My Mana Is For Me

So, I was going to write up a standard Morales-As-Support good guy guide… And then, the match before I began typing, I ran into a team-from-hell.

No one was doing anything to peel guys off of me. They would just sit back and watch the enemy Nova plink away. ¹

Seeing all this relatively early on, I decided to try something different. Morales is maybe the least solo-capable support in the game, as she can’t even heal herself until 13, but there is definitely some interesting solo play to be had, at least in quick match.

Prolonged Safeguard

As a rogue medic / solo laner, the two things you need to do are to keep yourself alive, and keep your pack alive. Keeping yourself alive starts at Level One with either Prolonged Safeguard or Trauma Trigger. I prefer Prolonged Safeguard, as it is more useful in case your team gets their shit together in time for the end game.

Bioshield

If people have been actively getting past your army (Or, if they have an Auto-Attack Hero), you can take Advanced Block here. I went with Bioshield, as it really helps one of your scrub minions stand up to a tower.

Irradiate

This one is really the heart of this build. It gives you continuous AoE damage so long as you have a minion up. At level 20, it does ~ 50 DPS per target. Add one well-placed grenade, and you suddenly have effective wave clear potential.

Toss Up

At level 10, you have to evaluate your team. Do you have someone that will benefit from Stim Drone? If you do, have they been worth a shit during the match? If so, take it, and make sure to burn it every teamfight you can. If not, grab your dropship and use it as a defensive measure to frustrate the shit out of the other team. ²

Couples Therapy

After only 13 levels, you can now heal yourself! Rejoice!

Second Opinion

You are mainly looking to let your minions do the fighting with this build, but this talent is both offensive, doubling your grenade firepower, but defensive, allowing you to create twice as much separation when needed. If you’re moving back toward full-time teamfighting at this point, you might consider either Inoculation (my choice) or Shield Sequencer.

Caduceus Reactor 2.0

This is pretty much my full-time talent level 20, whether I’m still going rogue or if I’ve reformed and decided to support my team’ In this build, it allows for virtually infinite healing gives your initial survivability a strong boost.

Strategy

Generally, I would advocate that you only use this build on maps with three lanes and terrible teammates. You also might want to make sure the other team doesn’t have a Zeratul or Nova.³

Your goal is to be an effective solo laner, who becomes an effective pusher once you accumulate a crowd of minions. Your first priority ⁴ is to keep your minions healthy and destructive. If you have a teammate that is attending to the merc camps that spill into your lane, you can relatively quickly snowball into a truly destructive force. With an attentive teammate actually working with you, it is quite possible to collapse an entire lane’s defense inside of the first 12 minutes of a match, and be pushing the enemy Core.

Always remember, though, that unless you’re at zero mana and it’s relatively early in the game, always abandon ship and get to safety if you’re being threatened.

Final Notes

If you go this route, you will likely take abuse for it- both for the play style, and because you’re probably playing with idiots if you’ve resorted to using it. As much fun (and success) as I’ve had with this build, a pure healer Lt. Morales is truly devastating on a good team. ⁵