Medusa is one of the hardest carries in the game. She is very hard to kill, scales well with farm and is able to turn any team-fight in her favor especially in the late game when her multi-shot will deal very high AoE damage. All of this is compensated by her extreme need of gold which makes her a very passive hero in the early stages of the game.

Medusa is good in “4 protect 1” strategies where she’s going to be the main farmer. She needs a lot of space to farm, usually for the first 20-25 minutes. This means you want to play with a team that is not very farm dependent and can hold their ground early on without your help. Medusa is not bad in fights, even early on, but any team-fight slows her progression down and deaths could cripple her.

• Safe lane carry
  

As is the case for most carries, the safe lane is great for Medusa. It gives her a lot of space to farm, it usually means she’s going to have a support as well and is generally a good lane to stack and farm the jungle later in the laning stage. 

• Mid lane carry
  

On the mid lane, Medusa should still have #1 farm priority, she just starts on a different lane. She’s good here because she’s very hard to drive off the lane, you can’t zone her and it’s pretty hard to stop her from farming as she has great attack range and attack animation. Her Mystic Snake allows her to occasionally harass the enemy heroes as well or to push-out the wave and buy herself some time to stack or farm jungle in the later laning stage.

Luna and Gyrocopter have a slightly similar playstyle - they’re good in team-fights and can farm stacks. Both of them also have multi-target attacks and scale well into the late game. Both Luna and Gyro are better than Medusa in the early and mid game but don’t scale as much as her later on.

Good friends to have are:

Strong Against:

Weak Against:

The early game items are no surprise, it’s the standard package for every agility carry – Wraith Bands and Treads for stats. Magic Wand is especially strong on Medusa as it gives you both HP and mana (and mana can be converted to HP with Mana Shield), so it actually increases the survivability a lot and you always want to have it.

You get Madness to increase your farming speed and then you go for Hurricane Pike – its extremely useful not only for the mobility, but also for the +all stats it gives for relatively cheap.

Afterward, you have a hard choice to make: Skadi is the best all-around option because it gives you the highest amount of HP and mana and the attack modifier is very useful since you don’t have control. You can, however, substitute it for Manta, Linken’s or even directly Butterfly (and leave the Skadi for later). Manta is best in case the enemy team has silences and other dangerous debuffs you can dispel. Linken’s is best if they have strong single-target spells and they want to burst you down. Butterfly is best if the game is going great and you want to increase your DPS as much as possible to win fights, get Rosh and end the game.

In the late game, you get Butterfly to increase your DPS and to finish the game. You usually go for Daedalus as the best late-game DPS item (thanks to the lvl25 talent) followed by Rapier, but only after you are confident you are extremely hard to kill.

Mystic Snake can be used for last hitting, but only if you’re playing mid and even then – only if it’s going to hit the enemy hero as well. Avoid using it on the safe lane as it pushes the lane – it’s only worth using it if your supports left and you want to push out the wave anyway.

When the lane is pushed always try to stack the closest camps. At level 5, you can start nuking the stack with Mystic Snake (target the smallest creep with it) – 2 Mystic Snakes should be enough to clear it.

Jungling

As a safe laner, you want to farm on the lane until you get Phase, Aquilla, Wand, MoM. With those items, you can start clearing the jungle as well. The most efficient way is to push the creeps wave, kill the next wave that is coming as fast as possible and then move to the jungle. Clear the entire jungle and return to the lane. If the lane has been pushed, you can teleport back to your tower so you don’t miss the farm.

On the mid lane, it’s a bit more different. You’re going to be higher level, so you only need the Morbid Mask before you start jungling – you can kill the creep wave with Mystic Snake and then go to kill the closest jungle camps. Stack the ancients if possible but wait for Mask of Madness before you start clearing them. You can buy MoM before finishing Phase Boots if you want to start farming jungle earlier.

When you have MoM, you can clear out ancient stacks as well. Always stay with activated Mana Shield so you don’t take much damage. As we mentioned, almost all ancient creeps have mana pool, so spam Mystic Snake all the time to deal some damage and regain mana.

