Strategy Guide for Medusa the Gorgon

by d07.RiV (as of v6.59)

http://planetdota.blogspot.com

Table of contents
1. Introduction
2. The power of Medusa, the Gorgon
3. Skill build
4. Item build
5. Strategy
6. Synergy and counters
7. Conclusion
8. Replays
1. Introduction
QUOTE

The Naga princess was named after the legendary gorgon who turned her foes into stone. Though
she hasn't developed a stoney glare, her combat skills will freeze even the strongest of fighters in
submission. Her years of archery has allowed her to fire multiple arrows with keen accuracy.
Manipulation of magic grants her a shield of mana to absorb physical impact. Channeling
electrons within the air, she can ignite an electric spark that will jump from foe to foe. Her
legendary name is well earned.

Medusa's role in a team is primarily a carry hero being a blended tank/DPSer. Her abilities
supplement the role, giving her a mighty slow/debuff, farming skills and tanking skill. By the
definition of a carry hero, she takes a solo lane and stays there until she's farmed items good
enough to scrape a win for her team. Yes, she is not the best carry hero Scourge has, but she can
be used to counter many heroes such as Sven or Omniknight.
Unlike most AGI damage dealers, her high damage output comes not from special abilities, but
from her superb ability to farm. This is why you should focus on farming during the entire
early/mid game.

2. The power of Medusa, the Gorgon

Hero Attributes:
 • Strength: 14 + 1.85
• Agility: 20 + 2.5
• Intelligence: 19 + 1.85
• Attack range of 600.
• Base movespeed of 300.
• Base armor of -1.
• Base HP of 150.
• Base MP of 0.
• Base damage of 25-30.
• Base attack cooldown of 1.7 seconds.
This sums up to 416 health, 1.8 armor (9% reduction), 45-50 damage and 247 mana on level 1,
and 1252 health, 10.4 armor (38% reduction), 104-110 damage and 819 mana on level 25
(without stats). Her agility gain is a little below average for AGI heroes, rather mediocre strength
gain is compensated by mana shield and decent intelligence gain.

QUOTE

Split Shot
Medusa magically splits her shot into three arrows. These arrows deal a lower percent of her
normal damage.

Level 1 - 45% damage

Level 2 - 55% damage
Level 3 - 65% damage
Level 4 - 75% damage

Passive

This is the main farming skill. You can turn it off and on at will (no manacost/cooldown). This
decreases the damage you deal to the target, but increases overall damage, thus making you push
better. Never get this in early game, as it makes it harder to last hit/deny, and getting it to keep it
turned off is not worth it. It might be tempting to get it to harass enemies without drawing the
creep aggression, but the damage is just too low at that stage. Later, with damage item, it will get
you a lot of creep kills. We'll talk more about that ability later.

QUOTE
 Chain Lightning
Hurls a bolt of damaging lightning at a target enemy that jumps to nearby enemies. Each jump
deals less damage.

Level 1 - 75 damage, jumps 3 times.

Level 2 - 150 damage, jumps 5 times.
Level 3 - 225 damage, jumps 7 times.
Level 4 - 300 damage, jumps 9 times.

Cooldown: 11 seconds.

Level 1: 90 mana, 11 sec cooldown.

Level 2: 105 mana, 11 sec cooldown.
Level 3: 125 mana, 11 sec cooldown.
Level 4: 145 mana, 11 sec cooldown.

This is the only nuke Medusa has, whether to get it or to skip it is up to you. I prefer maxing it
first and mainly last hitting creeps with it combining it with harassing enemies. If your team
doesn't mind you KSing this is a good skill for that.
It deals moderate damage (300), but the damage decreases quite significantly while jumping
from target to target, so if you want to harass, you want to target the enemy hero. Be careful with
it later and do not spam it too much, because it will decrease your mana pool, thus leaving you
with less mana for manashield (sounds like hurting yourself) or purge which you might need to
finish the target off or escape.

