Nature's prophet without midas

I've played nature's prophet quite a bit recently and wondered what other items you can get instead of an early midas?
Is it ever viable to not go midas and do something different?

Yes! Yes! a thousand times Yes! Hand of Midas is never a Core Item on any Hero. You only get it when you can afford to be in the Jungle using it as soon as it comes off cooldown, which with Nature's Prophet is easier to do while still Split Pushing/Teamfighting/Ganking/etc.

Hand of Midas is useful for outfarming other Carries later on in the game, but delays your first Core Item and thus, forces you to focus on farming in the Early Game until you make up the Gold you spent to get the Hand of Midas

Get it if you can in a reasonable time, preferably before 8 minutes, but if you can't, move on to your first Core Item instead. Never get it if your Team needs you to be in the Lanes constantly by the 10 minute mark (early Pushing Strategies, no Hard Carry, etc.)

Rushing a Shadow Blade straight after your Boots will make it easy for you to Gank, for example, you can go after the other Team's Jungler to stop them from farming an important item, i.e. No Mekansm / Blink Dagger for Enigma if you sneak up on him and take him out while he's still farming it. You wouldn't be able to do this fast enough, if you had to get a Hand of Midas first.

You can also troll with a Dagon which is fun to do in Pubs 8)

Mekansm or Medallion of Courage.Rushing a Shadow Blade or getting a Necronomicon.

50% of the games I play Prophet I'll rush a Medallion of Courage.

1. It makes your jungling quicker, big creeps go down fast with -6 armor.
2. Ganks becomes very easy, especially against tanky heroes.

The plan here is to make up gold that you would get from Midas, and get it with ganks. This is way more valuable than a Midas Furion, as the early game is often where the stage for the rest of the game is set. If you can make a difference early game, your chances of winning increase heavily, where as going Midas really relies on your team holding their own weight while you AFK farm early game. I rarely ever go Midas, bad item for bad players :D

One of my pet hates is Nature's Prophet who goes Hand of Midas every game without considering the situation - it's great if it's going to be a long game. It's really bad idea if the enemy team has a very aggressive early pushing and/or ganking game. Getting an early advantage via ganking/pushing is better if your team has the ability to do it, as it not only benefits your side, but slows the enemy down too.

Except that one game where I started ganking for like 3 mins non stop with a midas recepe in my inventory.

It's not that you can't do it, it's just not as effective as getting virtually anything else. You can technically gank and get a kill with nothing in your inventory, doesn't change the point.

I pointed it out because you and Hades were in the game *cough*.