Murky Talents

Level	Choices
1	? ? ✓
4	✓ ? ✘︎
7	✓ ? ?
10	✓ ?
13	? ✘︎ ✓
16	✓ ? ✘︎
20	? ✘︎ ? ✓

Fish Eye promotes aggressively using Spawn Egg by significantly increasing its Health pool and sight range. This Health increase is generally enough to re-cast Spawn Egg should a Hero find and attack your Egg, granted you react quickly enough. The real power of this Talent, however, lies in its ability to detect Stealthed Heroes and generally give vision in a wide area, drastically reducing the space usable by enemy Heroes to approach you unnoticed.

Using your Egg anywhere where a team fight might erupt can absolutely frustrate opposing flanking attempts, particularly by Heroes with Stealth (such as Nova, Samuro, Valeera, or Zeratul). The Movement Speed provided by the Talent is also useful for quickly returning to any ongoing fight.

Egg Hunt provides fake Eggs that are useful and expendable scouting devices that apply Slime to anyone foolish enough to stand near them as they are destroyed. By stacking several Eggs in a given bush, it is possible to deal a significant amount of damage should all the Eggs be destroyed at once. This tactic is particularly useful when laning, as you could trap a nearby bush to use for cover. Otherwise, the Stealthed effects, although short in duration, is useful for for making it more difficult for opponents to guess where your real Egg might be hidden.

A Fishy Deal turns Murky into one of the most effective Mercenary Camp claimer. With proper preparation and setup, as little as two Minion waves can set you up for capturing basic Mercenary Camps. This is, however, reliant on how effective your opponents are at killing Pufferfish. Furthermore, the Talent is less than effective on Maps where Mercenary Camps are not plentiful. The task can also be made even more difficult by allied Heroes preventing you from killing Minions. As such, you should let them know of your intention.

The key to using A Fishy Deal is learning just how much you need to weaken Minions for Pufferfish to be able to kill them. For your typical Minion wave, Melee Minions are generally at the right level of Health due to the fighting. Ranged Minions, however, must be set up with Slime and at least two Basic Attacks each. As you grow stronger, fewer Basic Attacks will be necessary. Try Mode is particularly helpful for learning how to gauge just how much damage you need to deal at any particular Level. The Tufferfish Talent helps significantly with this process.

A Fishy Deal is particularly recommended on the following Maps: Blackheart's Bay, Cursed Hollow, Dragon Shire, Garden of Terror, and Sky Temple.

Slime Time significantly boosts the effectiveness of Slime. However, the Quest can be quite difficult to complete, especially against ranged Heroes. As such, it is only recommendable against team compositions that feature at least two melee Heroes.

To get this Quest done at an opportune time, you will have to be very aggressive with using Slime against opponents that have already been Slimed. It should be noted that the Black Lagoon, Toxic Buildup, and Fish Oil Talents can make this Quest much easier to complete, although the latter two come online rather late.

Tufferfish makes Pufferfish a bit more difficult to destroy, although not by much, and especially not versus Heroes with quick Basic Attacks. The damage increase is also rather negligible when compared to the two other Talents available at this Tier, and even more so should the Pufferfish be destroyed.

This Talent's saving grace is its ability to improve your Octo-Grab combo, although Slime Time and Living the Dream will both provide more overall sustain damage. Tufferfish also works well against solo Laners who rely on Abilities to destroy Pufferfish, such as Azmodan.

Living the Dream generally competes with Slime Time in terms of raw added damage output. Its main upside is that you get to benefit from the Talent almost as soon as you pick it up, unlike Slime Time. Living the Dream also increases the damage output of all your Abilities (including March of the Murlocs) and some Talents ( Time to Krill), making it generally more versatile. Slime Time, however, is not lost on death, on top of providing additional Slow, meaning that Living the Dream makes dying twice as punishing, although this risk can be mitigated by later Talents. When playing against Heroes with limited burst damage, making it easier for you to survive, Living the Dream surpasses Slime Time so slightly that the risk is simply not worth it.