QUOTE

Mana Shield
Creates a shield that absorbs 50% of the incoming damage by using Medusa's mana.

Level 1 - .75 damage per point of mana.

Level 2 - 1.25 damage per point of mana.
Level 3 - 1.5 damage per point of mana.
Level 4 - 2 damage per point of mana.

Level 1: 50 mana, 10 sec cooldown.

Level 2: 50 mana, 10 sec cooldown.
Level 3: 50 mana, 10 sec cooldown.
Level 4: 50 mana, 10 sec cooldown.

Your signature skill which makes you so hard to kill. As the mana will usually end before your
health, it basicaly adds your doubles manapool to your health. The only difference is that it,
unlike version 5.84 Medusa, does not absorb all damage, so it is not a very wise move to use it
when you are running out of health (purge would usually help you more).

QUOTE

Purge
Casts a powerful anti-magic buff at a target enemy unit. Slows movement and attack speeds for 5
seconds.

Level 1 - Slows speed by a factor of 2.

Level 2 - Slows speed by a factor of 3.
Level 3 - Slows speed by a factor of 5.
Deals 600 damage to summoned units.

Cooldown: 12 seconds.

Level 1: 60 mana, 12 sec cooldown.

Level 2: 60 mana, 12 sec cooldown.
Level 3: 60 mana, 12 sec cooldown.

This is a great ultimate, slowing enemies by a great deal, damaging summons, dispelling most
buffs (does not dispel positive buffs on teammates or negative buffs on enemies). Note that this
can be cast on allies to remove buffs, and they will not be slowed. However, in most cases only
one level of this skill will be enough until late game, because the only thing that changes is the
slow factor, and 2 is usually more than enough, especially when you get Eye of Skadi. Later
though, the 2-3 seconds of insane decrease in the attack speed of their main DPSer might win
you the battle. More about that skill and buffs it dispels later.

3. Skill build
Main skill build we would be using is:
1. Chain Lightning
2. Attribute Bonus
3. Chain Lightning
4. Attribute Bonus
5. Chain Lightning
 6. Purge
7. Chain Lightning
8. Attribute Bonus
9. Mana Shield
10. Mana Shield
11. Mana Shield
12. Mana Shield
13. Split Shot
14. Split Shot
15. Split Shot
16. Split Shot
17. Purge
18. Purge
19. Attribute Bonus
20. Attribute Bonus
21. Attribute Bonus
22. Attribute Bonus
23. Attribute Bonus
24. Attribute Bonus
25. Attribute Bonus
Skill build justification
This build is used when you have an easy to medium lane and can survive without a lot of early
attribute bonuses and mana shield. If that is the case, we will max chain lightning first because it
gives superior farming.
Mana shield is maxed next, after a few stats, because even though your mana pool is low at these
levels, this might save you in sticky situations and allow you to get out of gank alive (you aren't
very likely to get ganked earlier than that and if you are any decent team will give you a miss
call). Do not learn it earlier because you should spam lightning and cannot utilize mana shield to
its fullest potential. The shield will reach its full potential in mid/late game, but we get it now to
increase survivability.
Purge level 1 is learned as soon as it is available because it has low mana cost and can be used in
early game if the need arises. See the next section for a detailed description of Purge uses. Purge
levels 2 and 3 can be learned at levels 17 and 18, but if you feel like it you can get it earlier
(instead of Attribute Bonuses). That is, if you mean to use it for chasing, for which it is not the
best ability. At later levels, it is used against agressive damage dealers because it reduces attack
speed, too.
We get Split Show at levels 13-16, because that is about the time you should have finished
farming your Mjollnir and you can farm the creeps with split shot on effectively (this is much
faster than last hitting).
Alternative skill build
If you anticipate a hard lane (2 nukers or orb walker and/or disabler) you might want to go for a
safe build which maximizes the time you can stay on your lane instead of speeding up farming:
1. Attribute Bonus
2. Mana Shield
3. Mana Shield
4. Attribute Bonus
5. Attribute Bonus or Mana Shield
6. Purge
7. Attribute Bonus or Mana Shield
8. Mana Shield or Attribute Bonus
9. Attribute Bonus
10. Mana Shield or Attribute Bonus
11. Attribute Bonus
12. Split Shot
13. Attribute Bonus
14. Split Shot
15. Split Shot
16. Split Shot
17. Purge
18. Purge
19. Attribute Bonus
20. Attribute Bonus
21. Attribute Bonus
22. Chain Lightning
23. Chain Lightning
24. Chain Lightning
25. Chain Lightning
In this build we start with stats, getting mana shield to level 2 by hero level 3 and turning it on.
Then, depending on how agressive your opponents are you choose whether to continue maxing
mana shield (2nd options) or get as much attribute bonuses as you can (1st options). If you still
have a lot of mana by level 5, get mana shield, otherwise learn stats (I'm not sure, but it looks
like you have to reactivate mana when you level it up to update the effect).
As in the main build, we learn purge on level 6 because you might need to slow down a chasing
enemy hero. We skip chain lightning completely since this skill is totally useless in mid-late
game and in early game we need as much stats as we can get.
Starting at level 12 we begin to learn split shot (since you can't learn attribute bonus 7 at level
12) and have it maxed by level 16 (if you are doing well with mjollnir you can skip the attribute
bonus at level 13).
We get purge at levels 17-18 or later, depending on whether your team has a good slow already
or you have to use purge for that.

