Shiv vs Mo & Krill

Do

• Plan for Unstoppable Unstoppable 6,400 souls Tier 4ArmorInstantCast +60s Cooldown +5.5s Duration +125 Bonus Health +25% Debuff Resist Builds from Debuff Reducer — know which tier it sits in so you are not improvising at the shop.
• Know what Burrow looks like. It is the cooldown this lane revolves around.

Avoid

• Walking to lane on the same path every wave against a hero with Mo & Krill's engage range.

Do

• Zero ranged presence — 2.8 damage per pellet means they contribute essentially nothing outside a few metres.
• Every one of their damage tools requires being close, so a mid- or long-range laning duo can simply refuse to engage.
• Serrated Knives Serrated Knives 16s Cooldown Shiv throws a knife that damages and bleeds the target. Crowd Control Applies a movement slow with the bleed; Damage 32 impact damage plus 10 bleed DPS per knife stack over a 5s debuff; 1 1 AP: +2s debuff duration 2 2 AP: +2 charges (four knives available for a full stack dump) 5 5 AP: +7 bleed DPS per stack, and +0.01 spirit scaling on the full-Rage impact damage give him free chip at range with 2 charges on a 16s cooldown, which wins the health-bar war without him ever entering shotgun range

Avoid

• 930 base health gives them a large health pool that is hard to push out of lane.
• Scorn Scorn 13s Cooldown A burst of damage to everything close by that converts a portion of the damage dealt into healing, with a substantially larger return when the damage lands on enemy heroes. Crowd Control None at base. T3 adds a stacking 15% damage debuff on enemies hit, lasting… Damage 45 damage base, scaling with spirit at 0.675, with a 13s base cooldown. Defensive The heal is the main defensive layer. 1 +30 damage. 2 -5s cooldown, +1m radius. 5 applies a stacking 15% damage debuff to enemies hit for 16s. clears troopers and heals off them simultaneously, so they sustain and farm from the same button.

Do

• Their first real spike is Scorn first two points (laning 0-10min) — respect it from that point, not before.
• Your spike is ult unlock: Killing Blow makes every low-health enemy within 12m a guaranteed kill and turns on the Rage passive that upgrades all three basic abilities

Avoid

• Taking an even fight against Mo & Krill on their spike timing when you could take the same fight ten minutes later on yours.

Do

• Watch for Burrow. Shoot the burrow mound. Hero damage directly reduces the speed bonus, so contesting the approach turns a fast dive into a slow one you can walk away from.
• Kite. Their entire damage output requires close range and their spreadshot does 2.8 per pellet — holding 20m+ with a mid- or long-range hero keeps them past the point where their damage starts falling off.

Avoid

• Spending your own escape before Burrow is on cooldown.

• Burrow Ability 2

  It puts you somewhere you did not choose to be — slow plus a Knockup on everyone near the emergence point.

  • Shoot the burrow mound. Hero damage directly reduces the speed bonus, so contesting the approach turns a fast dive into a slow one you can walk away from.
  • Spread out. The emergence Knockup is AoE, so standing apart means it catches one person instead of three.
  • The travel path is visible on the ground — reposition to a spot with no cover for them to surface behind, or back onto high ground they must climb to.
• Combo Ultimate

  Once this lands the fight is usually already decided — full Stun for the 2.4s channel (+0.7s at T3).

  • Interrupt it. Any Stun, Knockup, Silence or displacement on Mo & Krill breaks the channel and wastes a 150s ultimate.
  • Both participants are stationary and grouped for the 2.4s channel — that is a free AoE target for your own ultimate.
  • Do not let them finish the kill: a Debuff Remover or a heal on the held target denies the permanent max-health reward entirely, since the target has to actually die.
• Sand Blast Sand Blast 25m Range2.5s Duration40s Cooldown A spray of sand in a cone ahead that deals damage and disarms everyone it catches, preventing them from using their weapon. Crowd Control Disarm, roughly 2.5s. T2 adds a 28% slow and a 28% dash distance reduction… Damage 35 damage base; T1 adds +45 damage and +5m range. 25m range with a 2.5s… Defensive Disarming the biggest gun in the fight is a defensive cooldown in practice. 1 +45 damage, +5m range. 2 24% slow and 26% dash distance reduction. 5 +1.5s duration, -25s cooldown. Ability 3

  More lockdown on its own cooldown — Disarm, roughly 2.5s.

