General DiscussionMedusa item build

Skadi is still pretty decent cause Medusa really needs those stats too make her stronger in fights

u get yasha before linken, and after linkin finish manta. Then skadi and 2 bflies

Only get Linkens if theres a Doom, Bat, ... otherwise it really isnt that good on Dusa. I'd mostly go Phase Aquila Drums Manta (or just a Yasha and finish the Manta later) Skadi Butter/Satanic (BKB/Linkens if needed).

MKB is also good and Skadi is a must to provide more tankiness.
in superlate games, Medusa has two divines, Skadi, Butterfly,Manta and Daedalus.
No boots because no boots is swag lel.

Medusa, suffering from low mobility benefits immensely from having a Skadi. The slow makes it easy for you to kite aggressive right-clickers, and chase down escaping enemies. She is extremely stat-hungry and the gained stats from the Skadi help tremendously as well. Also, don't blindly buy Linken's; is it a great item? Sure, in the right circumstances (enemy team has strong single-target focusing). But remember that there are other items that you can get; Butterfly, MKB (really strong item when combined with split shot and manta, or a moonshard if you have the expendable income)

Try to stay away from crit until you are pretty late and the enemy team takes a little more dmg to put down; when using split shot the crit won't proc on the secondary shots, only the main shot. However, your illusions main shot can still proc crits.

When the game requires a little extra push, a divine or two is the way to go. Medusa is one of the STRONGEST divine carries in the game.

Side note: early game improves significantly with the purchase of a Mask of Madness! Your farm will pickup immediately, as well as allowing you to dish out way more damage to enemies in team fights.

You dont need fucking linkens youre not weaver or morph, is better to rush skady than linkens... lategame is a good item but hurts your farm potential early on, if youre playing with team is ok but alone you will not carry your shitstain teammates with linkens better build drums and yasha, cheaper and you can kill and run

I like Moonshard on her.

In fact I played a game where I got good early game farm, had an 18 minutes Treads, Aquila, SnY. Wasn't sure what to go for next when I had 2000 gold saved up, so I just went for a hyperstone and the another one when it was done. 120 extra attack speed when you are already hitting for 5x120 is a lot better than 20 extra damage and 20 attack speed (ie the cost of two ultimate orbs).

Was able to farm a Skadi 8 minutes after completing the Moonshard - that's over 650gpm. Pretty good.

We almost completely threw because of a bad fight where our pudge hooked me out of the middle of the fight when I had stone gaze going. Like our throne was down to about 1000hp after they barrelled down mid and took our tier 2, 3, rax, and tier 4 towers after taking that fight. Then we barrelled down their mid and had to take a fight against them including all their buy backs. Luckily I wasn't hooked out by the pudge and just barely managed to kill the enemies while surviving. All because of the attack speed granted from moonshard.

Nice was wondering about moon shard myself today .

Only question is how u keep your mana up without going back to fountain without linken

Land badass snakes, or have someone on your team with arcane boots or greaves

Snake steals so much mana, plus aquila, you won't need linkens. Linkens is for super defensive builds where your team has dmg and u just need to tank or as a precursor to divine rapier. You won't die if you have skadi and linkens.

S&y is superior to manta unless there's stuff to dispel. The mana cost for the illusions costs medusa too much hp saved by mana shield despite having int on the item. s&y is better move speed, same dmg, nice proc before skadi, more hp, costs less so you get your cores sooner.

Try phase, aquila, mask of madness, yasha, sange, skadi. From there if you are rolling and ahead daedulus is fine, but if they have channels or natural butterfly carriers go mkb. Then if you are unkillable at this point get more dmg, daedulus or mkb, whichever you don't have. If you need to tank right clicks butterfly. If you need to tank everything, scythe. If you need to block a couple spells like pudge hooks and tank shit go linkens.

And don't be afraid to go bkb if they have like anti mage or invoker or nyx.

Why does waga have a video insisting you get divine on medusa . He also gets bkb skadi which I don't see being mentioned much. Bkb? Divine after skadi not lategame but early say 28min

You don't really want to get BKB as Medusa since it provides lousy stats for the slot it takes and Medusa is pretty slot hungry. However if they have a ridiculous amount of disables or you're getting torn apart by mana burn then you're going to need BKB to survive. Ultimately if you need to get BKB on Medusa you're already in a pretty bad position.

The early Divine can work, because theres often that point in the game after you get Skadi where you're just too tanky to kill in a reasonable amount of time and the enemy hasn't got all their big damage items yet. If you get a Rapier fast enough then you're basically unkillable and you just walk through the entire enemy team. Still, feels kinda risky to me.

I see people saying don't get Daedalus since your split shots don't get crit. This is true and it used to be enough of a reason not to get it, but since the change to MKB, Daedalus now provides the highest flat damage in the game (after rapier). 81 flat damage plus crit from Daedalus is better then the 66 damage and 160 minibash damage from MKB (since you also only get the minibash on your main attack).
Still, if the enemy has evasion then MKB is better especially since the truestrike applies to all your splitshot attacks (not just the main one)

1st big(gish) item should be a farming item :maelstrom, yasha, mask of madness.

Then get a linkens if you really want to but skadi makes more sense most of the time.

Yasha skadi butterfly divine(s)

Linken, manta, mjollnir, skadi, mkb replace mjollnir or linken with divine if you can

mine build (Phase > aquila > skadi > bflies > manta > moonshard)

i only get ss lv 1 since i use it for disabling enemy in teamfights xDD

I don't care if I'm just normal skill even I can tell linkens first is (almost always) a bad idea in 2016.

I think after phase boots try blood stone skadi rapier

Divine right after skadi is risky but honestly I don't die much if at all after skadi. Like my last medusa match, 4 deaths in lane getting ganked by pudge and bm. I was way behind, went jungle to catch up (t1 was down anyway), I didn't die again rest of game. We lost cus we couldn't push out and clear the naga illusions quick enough, I shoudlv'e gone divine right then. But I did mkb, then I was too much of a wimp to go DR so I went another defensive item linkens so pudge and venge couldn't init on me. http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2304526452

You shouldn't ever go linkens first, it does crap for your dps and farming. Linkens should be a situational item anyway not core. Only thing that's core every game on medusa is skadi imo (well and aquila I think but you can't call a 900g item core)

Linken first is a huge nope.

I'd suggest getting a Treads into a MoM. Treads switching lets you get virtually unlimited mana and MoM increases your farm rate+gives you a bit of presence early game.

It makes you a bit squishier but you're pretty tanky from the Mana Shield anyways.

Radiance bloodstone octaeine manta bots

Tread swapping is pretty good, but medusa is so goddamn slow I prefer phase. Stack em with yasha and she gets around respectably. With treads you won't be able to fight anyone before skadi as they'll just run from you. Also she has pretty low starting dmg so an early blades of attack helps with cs in lane a lot for me. You can always rush wraith band/aquila if going treads though.

Pts with the old snake maybe but there's no way you should be running out of mana spamming snake. Maybe you need one mango before hitting level 5 but you definitely can spam snake without tread switching.

I dunno I know in theory linkens should suck but when I build it in practice after phase Aquila it seems to help a lot . Since you never have to return to fountain rest of game even after fights usually .

Linken's first is crazy fine. It gives you a lot of sustain. Medusa is not all about split shot and getting the most cs/min possible. With a relatively well-timed linken you can already take fights and are very hard to kill. No need to farm for 30 minutes you can just push with your team.