About Purge
Purge can dispel many buffs, including these ultimates:
• God's Strength
• Song of the Siren
• Overgrowth
• Track
• Insatiable Hunger
• Amplify Damage
• Requiem of Souls (slow only)
• Guardian Angel
The most notable are Overgrowth (you can cast spells even if you're entangled yourself, but you
can purge only one target, so try to free the hero in most danger), Insatiable Hunger (screwing
Broodmother), God's Strength (screwing Sven) and Guardian Angel (only one target). It also
removes Repel, making Medusa a good counter for Omniknight. You can cast it through
bladefury (although it is not stopped), it cannot be cast through BKB or N'aix's Rage, but the
slow effect is not removed when avatar is activated (N'aix cannot use Rage to regain speed after
being purged). It of removes some non-ultimate damage-over-time abilities, but it does not
remove Doom, Poison Nova, Rupture.
Interesting fact is that purge works on every Treant's spell: you can purge living armor (not worth
it usually), nature's guise (place a ward and purge the invisible hero before he can get out of ward
range), eyes in the forest (yes, target a tree and eye is gone), overgrowth (already mentioned that
one).
Purge also lasts much longer on creeps, so when cast on Spirit Bear it has terribly low MS/AS
for a considerable amount of time.
Purge deals 600 damage to summons and illusions at all levels (that is a recent buff), which
makes it destroy most illusions almost immediately. It affects Furion's treants, Enigma's
Eidolons, KotL's Ignis Fatuus, Lycanthrope's Wolves, Broodmother's Spiderlings, Visage's
Revenants, Undying's zombies, Terrorblade's/Chaos Knight's/Morphling's/Naga
Siren's/Lancer's/Manta Style images, Warlock's Infernal (not a good idea, 600 damage is not
much for his huge hp), Beastmaster's/Necronomicon summons, and Helm of Dominator/Enchant
converted creeps.

