Medusa/Guide

Carry

 * This build gives Medusa great sustain and harassment on the early game, while enabling quick farm mid-game with Split Shot. However, avoid putting skill points into Split Shot during the laning stage as it will mess with lane equilibrium. You can always hold on to that skill point and level up Split Shot when you want to push. Mana Shield and Stone Gaze only get one level early on as that's all you'll need for farming, fighting, and escaping ganks. However, you may consider adding extra levels in Mana Shield if there are enemy heroes that can eat through your mana.

General

 * Medusa has one of the lowest base health in the game, making her quite vulnerable in the early game.
 * Medusa is arguably the hardest carry in the game, but also the most item dependent. Knowing how to farm well is the most important aspect of playing her.
 * Early on, Medusa should just focus on farming and surviving. Once you get Mana Shield, you'll have a lot more survivability in lane, but always keep an eye on the minimap for incoming ganks and your health and mana pools to see how much damage the enemies are doing.
 * In the late game, Mana Shield and Stone Gaze allows Medusa to withstand much more punishment than most carries.
 * Enemy teams who cannot kill Medusa quickly enough will often lose the teamfight.
 * Because of this, a well farmed late game Medusa can often turn a losing match around.


 * Split Shot makes you a really good farmer and pusher, especially once you get more levels in it. Use it to quickly farm jungle camps or push lanes to try to take early towers
 * When pushing towers with Split Shot, keep the tower as your main target, and the other arrows will hit creeps or nearby enemies. If you target creeps while trying to push, the extra arrows won't hit towers.
 * Split Shot also gives you immense damage during fights. While Medusa's single target damage isn't much for a lot of the game, with Split Shot you can easily deal decent damage to each enemy in a fight.
 * Split Shots works on Medusa's illusions.


 * Mystic Snake is potent throughout all points of the game. It lets you harass enemies and keep your mana nearly full while posing minimum risk to yourself
 * For maximum damage against enemies in lane, try to bounce the snake off a few creeps into the enemy hero.
 * The mana steal works against heroes and creeps to the full extent. Use this in the jungle to keep mana from dropping too low so you can tank hits from creeps with Mana Shield. Medium Satyr and Mud Golem camps work the best for this.
 * Mystic Snake can be maxed first as it is Medusa's only nuke and can be used to push lanes.
 * Mystic Snake's damage increases per jump, so you best cast so that it would hit enemy heroes at last, to make them take the most damage. If used for farming, casting it so that it hits the creeps with more health can prevent overkill damage on lower health creeps, making it more effective and faster to farm.
 * Since Medusa does not have much mana and the ability has a high mana cost, make sure that it hits at least 2 enemies who have mana (e.g. ranged lane creeps), to get some mana restored back. It does not matter if targets with mana are hit first or last, since the mana drain is static and does not increase per jump like the damage.
 * Ranged lane creeps have a mana pool of, so Mystic Snake can drain mana from them. So in order to get its full mana cost basically refunded, it has to hit at least 3/3/2/2 ranged lane creeps. This means it is also important to hit enemies with the spell in order to not run out of mana during the laning phase.
 * In order to refund the full mana cost, Mystic Snake must hit units with a sum of total mana.
 * Use Mystic Snake on a nearby creep to have it bounce and hit an enemy that's out of range.
 * With, Mystic Snake will petrify all enemies it hits, improving Mystic Snake's utility by giving Medusa a disable.
 * Enemies petrified through Mystic Snake take on the same properties as if they were hit by Stone Gaze.
 * Mystic Snake does the damage and mana steal first before applying the petrification debuff.
 * Unlike Stone Gaze, an Aghanim's Scepter Mystic Snake does not bypass spell immunity and will not apply the petrification debuff should an enemy turn spell immune before the snake reaches its intended target.