  • It is a cone in front of them — strafe wide or get behind them and it applies nothing.
  • Disarm blocks weapons, not abilities. If you are ability-based (Paige, Paradox, Pocket) you can keep fighting through it; if you are gun-based, use the window to reposition instead of trying to shoot.
  • Debuff Remover clears the Disarm and is worth holding specifically for the moment before they commit Combo.
• Scorn Ability 1

  Their sustain and their farming button in one. It lets them sit in a trooper wave and stay topped up.

  • Anti-heal (Healbane Healbane 1,600 souls Tier 2ArmorPassive +8s Duration +7 Spirit Power -35% Incoming Healing / Toxic Bullets Toxic Bullets 3,200 souls Tier 3WeaponPassive -40% Incoming Healing ) applied before the engage removes the sustain that makes the whole hero work.
  • It is a short-radius point-blank pulse — staying more than a few metres away denies it entirely, and their spreadshot cannot punish you at that distance either.
  • Do not feed it multiple bodies. Scorn heals per target hit, so a clumped team is what makes them unkillable.

1. 1 Burrow

   Burrow first. It is their only engage and their only real escape; force it on a trooper wave or a fake overextend and they are a slow-approaching shotgun hero for the next 20-40 seconds.

2. 2 Sand Blast

   Sand Blast second — bait the Disarm from behind cover or with a summon, then engage when your gun is safe for the next window.

3. 3 Scorn

   Scorn third: make them use it as wave clear rather than as a heal in a fight, since its cooldown is short and its impact in a brawl is large.

• No ranged damage whatsoever; kiting them is a direct counter. Strong evidence
• Combo is a stationary channel that any CC breaks, wasting their ultimate. Strong evidence
• Anti-heal items simultaneously disable Scorn's sustain and Combo T1's Lifesteal. Strong evidence
• You both win by jumping on someone, which means the loser is whoever jumps first. An entry spends mobility, and a hero who has spent their mobility is the ideal target for a hero who has not — so the fight between you is decided before contact, by who can wait longer. The way out of the stalemate is to force it with someone else's engage and arrive second onto a target they have already committed to. Strategic
• Neither of you deletes the other, so this matchup is decided by multipliers rather than damage. Resists stack multiplicatively, which means your fourth resist item buys much less percentage than your first; shred is subtracted from the total afterward, which means it is worth more the tankier they get; and healing reduction stacks multiplicatively too, so a second anti-heal source on top of a first is worth far less than the first. The efficient build against Mo & Krill is one anti-heal, one shred, and damage after that. Strong evidence

• Burrow lets them travel to you underground with bullet and spirit armour, then surface directly under your feet with a Knockup you cannot dash out of. Strong evidence
• Sand Blast disarms you for around 2.5s (longer at T3) in a 25m cone — your gun stops working for the exact seconds they need to set up. Strong evidence
• Combo holds you stunned in place for 2.4 seconds while grinding through your health, with +50% Bullet Resist at T2 so shooting them off is unreliable. Strong evidence
• Scorn heals them off every body in radius, with a stacking 15% damage debuff on you at T3 — the longer the brawl runs, the more the numbers move their way. Strong evidence
• Every kill secured inside Combo permanently raises their max health, so the same hero is harder to kill in minute 40 than in minute 20. Strong evidence

