Hi there! I’m Omega Ego. I like Heroes of the Storm, and I like to write, so I figured I should combine the two and write some articles for NGS. Full disclosure: my rank is currently gold 4, so any and all feedback is appreciated even if its just telling me why I’m wrong. My socials will be linked at the end of the article.
In my opinion, fish don’t smell good, and in the case of Heroes of the Storm coordinated play, they don’t play well either. For NGS Season 10, Murky was the overall lowest win rate hero at 20% with 20 games played. Not a great sample size, but can you really blame people for not wanting to play the squishy murloc? In storm division for NGS, the highest level of play in the league, Murky was not played once. Funnily enough, Murky has a positive win rate across Storm League as a whole, with the positive win rates coming from Silver, Gold, and Diamond. I assume the significant difference in win rate comes from the fact that NGS is a coordinated environment compared to storm league. In NGS, you can better counter the Murky not only in draft, but in game by coordinating who is going to “deal with” the Murky and when. In uncoordinated play, Murky is able run amok, with no one able to stop him unless the enemy team becomes coordinated.
Murky’s biggest problem is his low health pool. At level 1 he has the second least amount of health in the game, right behind Abathur. In a teamfight, the poor thing just can’t survive more than a few seconds. Murky can use safety bubble to survive an extra two seconds, but during that he is unable to contribute to the fight. In the actual fight, the pufferfish won’t last the necessary 3 seconds to get the damage off, and with a level 1 auto attack damage of 60 that means Murky is relying on his slime to deal most of his damage. Most of the damage that comes from slime comes from sliming already slimed targets. So in order to deal optimal damage as a Murky, you need to stay in the fight long enough to slime a target(s) multiple times. Again, this is the second lowest health pool hero in the game so staying in the fight is easier said than done. In Storm League, Murky can thrive off the chaos of the fight by ducking in and out of each fight with safety bubble, or by soaking while the fight goes on. In NGS on the other hand, Murky is going to have a harder time. The enemy team can quickly focus fire to kill him and the pufferfish, and if Murky soaks then the enemy team can coordinate who to send to soak against the Murky or can choose to push their advantage and take a 5v4 fight.
It is true that Murky has a significantly reduced death timer, but then he needs to travel from the egg to the teamfight, which might be on the other side of the map. You can put your egg near an objective before it starts but you’ll still be dead for 8 seconds which might be long enough for the enemy team to have killed your teammates in a 5v4 that started with the Murky dying. Again, Murky in NGS will die a lot faster than in Storm League due to a coordinated focus fire.
Most Murkys rely on his bribe talent at 1 (with a 90% popularity in NGS season 10), but that is reliant on the pufferfish staying alive. Most enemy offlaners will be able to kill the pufferfish no problem, and if Murky for some reason goes in the 4-man rotation, they will have to deal with the enemy 4-man killing the pufferfish quite easily. Murky could double lane but he is susceptible to ganks, and other offlaners can double lane just as effectively if not more.
All that being said, Murky starts to come online at level 10. Most Murky players swear by Octo-Grab, and for season 10 NGS it has both a higher popularity (65% to 35%) and a higher win rate (23% to 14.29%) compared to March of the Murlocs.
Let’s start with March of the Murlocs. It’s reliant on your enemies staying in the path of the murlocs which is hard to guarantee without some form of CC holding people in place. If you’re drafting that sort of wombo combo, you may as well go for an Orphea with Eternal Feast. March of the Murlocs will only deal damage over a total of 13 seconds (7 seconds for the march to finish and an extra 5 seconds for any lingering murlocs to finish dealing their damage). Each marching murloc has a tiny collision radius and spawn randomly along the start line of the march. Even if the marching murlocs hit, they only deal 25 damage a second (with 4% scaling) and slow by a stacking 15% slow for 5 seconds. The stacking slow can be impressive, resulting in people moving at 25% movement speed if hit by 5 murlocs, but is too inconsistent. It’s good at preventing enemies from leaving the area if they get hit, but if they stay and fight you just used your 110 second cooldown heroic to deal low damage and annoy your enemies. The murlocs do deal 50% extra damage to structures, but compared to Azmodan’s demonic invasion they aren’t even the best heroic to siege with. With a 110 second cooldown, you will have to choose once every 2 minutes whether you want to deal minimal damage to structures or minimal damage to enemy heroes. In NGS teams can coordinate as a team whether to retreat or to stay in the fight, whereas in storm league the enemy team might split up with some of them retreating and some of them staying in the fight resulting in a teamfight win for the Murky.
Being able to lock down an enemy for 3 seconds is great, and Octo-Grab does just that-provided that Murky stays alive and the target doesn’t get cleansed. In organized play cleanse is incredibly important, resulting in many healers having a direct counter to Murky’s best heroic. And I’ve already gone over Murky’s abysmal ability to stay alive in a fight. When the enemies realize you’re locking down one of their teammates, they will focus fire you. In Storm League the focus fire isn’t a guarantee, but in a coordinated environment it’s a certainty.
At level 20, Murky’s salvation arrives in the form of Big Tuna Kahuna, which is generally regarded as being the superior of the talents at that tier, since it allows Murky to stay alive a significantly longer period of time in a fight. Making Inky has the exact same popularity and win rate as Big Tuna Kahuna and it works similarly but opposite: where Big Tuna Kahuna increases how many slimes you can do before you die by increasing your health a significant amount, Making Inky increases how many slimes you can do before you die by decreasing the slime cooldown by a significant amount. At this point, however, the momentum of the game might be too far in favour of the enemy team to be able to make a comeback with the level 20s. Both Making Inky and Big Tuna Kahuna have a 33% win rate across 3 games played each. Definitely increasing his odds of winning from a 20% win rate, but they’re not “auto-win” talents by any means. Teams are also better at ending sooner in a coordinated environment, and so the Murky team might not even hit this power spike.
In coordinated environments teams can also coordinate better in draft to pick heroes that can more easily deal with the Murky, although that is a double edged sword as you could say that the Murky team could only select Murky in games without a good Murky counter.
Murky had the lowest win rate of any hero in NGS for season 10, and that makes complete sense. He is squishy, doesn’t do that much damage, and can be easily dealt with in a coordinated environment.
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