Medusa went from worst pick to best pick in Dota 2

When Dota 2 patch 7.33 was first released, Medusa looked like a dead hero. Nobody knew how to play her with almost zero HP and the counters were numerous.

In particular, Axe can dunk her even when she’s level 25 if you don’t buy any HP giving items. And that’s because Medusa is now a Universal hero and her strength increase per level is precisely 0. But that doesn’t mean that this hero cannot be played in pubs. Pro players pick her all the time and they are very successful with her.

Medusa’s strengths

Medusa has been played 15 times at ESL One Berlin Major and her win rate is 80%. Among the highly picked heroes, she is by far the most successful. And the reason is not that hard to grasp.

The new map is full of neutral camps. A team that manages to establish good map control, even on one side of the map, will outscale the enemy in the vast majority of cases if it has a position 1 Medusa player. And that’s because this hero farms faster than almost any other hero in the game.

Medusa’s Split Shot takes the hero’s damage and increases it by a lot. And that’s because the hero hits 4 additional targets and each of these 4 attacks deals 85% damage of the original attack. This means that when you’re farming creeps, your farming speed is around four times greater than that of most carry heroes.

This farming speed allows a good Medusa player to get ahead of the enemy team with ease. And if your teammates give you even one good team fight or space on the map, victory is pretty much guaranteed. It is very hard to lose when you play this hero and that’s why her win rate is 57.4% at the moment, which is incredibly high.

Medusa’s Mana Shield absorbs up to 4 damage per mana unit. That means that you have an enormous amount of effective HP (or mana), not just against physical damage but also against magical damage. When you have 1000 mana, you actually have 4000 HP plus your standard HP.

Because of that, you want to buy as much mana as you can because every point is quadrupled. You’re basically buying heavily armored HP each time you buy mana.

Medusa is played using a hyper-aggressive build, using decent stat-giving items but also a lot of damage items such as Dadelaus and Monkey King Bar.

Header: Dotabuff