Fast and furious merlin

This is my first guild so please leave feedback :)

Merlin has 3 stances and they all have difrent combos

ICE
When you are in ice you should you your Blizzard imediatly followed by your Frostbolt.The idea is simple the enemys will get hit by the slow and you will get the bonus dmg on your Frostbolt In this stance merlin has a prety nice ammount of burst and soft cc(slow)

FIRE
The fire stance combo is the same as for the ice .You use the Dragonfire to reduce the enemy armour and then you start to chanel the Radiate and watch the enemys melt.The Radiate might fell a bit wierd because it hits on ticks and it if you can't keep the flame on someone it might seem like you hit them but they don't get the dmgThis stance has the most dmg of the 3 but it's also the most risky because to deal that huge ammount of dmg you must go prety close to the enemy and that can

Arcane
This is Merlin's only hard cc stance and this hard cc is in the form of his Vortex.The combo in this stance can be done difrently depending on matchup and on how used you are whit the hero :the easy way would be to use your Vortex to pull the enemy and then to follow up whit your Eclipse to deal the dmg but to get the max ammount of dmg you should first fire your Eclipse then your Vortex and when they try to run they get pulled back inside the dmg.In case of speedy enemies you should fire Vortex on the sides so they can' get out of the dmg.This stance has a high dmg potential if you manage to hit the combo.One important aspect of this stance is the interation eclise has whit airborn enemies

Now you Flicker and Elemental Mastery are the same in all stances the Flicker being a blink and the Elemental Mastery being the way you change stances.Depending on what stances you go from and what you go to, you get difrent efects:Ice does a slow Fire gives a dot dmg arcane is a small knockup.The stance you change in will always be difrent from situation to situation but if you get dive reguraly i recomand poking in arcane form so you use the knockup to buy some time.And the way you upgrade these 2 abilies should also depend on the games because if you can afford to be agresive the dmg from ult can be a prety nice finish/engage.

His trait works similar to a polynomicron after you use an ability you do a bit more dmg.The intresting thing about this is that you can triger some efects like the dmg from Soul Gem but you can't stack it whit the trait or you can add the Divine Ruindebuff.This bonus dmg also works against towers so if you have the mana i recomand going into ice and spaming 1 to get the bonus dmg so you can take the towers down faster.

From my experience:arcane is prety bad in close range but you should change into this stance if you get dived and use this to buy yourself some time whit the knockup.Fire is a a really stong close range stace as whit the dmg potential of this stance you can out dmg an anubis ult.Ice si a more rounded stance as it can be good as poke and it can also be good in close range but the dmg is smaller.

PS: can anyone tell me how to have links to the abilies because it would be better for a new player to see the ability instead of just the number. TY <3

from the belssings available at this moment you can get 3 that have ways to deal dmg in them Attacker's Blessing Mage's Blessing and Specialist's Blessing because of the cdr. Attacker's Blessing gives you no kind of mana regen and for someone who can burn mana like merlin this blessing is prety risky, Mage's Blessing is good as it has mana regen and dmg as baseline followed by cdr after stacks are completed so i recomand this blessing in most cases , Specialist's Blessing has baseline cdr this being the cheapest cdr item in the game at 700(same as mage's but for that you need to complet the stacks) and it has 20 mp5 the same as the mage's if you have 0 mana but you always have 20 so if you want to use more abilies early you can find the mana prety good ,the completion of this blessing isn't that hard on merlin because most of his abilies are aoe whit multiple hits you you should be able to stack this prety fast if you have frontline and the ms can give you the potential to run/chase enemys more easly.

On merlin cdr can be extremly strong as you have more abilities then a normal god and being able to change stances more often can be really strong for this i recomand Chronos' Pendant as it gives 20 cdr and on top of that 1 sec every 10 sec and is also has nice power to it.

Life steal is another good thing for merlin as he has no kind of sustain in his base kit, here i recomand Bancroft's Talon for a ton of power and lifesteal as the dmg caps at 200 and the lifesteal at 35% when you are low on hp or Soul Gem that besides the lifesteal also has cdr and the pasive efect works really well whit merlin as he has more dmg abilities then a normal god so you can triger the bonus dmg more often , and this item also scales really well when you get more power items.

Another important thing is the pen item/items and for this on merlin i recomand going for Spear of the Magus as almost all of merlin's abilies have multiple ticks of dmg so this items shreads armour another pen item could be Spear of Desolation but this doesn't offer that much pen but instead it gives cdr so i could be ok , and lastly Obsidian Shard can be a good late pen item if you have problems whit enemys whit high armour. Divine Ruin can be used as a counter item against heroes that have healing or that build a lot of lifesteal.

Gem of Isolation works really well whit merlin's kit as it allows your abilities to hit the enemy more times as they will not be able to get out of your dmg abilities as fast as they would if you didn't have this item unless they use escapes.So in my opinion this is a really strong item for merlin and it also has 200 hp and 10 ccr so it's also a defensive item.

In joust if you lose as merlin it's usualy because the enemy can lock you down or dive you easly as merlin has a ton of dmg so i doubt you can lose in that department.
But Bumba's Mask can help you turn the tide of battle making you extremly hard to lock down/dive so if you are losing simply changing Chronos' Pendant for Bumba's Mask can allow you to win games you would normaly lose because if you getpotion of might you will be back to 30% cdr and you can get blue to hit the max of 40% but the ms Bumba's Mask offers not only will take your enemys by surprise as this isn't really a common item but it will make chasing and getting away from you almost imposible and if you can constanly change position to get the most out of the ms you will be able to do a ton.In my opinion this item can easly win games if you are starting from behinde bacause as merlin you can simply use 2 spells and run away and because you have small cds on the poke stances they will have to either fall back or push and in both cases you can get the upper hand because of the ms.

I know this isn't an item that you would normaly get but atleast give it a try and see the magic happen.