The farming power of Medusa comes from the jungle. While farming jungle, try to always hit 2 camps at once – to do that, simply pull one of the camps, then start hitting the other and then position yourself between the 2 camps. Check the time too, if it’s close to x:53, try to stack them as well. Another trick is to use Mystic Snake to hit creeps from both camps – you just have to use it while the second camp is coming towards you, otherwise, it might miss if the first camp is one of those who chase only for 5 seconds. Check out the screenshots and try to always position yourself in a similar way.:

The Dire position (on the bottom ancient camp) is probably the best farming position as you can farm 3 camps at once:

More 2-camp farming spots:

You don’t usually want to use Mystic Snake on the safe lane because it pushes the lane. The only exception is if you’re playing solo against the offlaner – then you can spam it to control the lane.

On the mid lane, if the enemy is playing aggressively and comes to harass you, punish him with Mystic Snake – use it on a creep, so it can bounce to him and deal a ton of damage.

You can also cast Mystic Snake while the enemy is going for a last hit – this is an easy trick, just wait for a creep to get low and throw the snake while the enemy is moving towards it. It will often hit even the heroes with high range.

Consider the level of Mystic Snake – it hits 3/4/5/6 units, so if you want to hit the enemy hero, you have to wait for 1 or 2 creeps to die (with snake level 1-2). Level 5 (Snake lvl 3) is the first level where you can nuke the entire creep wave and still hit the enemy hero.

If you’re worried that the enemy can dodge the snake – you can throw it at him directly, but that’s not usually worth it – it doesn’t deal that much damage and your mana won’t be compensated.

As Medusa, your kill potential is minimal. If your teammates gank the enemy – help them, but don’t try to kill the enemy hero yourself. That can only put you in a bad position. 

As we mentioned, buy Magic Stick/Wand as soon as possible so you start gaining charges. Don’t use it until you get ganked – you want to have a full Wand in those situations. Buying Raindrops is also a great idea to help you with survivability.

If you suspect a gank, turn your shield on immediately – it costs you nothing to play safe. With Mana Shield and a good number of Magic Wand charges, you’re very hard to kill. At the very least, you can survive long enough for your teammates to teleport and help you.

If the enemies are playing very aggressively and are constantly trying to gank you, you can skill Stone Gaze earlier, even at level 6 if needed.

If you can’t stay on the lane, just get a Morbid Mask and move to the jungle. 

As we mentioned, the most important timing in the early game is when you get your Mask of Madness – that allows you to farm the lanes and jungle very effectively.

You don’t have to make any rotations with Medusa. Ever. Adapt your whole mindset to a single doctrine – anything that happens on the map in the early game is designed to create space for you. You want to get big as soon as possible, so you can use your farm advantage to fight.

We’re going to observe Sccc’s Medusa against Mineski. He gets to play against Moon’s Death Prophet.

Check how he uses Mystic Snake to punish DP’s aggression at 2:00, dealing a lot of damage with it.

He gets ganked at 4:20 while trying to take the rune, although he still manages to deny it.

Otherwise, the lane is very passive as it usually is with Medusa. He uses occasionally Mystic Snake to last hit and harass.

At 5:50 he starts stacking ancients. Take a look at how much mana Mystic Snake steals – he gets +60 mana.

At level 6 he gets a point in Split Shot which means he wants to start pushing the lane and farming jungle – and indeed he auto-attacks the creep wave and finishes it with Mystic Snake.

At 8:30 he starts farming the jungle and farms 2 camps at the same time. One thing to point out here is how he uses Mystic Snake to hit both camps before they go back. This is easy with those 2 camps but a bit harder with others. He continues farming 2 camps at a time consistently which is very important in order to maximize your efficiency.

The mud golems are worth mentioning as well – all of them, even the small ones, have mana pools. So when Sccc uses snake on them, he completely regenerates his mana.

Look at 12:50 how he kills both camps just in time for them to spawn again.

Once he has his Mask of Madness, he starts clearing the ancient stacks that his team made for him, spamming Mystic Snake on them.

Farming in the mid/late game is pretty much the same as in the early, just faster. You still kill neutral camps and push waves whenever possible.

One of the differences is that you can use Manta illusions to clear the waves if the lane is not safe enough. Since the hero is not very mobile, you don’t want to go too far into enemy territory without back-up.

Given that you have enough mana, Mana Shield is a 60% reduction, which equates to a 2.5 effective HP multiplier against all types of damage.

This means you need to have enough mana so Mana Shield can block damage until you’re out of HP for maximum effectiveness. Less mana is insufficient, more is useless. In theory, this breaking point is reached when you have mana equal to 60% of your HP.

BUT

You want to have enough mana to cast our abilities – Manta is 125, Stone Gaze is 200. Mystic Snake is 170 but it will usually return with more mana, so we won’t count it.