• Kite. Their entire damage output requires close range and their spreadshot does 2.8 per pellet — holding 20m+ with a mid- or long-range hero keeps them past the point where their damage starts falling off. Strong evidence
• Shoot the burrow mound as it approaches. Hero damage reduces the Burrow speed bonus directly, so contesting the travel converts their dive into a walk. Strong evidence
• Hold one interrupt specifically for the Combo channel. Any Stun, Silence, Knockup or displacement on them cancels a 150-second ultimate and denies the permanent health stack. Strong evidence
• Buy anti-heal before mid game. Healbane / Toxic Bullets cut Scorn's healing and Combo T1's Lifesteal at the same time. Strong evidence
• Spread out so the Burrow emergence Knockup and Scorn each hit one person instead of three — their sustain scales with the number of bodies in radius. Strong evidence
• Sand Blast is a frontal cone: circle behind them rather than backing straight up, and if you are ability-based, keep fighting through the Disarm since it only blocks weapons. Strong evidence
• You do not have the CC to reliably break Combo out of your own kit, so buy the cheapest thing that does: Silence Wave Silence Wave 3,200 souls Tier 3TechInstantCast +42s Cooldown +3s Duration +0.1s Cast Delay +90 Bonus Health is the only area Silence in the shop and the standard answer to channelled ultimates. Area matters because you do not have to win the aim duel — you have to cover the spot they cast from. Note the alternative, Counterspell Counterspell 3,200 souls Tier 3ArmorPassive +23s Cooldown +20 Spirit Power +6s Buff Duration +0.8s Spell Parry Duration +50 Bonus Health +5 Spirit Power , parries a single ability outright but requires a read; Silence Wave forgives a bad read, which is why it is the buy when interrupting is not your specialty. Strong evidence
• Mo & Krill starts the fight and you have no exit, so the defensive active you buy has to work when you did not see it coming. Unstoppable is the stronger effect — immunity to and a dispel of Stun, Silence, Sleep, Root and Disarm for 5.5 seconds — but it must be pre-cast, and it cannot be activated once you are already stunned, which is precisely the situation this hero creates. Indomitable Indomitable 6,400 souls Tier 4ArmorPassive +55s Cooldown +10s Duration +10% Bullet Resist +10% Spirit Resist +20s Cooldown On Apply +2 Out of Combat Regen Builds from Reactive Barrier auto-cleanses the next Hard CC with no input from you; against an initiator that reliability beats the bigger number. Strong evidence

• During the Combo channel — they are stationary, locked to one target, and any Hard CC cancels it. Strong evidence
• While burrowed and being shot: hero damage strips the speed bonus, so a contested approach leaves them arriving late and out of position. Strong evidence
• Immediately after the Burrow emergence Knockup, with Burrow on cooldown — they have no escape and are standing inside your team. Strong evidence
• Any time they are further than ~20m from a target: their spreadshot starts falling off at 20m and Scorn only reaches 9m, so they deal little damage at that range. Strong evidence
• Their 2.82s spreadshot reload at close range, which is a long window for a hero with no ranged fallback. Strong evidence
• Being stunned by Mo & Krill now pauses your reload rather than restarting it, as of 09-16-2026. That quietly changes when it is safe to reload in this matchup: a reload caught by their Stun resumes where it left off instead of costing you the whole cycle, so the old rule of never reloading inside their engagement range is too conservative now. The compensating change is that parrying also pauses your reload, so a defensive parry no longer buys you free reload time. Documented
• Parry is your best tool against Mo & Krill's arrival and it is now a commitment rather than a hedge. Since 09-16-2026, parrying during a dash cancels the dash and its momentum, so you cannot both reposition and hold F. The cooldown maths makes the decision for you: a successful parry costs 0.5 seconds and stuns them for 3 with no Debuff Resist reduction possible, while a whiff costs 4.5 seconds — against a hero who arrives on a cooldown, that whiff is the entire window they needed. Documented

• Mo & Krill closes distance on a cooldown and you have no exit, so in the 0-6 minute window your Guardian is your escape item. Fight with it behind you and inside its range, not beside you: their gap-close has to end somewhere, and ending it inside 116 DPS of Guardian fire is the only punish you own before you have items. The moment the Guardian falls at around 6:00, that safety disappears and the matchup gets materially worse — plan your first defensive purchase for that timing. Strategic
• Around 6:00 the Guardians become realistically contestable and players start leaving lane for Haunt camps Haunts Neutral camps Lanes and Districts across the map Haunts replace the old neutral camps. They are not a reskin: each type behaves differently, and the health bar now shows a camp's soul value and how hard it is, so you can decide whether a camp is worth your time before you start shooting. Three eye colours mark the tier — teal for tier I, yellow for tier II, red for tier III. Souls 41/68/181 souls tier I / II / III a creep +0.44 / +0.73 / +1.95 a minute — which for you means the map stops being a 1v1 and Mo & Krill gains the thing they are best at, the opening engagement onto a target with no way out. The last two minutes before that transition are your safest window to build a soul lead. After it, treat any position without a teammate in line of sight as a position they can start a fight in. Strategic
• You get value from moving around the map and Mo & Krill does not, but the 09-16-2026 patch made that harder to convert early: tunnel breakables Crates Breakable Streets, rooftops and tunnels — about 500 of them Ordinary breakables. Each has a 60% chance to drop souls; a Tough Crate always drops, for double. Souls 23 souls a crate, 60% of the time +2 a minute now spawn and respawn on 5 minutes rather than 3. The off-lane income that used to make a rotation pay for itself is roughly 40% less frequent, so before 6:00 a rotation has to be justified by pressure on Mo & Krill or on the Guardian, not by the breakables you pick up on the way. Documented

