Hi there everyone! So, it’s been some time since my first guide and I got a lot of great feedback and a great, positive response from the community. I have been waiting awhile before my next guide to try and decide on what to do it on, but in the end decided to go for a second Miko build! It’s not just because I totally love playing this guy, I swear! I wanted to do an Offensive Miko build, because as someone said in the comments for my first build, you really can build these characters in a lot of different ways and that offensive Miko could really be a thing. I’d already been thinking about it, so why the heck not! Let’s do it!

I will not be doing a break-down of Miko’s abilities this time and talking about their importance in Miko’s kit this time, as this can easily be found on my first guide, right here. I will however quickly talk about Miko’s Armour ability, something I did not do previously.

A. MIKOLLOPRIA

The reason I wanted to this time talk about Miko’s armour is due to how this impacts Miko as a damage dealer. Miko’s armour has a higher level of regeneration built in, a decent amount of health and high movement speed. As a Healer, this makes Miko feel like how you’d expect any Healer to feel, kinda squishy but fast. That’s why a lot of the sustainability picks for Miko in his Helix tree are so strong. For a DPS though, this kit changes the way Miko plays as a character. Firstly, your pretty squishy. Not too squishy that you cannot survive a fight, but keeping your distance from the enemy, especially ranged characters is Very important. That’s where her mobility comes into play. Having a high base speed on Miko allows for you to keep your distance and kite back from enemies, especially melee based ones. As well as this, the high health regeneration on Miko as well as her self-healing ability mean that if you get into a rough spot, as long as you can get out for a short amount of time you should be ready to jump back into the action pretty quick. Think of it like Fight or Flight, as long as you are high enough health you can keep going, but if it gets too dangerous, run out for a bit to regen up then get right back into the fight!

Now, Miko’s Helix tree will have a very high focus on crowd control, stuns and movement impairing abilities. As such, Miko does not provide a great amount of damage, especially in comparison to something like Orendi. If you want raw, high amounts of damage then this build is not for you. Miko’s Kunai provide a decent amount of damage, but is more focused on a consistant, low output of damage to your target. As well as this, Miko’s abilities have a decent amount of damage but focus on crowd-control or survival. However, if your team needs some crowd control to keep the enemies stunned, watching the approaching truck like a rabbit caught in the headlights then an offensive Miko build like this is perfect to finishing up your team composition. I talk a lot about how not using your Healing Beam over dealing damage is not optimum through this guide, however this does not mean you should avoid it at all costs! Keeping your team alive is still important, but when you’re looking to dish out some damage as Miko having to stop all damage to heal your team is not what you set out to do!

Tier 1

First Responder ------------------------------------ Vicious Strain

So, as I mentioned a lot of this build is going to be focused on stunning and slowing your enemies. This allows Miko to keep distance on them if they are melee and keep them in a certain area to allow you to land your Kunai or for your team to land some serious damage on an easy target. It should be no surprise then that Vicious Strain is the choice I make here, as increasing the slow effect by 100% on Cloud of Spores is great for Miko’s kit so early in the game.

Tier 2

Regenerative Aura ------------------------------------ Heal Thyself

So neither of these are actually amazingly useful for you in particular, however due to the fact that this Miko build is very much about helping your team out in fights through crowd control and the fact that neither of these abilities provide an increase in damage, Regenerative Aura comes out on top. It helps to provide some healing to your team, which is not too useful due to the fact you should be positioned away from them and the enemies, but also wins out over Heal Thyself which only really does anything in a 5 second time frame and only if your not dealing damage, which is not optimum.

Tier 3

Evolutionary Emergence ------------------------------------ Swift Draw

So, this is a tricky one, and ultimately comes down to a bit of preference, mixed in with the idea that your damage is not huge as Miko anyway, so having lower cooldowns on your CC is a bit better. It may also turn out that even though Evolutionary Emergence may look to be the lower damage choice here, it might not be. Having a lower cooldown on Spore of Clouds means it is up faster, and the increased recharge may mean more damage than Swift Draw could provide. Not to mention the fact that this adds to and helps to cover up Miko’s extreme lack in any kind of bursty damage, making dealing with outdamaging a Healer easier.

Tier 4

Trail of Spores ------------------------------------ Sporeshock

Now, another one that kind of comes down to preference in a way. In the previous build, it was a pretty clear choice that hard CC is better than just more slow area. However, this build actually does not do too bad with this slow, and may actually benefit moe than taking hard CC. Gasp, Better than Hard CC?! Blasphemy. Ultimately, I don’t think I can really make a choice here. If your team has a lot of AOE, Trail of Spores might be better, if they have enemies who are just too mobile and hard to hit directly this also might be the case. But Sporeshock might be better if your team has more pin-point abilities or damage sources like Marquis’ sniper for example.