Black Lagoon is a good Talent that nearly doubles the area of effect of Slime. On top of simply allowing Murky to more reliably hit multiple Heroes, this increased area of effect also provides him with a pseudo-ranged Ability that allows to kite melee Heroes and easily keep up with ranged Heroes trying to escape, granted they have already been affected by Slime.

Slippery When Wet is a strong Talent that provides Murky with some combat mobility. The main advantage of this Talent is that it allows you to unconditionally waltz right up to your intended Octo-Grab target. The Movement Speed increased by Slippery When Wet allows Murky to effectively escape all but the most mobile of Heroes while using Safety Bubble, which may help maintaining Living the Dream Stacks.

Time to Krill is a decent Talent that increases your damage when you can use Basic Attacks a lot, however, it needs a few seconds to ramp up.

Do not pick this Talent when playing against burst damage or you will end up having a dead Talent.

March of the Murlocs has the potential of dealing an immense amount of damage. This is, however, reliant on using the Ability in conjunction with some form of area of effect crowd control, or during a fight from which your opponents can not (or should not) avoid.

Octo-Grab is one of the longest targeted Stuns in the game. It is almost always used in conjunction with Pufferfish to guarantee a large amount of damage. Besides killing Murky, the only reliable way of preventing Octo-Grab from being used as a way of locking down kill targets is to use cleanse effects (for example Intercession by Whitemane), as well as a few other select Heroic Abilities and Talents. If the opposing team has a particularly important target to focus down, this is the choice for you.

Rejuvenating Bubble greatly increases Murky's survivability by essentially allowing him to near-fully heal during Safety Bubble when combined with his very high baseline Health Regeneration. Rejuvenating Bubble becomes particularly effective when combined with Big Tuna Kahuna. Just make sure to use Safety Bubble when you have actually taken damage.

Egg Shell is a trap Talent. Although it initially provides more raw survivability than Rejuvenating Bubble, it is uncontrollable, in that the Shields provided by the Talent are liable to get poked, willingly or not, by Heroes, Minions, and everything in between. Since the Shields do not benefit from Murky's high baseline Health Regeneration, this "mitigation" ends up being wasted by superfluous damage in many cases.

Fish Tank increases Murky's survivability against team compositions with limited damage output. Double Healer compositions may actually find it impossible to shed Murky unless they can also commit a damage dealer's time to dealing with him, particularly with Slime-oriented Builds. It should be noted that the area of effect-nature of Murky's Abilities means that Fish Tank works exceptionally well when surrounded by Minions.

Toxic Buildup turns Murky's Basic Attacks into something to be feared by all Heroes. This Talent single-handedly allows Murky to take on the majority of Heroes in a head-on fight. This high damage output, however, is dependent on your ability to deliver said Basic Attacks. As such, Toxic Buildup is generally recommendable against team compositions that feature at least 3 melee or low-range Heroes.

Fish Oil turns an unreliable Pufferfish into a reliable source of area of effect damage and Slow, on top of providing a Slime stack for future Slime uses.

Wrath of Cod, although potentially very hard hitting, suffers from the same issues as Pufferfish does as a baseline Ability: if it dies, it does nothing. Unlike Fish Oil, it also does not affect Minions and Mercenaries, on top of not triggering an initial Slime cast, making it generally less versatile.

Never-Ending Murlocs turns March of the Murlocs into a win condition. If your opponents are unable to interrupt the Ability, they are essentially forced off any Objective or away from Structures they may be trying to defend or assault. Keep track of important interrupts to get the most out of this Talent.

... And a Shark Too! adds a measly amount of damage to an Ability that is generally used as a combo piece for your allies to follow up upon for near-unconditional kills. You will get more mileage out of other Talent choices.

Big Tuna Kahuna makes Murky twice as big, and twice as frustrating to deal with. Since Murky's damage output is tuned around being relatively easy to dispatch, Big Tuna Kahuna flips expectations upside-down with Murky becoming about as resilient as your typical Bruiser. You do, however, need to be careful about actually dying, as this Talent comes with an important downside.

Making Inky provides Murky with yet another large damage increase option. Since the Talent competes with Big Tuna Kahuna, however, you should see to use it only when you feel like your survivability has not been an issue. Against Heroes such as Li-Ming, however, go for the alternative.