Morphling in 7.41f: What Changed for the Hero and How He Stacks Up Stat-Wise

Hi! Today I’m taking a look at Morphling in 7.41f, because he’s exactly the kind of hero where even small tweaks quickly change how he feels to play: he lives off tempo, stats, and how freely he can switch between damage, survivability, and mobility.

Role and abilities

Morphling is a ranged hero with Agility as his primary attribute and a difficulty rating of 3 out of 3. In terms of roles, he’s first and foremost a Carry, but he also clearly has traits of a Nuker, Disabler, Durable, and Escape. In my opinion, that describes his essence well: he doesn’t just deal damage, he constantly adjusts to the situation, especially if his positioning allows it.

The official description is also very accurate: Morphling slips away through a wave, plays around transformation, and can survive places where another carry would already have been caught. He has a few key buttons:

• Waveform — turns the hero into liquid and sends him forward, dealing damage along the way; Morphling is invulnerable while it’s active.
• Adaptive Strike — launches a stunning and knocking-back stream of water at the enemy; damage and effects depend on the current balance of Agility and Strength.
• Attribute Shift (agility) and Attribute Shift (strength) — reversible stat redistribution; with Aghanim’s Shard, it can be used while stunned, and mana cost is reduced.
• Morph — copies the chosen enemy, grants their basic abilities and primary attribute; with Aghanim’s Scepter, an alternate use appears with a strong illusion.
• Ebb and Flow — the innate ability, which grants bonuses based on current Strength and Agility and remains even after transforming into another hero.

What I especially like is that Morphling doesn’t have a “flat” ability kit: he always plays off his current stats. That’s what makes him demanding to execute, but very flexible in design.

Changes in the latest patches

In the patch notes passed to me for 7.41f, there are no separate changes for Morphling, so I’m looking at the accumulated changes from the recent versions, from newest to oldest.

• 7.41e: Morph‘s cooldown was reduced from 140/100/60 to 125/90/55 seconds; the illusion from Aghanim’s Scepter no longer has the vision radius penalty that other illusions do.
• 7.41d: base Strength was reduced from 23 to 16, base Agility increased from 24 to 33, first-level damage rose by 9 — from 36–45 to 45–54; Ebb and Flow was buffed: attack range from Agility increased from 20% to 25%, and spell cast range and slow resistance from Strength went from 20% to 25%; Morph received a nerf to the Aghanim’s Scepter illusion: damage dealt to it was reduced from 300% to 200%.
• 7.41c: Waveform now casts in the chosen direction even if the target point is beyond cast range.
• 7.41a: Agility gain increased from 3.9 to 4.2.
• 7.41: the innate Accumulation was removed and replaced by Ebb and Flow; the model size was also changed — it now depends on the ratio of Agility to Strength. Waveform‘s cast range was reduced from 700/800/900/1000 to 700/775/850/925, and Adaptive Strike‘s base damage was raised from 25/50/75/100 to 50/70/90/110.

For me, two things stand out in these numbers. First, in 7.41d the hero was heavily reworked in terms of base stats: he became noticeably more agile, but lost some of his starting Strength. Second, Ebb and Flow clearly pushes him toward playing around the current stat balance, rather than following one rigid build.

Statistics

According to OpenDota data for the last 7 days, Morphling has played 149,705 public matches and holds a 47.9% win rate. That puts him 98th out of 127 heroes by win rate and 101st by games played. For a hero of this type, that doesn’t look like a stat line without questions: he’s popular, but he isn’t breaking pubs with his win rate.

Looking at ranks, the picture is pretty even:

• Herald — 46.5%
• Guardian — 48.2%
• Crusader — 47.2%
• Archon — 47.8%
• Legend — 47.8%
• Ancient — 48.2%
• Divine — 48.4%

In my opinion, this is exactly the kind of case where the hero doesn’t look “broken” at any one bracket: the numbers are close across the board, with no sharp spike at any single skill level.

In professional matches over the latest period, OpenDota gives Morphling 5 picks, 3 wins, and 2 bans. That’s a small sample, so I wouldn’t draw too many broad conclusions from it, but there is still some interest in the hero at the competitive level.

Items and counters

According to OpenDota, in professional matches Morphling usually starts with simple stats and resources, then builds items for tempo, Agility, and survivability. I’d pay close attention to how his item set changes by game stage:

• Starting items: Iron Branch, Circlet, Magic Wand, Tango, Faerie Fire, Magic Stick.
• Early game: Boots of Speed, Power Treads, Morbid Mask, Vladmir’s Offering, Wraith Band, Blade of Alacrity.
• Mid game: Blade of Alacrity, Diadem, Yasha, Manta Style, Vladmir’s Offering, Dragon Lance.
• Late game: Ultimate Orb, Butterfly, Black King Bar, Eaglesong, Demon Edge, Hydra’s Breath.

There are no surprises here for me: Morphling likes items that help him survive the jump into a fight, live long enough to make use of his stat stacking, and keep his tempo up. Butterfly and Black King Bar in the late game look completely expected, while Manta Style and Yasha fit perfectly with his desire to play around mobility and stats.

The matchup picture in professional games is also interesting. Morphling performs best against Weaver — 63 games and a 77.8% win rate; against Medusa — 28 games and 71.4%; against Troll Warlord — 23 games and 69.6%. He looks worst against Broodmother — 20 games and 20.0%; Chen — 24 games and 25.0%; Alchemist — 29 games and 27.6%.

I think this reads like the hero’s usual story: when he can scale calmly and doesn’t have to waste time on an awkward map, everything looks very good. But against heroes that apply tempo quickly, blur the lane, or don’t let him play comfortably around stats, problems start to appear.

Conclusion

If we look strictly at the numbers I was given, Morphling in 7.41f does not look like a hero who suddenly became an obvious problem for the game. He still seems like a very delicate carry with a high ceiling, and in 7.41 he got a clear set of tools, while 7.41d also noticeably tuned his base stats and innate mechanic.

I think the key question right now isn’t whether Morphling is strong in general, but how consistently he can convert his advantage through the map, timing windows, and smart stat shifting. Statistically, he doesn’t look like a hero taking over everything, but he definitely shouldn’t be written off — especially if his team knows how to play around his tempo and space to farm.

Source: official Dota 2 data and OpenDota.

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