Marci Pos1 Miniguide

I have 100 Marci games mostly as Pos1 and 60% win rate in Ancient bracket. I'm writing this for fun and to share.

The overall idea is that you can have mobility and burst on an armlet strength carry with an armor talent.

Starting Items: tango 2x gauntlet mango qb

For a laning partner, you would like a ranged hero with kill potential so you can win the lane with Sidekick. Veno and Sky are particularly good, with 50% and 40% slows at level 1 respectively. The enemy can't turn and fight when slowed because Sidekick gives bonus damage and lifesteal, and they can't teleport away because Marci has a stun.

In some lanes, you want to skill Rebound early to have an escape.

Skill build is 1-1-3-1 and the core items are Soul Ring + Armlet. These items win your lane and give you burst potential so you can group with your team. Make Helm of Iron Will first, and then go back for the Soul Ring, sending extra tangos and mangos if needed. Don't buy Boots until after those items are complete, you don't need Boots for a while. You have mobility, lockdown, and % move speed from Unleash.

The Soul Ring is important so you can always cast your spells. Maxing Sidekick and buying Armlet + Soul Ring also means you never have to go to base, you can always farm jungle and ancients efficiently between fights. Get the armor talent to make your Armlet toggling even stronger.

You might consider the mana talent and clarities instead of armor talent + Soul Ring, but it's bad.

From here, you have some choices.

The main problem with Marci is that you cannot whiff Unleash because you're completely useless without it. This means the hero has to be played precisely to win, and you have to compensate for that with your item build.

If you're in higher skill games than me, after Armlet + Soul Ring + Boots, you'll probably prefer to go Blitz Knuckles, Phase Boots, BKB, MKB.

What I do in Ancient bracket: you are going to need some attack speed so you can deal damage without having to commit your ultimate, and since you don't want to fight when Unleash is on cooldown, making a farming item makes sense. Since Unleash scales so well, Midas is an item that works well on Marci; hitting your level 12, 15 (stun talent) and 18 faster is really strong. So one idea is to pick up brown boots and Midas after Armlet.

After Midas I like to pick up some damage so I can kill enemy supports in a single stun duration. If you go Crystalys and win a team fight, you can have Daedalus + Aegis, and get BKB after. With Daedalus, you can melt the enemy heroes through their 9 second BKBs, allowing you to close out games. If the enemy team has a lot of BKB piercing disables, you should skip BKB and play around Blink instead. You'll want Blink in most games so you can weave in and out of fights with Blink + Rebound. For final items, Abyssal Blade / Satanic / MKB are all useful.