4. Item build
Item build can differ from time to time. These items are for survivability if your lane is rather
hard:
Bracers are for HP boost which you desperately need (given your devastatingly low base HP),
they also give a bit of mana for your mana shield. Perserverance gives good HP regen and mana
regen and is decent if you have a hard time farming mjollnir (though usually you can do with just
ring of health).
If you do not have much problems early, stick with a couple circlets you got from the start and
eat tangos from time to time.
The main item you should farm in the first part of game is...

the Mjollnir.
This is the best damage item on Medusa, as I will prove later, also this item provides incredible
farming with split shot.
In most pub games and in many higher-level games (which don't usually last too long) the game
should be drawing to an end quite soon. You are a good DPSer by now and can support your
team quite well with your multiple-target attack, and your mana shield already provides good
survivability (better than most AGI heroes). But should the game continue...
Next, you should head for these items:

Boots of Travel are preferred over Power Treads as you're already an AGI hero and your attack
speed is good already, and the extra movespeed and, most importantly, the ability to teleport is
much better.
Eye of Skadi is the best item for Medusa, you are one of the few heroes that benefit from every
bonus Skadi gives: 675 health and 475 mana means 1625 pseudo-health with mana shield,
damage and attack speed are nice to have, and the frost attack is a great bonus too, as Purge is
not reliable enough while chasing. Skadi frost attack stacks with the chain lightning (although it
probably doesn't slow on the attack you release the bolt). The animation is as if you had no orb
effects, but the target gets slowed (and is painted a bit in blue). The only reason this isn't the first
item is because even if you do manage to farm it in a reasonable time, you will have problems
farming anything else since you do not have a good damage output with just skadi.
The Butterfly should be bought if you still have problems winning. It gives a little less DPS than
Buriza-do Kyanon, but 30% evasion compensate for that, making you nearly invincible.

If you do not like mjollnir or for any other reason, there is...

Radiance.
It costs 1335 gold cheaper than mjollnir and gives about the same farming early, but prepare to
lose efficiency later because Mjollnir gives superior damage output. It really depends, if your
team does not have a radiance carrier, and you can farm a relic in 1 go without dying, then go for
it. In the first replay I farmed 4k in 17 minutes, and wanted to see whether radiance is good on
medusa, so I checked to make sure that neither allied razor nor spectre were making it (weird
though) and went for it. If you watch the replay you will see that my damage becomes inferior to
that of Razor (who made Mjollnir) quite quickly.

Another situational item is:

Black King Bar

If there are a lot of disablers on the other team this item is a must since you will suffer a lot
otherwise instead of helping your team you will spend time flying in the air or running around as
a chicken. Also it protects against Feedback/Mana Break which is a real threat to Medusa.
You might want to buy this item before or right after skadi, depending on how the game
progresses.

About Split Shot

Split Shot splits your arrow into 3 arrows, which target different units (it is pretty much random,
the targets can even be behind you), dealing 75% of your normal damage each. If there are less
than 3 units nearby, Medusa will release less arrows and the damage will still be only 75%. It
should be used for farming after you got your first damage item (Mjollnir) as the damage then
becomes good enough to get most of the creep kills despite the damage decrease. It should be
turned off if you're fighting one hero, and should not be used against 2 heroes unless you are sure
that neither of them will run away.
If you get an MKB, Buriza, Sange/SnY or Maelstrom/Mjollnir every time the effect (microbash,
critical strike etc.) triggers, you will fire only one arrow (which is another reason I prefer
Butterfly over Buriza).
If you get Skadi or Lifesteal you will still release 3 arrows, but only one of them will have the
orb effect.
If you get Desolator you will release only 1 arrow even if you turn on split shot, which is why
you should never get Desolator on Medusa (unless you really hate split shot).
If you get Feedback (Manta Style or Diffusal Blade) you will not have the orb effect.

Item build justification

In this section I am going to compare different damage items in terms of added DPS and their
cost, namely: Buriza-do Kyanon, The Butterfly, Radiance, Monkey King Bar, Maelstrom and
Mjollnir. I do not include Stygian Desloator in this list because it disables the Split Shot ability.
Divine Rapier is not viable anymore without Aegis.

