6.86 Dusa

Hi all...

Now with Faeries and Dragons and stuff, with nerfs to MKB and such... what's the go to build for dusa?

Phase Boots -> Ring of Aquila -> Drums of Endurance - Eye of Skadi, with a potential Yasha stop off before hand. Then into the usual stuff, Butterfly, MKB, ect ect

But Dusa is used more aggressively now, paired into deathball line-ups to abuse the fact she's gets tanky really early, and Mystic Snake making her lane absurd, so she gets ahead, and gets through her weak mid-game in a decent position by killing towers early. From my observations of the games from the Major qualifiers.

It's weird, but makes sense.

I'd say definitely Slahser's way.

Magic Wand > Ring of Aquila > Phase Boots > Divine Rapier > regular luxury

Max Mana Shield ASAP > Stats in between > Ult @ 6, 20, 21 > Snake @ 22,23,24,25 > Split Shot 8,9,10,11

When I used to pick Medusa, I ran her mid and deathballed with her. Like, my logic was that I'm tanky enough, and will they really be able to deal with my giant woman-snake? If I have a linkens, killing me is even harder than. All I needed to make their lives hell was Phase, Aquila, and Wand, Linkens as soon as it was available from all the towers I took, Skadi afterwards because they can't kill the siege tower, this massive damage reduction and massive mana pump is an unstoppable combo. I would've been made fun of except it worked the 3-4 times I did it. I need to try it again.

And the funny part of this is I run Dragon Knight, a hero people claim is a real deathballer, as a farming carry in the safelane usually, since I too often get nuked down as DK when I try to deathball, so I prefer to get items to deal a ton of AOE damage.

Yeah, I'm some kind of scrub or something who deserves to be purged off the world if you're that kind of person.

She can be a ferocious mid with the right matchup - basically most int heroes can suffer a lot against her. Build is generally a combination of stats and raw damage, especially good with teams who have strong midgame physical damage output.

So I'm seeing some different stuff here:

I'm guessing that item-wise, stuff similar to what a Morphling would build is correct: Small Agility items (would anyone buy drums?) into Skadi, then Butterfly, MKB, etc.

My question is, how viable is the good old Linkens Manta Skadi Rapier Rapier style?

Since MKB lost a lot of its damage in 6.86...

Also, I'm seeing 2 variants of the skill build: The Shield + Stats build with no snake until like 22, and the max snake build.

I'm assuming that the snake build is for going mid, and the shield is for safelane? (even though one point could help.)

I've been going the max snake for some hyper agression in dual vs dual or tri vs tri lanes, the snake does wonders in those situations.

I will try the shield build later.

Meanwhile, discuss!

I personally don't see any reason not the max Mystic Snake; The spell is just far too good not to. One of the best laning spells in the game, and an incredibly good team-fight/harassing ability because of percentage based mana steal.

The issue with the Linken's, Manta, Skadi build is you take so long to come online. Whereas technically just Skadi and a damage item is enough. The game being more aggressive necessitates faster item builds. You might eventually build into that as a 6 slot, but the traditional build order is out-dated.

MKB is still fine on Dusa; Given that evasion is fairly common, and all of the split shot attacks can miss, it's usually justified.

Whether to max snake or not depends completely on who you're laning against. Multiple heroes with lots of mana/dependency it's awesome. One strength offlaner who doesn't care much, and it's meh.

Mana Shield gives you a LOT of survivability. Dusa is ridiculously good with stats - every single point of every type increases her survivability - strength = HP, agility = armour, int = moar shield. However, her own stat gain is awful, and Split Shot only really works as a damage steroid when you have a lot of it, and plenty of targets. So you need raw damage too.

I don't think there's anything wrong with going Drums on her if you need the help earlier on. She makes a good aura carrier thanks to her survivability, and you'll flash farm so hard late you don't really care if it slows you down, as long as you get there.

Any stats heavy build is good on her - Linkens/Manta is popular because it has a lot of both, and because you don't generally want/need to get a BKB (it is situational though) as it does a lot less for you on the whole. This makes you very hard to take down. However, it also means even with Eye of Skadi on top, you're not really a big damage dealer until you add even more items, so you're reliant on your team to fill that gap (hence Shadow Fiend, Witch Doctor, Death Prophet etc).

There's a lot of viable builds on Dusa, you've got to read the game situation and react accordingly. There were some crazy ones out there, like Armlet/Bloodstone, I'm not sure if they're still viable or not...

Quite viable if you drop the Linken's Sphere from it as a standard build. While it does provide Stats, +15 to all Stats for 5125 Gold is far too inefficient for a 1st Item. Even if you have a Linken's to block a Spell in fights, without any other Items, you're not going to contribute much to a fight. Ring of Aquila + Drum of Endurance provides enough EHP to ensure you get Stone Gaze off...which is all you're good for in fights before you get at least 2 major items.

{[Medusa]] is the same as any other Hero in regards to Linken's Sphere. Don't buy it unless you're against a powerful Single Target Disable ( Doom, Fiend's Grip, etc.), or you can get it as a 4th/5th/6th Slot item if the game is going past 60 minutes. Otherwise, if you don't want to get Disabled, just get a Black King Bar.