Tier 5

Toxic Transfusion ------------------------------------ Pandemic

Now I’m gonna say go with Pandemic on this one, but Toxic Transfusion has it’s merits too and I will talk about both and why to pick one over the other. So, Pandemic will allow you to increase your poison amount, not only on players, spreading it to pretty much their whole team and dealing a lot more AOE damage, but also helps out a lot with clearing out waves of enemies as the spreading poison gives you more wave-clear. However, and this is where your own decision and situation comes in, if surviving is getting tough I would totally pick-up Toxic Transfusion instead. This will make you a lot harder to kill, as your poison uptime should be pretty high with this build as you focus your Kunai more than your Healing Beam. However, always keep in mind that if you pick this up, you have to start spreading your Kunai damage to optimise your life steal, and spreading your already limited damage may damage your output in the long run. Risk - Safety. Damage - Survivability.

Tier 6

Probiotics ------------------------------------ Spore Strike

Obvious choice, Cloud of Spores is your only source of burst damage in your kit and your biggest source of damage, increasing this by +15% is pretty vital. However, always keep in mind the damage from your Cloud of Spores is done from the impact, not from the effect left after. Accuracy is key. But again, this is the point in the game where some pretty big splits are occuring. One Helix choice is normally damage, the other survivability. Making the informed decision on what you need at that point in the game is up to you.

Tier 7

Fight or Flight ------------------------------------ BladeSlinger

Now, in a perfect world you would never take any damage. But that would probably make the game pretty boring now I think about it… But anyway, BladeSlinger here will increase your damage output, against the risk-averse choice of higher survivability with increased speed when taking damage from Fight or Flight. However, this might not be so clear cut. By this point, you’ve made the choice of whether to take Pandemic or Toxic Transfusion at Tier 5. Now, if you had taken Toxic Transfusion for survivabilty, increased attack speed from BladeSlinger might actually increase your survivability even more so, as applying your poison to multiple targets is now faster, meaning your life steal will take less time to setup and make the window where you are vunerable smaller. Ultimately, I prefer BladeSlinger here. If you did not take survivability earlier, you hopefully made the right choice and are pretty safe, so taking more damage shouldn’t hurt you too much. If you did take survivability earlier, attacking faster might actually still be safer than being able to run away faster. Not to mention that your Cloud of Spores should be plenty to kite and peel.

Tier 8

Biosynergy ------------------------------------ Healing Prowess

Now, neither of these are too great for you, so this one comes down to which one is the least bad for you. Again, it’s gonna come down to the fact that you should only be using your Healing Beam when you need to, and avoiding constant use of it. This ultimately makes Biosynergy pretty useless, as you are not going to be getting much of that CDR on Biosynthesis without using your Healing Beam.

Tier 9

Spore Storm ------------------------------------ Resilient Strain

Another situational pick, and a lot of factors come into play here, but the main two are fight duration and enemy team mobility and composition. If the other team has a lot of melee characters, then taking a larger slow area of Spore Storm will probably be better, as making getting to you harder is always great and making the whole area harder to move through in general will make team fights great. However, if team fights are lasting a lot longer than you’d hoped, Resilient Strain might be better. Ultimately, I am gonna side with Spore Storm, as a good team will move out of the slowing area before it runs out and placing the Cloud of Spores effect in a spot where this longer duration is actually effective can be difficult, and the larger area of effect of Spore Storm might make correct placement easier.

Tier 10

Barkskin ------------------------------------ Vicious Strain

Now, I’m gonna say go for the adding damage to your Ultimate, Fungus Among Us with Vicious Strain

, however it is very important to place your Shroom in the right place. Not taking Barkskin here makes your Fungus Among Us pretty squishy, and you really want this thing to last as long as possible in a fight. It most certainly won’t last for the whole fight, if it does either you are a PLACEMENT GOD, or the other team seriously screwed up by letting it live. The added damage to this guy is pretty big, with the overall damage over 45 seconds coming up to a whopping 3510 damage. Now you can see why I say the other team really will not let this live if they are smart, as having to place this in an area where it can damage enemies and stay out of range of focus is pretty tricky and will most likely not happen. I can see using this becoming very deadly though in team fights and seriously turning the tide if timed right, as dropping this in the middle of the fight, healing your allies and dealing that much damage per second can seriously change the flow of a fight. Timing the perfect moment to place this, when abilities on the enemy team to burst this are down, and your allies will benefit most from the healing is again, tricky.

In the end, Damage Miko turns out to be more of a ultilty, crowd control fungus than damage, but he is not something to laugh at or ignore either. He may only put out damage slowly through his Kunai, but a great Miko will make you feel it in the morning with well aimed a Cloud of Spores, which at the same time makes pinning him down even harder. The slows he can bring to his team in fights to allow for them to pull off their damage is crucial, but this little mushroom man can still be Extremely deadly if you are not careful and allow his sprouting friend to do his work. Fungus Among Us is very much Miko’s most important piece of kit for a build like this, providing both large amounts of healing and damage, and if placed with a Cloud of Spores right on top to hold enemies in their noxious death, you may shortly be finding yourself featuring as a ‘Zombie’ from The Last of Us.