Medusa: the last true 1v5 Carry?
Medusa is a strong meta hero, but looking at stats, she seems inferior to several other hyper-carries, including conceptually similar Luna. There is one major difference between the heroes, however: Medusa has a disable, and it seems the players who leverage her Aghanim’s Scepter and Shard perform above average in high level pubs. This is what we want to discuss today.
Aghanim’s Upgrades
There are three reasons Aghanim’s upgrade on Medusa is so strong. The first one is simple: Scepter gives all stats and Medusa is one of the few heroes who benefits from all three attributes. Nothing from the Scepter is wasted on her.
The second reason is the access to a disable. Fully charged, it is over two seconds of stun and +50% auto-attack damage amplification. It means Medusa can be a follow-up disable for her team and even a counter-initiator.
Her Aghanim’s Shard also frequently means that Medusa can be a counter-initiator even if she is the target of the initiation and it is the third reason Aghanim’s Scepter is so good on her. The single-target snake from Cold Blooded is annoying to deal with for a lot of heroes, including most supports and even some carries.
Tricky Target
All of this together makes for a hero who is tricky to initiate on and even harder to kill. You can initiate with BKBs to avoid getting petrified by the first snake, but then BKB-piercing Stone Gaze can come into play.
You can try to get rid of the surrounding heroes first, leaving Medusa for later, but this approach is similarly problematic: during this fight you will be subject to a constant barrage of Mystic Snakes and auto-attacks, and given how fast Medusa farms, these auto-attacks will probably hurt.
You can try to bait out Stone Gaze, disengage and re-engage afterward, but it is easier said than done. Moreover, especially in pubs, this can result in half the team running away and half staying in the fight, making for an even worse situation.
Basically, what we are trying to say is that Medusa is one of the strongest, if not the strongest hero in the game, tactically speaking. She is a carry with exceptional survivability, access to powerful disables and a team-fight turning ultimate.
In her final form, she is almost impossible to deal with head-on and while shutting her down early is always ideal, it is not always feasible. Hence we need a flowchart of things to do, if Medusa has already approached critical mass.
Strategic approach
Medusa has one big weakness: she is “swift as the wolves of Icewrack”. With her 275 starting MS and no MS talents she can and should be avoided in unfavorable engagements. Moreover, her low movement speed and general lack of mobility should absolutely be abused strategically: forcing Medusa to react and commit a TP usually means the other side of the map should be open for favorable teamfights: it will take Medusa a while to get there.
Split-pushing is close to being extinct, but it is a great way to force the enemy into mistakes. Divide and Conquer should be the general motto versus Medusa: it is hard enough dealing with the hero on her own, but with proper support and catch from the enemy team, chances of a successful engagement for your team are pretty low.
And don’t try to initiate on Medusa if you are not sure you will be able to kill before she turns the fight around. With enough disables it is possible to chain-stun the hero to a point where she won’t be able to retaliate, but if she does manage to get a Mystic Snake + Stone Gaze off, it is best to start running away: she will most likely have most of her mana back and will be ready to fight.
The Biggest Problem
The biggest problems start if and when Medusa is allowed to play proactively, rather than reactively. If she and her team can safely group up and start moving forward as a unit, that is where the real problems begin. It is best to prevent the enemy from getting there by constantly clearing out waves and forcing reactions across the map with pushing heroes, but it is not always possible.
In this scenario, against a decently farmed Medusa sieging your high ground, we believe the best course of action is to ignore her, concentrating on the backlines. Buy a smoke if you need to wrap around, poke with long-range spells on secondary targets, but don’t engage on Medusa.
If you are able to start a teamfight with several clean kills on supports, perhaps you will be able to leverage your numerical advantage. In other scenarios, resetting the board back to a game of cat and mouse is preferable.
What do you think of Medusa? Do you have advice of your own on how to deal with the hero? If so, share them in the comment section below. Please.
First!
Medusa is a hard carry and has always been one of the hardest carries in the game.
She's been that way since Dota 1.
The only way to counter Medusa is to nerf her.
You need your offlane duo to dominate their jungle early. She deals 0 dmg till 20-25 min mark.
Medusa is cool hero, but somehow I dont like to play her as safelaner. You are not strong laner and you want to have access to camps - as safe laner you have access to big and small early (usually both of them blocked or dangerous to walk to the big one and small is for pulling), long way to triangle and hard way to escape without ulti (which you usually dont want to take early anyway).
It feels so great to have decent matchup mid with some active lineup with carry like CK, WK etc. You need heroes, who can at least draw lanes, who will not get kicked into jungle easily.
You can stack and farm triangle for yourself, especially on dire. Usually I start stacking asap (if enemy is not putting pressure, I take splitshot at lvl 2 and start pushing wave into him and stack something right away). after being lvl 5, you can kill wave within few seconds with snake and stack every single minute without losing any creeps.
The problem is, that there are heroes, that can bully you especially before lvl 5, when you can just push the way and there are heroes, who are not compatible with you at all in meta - Terror, Luna, Spectre, Gyro, am, Jugg, Sven etc want to blitz through jungle and do the same thing as you. That just doesnt work.