 * One point in Mana Shield gives you the full 60% damage reduction. Subsequent levels just lower the mana lost per damage.
 * Level Mana Shield based on what the enemy has. If enemies have items such as, grabbing more points may not be a bad idea to lower the overall mana lost from it.
 * Even if you do level Mana Shield up early, be wary of enemies who tend to build illusions with mana burn, such as with his  and  illusions.
 * Medusa is 250% more durable with Mana Shield than her HP alone as long as she has mana.
 * Medusa's mana pool needs to equal at least 93.75%/78.95%/68.18%/60% of her current health to maximize the damage reduction of Mana Shield, assuming she does not lose mana in any different way than by the absorption of Mana Shield.
 * Be wary about leaving Mana Shield active in the early game without a high mana pool or some mana regenerating items. Heavy damage may leave you unable to cast Stone Gaze, which can turn the tides of a gank or teamfight when used correctly.
 * The ideal ratio of mana to health is 0.94/0.79/0.68/0.6 mana per health, meaning every consecutive skill point in Mana Shield becomes less cost efficient, consider grabbing a point in your other abilities over another point in Mana Shield if you already have the ideal mana/health ratio (any more points basically mean wasted mana; do not forget about Stone Gaze and Mystic Snake costs).
 * With careful and strategic use of Mystic Snake in the heat of battle, you may be able to replenish and keep your mana pool up even if you are taking a heavy beating.


 * Leveling Stone Gaze only increases the duration by 1 second each level. As such, one value point early on should be enough for both escaping ganks and turning the tides in team fights.
 * Stone Gaze goes through spell immunity, meaning the only way to escape it is to turn away from Medusa. It'll even freeze a who used  and take them out of the Phase, so use that to your advantage.
 * With the Stone Gaze Duration talent at maximum level of Stone Gaze (9.5 second duration), it is possible for enemies to be petrified twice in one cast. Abilities such as and  help with this.

Items
Starting items:
 * for a bit of regeneration in lane.
 * 's flat heal will go a long way to keep Medusa healthy, considering her abysmal starting health.
 * provides early attributes needed for last-hitting creeps and a small boost in your hit points and mana. On top of that, planted Iron Branches increase the total healing from Tango.
 * gives passive health regeneration and burst mana.

Early game:
 * gives Medusa additional movement speed to compensate for her low mobility.
 * is one of the most cost-effective survivability items on Medusa early on. The instantly restored health and mana you get from charges is doubly effective on her thanks to Mana Shield.

Mid game:
 * gives cheap attributes, attack range and a useful active ability - a very cost-effective item for Medusa.
 * is good for increasing your farming speed and being slightly active in the mid game. Her Mana Shield pretty much negates the increase in damage taken from it, it gives her the movement speed and attack speed she needs for both farming and team fights, and it lets her be active early on. However, be careful with the active ability as the silence will prevent you from toggling Mana Shield.

Late game:
 * gives both killing power via slowing enemies and survivability because of attributes and mana for Mana Shield.
 * offers bonus damage, attack speed, and armor, and its evasion gives you even more survivability.

Situational items:
 * is a great cost-effective attributes item on Medusa. It gives her both intelligence and strength which is needed on her, and the slight movement and attack speed it gives are great for farming or pushing.
 * can be purchased before or after Eye of Skadi. If fights are not in your favor early on, you're farming rather slowly, or enemies have stuns to keep you down in fights, consider a Linken's Sphere.
 * can be bought to deal with summons or illusions.
 * can be needed if the enemies have evasion items or heroes.
 * is considered if the enemies are keeping you locked down before you can get Stone Gaze off.
 * gives intelligence and mana regeneration to make you even tankier, and it effectively gives you a and  in one slot.
 * boosts attack speed further, a handy item in the late game as you can consume it to save a slot for reduced bonuses.
 * for an extra disable, attributes, and mana regeneration which may help Mana Shield.
 * allows Mystic Snake to petrify any enemies it hits, giving the ability a hard-disable utility that allows for more strategic employment. It also provides attributes in all departments, as well as adding a respectable amount of health and mana to Medusa.
 * is the best damage item on Medusa. She's tanky enough that, even with, the odds of her dropping this are extremely slim, and it'll help you take on the enemy team with Split Shot. That being said, if you are against heroes that can burn through your Mana Shield, it may be too risky.
 * should be picked up when building . Due to the extremely high damage provided by Divine Rapier, Satanic's passive lifesteal and its active skill become effective in terms of healing yourself, decreasing the chances of dropping the Rapier.

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