When should a Midas be purchased?

I have asked this on so many sites. I know which heroes to get it on, but I wonder when?

Some people say I should get it when I'm doing well so that I can accelarate my purchases, and that I should not get it when I'm doing poorly because other items are way more important. Some people say that it is always a necessary pickup so I should plan to get it anyway. And others still say that it should only be picked up if I'm doing poorly. thoughts?

Pick it up if you think the game is going to be about farming. Don't pick it up if you think the game is going to be about fighting.

When to get:

Position 1: before 6 minutes.
position 2: before 8 minutes.
position 3: before 10 minutes.
position 4: 1700 gold accumulated before the 6 minute mark.
position 5: a full Midas able to be purchased before the 5 minute mark.

when not to get:

all other times.

This!

A midas has a long payback period, so it suits game which are relatively passive. However, in a game with a lot of early action it's a poor investment as that gold could have been spent on something that helps you survive/get kills.

This can also be said about other farming items such as Battle Fury and Radiance. If they are running a heavy mid-game lineup that focuses a lot on early ganks and strong early pushers like Lycan, Nature's Prophet, and/or Leshrac scrap the farm items and go for some mid game power.

Example: If you are playing a game of Phantom Assassin and they pick a Storm Spirit, Lycan, Nature's Prohpet, Vengeful Spirit, Elder Titan your team is not going to be able to hold of their huge pushing power while you spend 13 minutes minimum finishing a Battle Fury and another 20-30 minutes building items that can actually help your team. By then your towers will be dead, and you will lose most if not all of your farming space. So instead of going for a battlefury try going for

>>> >>> >>> Whatever you like.

These items will give you a big mid game presence and will serve you much better in fights than would a Battle Fury.

-BK

A Hand of Midas takes 18:20 to pay for itself, so if you get it at 6:00, you won't start making any money off of it until 24:20.

To me, this says that there are 2 times when you buy Hand of Midas

• When you don't need Major Items before 20:00, but you want faster Exp
• When you have plenty of space to Farm before 20:00 and feel that you'll have a sizeable advantage if you can Out-Farm the other Team around 30:00

An example of the 1st one:

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1061737325

Playing as Faceless Void against a team with both Vengeful Spirit and Jakiro, I didn't feel particularly safe fighting inside Chrono (especially as i soon becme evident that Venge had a good concept of Positioning herself away from Chronosphere.

However, I did have a Queen of Pain and a Timbersaw on my Team, so as long as they were around to follow up on Chrono, I could easily land it, then retreat to safety as son as Macropyre came out , so that the target could be Bursted down quickly with Sonic Wave and Chakram.

Naturally, Mask of Madness and Maelstrom weren't good Item choices if I wasn't planning on being in the centre of fights and my main focus was gaining levels and landing Chronosphere, so I opted to build a Hand of Midas into Aghanim's Scepter.

With a faster lvl6/11/16, as well as a faster Aghanim's Scepter, I certainly achieved this without being any less effective during the Early-Mid Game. <}3

Tststs, this math again.

I completely disagree with this math. Because it relies on the assumption that Midas creates 190 gold on each use.

However, Midas doesn't create 190 gold on each use. It creates 190 gold MINUS the initial bounty of the creep. Because if you use it on a lane creep, you could have gotten the normal bounty of the creep if you didn't have a Midas.

So if you use Midas only on lane creeps, Midas creates 190 (Midas gold) *minus* 50 (average bounty of a lane creep) = 140 gold.

Besides, it also assumes that you instantly use your Midas when it is off oooldown, which is also obviously false : creeps are a scarce resource in doto and you always see players wasting 20+ seconds just to look for a creep to midas. And there are times when you are dead. So there's a big waste there as well.

So for some more realistic assumptions :


- Midas only lane creeps that you would have last hit otherwise : Midas takes 24 minutes to pay for itself

- Midas only lane creeps that you would have last hit otherwise and Midas off cooldown 10% of the time : Midas takes 27 (!!) minutes to pay for itself.


I know that at the beginning of the game you midas jungle creeps for the XP, and that you wouldn't have last hit those jungle creeps because they're too tanky at that stage of the game, but going to the jungle for creeps makes you leave the lane and miss last hits on lane creeps anyways.

So yeah I can't believe this obviously flawed math is generally accepted to be true because it gives completely false ideas about the item especially to new players.

So yeah...Midas is an item that makes your pre-30 minutes weaker and your post-30/35 minutes stronger. Get it if you think the game will go late, and get it if you think this will be a looong and passive game. Typically it's a really popular item in competitive because there are extremely passive games in competitive these days. Also, you need to get it very early, because the later you get it the less effective it becomes, e.g if you get your midas at 15 minutes instead of 5 minutes, it will only start paying off at 40-45 minutes, and who would want that, right? There's no such thing as a comeback midas, again the math is absolute : the later you get it the less impact it has, and besides if you're behind you will need to fight anyways because the enemy team will start to push, so leave the trolls and the trolled to their nonsense and buy a freaking drum or something.

So yeah get it if you're freefarming your lane and you can get away with an early midas, and you think the game is going post-30 minutes without any major T3 pushes before that time. It's good on any hero who wants a lot of farm/XP for the late game but it only makes sense if you're somehow sitting on a ton of gold before the 7 minute mark.

Kappa to the math god

Creep gold is unreliable gold and midas gold is reliable one.
Also, midas pays off in 18:20 only of if used whenever it comes off cooldown at the very instant it comes off of it.
So it becomes imperative that you dont die.


Another point is that it gives 2.4x exp of that creep or unit u used it on. Midas pays off in this way too. You can really counterbalance the unreliable gold loss with exp gain you get from midas.
And if you are talking about opportunity losses, too many factors come into play and then it would be better to either farm all your items or end the game right away at minute 1 when opportunity loss is its highest , which by all means are two redundant strategies.

Well no, even then you have to substract the initial creep bounty and it's 24 minutes.
Besides nobody uses midas perfectly off cooldown, even in competitive I always see some downtime and some time wasted just to find a creep to midas.

Yes it gives XP but my point was purely on how much time the midas pays for itself in gold.

True it's reliable gold but it doesn't change that much I think : since the basic income in unreliable gold you always lose gold when you die anyways unless you spam the quickbuy button just before your death.

I think Hamstertamer, you are stuck up in the ideology of opportunity losses. Please do not do so if you want an objective analysis..

Ever wanted a javelin and died at 1400 gold?
Quick buy wont help you then. Now dont say o wont fight because as a har d carry, the fight comes to you, gankers come to you.

Your ideology has one big flaw. It advocates, ideally not to sacrifice creep imcome in any case that you stay near creeps even at enemy towers when 2 heroes are there to defend. Won't it be foolish to stay near wave tryimg to het gold and exp? Wont you want to jungle if you can?

When laning, midas a creep. When it is impractical and you are in jungle midas the big one. As a carry, i myself would argue that maths wont make sense when you take midas for early levels as a higher prioprity than gold. Also,Jungle farm is uncontested and hence no viable opportunity loss.

If you are absolutely against midas then be against your argument as well becaise because there are three lanes worth of exp that no one person can farm viably, yes not even meepo.