First, I will compare these items on level 16 (Attribute Bonus is level 3) and have 2 bracers and a
perserverance. We will compute the average damage dealt to one target per second (DPS).
Critical strike on Buriza is 20% chance for 2.2x damage, which is 20% chance for 120% bonus
damage and a total of 24% bonus damage. Microbash on MKB is 30% chance to bash for 100
damage which is 30 added damage. Chain Lightning on Mjollnir is 20% chance to release a 200
damage lightning which is 40 added damage.
Your DPS (Damage Per Second) without tier 4 items is 102 (103 damage/1.01 second
cooldown).
With Buriza your DPS will be 219 (178 damage*1.24 critical strike/1.01 cooldown).
With Butterfly your DPS will be 220 (163 damage/0.74 cooldown).
With Radiance your DPS will be 196 (163 damage/1.01 cooldown+35 immolation).
With MKB your DPS will be 226 ((178 damage+30 bash damage)/0.92 cooldown).
With Maelstrom your DPS will be 169 ((134 damage+30 lightning damage)/0.97 cooldown).
With Mjollnir your DPS will be 257 ((173 damage+40 lightning damage)/0.83 cooldown).
Now, we compute GPD of these items (Gold Per Damage), which is item cost divided by the
added DPS. The less the GPD, the better the item is (in terms of gold spent for the damage you
receive).
Buriza: 6200/(219-102) = 52.99
Butterfly: 6350/(220-102) = 53.81
Radiance: 5325/(196-102) = 56.65
MKB: 5400/(226-102) = 43.55
Maelstrom: 3360/(169-102) = 50.15
Mjollnir: 6760/(257-102) = 43.61
So, as we can see, MKB and Mjollnir are the best items, adding the most damage. Also MKB has
an invaluable microbash which in most cases stops your enemies from teleporting from you and
stops chanelling spells, while Chain Lightning which helps farming because every time it occurs,
it interrupts Split Shot, but gives 200 damage to 3 creeps which is usually much better (with this
item you get nearly all creep kills most of the time).

I prefer Mjollnir over MKB because it gives a bit more damage, and is more oriented toward
AoE attack (doesn't conflict with split shot that much). True, Mjollnir is harder to farm, but it is
built from maelstrom which also has a good GPD ratio (better than buriza/butterfly).
I already explained why I do not like Radiance that much. It gives much less DPS and
immolation loses effectiveness later.

Then, we need to decide which item to get after you get Mjollnir, Travels, and Skadi. Suppose
you are level 25 (Attribute Bonus level 10) and have perserverance, 1 bracer (no slots for 2),
Skadi and Mjollnir. The GPD on the same items are as follows (except radiance, which loses its
effectiveness in late game):
Buriza: 27.07
Butterfly: 30.53
MKB: 31.03
Here we see that all items give about the same GPD ratio, but the Butterfly gives 30% evasion
(and thus 43% enhanced HP except for spells) and does not impact Split Shot. So it becomes our
second damage item.

Items not to get:

Eul's Scepter of Divinity/Guinsoo's Scythe of Vyse

It may be an attractive option, as it boosts your mana pool and regeneration and gives you 6
charges of cyclone/hex ability, but in this guide we are making a damage Medusa, not support, so
leave this item for more suitable heroes. It adds a lot of mana but that will not improve your
survivability much since your health is usually less than your mana doubled anyway.
 Heart of Tarrasque
With your mana shield, Skadi is a much better item as it gives around 1600 effective HP while
being only 28% more expensive than heart. Anyways, usually one Skadi is enough to make you
immortal. Get butterfly instead as it gives you both damage and attack speed as well as 30%
evasion which boosts your EHP by about 42% - which is more than Heart gives (provided you
have a Skadi already). Plus you will hit a mana problem agian if you get heart, since with just
skadi you have an ideal health mana proportion that allows you to use purge a few times and still
have mana for shield.

Sange and Yasha

Again, Skadi provides everything this item can offer you except movespeed, which you already
have with boots of travels, and you have purge to escape a single enemy even if he has slow.