Mana Shield is calculated BEFORE damage reductions. To block the same amount of damage, with every point of armor you get, you will lose less HP, but the Mana Shield will use the same amount of mana. This means that in the late game you’re going to need much more mana to sustain the shield.

Magical damage is easier to calculate as your spell resistance will always be 25%, although we all know there are many ways for your team to increase it (Rubick, Pipe) or for the enemy team to decrease it (Veil, Elder Titan), so it’s situational as well.

A few simple tests showed the following results (with HP = Mana):
At 20 armor, your mana ends when your HP is at around 20%
At 25 armor, your mana ends when your HP is at around 27%
At 30 armor, your mana ends when your HP is at around 35%
At 25% magic resistance, it’s the opposite – your HP ends when your mana is at around 33%

Yet, you’re also going to lifesteal in the late game, so you gain more HP and you need more mana to sustain the shield.

In conclusion, if you are playing against plenty of physical damage and you have high armor, you need a mana pool a bit higher than your HP pool, usually achieved with stat items like Skadi and the mana talent.

Unlike most other heroes, Medusa becomes level dependent in the late game as her level 25 talents are very powerful.

At level 25 you become even more powerful as you can lifesteal more, slow everybody you hit or deal more damage (if you have Daedalus, MKB or Mjollnir).

So if you’re close to those levels, let your team know so they can wait for you before pushing/fighting.

As a Medusa, you will always have potential to come back into the game. The hero is designed to be strong in the late game, so don’t panic if you’re losing in the beginning.

In a losing position, you should be farming as usual in the jungle. If the enemy creep waves are pushing, you can use the hero to clear them if you don’t feel any threat of ganks and re-enter the jungle afterward. Try to stay close to your allies while farming (or call for your allies, at least the supports, to stay close to you). You are slow, so if caught alone you will die.

Anti-Pushing:

You’re also pretty good in team-fights, so you should always defend your base with your team. Anti-push with Mystic Snake and use Stone Gaze when the enemy team commits to a fight. Try to hit as many heroes as possible with the Snake. Even if you don't instantly kill the creep wave, you will pull it and easily finish it off with your AoE attacks.

Medusa is very strong in team-fight – she is tanky, she hits a lot of units and the Stone Gaze forces enemies to either run from you or to get stunned (and take increased damage).

You don’t want to initiate the fights, you want to wait until someone else initiates and then walk in. Having a Hurricane Pike here is a huge advantage as it will allow you to force yourself into the fight and use Stone Gaze. Otherwise, you can get silenced or chain stunned.

The key moment is deciding when to use Stone Gaze. You don’t want to use it too early into the fight when the enemies can easily disengage and wait for the effect to end, but at the same time, you don’t want to use it too late when your team has already suffered losses.

So watch the enemy team carefully, if they engage, and can’t really run away easily, go in and use it.

Position yourself in the center of the fight – this will allow you to hit all targets with Split Shot and will also affect as many enemies as possible with Stone Gaze.

If the enemy carry is a strong melee hero like Sven, Ursa, Lifestealer and comes to hit you, and Stone Gaze is already down, you want to back off. As tanky as you are, you don’t want to man-fight such heroes if they’re pretty farmed. You are a ranged hero, so use that advantage and kite them (another situation where Hurricane Pike is very useful).

Example:

In this example XXs Smokes with his team in order to find a favorable team fight. As soon as the Smoke breaks he knows the fight is about to start and he manages to activate his BKB just as the enemy Tiny blinks next to him and tries to stun him. With BKB and Rapier the enemy team cannot man-fight against the Medusa and XXs manages to kill both the Tiny and the Gyro.

5-man pushing:

Medusa is a great hero for sieging as you can just hit the enemy towers while your team stays behind you. If the enemies initiate a fight, you can win it with Stone Gaze. So don’t be afraid to push while the enemy team is alive if you have an advantage. You are very tanky, so you are extremely unlikely to die from the initiation of the enemy team and the first wave of nukes.

Both Aegis and Cheese are amazing on Medusa, so try to take Rosh before you push the enemy high ground. Your enemies are very unlikely to be able to burn through 4k EHP twice or even three times.

Split-Pushing:

While she out-pushes lanes very easily, Medusa is not very mobile so split-pushing is not really an option. Besides, if you’re farmed enough to take towers, it’s better to use that farm to fight with your team instead. A late game Medusa should always be with her team when she’s not farming.