Is the hard carry really only effective after 50+ minutes into the game?
Medusa art via 1ZOOM/Illustrations via Mineski.net
For someone who has devoted the past few years of his life covering Dota 2 tournaments, Medusa is an eyesore. Shame me all you want for that low-hanging pun, but everything beyond this point is true.
Try to put yourself in my shoes: you’ve been awake for 17 hours and counting for a tournament that is happening on the other side of the world. The current series that you are watching is between two teams that you aren’t even remotely excited about. To make matters worse, it went to a deciding game three. As SirActionSlacks runs his usual shenanigans during the break, you started questioning your love for the game and for yourself, “is Dota really the life?”
You prayed to the Dota gods for a fast game, but after realizing how you behaved in pub matches, you thought that they might not heed your call. Finally, the drafting phase approaches its conclusion, “one last game,” you whispered to yourself. The draft timer ticks out to its last seconds. As you gather your breath to let out a sigh of relief, the camera pans to reveal the last pick. It was Medusa.
You weren’t sure if you still want to exhale, because you know for sure that it’s not going to be a fast game. Medusa is an archetype of a hard carry. Her gameplay practically revolves around farming because she’s utterly useless without items. She’s not flashy, nearly immortal, and takes zero skill to play (90% of her team fight contribution is just pressing right click, after that you can literally just raise up your hands).
Yet despite the fact that Medusa is a boring hero to watch, play, play with, and play against, there’s one thing about her that a lot of people get wrong—she doesn’t need a lot of time to be effective.
With great shame, I have to admit that this thought never dawned on me before. I wouldn’t have realized it if not for ABED’s Medusa. It was an ironic experience on my part because I used to hate Fnatic Dota for letting ABED, a guy notorious for his micro skills, play that hero. It’s like buying a $2,000 gaming PC to play Minecraft.
But that was way back when I didn’t know any better. After seeing how Fnatic Dota shredded the tanky lineup of EHOME in the upper bracket of The Chongqing Major playoffs with ABED’s Medusa in just 18 minutes, I was enlightened.
VOD via StarLadder Dota 2
Thanks to their draft, everything went in Fnatic’s way that game. They picked up MP’s Timbersaw and ABED’s Medusa in the second pick phase when their opponents were left with little for counters. As a reaction, EHOME dedicated their last two picks, Lion and Anti-Mage, to answer their opponent’s durable cores.
The nature of the draft suggests a late game bout—a farm fest hosted by Anti-Mage and Medusa. Unfortunately for Fnatic, Anti-Mage naturally has the upper hand against Medusa. They were aware of this for sure, but why didn’t they just ban it? Well apparently, Fnatic had no intentions of going into the late game and they wanted EHOME to pick Anti-Mage.
MP’s Timbersaw spent the early game forcing teleport reactions from EHOME. However, it was only at the 9-minute mark of the game when they were able to punish MP’s intentional overstaying, and it required ASD’s Anti-Mage to leave the lane. Immediately after respawning, MP went back to pester anyone who was at the top lane. This triggered a smoke gank attempt from EHOME that ended in Fnatic’s favor.
While all these were happening, ABED was busy securing the net worth lead.
Realizing how they’ve fallen to MP’s space-creating strategies, EHOME tried to correct their mistake by conducting another smoke rotation towards the Radiant jungle where Medusa is probably farming. Regrettably, they failed to find ABED; it was ABED who found them.
Fnatic’s successful execution of space creation is just one proof that time is not entirely the factor for an efficient Medusa game. In fact, out of the 19 times that Medusa has been picked so far into The Chongqing Major, only Team Liquid and The Pango’s group stage bout reached over 50 minutes.
Historically, the classic four-protect-one strategy is not the only key to a great Medusa game. During The International 2016, OG pulled off a 17-minute game against Alliance with a Drow Ranger-Medusa strategy. One year after, at the seventh iteration of the grandest Dota 2 tournament, Cloud9’s Fata built Blade Mail as his core item for Medusa that led to a 32-minute victory against Virtus.pro.
In conclusion, Medusa is a victim of hard carry stereotyping. Unlike other femme fatale cores like Spectre or Naga Siren, both of whom lack flash-farming abilities without their core items, Medusa doesn’t need time to farm items—it’s space that she needs. So no matter what the meta dictates, not all Medusa picks equate to a long-ass game.
ABED gave us a different perspective on Medusa and we shouldn’t let it be put to waste. From now on, in lieu of groaning every time I see Medusa pick in the draft, I think I’ll personally feel excited knowing that there are unlimited possible strategies to make a Medusa pick work. In the near future though, I wish that I can change my mind about her gameplay, because in the wrong hands, she’s still hella boring to watch, play, play with, and play against.
