Muerta guide. How to play and win with Muerta, new Dota 2 hero
On March 6, Valve Corporation released the 124th Dota 2 hero, Muerta. It's an intelligence based carry which is based around magical damage right clicks — a rare sight in the game. Let's figure out the best item and ability builds, and the way to play and get MMR with Muerta.
Muerta abilities
The concept is clear: one farming nuke, some crowd control, carry passive, and an ultimate, during which you deal your main damage in teamfights. And with Black King Bar it's really hard to kill Muerta during its effect. But in reality it all ends up weaker than it sounds.
Muerta build, what abilities to pick
The main part of her kit early is the passive. It not only gives her carry potential and helps to farm, but also makes her a decent hero in the early stages. But we don't want to push the lane on frail carry like Muerta, so we start with Dead Shot and fully invest in it — since this is an intelligence based carry, you can use it quite often to farm. If you plan to farm without participating in fights too much, maxing the passive next is worth it. But at least one point in The Calling is good to have.
Muerta best talents to pick
- Level 10: +100 Dead Shot damage
- Level 15: +35 Damage
- Level 20: +20% Gunslinger chance
- Level 25: If you have a lot of magic dmg against you, pick +25% Magic Resistance. Otherwise, pick additional spirits for The Calling
Muerta item builds, what to buy
Item build is quite simple as well. Since we have a chance based passive, it’s good to improve it with attack speed items and other chance based effects: Maelstrom, Monkey King Bar, etc. Your first item after boots depends on your game plan. If you want to go to the jungle early, Mask of Madness is worth it. Otherwise, Falcon Blade will help you in winning your lane and will be useful later. The next item is definitely Maelstrom. Black King Bar will make you almost unkillable during your ultimate, and it’s important to get the most out of it.
Other good items are Gleipnir, Hurricane Pike (the recent mana cost nerfs don’t affect you, since Muerta’s main attribute is intelligence), Daedalus. Some players tried to run her with Witch Blade. Ethereal Blade is a very situational item, and it might be a bait to buy it in every single game. But in some cases using it to maximize your ultimate potential is not a bad idea.
How to play Muerta
Muerta’s gameplay is clear as well. The hero farms really fast and gets a lot of items relatively quickly. So, in teamfights she should use her ultimate and focus one or two key targets, preferably with initiation and control from other team members. But this is the part where she runs into some issues, as she just doesn’t have that much damage even in the hands of the strongest players.
She needs to be one item ahead of the enemy carry to be a serious threat. And since her ultimate gets countered by Black King Bar, Muerta really needs a good teammate to force that BKB out of those key heroes, and only after that unleash her ultimate. Otherwise, she just wastes Pierce the Veil and gets kited.
So, at the moment the hero looks quite weak. Most likely, Valve developers will buff her really soon, as even in hands of prominent pros and streamers, she has around 40-45% winrate. If they will, it won’t be the first time Valve buffs a new hero — for example, Snapfire was buffed right on the second day after release. While you can win with this hero, it will be an uphill battle at the moment, so we can’t recommend you picking Muerta in ranked matches.
Muerta counter-picks and what to pick her against
Although at the moment you don't really need to counter her, as she isn't that strong in her first iteration, there are some ideas still. She is good against a lot of range physical carry heroes: Razor, Death Prophet, Troll Warlord, Weaver, Drow Ranger, Nature's Prophet.
When talking about counters, first obvious choice is Anti-Mage. What else counters Muerta is melee tanky heroes, who can sit on her with Pipe of Insight and don't let her to get to more important targets. Character like Centaur Warrunner, Axe, Brewmaster, Sand King, Ogre Magi. Spectre is also somewhat similar with that approach, and it's also a very strong carry in the meta.