Killing her backline is never easy since she herself has a disable on a small cooldown and her ultimate makes it hard to both dive past her aswell as manfight her. Medusa isn't helpless either, with the right items, she'll kill an entire team before they manage to disable and poke at her to death.
Great hero overall. 1 man raid bosses are always fun to play. PL and TB are also raid bosses but they are illusion heroes so is it really a 1 man raid boss? 🤔
Medusa is probably my fav mid hero right now, she is stupidly strong on lane and mid allows her to farm supper fast. Just buy 2 wraith bands, build manta and rush agh with shard. Works around 87% for me
Despite not playing actively I have a lot of experience with Medusa and while being support in 90% of my games I pick her when forced to carry in 6k bracket. The problematic heroes for her are Invoker, because he can disable her to no end on his own and force the Gorgo to buy BKB when facing him, something which she naturally despise for multiple reasons. Other big problem is the Dwarven Sniper and his range advantage, something which Medusa on her own will never be able to overcome. Mobile heroes that can dance around her and kill in a flash her teammates is something she also see as a problem - Storm Spirit, Spirit Void, Ember Spirit and the likes. Items that disable her - disarm is her bane, because unlike hex cannot be dispelled by ally and prevent her to deal any significant damage for half the fight, put a pair against her and you will be able to kill her whole squad while she just watches. Aside from that Medusa is exceptionally strong in the early game and with few items can fix her major weaknesses as low mobility and lack of disables. Clearing the whole map with her is a breeze and getting on the high ground when facing her is a nightmare while she basically cannot be outlasted and the more the game drags the higher the chance for her to turn the tables if she is at disadvantage. She is so absurdly strong that a single 20 charges of Magic Wand give her around 1,000 effective hit points after she got level 4 mana shield, nearly the same she can get from a Point Booster.
I always get deleted as medusa by invoker because of his E.M.P , medusa her low movement speed sets it up for disaster as she can never get out of time when tornado'd
I also found out medusa cannot out carry arc warden late, he just wins big time.
Also ofcourse anti mage but he is more easy because he is melee ofc
But what do i know, i am just a gaurdian passing by
I don't understand the blog posters here. They attract devs to perfectly balanced stuff of the game. Just pick zoo and early push. Easy as that
Been spamming naga a lot lately and at my relatively low MMR people tend to pick Medusa to counter it. Dusa definitely does not counter naga. Auto attacks are mosquitos with her agility gain, like the author mentioned split pushing is a viable way to kite the hero, and god forbid you manage to to kite out the stone gaze her style of man-fighting is a foolhardy choice against an illusion hero who builds diffusal. In general Naga is just a strong hero that isn't easily countered. Yeah Axe and Wyvern, but other than that it takes multiple sources of good illusion clear.
@Nemrod cut the crap smurf; your sample size is 8 matches, and you only have 32 matches total. Try that on your main and then we'll talk.
@Ultraman(W33D):
When facing Invoker as Medusa you indeed have problem with movement speed and it's hard to evade Tornado-EMP combo. The thing you wish to incorporate in your item-build are Yasha, Travel and Force Staff. Not to be rushed, but just to have them eventually and fortunately once evaded EMP cannot be used on a short notice, so Invoker becomes not so damaging and scary. If he by some chance try to play Exort and try to burst you down using his lead from middle lane, a Blade Mail and some survivability is all you need to punish him.
@Talker:
Medusa is extremely strong in the early game, her Mystic Snake is very strong and basically free-of-charge spell and her durability guarantees you can cannot be burst down nor traded efficiently against. No carry can and should clear neutral stacks until certain criteria's are met - which usually is to not have lane wave in your side of the map and that taking the neutral camp doesn't cost you much time. All of those are met by Medusa when she have level 7 and above, at that point camps should not be warded anymore and she can easily push the lane and clear the camps without any effort. The safe lane is perfectly viable for her in public games she can be played on any core position but to make the highest impact you need her at safe-lane, because other positions doesn't suit her later and your team will lack something if you have Medusa on hard lane or middle.
% Blademail on medusa? Yikes son…
Well that depends, on what the draft is. If you have offlane Timber/axe/Tide (playmaker, which pushes lane and wins it usually) and carry like CK, WK, Razor, LS, who can be aggressive as well, you can just go at 17-21 minutes with team having manta+aghs and take all outer towers and rosh afterwards.
The issue is, that often people pick into medusa heroes, who want to farm. Be it some safelane bf carry (am, Pa), Luna, Terror, or go radiance (WK) + some weak offlane/supports and you lose early game and everybody farms jungle.
Btw I hate to play into heroes, who are far away - sniper/aw the most, because you need the rest of the team to kill him, because you cant get to them even with swift blink, because they have one on their own as well.
@Life:
While Blade Mail is not an item I would buy in most of the matches, it's perfectly legit item for Medusa as the point of the item is to trade your high health against enemies that burst heavily and after that need time to recuperate. Medusa is the hero with the highest EHP pool out there, while she is slot starved, when playing from behind and facing heroes that Blade Mail provides adequate damage - it's a sane decision to build it and ditch it the moment you no longer need it.
Medusa is completely fine. Honestly probably one of the few balanced heroes in the game right now. She absolutely cannot 1v5 unless you are in scrub tier MMR.