Do you want to know how to carry games by playing Medusa in Dota 2?
Among the most picked hard carries in most patches, Medusa is a formidable ranged and agility-based hero. Her long-range and extremely lucrative farming abilities make her an exceptional Late game carry who dominates all. These are just some of her attributes that make learning how to play Medusa in Dota 2 important for Carries.
Because of her signature abilities, she is extremely potent at crowd control and clearing large amounts of creeps. This aspect of her arsenal makes her an option against any carry, and she can even take on multiple opponents. Moreover, with enough space, she can easily end the game herself; without the aid of her teammates.
Later on in the game, her moves also make her incredibly tanky, making her both tanky and harder to kite. This insane potential, however, can be difficult to unlock, unless one knows how to use her spells properly. As a result, it is essential to ensure that one is aware of how to play Medusa in Dota 2.
With her spells that disable and impressive crowd control, there are many that fall to her. Some of these with considerable weaknesses are Sven, Lifestealer, and Meepo, who have nothing to counter her with. In contrast, heroes that work well with her are those with lockdown like Axe and Earthshaker with massive AoE disables.
Medusa’s Abilities
Her first Ability, Split Shot, allows her to be this good at controlling large crowds of units. This spell allows her to split her shot arrows into multiple arrows with magic. However, these arrows deal less damage. With these arrows, Medusa gains a bonus attack range and attacks four more targets in addition to the main target.
Mystic Snake is Medusa’s primary disabling ability which she also uses to harass enemies easily. Granting the power to launch a snake that both damages enemies and gives Medusa mana, Mystic Snake is extremely useful. Moreover, it has a minimal cooldown of ten seconds which lets her be an absolute nuisance in the lane.
Becoming tanky in the Late game is due to Mana Shield and the buffs it gives Medusa. This spell absorbs 70% of the damage that Medusa receives up against her available mana. She can absorb 2.5 damage of any sort at its max level for a single point of ana. Choosing the suitable talent allows her to improve this to a total of 3 damage per mana.
Medusa’s ultimate ability, Stone Gaze, is another disable that affects an area of units simultaneously. Any units who look at Medusa for more than two seconds get stunned while also receiving 50% more physical damage. Not only this, but any units in the area of her ultimate ability have reduced attack and movement speed.
How to Utilize her Abilities
Split Shot works best as a farming tool, and it is optimal that one treats it as such. In the lane, it is usually most effective to turn Split Shot off as a way to make Last Hitting easier. However, as soon as Medusa shifts to killing neutral creep camps, she should turn her modifier on to farm quicker. She can also utilize this ability on illusions she makes.
Mystic Snake is great at almost all points in the game, with it being an efficient spell for harassing enemies. In the lane, it is great to secure the ranged creep with or harass enemies whenever they step up. Many are also unaware that the damage increases with every bounce, so using it on an alternate target is vital.
As Mana Shield already gives Medusa 70% damage absorption at the first level, only an initial level is necessary. Initially, Medusa suffers from a very low mana pool. As a result, she should turn the Shield off when hitting creeps. However, once in the presence of an enemy hero, the Shield must be on in case of a kill attempt. This helps you Play Medusa in Dota 2 while maintaining your defenses.
Like Mana Shield, Stone Gaze also gets better only minimally with every level. As a result, only a value point early on for emergency situations is optimal. Not an initiation spell as it becomes too easy to escape, Stone Gaze is perfect as a counter-initiation ability. Medusa can also use it as an escape mechanism instead of its role as a fighting tool.
Item Build
As strong as Medusa is in the Late game, few are as weak as her early on. Because of this, she needs serious help from her support and the items she chooses to build. The most important things she needs to start with are Iron Branches for stats and multiple healing items.
The first items that she builds towards in the lane are multiple Wraith Bands and Power Treads. These items both provide her with stats as well as attack damage to help her with Last Hitting. After buying these integral pieces of equipment, she starts building her Manta Style, her most important item.
Since Medusa is a hard carry with a team that relies on her to win, she has many more items to build. There is, however, a lot of versatility in what items she can and can build. A necessary item she should prioritize is the Eye of Skadi. Not only does Eye of Skadi give her stats, but it helps her slow down enemies to make them easy targets.
Another popular item in her arsenal is the Butterfly. Butterfly gives her evasion, a ton of agility, attack speed, and damage. Furthermore, this evasion makes her extremely hard to kill, which in addition to her Tankiness, is overwhelming. Besides this, the item is also not as expensive as other late game carry items.
Some more additions to her arsenal can be the Aghanim’s Sceptre and Shard combination or a Daedalus. If against heroes with a multitude of disables or Point Target spells, the Aghanims Sceptre and Shard Combination overpowers all. The Daedalus, on the other hand, is a stable item that amplifies her attack damage intensely.
Laning Stage and Gameplay
Unlike support or even aggressive carry heroes, Medusa aims to have an increasingly passive laning stage. This is partly due to her weak nature early on and a tendency to choose farming over fighting immaturely. Staying behind the tower to Last Hit creeps with her long range is the best bet in winning the lane.
Even as the laning stage gets over, Medusa stays in lane longer than most carry heroes. Moving on to the jungle, staying in well-warded areas near teammates who can assist her is better overall. Rather than participating in fights without adequate items or farm, she should focus her strength on pushing creeps and towers.
In addition to this, Medusa stays near or in the jungle until she builds at least two major items. At this stage, she feels safe and can move out with her teammates to push towers and fight enemies. With the help of her teammates and proper placement of her ultimate ability, winning fights with Medusa is quite easy.
Medusa, though extremely popular, is a quite misunderstood hero. With the right usage of her abilities and understanding of her Power Spikes, it is easy to demolish games. Practicing patience and learning through experience are important to learning how to play Medusa in Dota 2.