5. Strategy
Note: the text in blue is for players newer to DotA. You can skip it if you'ra familiar with things
like creep blocking, lane control basics (last hitting, etc.)
Early game (levels 1-10)
Pick your hero (after waiting for about one minute to see whether the other team gets any
Medusa counters) which is the first (upper-left) hero in the Evening (Scourge upper-left) tavern.
As a carry, Medusa would do much better in solo lane. Do not get bottom late for scourge or top
late for sentinel as they are very vulnerable to ganks, and you would do much better in the
middle lane. So request for solo mid and go there (do anything to convince your teammates if it's
a pub). Get a tango and a couple circlets. You do not need chicken that much because you do not
need a lot of cheap items early (like Mekansm parts), but it is still recommended that your team
has one and it's owner has given you shared control (again, try to convince him to do so if it's a
pub). Do not get a chicken yourself because you're carry.
While going to your middle lane, try to block the creeps as much as possible. For that, wait for
them at your second tower (the one just outside your base) and stay in front of them, clicking H
(hold) and resuming motion so the creeps huddle around you. When you master this, you will
make the creeps collide on your side of the river, making use of the miss factor and making it
harder to gank you.
Once on the lane, stay behind your creeps as you're too fragile. You have 600 range but your
attack animation is far from perfect, so you will need a lot of practice to last hit/deny properly.
Last hitting means not firing at all, and trying to only land the finishing blow to the creeps,
because who does it is the one who will get 50 gold, which is a really nice bonus. It takes a lot of
practice and timing, and there is inDe_eD's guide to Micromanagement which teaches you many
tricks. Denying is killing your own creeps because this gives your opponents much less EXP
than if you didn't bother doing this. You can target your creeps with A (attack) - click when they
have less than half HP. If you type "-di" the leaderboard title will show you how many creeps
you have killed/denied so far. Also, exclamation marks will fly out of creep's head if someone
denies it. If your opponents don't seem too aggressive, move closer so that your arrows have less
distance to fly.
If you have a hard lane: get 2 levels of mana shield and turn it on. Now you can survive nukes
much better. You might consider getting a couple bracers and/or a Ring of Health or even a
complete Perserverance, or just farm your damage item of choice straight away. If you have a
really hard lane (that is, the usual definition of hard, plus mana burn) then request for a swap
(you might even consider sharing the lane with someone else).
If your lane is not that hard, you can learn chain lightning and start using it after you hit level 3
and then on every other creep wave or so (depending on your mana). A good idea is to hit a
ranged creep a few times, then when any enemy melee creep hits red health fire chain lighining
at an enemy hero. They will get decent damage, you will kill the ranged creep and possibly the
melee creep will also die. When you max chain lighning you will need to hit the ranged creep
only one time so this strategy is rather efficient. Do not activate mana shield unless you
anticipate being ganked because you lose too much mana if your opponents nuke you with mana
shield on, and you cannot respond properly or use the farming technique. Instead, eat trees and
stay safe. Do not attempt killing them alone unless you are sure you can pull this off without
losing too much health (which usually is not the case with Medusa). However, you have a high
chance of killing one or two of them with your ally (allies) because you have a good slow and a
nuke to finish them off.

Mid game (levels 10-16)