• There is a hard behavioural change at 20:00 in this matchup: respawn goes from 35 to 38 seconds as of 09-16-2026, and you are the hero Mo & Krill can pick off without a fight starting. Three seconds does not sound like much until you price it against the Rift's 7-minute cadence and the Urn at 20 and 25 — a single death now reliably costs you presence at the next objective. Past 20:00, stop taking the solo camp that is one rotation from their side of the map. Documented

• Combo is a channel, which means the fight is decided by whether you can break it. Hold one interrupt — a Stun, a Silence, or a displacement — specifically for that cast rather than spending it on the opening trade. If you have no interrupt, the answer is line of sight: leave the area entirely rather than trying to out-heal it. Strong evidence
• Against Mo & Krill's knockups, Debuff Reducer Debuff Reducer 1,600 souls Tier 2ArmorPassive +25% Debuff Resist +90 Bonus Health is a live answer where it used to be a dead one: Knockup durations were brought under debuff reduction on 05-22-2026, so the +25% from a 1,600 Tier II item genuinely shortens the airborne time. That matters more for you than for most, because you have no exit and the airborne window is when their follow-up lands. Worth pairing with the fact that Knockdown Knockdown 3,200 souls Tier 3TechPress +35s Cooldown +0.1s Cast Delay +2s Stun Delay +0.5s Stun Duration +75 Bonus Health +5% Ability Range +5% Radius -style effects going the other way still cannot be shortened at all. Documented
• You are not going to kill Mo & Krill in a normal teamfight and trying to is how fights are lost. Treat them as terrain: fight around them, spend your damage on whoever is behind them, and only commit to killing them once anti-heal and shred are actually online. Strategic
• Mo & Krill brings enough lockdown that Stun sequencing matters. Community reporting describes Stun diminishing returns of roughly 10% then 30% inside an 8-second window, applying to stuns only and not to silences, slows, disarms or hexes — so their follow-up chain may be shorter than the first one felt. Treat this as unconfirmed, but it is worth knowing before you burn a cleanse on the opening Stun. Uncertain

• Mo & Krill heals through damage, so healing reduction is not optional here — but pick the right application route. Anti-heal arrives two ways: bullet-applied (Toxic Bullets, T3) builds up through gunfire, and spirit-applied (Healbane, T2) lands off Spirit Damage. Buy the one that matches how you actually deal damage, or it will never apply. Documented
• Mo & Krill dives, and you do not have an exit in your kit. This is the clearest item priority in the matchup: buy a movement or escape active before you buy your next damage item. A damage item does not help you if the fight starts with you already dead. Strong evidence
• Against Mo & Krill's crowd control, understand what Debuff Resist actually buys you: it shortens duration, never magnitude. It is excellent against long disables and close to worthless against a short hard slow. Two things it explicitly does not shorten at all are the parry Stun and the Knockdown item's Stun. Documented
• Mo & Krill is a durability check, and the maths favours shred over raw damage here. Resistances stack multiplicatively, but shred is pooled and then subtracted from total resist — so the higher their resist climbs, the more each point of shred is worth. Against a stacked tank, resist reduction outperforms another flat damage item. Documented
• You have no reliable interrupt in your own kit, so against Combo you are buying one. A Silence or a displacement active is worth more to your team here than another damage item, because nobody else may be holding one either. Strategic
• If Mo & Krill buys Dispel Magic Dispel Magic 3,200 souls Tier 3ArmorInstantCast +45s Cooldown +10% Spirit Resist +3s Buff Duration +250 Heal Amount to purge your anti-heal, bullet-applied reduction re-lands on your very next shot, while spirit-applied reduction has to wait for your next ability. That asymmetry is a real argument for the bullet route against a hero who will buy a purge. Strong evidence
• Unstoppable (vitality T4) — Buy when enemy lockdown is the reason you lose fights — it lets you walk through a full CC chain and still deal damage. In this game that means Mo & Krill's Combo. Documented
• Ethereal Shift Ethereal Shift 6,400 souls Tier 4TechInstantCast +37s Cooldown +4s Duration +5s Buff Duration +30% Spirit Resist +20 Spirit Power (spirit T4) — Buy to survive a telegraphed assassination combo or ultimate — you cannot be hurt for four seconds. That matters here because of the channelled ultimates from Mo & Krill. Documented
• Knockdown (spirit T3) — Mo & Krill creates that through Mo & Krill's Burrow. Buy whenever an enemy fights from the sky — it answers flying and airborne heroes and channelled aerial ultimates. Documented

