Medusa

Medusa the Gorgon is a ranged agility Hero. Highly item-dependent, she acts as a carry who can potentially strike down entire teams at once while protected by tank-like survivability. Split Shot allows her attacks to hit multiple targets, greatly increasing the potency of damage-granting items. Mystic Snake grants Medusa some presence in the lane and skirmishes, and its mana stealing refunds part of the cost to boot, making it an excellent farming and harrassing tool. Mana Shield protects her from the opening damage of teamfights, and if supplemented with items makes killing Medusa a fatally time-consuming process. Stone Gaze acts as a fantastic defensive mechanism against ganks and initiations alike, with crippling effects on all who dare face the Gorgon.

Tips

 * Mystic Snake can be maxed first as it is Medusa's only nuke and can be used to push your lane.
 * Try to aim Mystic Snakes to bounce off enemy creeps before hitting heroes to maximize the damage, make sure you're at least always hitting the ranged creep to regen your Mana.
 * On a standard lane creep wave of 3 melees and 1 ranged, a level 4 Mystic Snake that bounces on the melees first will instantly kill the ranged creep on contact.
 * Split Shot is a highly item-dependent ability. Consider spending pre-level 6 points in Attribute Bonus for a small but more tangible boost in power.
 * By activating Split Shot before you use Manta Style or Illusion rune, the illusions will gain the Split Shot ability, which is a very good boost in terms of increasing your DPS.
 * Be wary about leaving Mana Shield active in the early game without a high mana pool or some mana regen items. Heavy damage may leave you unable to cast Stone Gaze, which can turn the tides of a gank or teamfight when used correctly.
 * Mana Shield does however provide an immense amount of damage reduction at all levels. An alternative build is to max this by 7 and take a lot of points in stats.
 * When pushing, activate Split Shot when attacking towers to whittle down an incoming creep wave.
 * Items built from Ultimate Orb and Perseverance are good for Medusa, such as Linken's Sphere and Manta Style. The bonus stats and regen make Medusa very tanky with Mana Shield active.
 * You should always have a Town Portal Scroll in order to escape incoming ganks and as well as for defending your base. It is especially useful for countering engagements and tower dives, as Stone Gaze severely punishes teams who commit to a fight.
 * It is possible to farm ancients with Medusa at level 1 by putting a point into Split Shot. However, it requires juking into the jungle, and may need more skill to perform in on the Dire ancients.
 * Remember that Petrified heroes will take no damage from magical attacks. This is especially important if you have a nuke heavy team as activating Stone Gaze at the wrong time can cost your team a battle that could have been won otherwise.
 * Proper use of Stone Gaze together with Split Shot makes Medusa a great counter to heroes that either summon illusions, purchase Manta style in their item build or rely heavily on their auto-attacks to do damage. Examples of these heroes would be Phantom Lancer, Chaos Knight and Faceless Void. Remember that a successful Stone Gaze will clear all illusions from Medusa's vicinity.
 * Power Treads Contrary to the default build, Power Treads are the superior shoe for Medusa, she greatly benefits from the stat toggle and increases her farming and attack speed dramatically. Phase Boots are great for the early to mid game, but when you commit to Medusa you're in it for the long haul where Treads will outshine Phase.
 * Magic Wand gives Medusa cheap restoration and stats that she needs needs early game.
 * Manta Style is an excellent item to build on Medusa to greatly increase her Area of Effect Damage per Second through a team fight. You can dodge projectiles or dispel certain debuffs on yourself and unleash a barrage of auto attacks on the enemy team.
 * Eye of Skadi provides much needed stats to boost Medusa, while Strength and Agility naturally makes her more much harder to bring down, Intellect increases the amount of damage she can absorb with Mana Shield (Up to 60% of each hit) this makes Skadi the ultimate item to tank Medusa and give her the survivability to stand tall and mow down the enemy team.
 * Mjollnir and Maelstrom can be picked up to increase your farming speed while also boosting your damage passively. Mjollnir's Static Charge buff can be applied to yourself when you get focused to provide even more AoE damage to the enemey team, overall Static Charge is fantastic to pick up on any tank.

Trivia

 * While the lore of Medusa is heavily inspired by its ancient Greek counterpart it should be noted that in the early versions of the myth, Medusa was born hideous to primordial sea deities Phorcys and Ceto who are described as cthonic monsters from an archaic world.
 * The mythology that describes Medusa as having incomprehensible beauty was introduced later by the Roman poet Ovid and in that version Medusa did not exchange her beauty for power. Rather after being attacked by Poseidon in the temple of Athena the enraged goddess twisted Medusa's beautiful visage to the point that merely looking at her would turn the onlookers to stone.
 * Medusa's response upon killing Gyrocopter "Snakes on a plane", refers to the movie of the same name.
 * Even though Medusa has a response upon purchasing an Aghanim's scepter, her ultimate, Stone Gaze, is not upgraded by it.