Guide to Medusa. One of the most greedy carries in Dota 2

Medusa is a classic late carry that needs artifacts. And at a low rating, it can become an invincible machine, since players do not always know what to do against this hero.

pros and cons of a hero

pros

• Good survivability due to the Mana Shield skill and related purchasable artifacts.
• Easy to learn
• Can farm stacks fast
• Strong in the late game

Minuses

• Highly dependent on artifacts
• No kill potential in lane
• Hard to come back after a bad start

Hero Abilities

split shot

The hero magically splits his arrows, attacking multiple targets, but dealing less damage. Additional targets are not affected by attack effects such as critical damage.

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• Illusions created with Split Shot active retain the status of the ability.
  
• Allows Medusa to perform instant attacks on the nearest 4 enemies when launching an attack projectile
  
• Search radius depends on Medusa + 150 attack range; resulting in a radius of 750 units, taking into account the hero's standard attack range (does not target wards, buildings, invisible or attack immune units, or in the fog of war, but does target couriers).

Mystic Snake

Launches an energy snake that jumps from target to target and deals damage. After reaching the last target, the snake will return to the owner and restore his mana. With each jump, the snake deals more damage. Restores 11%/14%/17%/20% of the victims' total mana.

• The snake moves at a speed of 800.

• The ability first deals damage, then applies the slow and the Stone Gaze debuff.

• The snake always bounces from the current target to the nearest suitable one. Cannot hit the same target more than once per cast
• The snake provides 100 radius flying vision while flying.
• Medusa gains mana when the snake returns. Recovery is based on the maximum mana of all enemies hit
  
• Mystic Snake needs to hit minions with 1273/1072/942/851 (305/307/308/310) total mana to replenish the spell's mana cost.
• Each successful hit on an enemy increases the damage of the next bounce by 35% of the ability's base damage.
  

Mana Shield

Creates a shield that absorbs 100/150/200/250 damage taken using the hero's mana. It also grants a permanent bonus to mana.

• When activated, On increases Medusa's effective health by 233.33%, assuming the hero has enough mana
• When toggled On/Off, Mana Shield does not interrupt Medusa's casting spells
• Mana Shield remains after Medusa dies. If the shield was active at the time of death, then the hero will be reborn with an active ability.
  

Stone Gaze

Reduces the movement and attack speed of any enemy that looks at the owner of the ability. If the victim looks at him for more than 2 seconds, then he will turn into stone. Stuns petrified creatures and increases physical damage against them.

• The enemy team must have vision on Medusa (when using her Stone Gaze) for at least 1 server tick before any enemies can be affected.
• Each enemy creature facing Medusa within 85° within a 1200 radius around the caster will receive debuffs: one tracks how long the creature has been facing Medusa, the other grants a slow.
• The debuff that tracks a creature's position counts how long it has been staring at Medusa. For a total of 2 seconds, it petrifies the creature
• The slow debuff only affects affected enemies facing Medusa. Creatures that don't look at the caster are not slowed, but retain the debuff. The slow debuff lasts for the same duration as Stone Gaze (meaning it ends with the ultimate) or until the petrification ends.
• Only when the petrifying debuff ends will the creature be able to be petrified again by Stone Gaze, being affected by the ability until its duration ends and while the creature is looking at Medusa.
• Petrification is a normal stun that additionally freezes animations and increases physical attack damage. Does not enhance magical or pure damage attacks and physical damage spell damage.
• Stone Gaze does not affect neutral creeps.
• Stone Gaze ends when Medusa dies, but already petrified enemies remain in this state for the duration.

cold blooded

The ability appears after purchasing Aghanim's Shard. Each time a hero is targeted by a spell, they release a snake at the attacker from the Mystic Snake ability, which only affects the offender. Cooldown: 12 seconds.

• If the target is spell immune, it does not count towards the bounce count.
• Blocked by both primary and secondary targets. Blocks on hit. When blocked, it stops bouncing and returns to the hero to restore mana
  
• If the snake's current target dies or becomes invulnerable, hidden, or invisible, the bounce will not count and will not increase damage
• The snake will release at the hero even if he is invulnerable or hidden
• Has no range limit.
  

Leveling abilities

The most popular buildup on this hero. While we are not participating in fights, we do not need a shield, but the emphasis is on the second and first skills. The snake helps us to stay on the lane and finish off ranges, while straining the enemy, and due to the pumped Spit Shot, the character starts to farm very quickly.

Talents

The choice of talents is very simple, in fact, up to level 25, they always take the right talents, because they are simply better. At level 25, there is no choice left, the left talent is too strong to bypass it.

Item assembly

The most popular items on the hero:

Assembly examples:

There is variability in buying items.

Primarily for stats, many players buy Dragon Lance, which will work great on enemy melee carries. Next comes Manta Style, with which you can increase the speed of farming, as well as reset negative effects from yourself. Then you should increase the number of stats, at the expense of skadi, which with a talent at level 25 will work even better. Butterfly is not used in all cases, but still quite often. Due to a good agility bonus, the damage, attack speed and defense of the hero will noticeably increase. Well, the chance to dodge the attack will increase the survival of the hero. It is especially important to use this artifact if the enemy team has several heroes at once who deal damage mainly with their auto-attack.

Gameplay

At the beginning of the game, the main task of Medusa is to farm, and even with the cover of supports, earning gold is not easy. For starters, it's worth getting used to Medusa's attack animation and her low initial damage. Because of this, Medusa is most often at the beginning and takes the Wraith Band item in order to at least somehow increase the damage. Subsequently, of course, the minus of the initial damage will not be felt, since we will buy artifacts that increase damage. Medusa is a very strong team carry and learning to play Medusa is easy. However, you should not take Medusa in every game. All the same, this hero is quite dependent on the actions of his team. If your allies play scattered and you have to participate in some disadvantageous duels over and over again, then this can lead to the fact that you will start to fall far behind in farming and eventually you will simply not have enough damage.

Medusa can easily change the outcome of almost any battle, but only if you have managed to collect expensive artifacts. Otherwise, Medusa's skills will not be able to help you get the game out.

If everything is bad in your lane, you can always leave to farm your triangle. You can ask your supports to stack you to increase the tempo.