• The instinct here is to buy Dispel Magic as your answer to Mo & Krill and then find it greyed out at the exact moment you need it. Dispel Magic cannot be cast while you are stunned or asleep, and it cannot remove a Stun at all — it purges what comes with the Stun, not the Stun itself. Against Mo & Krill the item you actually want is the pre-cast kind (Unstoppable, which also cannot be activated once you are already stunned) or the automatic kind (Indomitable, which cleanses the next Hard CC with no input from you). Documented
• Anti-heal against Mo & Krill is bought correctly and applied at the wrong moment. Healbane's reduction runs for 8 seconds from your Spirit Damage and Toxic Bullets' runs while the bleed is up — both are windows, and re-applying the same source before it expires does not stack a second instance. The mistake is opening the fight clean and reaching for anti-heal once they start healing; by then you have spent the fight. Land it before they commit, then keep the window refreshed rather than re-triggering it. Strong evidence
• The reflex buy against a hero who keeps deleting you is Metal Skin Metal Skin 3,200 souls Tier 3ArmorInstantCast +24s Cooldown +5s Duration +12% Bullet Resist -20% Dash Distance +20% Gravity Scale , and against Mo & Krill it does nothing. Metal Skin is bullet-damage immunity only — Spirit Damage, abilities and every status effect pass straight through it, and you pay −1.5 m/s move speed and −20% dash distance for the privilege. The three big defensive actives are deliberately orthogonal: Metal Skin stops bullets, Unstoppable stops statuses, Ethereal Shift stops everything but disables you. Mo & Krill is a spirit threat, so it is the last two you are choosing between. Documented
• If you learned to play this matchup before 09-16-2026 you probably dash away from Mo & Krill and parry on the way out. That no longer works: parrying during a regular dash now cancels the dash and its momentum, so you parry standing still exactly where they wanted you. Parry first and dash second, or accept that the parry is a commitment to hold ground. Note also that a whiffed parry is a 4.5-second cooldown against a hero who only needs one window. Documented
• The finishing heavy melee on Mo & Krill is worse than it feels. Melee Damage is mitigated twice — once by Bullet Resist and again by Melee Resist — so it is the single worst damage channel to point at a stacked-resist target, and the wind-up is long enough for a parry that stuns you for 3 seconds with no Debuff Resist reduction available. Finish with your gun or an ability, not with melee. Strong evidence
• Players buy Dispel Magic for Mo & Krill and then discover it does nothing about Combo. Dispel Magic purges non-ultimate negative effects only — anything sourced from an ultimate is outside its scope entirely. Work out which of Mo & Krill's disables come off abilities and which come off the ult before you spend 3,200: the ability-sourced ones are purgeable, the ult is not, and for the ult you need either Unstoppable pre-cast or the discipline not to be there. Documented
• Your instinct is to jump on Mo & Krill's backline the moment you see an opening, and the mistake is not checking what is above you. A Walker's Stomp is 350 damage + 15% of your max health inside 15m with a 2-second Stun on a 7-second cooldown — a 2-second Stun handed to a team with peel is a death. Dive under their Walker only with Unstoppable pre-cast or after the Stomp has just gone off. Strong evidence