When your opponent chooses murky in a tournament setting, it can be perceived as mild trolling. An example that comes to mind is Cloud 9 Maelstrom choosing Murky during an ESL Majors match when faced against a much lower ranked team.
But Virtus.pro isn’t a weak team by any consideration. In fact, our rankings place them as the 8th most winning team in the world. To Be Determined, the team that chose to run Murky against them didn’t appear to be trolling either. As a matter of fact, Murky performed pretty well on the new Battlefield of Eternity battleground, eventually pulling his weight enough to secure a victory for TBD against Virtus.Pro.
What Happened?
Admittedly, Everyone is still trying to figure out what heroes are strong, and what heroes aren’t on the new battleground. We have heard rumors about Gazlowe’s strength on the battleground and strong arguments for Abathur’s strength as well. Murky hasn’t been part of this discussion, but perhaps these tournament matches will start the conversation.
For one, Battlefield of Eternity creates a long, almost perpetual team fight in the middle of the map. This makes heroes that can win early team fights and sustained team presence strong on this map. Murky does decently well in both of these categories and is further aided by the large number of hiding spots and aggressive egg locations available. In other words, when gas is running low, Murky keeps on chugging.
During these long fights, it is equally important to soak lanes for XP as well. This is where Murky appears have some non-intuitive uses that helped To Be Determined take a win. Egg placement near a lane allows Murky to quickly clear a wave of enemy minions for experience and then head back to the middle of the map to fight. If (IE, when) he dies, spawning directly back to lane allows Murky time to grab another lanes worth of XP, and the cycle continues.
To Be Determined pushing top keep with murky while a team fight ensues.
It’s not as clean as an Abathur, Brightwing, or Falstad soak, but it has it’s uses. To Be Determined employed a similar strategy throughout their winning game against Virtus.Pro, sometimes pushing extra hard with Murky when his presence wasn’t needed middle.
More Murlocs?
What is even stranger about this tournament match, is that Virtus.Pro proceeded to pick Murky themselves going into game two! I can’t explain for sure what Virtus.Pros was thinking, but their are several possibly explanations. Either they sincerely feared the Murky pick from To Be Determined and didn't want to use a ban, or they too actually think Murky is a strong pick.
Or perhaps they were trying to win back some momentum. It feels bad losing to Murky, so maybe the only suitable course of action is to pick Murky your self, win, and even the score. Things didn’t go so well for the Virtus.pro baby murloc however, and they ultimately lost the set 0-2.
Check out the games your self on this past broadcast. The first Murky match starts at 5:45:00 and the second match starts at 6:43:30. The only cast of the game available is in Russian, so if you can’t understand the language, you can at least understand the sweet Murky action taking place.
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