Medusa Primer

Hero Analysis

Split Shot
Mystic Snake
Mana Shield
Stone Gaze


After a quick look we can see that Split Shot is Medusa's bread and butter skill, what defines her as a hero. The potential damage output is huge (5*80 = 400%). This obviously makes her the potential carry of her team. The rest of her spells are of a more defensive nature. Manashield effectively makes her manapool a second hp pool. Mystic Snake supports your shield. As long as you can cast it repeatedly on mana-wielding opponents, it creates a sort of loop that works very well when pushing and being persistent around a chokepoint. Stone Gaze slows all speed factors and deals fixed damage to summoned units. It also hinders opponents from rushing into your face.

Pros

• Enormous damage potential with a 600-ranged, 5-way aircleave
• Tanky

Benefits gained through pros:

• All damage is multiplied exponentially
• Survivability which in return allows for more time to damage and/or tires out opponents

Cons

• Low hp, paper without Mana Shield
• Sub-par starting movement speed of 290

Problems that might arise due to the cons:

• Getting focused down
• Getting your mana burned away
• Getting outrunned

So how does one maximize the aforementioned hero's efficiency through items and playstyle?

To be able to do to use all her spells in the most efficient manner, she has to be able to jump in, use snakes and gaze while staying in the heat of the fight, dishing out heaps of damage through her 5 arrows thus forcing opponents to either die or back off.

So the items she will be picking up have to grant her:

• HP and mana pool + regen
• IAS. Damage that synergizes well with Split Shot
• Mobility to kite, to get in and out of engagements rapidly, and to minimize her chances to die

In other words, a little bit of everything.

What she does not need:

• Items of a supporting nature such as Mek
• Smaller items (see: drum) that clump her inventory up, since she's designed for high end items
• Pure armor items as her armor will get naturally high because she has an agi gain of 2.5/level
  
  With such a list of deficiencies before coming online adamantly, she needs cost-efficient items that are easy to farm, and that don't take up useful space in her inventory in case the game dures.

Playstyle and use of skills

Mystic Snake is fixed damage and is your answer to lane dominance, it is thus maxed first. The natural follow-up is then Mana Shield. Don't get early levels of stats as this delays your precious skills. They are ridiculously good and scale very well, all of them.

The only disadvantage is the movement of your nuke projectile, which can be avoided. Normally when you split-push and/or flashfarm, you hit 2 melees and throw a snake so that when the ranged creep is hit it is killed instantly, giving you back more mana. If you're dominating the lane and know that your mana boosting items will come in a timely fashion, don't be too stingy with it if it will provide you more control in your lane, it does give you secure gold, after all.

Mana Shield makes you a tank very fast and makes your opponents comit if they want to kill you. It allows you to also join the defence of a tower early if needed. When you have full HP, don't hesitate to turn off Mana Shield momentarily to spare your mana, when neutral creeping for instance. Stone Gaze is naturally used when you're in melee range with your opponents when being jumped on or when you have some allie disable to set it up.

Toggle Split Shot off when you focus one target only.

Farm as much as you can early on, grab a tp start joining your allies when you're needed, especially when defending towers. Towers are your friends, they give you lots of vision on the map and give you a broader area to farm. After your core items come online, farm either one of the mobility items and see if you can force a couple of fights with Stone Gaze through the use of Blink Dagger or Shadow Blade. The aforesaid also makes it safer for you to farm further.

Lategame it's all farming, splitpushing, going 5, raxing and divines, you know the deal.

Itembuild. Today's Metagame and its impact on Medusa

In the earlier days of dota where you could farm a lot before any important fight broke out, or in the era of medusa/drow meta (level and tank up, farm divine, get aegis)(ca. 2009~), Medusa could allow herself to sit in the lane and farm big chunky pieces of end-game items. The usual itembuild would look like this: Basi, Treads, (wand), Linkens, Manta -> Luxuries. As for skillbuild, either snaker+state to level 7~ or mana+shield, taking snakes later. Then leveling Split Shot.

This build is not optimal for today's "deathball" meta. It just takes too much time before she comes online and she is prone to ganks and attempts by enemy heroes such as Nightstalker, Bat, Brewmaster, Luna or KotL to secure map control. Ergo, her early farming time is greatly reduced. It is not uncommon that games are concluded around 40~ mins if not earlier. She needs cheaper items that cover many needs but in such a way that they do not empede her growth into lategame.

Item solutions to her deficiencies:

• Boots: Tranquil Boots
• HPMP: Soul Booster
• Damage: Maelstrom

That's 6975 gold without that wand and tp scrolls.

• Mobility: Blink Dagger / Shadow Blade

The good thing with these items it that they are all cheap and easy to build, they can also be upgraded later if you see fit. Tranqs and energy booster can be dissassembeled and re***embeled back and forth to provide you with manaregen that you would normally not have. Also, remember to drop your Point Booster in same fashion as you would with the use of bottle with agi Treads. Later on, you can sell RoP and RoR to make Travels. Soul Booster can be upgraded into Bloodstone later on to decrease respawn time and save you from using precious buyback money. Maelstrom synergizes well with Split Shot and can be made into Mjollnir later. Medusa makes great use of Mjollnir's Static Charge. A mobility item is not always needed so I'll leave it to your own sense of the game.

Post Core

I'll let you be the judge. I think the items listed are pretty self-explanatory.
Tip: Eye of Skadi coupled with Manta Style provides 3 Medusas whose main arrow slows and fires off in total 4*3 = 12 more arrows.

Specific Counters

• Linken's Sphere
• Black King Bar
• Stone Gaze
• Ghost Scepter
• Manta Style

Linken's Sphere makes you though to start a chainstun on, makes NA have to comit, makes Doom delay the use of his ulti. Black King Bar is picked up vs. Anti-Mage or chainstunners. Stone Gaze destroys pre-heart illusions and Necrobook summons without damaging Medusa. Manta Style is used to dodge a spell or remove a debuff. Ghost Scepter is self-explanatory. Ethereal Blade can provide valuable CC lategame and does decent damage if you have other agility-boosting items.

Media

https://dotabuff.com/matches/101013811

Playing on a friend's account just to showcase the new build.

Closing

If there is anything that you'd like me to elaborate on or you think I forgot something, do not hesitate to tell me. This article was designed to be short and concise while explaning the benefits of a newer take on building Medusa that fits today's way of playing dota.

Thank you for your time.


-8thdensity