rewind: Activate to reset the cooldowns of your Basic Abilities.