Dota – As Morphling, how to decide when to morph

Good question. DotA is a team game, with each hero playing a different role. Some heroes are meant to be farming and others are not. Carries such as Beastmaster, Juggernaut, Mirana, Kunkka etc farm the best and are meant to do so in order to tank in the late game. I'm going to assume that you are playing one of these heroes, and that your team is nicely balanced with other heroes playing the other roles. In that case:

• Early game, do not leave your lane to gank too often. Once or twice early if you are the solo is ok, but remember that the longer you are out of lane, the more XP and gold you lose. It's doubly bad if your opponent is still in lane getting the XP and gold that you would've denied. Stay in your lane and FARM FARM FARM. See the section at the end about support heroes though - they can afford to run around a bit more.

• Later on in the game, farm in between the big team moments... when the other team isn't about to knock down a tower, and when your team isn't trying a big push.

• When a bunch of their creep attack one of your towers but none of your opponents are around is always great. This may happen mid to late-game when your team has just abandoned a big push far into the other side of the map. The other team will be busy mopping up the creep that are in or near their base... if you teleport back to your tower quickly, you should be able to get more gold out of the creep than the cost of the scroll.

• Jungling / Neutralling can be good when there are no waves of enemy creep nearby. It is better to do this than to push with a wave into an area of the map where you will be ganked. Always watch the minimap when farming... if you can't see their heroes, they are coming to gank you. Same rules about teamwork apply - don't go farm the neutrals when your team is pushing together or they will rightfully hate on you. The only exception would be if you are the carry and your team can do ok without you for a little while.

If you aren't playing a carry: support heroes like Lion, Warlock etc should be denying/harassing/ganking and NOT taking gold from the carries. If you only have 2 bracers and boots on level 10 but you've been planting wards the whole game, your team will love you. If on the other hand you last hit ten creep with Lion's stun spikes when there's a Nerubian Weaver around that could've put the gold to better use, you'll be very unpopular.

So know what your role is in the team, and don't try to play a role that your hero isn't intended for. A lot of the dbaggery is misdirected rage from people who don't know how to express their frustration that you aren't playing the team role the way their friends do.

Disclaimer: in low level games / LANs people often get the team aspects of DotA wrong, so you may see heroes be played in the wrong roles, or not be used to being ganked so frequently. In those games you should just pick a carry and outfarm everyone.

Although I only play LoL and no DotA/DotA 2 (yet) it looks like at the moment the same mechanics apply to both games in DotA2 you earn more gold since the June 4th Patch. I found the following here for the original DotA and here for DotA 2:

Gold for a Kill

Every time you kill an enemy hero you are awarded with (Current Streak of Dying Hero)+200+(Dying Hero's Level)*9 reliable gold. Where current streak is:

• 0 if the hero has no kills since last respawn
• 0 if the hero has killed another hero and not died yet
• 0 If the hero has two kills in a row
• 75 Killing Spree (Three kills in a row)
• 150 Dominating ( Four kills in a row)
• 225 Mega Kill! ( Five kills in a row)
• 300 Unstoppable! ( Six kills in a row)
• 375 Wicked Sick( Seven kills in a row)
• 450 Monster Kill!!! ( Eight kills in a row)
• 525 Godlike! (Nine kills in a row)
• 600 Beyond Godlike! (Ten to infinite kills in a row)

This means you can get up to 1025 (600+200+25x9) gold for a kill if the hero was Level 25 and had more than 10 kills since his last death.

Gold for an Assist

Heroes that are in a 1000 area and not being the killer will be granted a certain amount of reliable gold, depending on total heroes (including the killer) in that area.

• 2 Hero: 125+12*(Dying Hero's Level)
• 3 Heroes: 40+10*(Dying Hero's Level)
• 4 Heroes: 10+6*(Dying Hero's Level)
• 5 Heroes: 6*(Dying Hero's Level)

Assists only give gold if Dire or Radiant gets the kill.

As 25 is the max. level for heros this means you can get up to 425 (125 + 12 * Level 25) gold if you're the only hero besides the killer in a range of 1000.

For loosing gold it's a bit more complicated, because your aquired gold is split into 2 categories:

• Reliable gold - Any bounty you get from hero kills is added to your reliable gold pool.
• Unreliable gold - Everything else (creep kills, neutrals, etc).

The difference between the two (except from how each is earned) is how each one is spent: Dying can only take away gold from your unreliable gold pool and not from your reliable gold. Buying items uses up your unreliable gold first before using your reliable gold. Buyback uses reliable gold first. In the end you still have a fixed amount of total gold (you just add the two together).

And further below on the pages you can find:

Every time you die you lose 30*(Level of your Hero) unreliable gold (Dying cannot take away reliable gold), the only way to reduce this amount is with a Bloodstone - you'll lose 25 gold less for every Bloodstone charge.