By this time you should have Maelstrom (or nearly finish it), bracers if you need them and boots
of speed. If you got ring of health/perserverance and thus don't have Maelstrom yet, try to finish
it as soon as possible (consider jungling) because you cannot stay on a lane for a long time
without being ganked, and maelstrom makes you clear a creep wave(s) much faster.
Start farming 3300 gold for Eaglehorn->Mjollnir. Be extremely careful and avoid ganks by all
means since it's a rather large investment and dying will impede you considerably. I do not
recommend using split shot because your damage is still not that great and instead of last hitting
creeps you will get them all to low health and your allied creeps will steal all the kills. I suggest
always having a scroll of teleportation in your inventory, it is hard to stress how many times you
will need it if your enemies run around ganking a lot. If you pushed too farm and a lot of enemy
dots are missing on the minimap you might consider teleporting to base or another lane. If
enemies appear behind you or from side you can try juking them by hiding in the trees and
teleporting from there before they can aim a stun at you. After you farmed up Mjollnir things
should become much easier, as the Chain Lightning really helps a lot. You should have it
Mjollnir around level 16 or even earlier if you get a few kills or are good at last hitting. Head for
Skadi parts, probably starting with a Point Booster. You can get Boots of Travel in between or
after Skadi. You can participate in ganks because you can deal rather a lot of damage if the target
is stunned/disabled, also if the teams clash you should be there because if your team fights too
much of 4v5 it might cost you the game. You can keep the mana shield on because it should be
maxed out by now and you should have a nice mana pool to go with.
Do not use chain lightning for farming because creeps die fast enough already with Mjollnir. If
you find a large wave of creeps you might considering using static charge on yourself and getting
ahead of your creeps so that the enemy ones will target you and die quickly.

Late game (levels 16-25)

Now you should be reaching your full potential. Gank a lot, do not be afraid of large fights.
Finish your Eye of Skadi. With the boost it gives you should be hard to kill. Activate split shot in
large fights because it will deal much more overall damage. Now head for Butterfly for even
more survivability . You should be able to push incredibly fast with split shot, clearing the creep
wave in several seconds. Boots of Travel will let you teleport around the map, assisting your
teammates and defending towers. Killing Roshan would be a good idea, and you make such a
good Aegis carrier (If you die you will quickly revive to defend the base).

Teamfights
By team fight I mean when the majority of both teams meet together and kill each other (at least
7 people).
The key to winning it is cooperating with your team and knowing who to focus/disable. A way of
communication helps a lot (e.g. Ventrilo or simply sitting in one room), otherwise you should set
up priorities in chat before the fight. Probably you would disable a DPSer and focus their most
agressive caster (like Zeus), or the other way around. It is good to have their other dangerous
heroes out of they way while you kill one of them. As a Medusa, you should activate Mana
Shield and tank/damage to your best ability. You should try not to get disabled since you deal a
lot damage and you don't want to miss that opportunity, and BKB helps greatly against a team of
disablers. Purge someone with dangerous buffs first. On top of the list are Sven's God's Strength
and Broodmother's Insatiable Hunger, other ideas include removing Guardian Angel and/or
Repel from your first target. Otherwise, you might want to either slow down their main damage
hero, especially if he is melee, or keep it to finish escaping heroes/slot down chase to escape
yourself. And don't forget that your main role is still to deal damage: what good would a nearly
unkillable hero do if he doesn't deal any damage/disable anyone? They just wouldn't focus you.
So turn on split shot and watch their HP go down. If you have magnataur or bloodseeker on your
team ask for a buff on yourself even if you do not have the highest damage in the team: you
attack multiple targets.
Note on the static charge. This buff should be applied on the hero the other team focuses (unless
he/she dies too quickly). That can be you (you are a tank, remember), or Axe (he will
BerserkerCall and the other team will crumble to combined helixes and chain lightnings), or
many other heroes.

6. Synergy and counters

Medusa does well with the following heroes:
• Category 1:

Disablers. That is quite obvious, but until you have your Skadi you lack a natural disable
(purge is not enough usually) and you like to have disablers on your side because they
hold the enemy safely in place for a kill.
• Category 2:

Big Damage Dealers who lack a reliable chasing skill. Heroes like Ursa Warrior
(overpower) and Juggernaut (bladefury) benefit fantastically from your purge as it allows
them to pump their whole damage into the target, which is catastrophically high for their
level. Sven has God's Strength, but his Storm Bolt's duration is too little. Chaos Knight
will work better if the target is slowed down so that he and his illusions can bring him
down (he has too little mana to cast both Phantasm and Chaos Bolt and still have some
for a couple blinkstrikes on lower levels) - and your purge/frost attack is here to help.
• After you get your Eye of Skadi, you are quite independent and can take heroes on your
own (well, they will have tons of trouble killing you), but you lack the power to kill
several people at once, because (a) they can fight back and (b) they can escape, because
skadi cannot slow more than one hero. So your allies would be:
 Mass disablers. Just turn on your split shot and watch them helplessly die at your hands.
Counters
However, Medusa is not all-mighty and is vulnerable to the following heroes:

Mana burners. Because of the mana shield, the damage to your mana can be considered as a
doubled damage to your health. Anti-mage will rapidly decrease your mana, leaving you with no
protection quick enough. Nerubian assasin's mana burn does 260 damage to your mana and
health, making you lose a total of 780 effective HP, and mana burn has a very low cooldown.
However, these heroes become weaker against medusa because your mana and health pools
increase and their mana damages stay constant. They best way to counter them is BKB (in case
of Magina you can purge him so that he doesn't get a chance to hit you many times).
The same goes to:

Though you can counter images (with split shot) and necrosummons (with purge). Be careful
when destroying the blue demon (melee) as it deals you 200-400-600 damage for that.

7. Conclusion
Medusa is a hybrid tank/DPSer and depends heavily on her mana to survive. She does well in
team battles, damaging several enemies at once, but is vulnerable to mana burns. Her purge
removes many buffs and Medusa counters these heroes pretty well:

• Treant Protector.
Purge counters every one of his spells, giving a cheap way to remove eyes (only 60 mana
and 12 second cooldown) and help your allies escape overgrowth.

• Rogue Knight.
His ultimate is removed by purge, making him lose his greatest strength.
 • Omniknight.
His ultimate and repel are both removed by purge, making him lose his 2 greatest
strengths. His degen aura is countered by purging him, thus reducing his movespeed
enough to get out of his aura range.

• Broodmother.
Her ultimate is removed by purge, making her lose her greatest strength.

• Lifestealer.
Your good ability to tank comes not from huge health pool but from using mana to absorb
damage, making feast less useful agains you.
NOTE: I do not consider Medusa a strong counter to Warlock, because purge only deals 600
damage to Infernal (which has 900/1200/1800 health) and the Infernal has insane HP regen,
while purge has 12 second cooldown. So it will take you 24 seconds to destroy it (if Warlock
doesn't use shadow word on it), and the Infernal will have already done most of it's intended
function by now. But if you see Infernal fall below 600 hp (I'm not sure whether magic reduction
applies), by all means use it because 100/150/200 gold boost is quite handy.
8. Replays
Finally I got one nice replay. It is TDA -rd game, zeus gets dropped off at some point but I doubt
that mattered very much. AFAIK their team were all friends.
I got radiance instead of mjollnir since I farmed 4k in about 17 minutes and thought I'd buy relic.
Razor outfarmed me then because he got mjollnir first. I skipped travels and regretted that.

QUOTE

Date: 10/01/2008 19:52

Patch version: 1.21
Map: DotA Allstars 6.49b
Game length: 1:11:12
Spoiler
Winner: Scourge

Sentinel:

Ucantbanallaccs, level 21 (Jungle), items: , APM: 66

TonyYayo87, level 18 (Top), items: , APM: 48

 Jam4, level 15 (Top), items: , APM: 43, left: 54:59

Zippi55, level 22 (Mid), items: , APM: 31

arwahne, level 20 (Bot), items: , APM: 123

Scourge:

carotafeliz, level 20 (Top), items: , APM: 64

d07.RiV, level 24 (Mid), items: , APM: 60

hm_span, level 21 (Top), items: , APM: 142

Kd.Abuba, level 25 (Bot), items: , APM: 111

ti(dan), level 23 (Bot), items: , APM: 104

rd19lc__1_.w3g ( 843.3k ) Number of downloads: 412

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