You just want Stats and Raw damage on Medusa, since she scales harder than any other Hero with all 3 Stats, but her Auto-Attacks hit with about as much force as a Crystal Maiden until she gets some damage.

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Recipe

You won't need much Regen as the 1st Item you should be picking up is either Morbid Mask or Ring of Health depending on which Item you're going to Farm with. I you know you're going to have to fight in your Lane, get less Wraith Band components and more Regen, i.e. a full set of Tangoes + a Healing Salve. If you're feeling confident and aren't having any HP problems, just finish Aquila 1st, then buy some sustain. If you're planning on fighting early, get a Drum of Endurance as well, otherwise, skip it and just focus on clearing Waves and Farming up as fast as possible. As for Boot choices, Medusa isn't particularly mobile and doesn't do well at chasing heroes down, so I'd rather go for improved Sustain and more Stats from Power Treads.

Personally, I still like Mask of Madness into Yasha for Farming on Medusa, but I haven't played her this patch, so from here, the build is based on old patches.











From there, bulk up your Stats by getting Skadi, then focus on a Defensive Item to allow you to survive in fights, i.e. Manta Style / Linken's Sphere / Black King Bar, then get some raw damage, i.e. Monkey King Bar / Daedalus / Divine Rapier. Finally, adapt as necessary.

Mystic Snake is not just a harassing skill in lane.

- It increases your farm because it allows you to clear stacks early for no mana cost (the mana you steal from creeps more than pays back for the initial 170 mana). You don't even need to rely on your team to stack since you can do it yourself, push the safe lane with snake and then go stack the big camp every minute. Then when you hit 7 clear it in a few snakes, rinse and repeat. So even against a passive solo offlaner this skill pays off a lot : more farm and even free mana on top of it. You can spam snakes on stacks indefinitely so Dusa doesn't really care about magic resist on stacks.

- It allows you to be one of the best counterpushers in the game. Almost Keeper of the Light level of counterpush...on a hard carry. Sit behind towers and spam snake, it's incredibly hard to push into this.

- And since 6.86, it's also a survivability skill in teamfights.

Do not buy Linken's Sphere on Dusa. Ever. Linkens is an item made for highly mobile heroes that focus around skirmishing and split pushing. While Medusa is the complete opposite of this, she's a 'siege tank' whose natural place is in the very middle of teamfights. She's a Black King Bar hero without any hesitation, her positioning puts her at risk of tanking a ton of disables and blocking one of them every 13 seconds pretty much changes nothing. The Linkens active is pretty much wasted on Dusa because she has no mobility skill to follow on it, mana regen is also kind of wasted on Dusa because she has snake for that, etc. No reason to ever buy linkens over skadi, skadi is the real stat item here.
Also most single target skills that you often buy linkens against don't even affect Dusa. Doom removes neither her Q nor her E, no need to buy an item to block it as she can pretty much ignore it. Duel? Same, she keeps Split Shot so she doesn't care. Laguna Blade? She can tank it easily. Etc.
No seriously do you go linkens on Shadow Fiend? Dusa is like SF, a low mobility right-clicker, so linkens isn't better on dusa than it is on SF. The fact that linkens gives a lowsy 195 mana (compared to 525 from skadi) changes nothing about that.

Manta Style is situational on Dusa. You can buy it if you need to dispel silence or stuff like Treant ult, but as a DPS item it's actually a bit inferior to raw damage items and the illusions are too weak to increase your farm at the time when it matters. You don't need manta every game, far from this even.

Also another point : Deathball Dusa with drum, aquila or other early game items *is* a thing, but it's completely lineup dependent and it's a build for 5-stacks, preferably for CM stacks even. I've won a share of stack games with that so I can tell you that it's good, however on a solo queue Dusa, do NOT do this. No aquila, no drum, just Phase Boots (for lane dominance) into straight up Hand of Midas all the way. Dusa needs 30-35 minutes to come online while your team is chain feeding and the only way you're going to carry those 5/25 games on your own is by having perfect farm efficiency and coming out before the 45 minute mark with 3 late game items and BKB (typically skadi, bfly, MKB and BKB). All while defending your base. On other carries, midas delays the time when you come online, while on Dusa, Midas *accelerates* it, since she needs 3 items to reach critical mass and by that time midas will have largely paid for itself. Also, Dusa is extremely level-dependent.
Dusa has extremely strong early game because she's one of the best laning carries in the entire game, but her mid game is all about farming (and counterpushing). You're not doing your team any favor by joining fights before you can win them, only fight to defend towers. Dusa is the one hero you should never feel bad for going greedy builds on.
Aim for the "early late game", from 35 to 50 minutes. That's when most pubs are decided, especially if you can counterpush. Get dat GPM!

upgraded boots of travel are insane on Dusa, because she needs positioning above anything else. Once you have them, you become pretty much a global hero, you can TP on any teammate that gets focused, save him with Stone Gaze and probably turn around. Limits the feed, you know :)