What is the ‘Feeding Diggie’ strategy and why has it taken the MPL by storm?

The ‘Feeding Diggie’ strat has taken the MPL by storm.

Debuting in the first week of the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Professional League Season 6 in the Philippines (MPL PH), Aura PH’s Rafflesia first played Diggie against Execration, went 0/21, won the game for his team, and was awarded the MVP.

In MPL MY/SG Week 2, Resurgence’s resident tank player and captain, Kayzeepi, went on a similar feeding spree on Diggie before closing out the 2-0 series against Orange Louvre Esports.

To understand why professional teams are opting to sacrifice one player, we must first be clear on why Diggie was the chosen hero to perform this job.

Classified as a support, the most unique characteristic about Diggie is his passive, Young Again, which allows him to casts spells even after death. In Egg Form, Diggie gains a new set of skills and becomes untargetable.

Egg Form Diggie not only provides vision of enemy units, but can also cancel recalls. Once the resurrection timer is up, Diggie will respawn in Owl Form at the position where he’s at on the map.

Diggie’s first skill, Auto Alarm Bomb, automatically chases any nearby enemy units before exploding, dealing Magic Damage and slowing them. It will remain in a designated location for 30 seconds if there are no enemy units nearby, which makes it most effective when placed in bushes.

These two skills combined naturally makes Diggie a great scout, and frankly, a big annoyance. He is able to linger on the map longer than most heroes, and functions as a live, vision-giving tool — a gameplay and design feature that was never integrated in MLBB as a MOBA.

• Resurgence’s Kayzeepi explains how to use ‘Feeding Diggie’ in your ranked games
• Watch Aura PH’s Rafflesia go 0-21 and still completely outplay his opponents

That said, is it worth it for Diggie to keep running into the enemy jungle just to get vision and provide information to the rest of his teammates? After all, doesn’t the enemy receive gold when they kill him?

Some YouTube content creators have already worked out the math almost ten months before the Feeding Diggie strategy was popularized. Based on the economics of Mobile Legends, the first few deaths of a hero give over much more gold than subsequent ones.

In fact, here is the full list of the number of deaths corresponding to gold received by the enemy:

The more deaths Diggie has, the more worthless his life becomes. Paired with Support Emblem, Pull Yourself Together, that reduces respawn time and Battle Spell cooldowns by 15%, it’s even faster for feeding Diggie to reach his target number of deaths.

Ideally, Diggie would want to die to towers in the early game so that the early gold would not go over to the enemy. Once he accumulates more deaths, dying to the enemy would not cost his team as much.

It’s not possible for opponents to ignore him on the map, for he does decent early game damage. If they ignore Diggie’s presence to prevent him from reaching ten deaths, he’ll be able to provide continuous information for his team.

The trade off for the team running Feeding Diggie, besides vision and information, is the shutdown gold that’s on the table. A fed opponent with max gold bounty has the potential to give over 600 gold. Coupled with Assassin Emblem, Bounty Hunter, the kill would grant them an extra 30% gold (up to 15 times).

The team running Feeding Diggie would also have to draft a composition that is at their strongest from middle to late game since they are banking on shutdown gold and funneling their carry. To keep up their sustain in the early game as they focus on farming, Lithowanderer too, becomes an important objective for them to secure.

It’s still being debated within the Mobile Legends community on whether this strategy is truly viable. Clearly it comes with high risk and high reward because the team running Feeding Diggie will be giving over early gold.

Not to mention, if opponents run heroes that likewise scale with stacking abilities like Cecilion, and stacking emblems like Festival of Blood where kills grant 1% extra Spell Vamp up to 12%, they to could potentially win team fights later in the game too.

Will the Feeding Diggie strategy be perfected any time soon? Or do teams just need a little more time to learn how to counter it?

Learn how to use Feeding Diggie in your ranked games from Resurgence’s Kayzeepi, or read more about how to counter this strategy.

READ MORE: How to counter the ‘Feeding Diggie’ strategy according to Bigetron Alpha’s analyst