Dota 2 Muerta guide: How to itemize like the pros

If you want to try Dota 2’s newest hero, Muerta, and you don’t know where to start, you are at the right spot! This guide will show you the best item build recommendations for Muerta, her performance in pubs, as well as, some handy gameplay tips. We’ll also show you how pro players itemize on this Mournful Revenant. Let’s get started!

In the last week (March 13 - 19), Muerta is the 2nd most popular hero, topped by none other than Pudge himself. She has a pretty low winrate at 47.1% but it has started to spike up following the buffs that Valve dropped two days ago (March 18).

Traditionally, new Dota 2 heroes would be extremely overpowered in their first days but Muerta seems to be pretty balanced. And even though her winrate looks a little discouraging, Muerta is not very simple to play and thus. Many players are still tinkering with her build and finding the best way to play this hero.

Muerta is designed to be a core hero, more specifically in the carry role. Despite that, her winrate as carry is the lowest when compared to other positions. Her winrate played in the offlane (mostly support) is the highest at 47% followed by the midlane role at 45%. As a carry, she only holds a 44% winrate but the difference is not significant enough to indicate that she’s not suitable as a carry hero. 

For starters, we recommend you to pick Muerta as a pos 4 or offlane since she has the best win rate in that position.

Item builds differ according to roles and situations. Generally, the most popular items for Muerta are Hurricane Pike, Black King Bar, and Maelstrom built into either Gleipnir or Mjollnir.

A common Muerta build in the early game is the Null Talisman and Power Treads. Null Talisman is really good to buff your stats and add your damage as well as help you sustain your mana. Players also often build either Falcon Blade or Witch Blade during the early phase.

Muerta doesn’t have an escape ability and her movement speed isn’t very fast so a Hurricane Pike is perfect to help her in this aspect. This item gives you that escape option, more intelligence, and more attack speed which also enables all of Muerta’s strengths.

Maelstrom is the go-to item that can help Muerta farm efficiently when coupled with her Gunslinger passive. Most players upgrade it into a Gleipnir which works great for Muerta since she doesn’t have any stuns or roots. But some players, especially those who want to maximize farm and damage, would go for Mjollnir instead. This is situational and though Mjollnir has a slight win rate advantage, Gleipnir is by far more popular.

A Black King Bar is almost always necessary since her biggest weakness is magic damage. Rush an early BKB to make your hero invulnerable to both physical and magical damage.

Here is a full item guide by Torte de Lini, a popular and reliable guide maker for Dota 2 players.

If you want to spice up your item builds and copy the professionals, we got your back. Here is how pro players in different roles itemize for Muerta.

Ivy's Qupe has been spamming Muerta out of his mind, playing her in 54 matches this week - the most out of all pro players. His win rate on Muerta is also impressively high at 68.5%. Interestingly, he has played Muerta the most as a support hero. Let's take a look at his favorite item build.

His usual build as a support is Urn of Shadows - Arcane Boots - Force Staff - Aether Lense (Upgrade to Octarine Core) - Blink Dagger - Scythe of Vyse.

He also likes to toss in an occasional Meteor Hammer in his Muerta build.

Topson has played Muerta in 36 matches this week and among all pros, Topson is the second person who has played Muerta the most. He holds a high win rate at 61.1% in the last week. Topson plays Muerta mostly in the midlane and his itemization is pretty normal, though in classic Topson style, he also tosses in some unpopular item choices.

Topson's most recent item builds for Muerta is: Power Treads - Mage Slayer (upgrade to Bloodthorn) - Hurricane Pike - BKB - Crystalys (upgrade to Daedalus)

It is difficult to really generalize Topson's builds due to how different it is from game to game. He loves to get Silver Edge in certain situations and in the late game, he would build Refresher Orb, Scythe of Vyse, and Revenant's Brooch. He would sometimes get Moon Shard or even Yasha and Kaya.

Carry players are not doing very well with Muerta as they mostly suffer a below 50% win rate this week. PSG.LGD's shiro has been playing plenty of Muerta with a 45.5% win rate in 11 games. He doesn't experiment much with Muerta's build and usually stick with the usual item choices.

Monet usually builds Power Treads - Mjollnir - Black King Bar - Hurricane Pike - Silver Edge - Daedalus - Blink Dagger (upgrade to Swift Blink)

Muerta in the offlane usually has similar, if not the same build as other core positions. As you can see from the image on top, pro players usually go for Falcon Blade or Witch Blade and then Maelstrom. They then purchase items for Hurricane Pike and Gleipnir or even Kaya. By the late game, you need to get items like Ethereal Blade, Silver Edge, BKB, and Blink Dagger.

If you want a detailed breakdown and demo of Muerta's abilities, you can press here.

Muerta is pretty complicated in certain aspects and her abilities, which can do a LOT, can be overwhelming to beginners. Here are some gameplay tips that can help improve the way you use Muerta in Dota 2.

That's all for our Muerta guide! Hopefully you can wing your gun in pubs and rock the new Dota 2 hero well. Stay tuned to esports.gg for more Dota 2 news and guides!