General DiscussionBest Boots For Medusa

I don't play her, but you have to think about what kind of survivability mana boots will give you.

It looks good on paper because, with your mana shield at its highest level, the active and the mana boost arcane boots give you will allow you to absorb an extra 962.5 damage.

However, your goal is to also deal damage. Phase boots works so well with the damage amp her ult gives. Also, arcane boots doesn't help you farm any faster or move between the lanes faster (something which you have to consider because you are usually placed in the 1 role).

Wait for someone more qualified to have a say on this, but for now, that's just my 2 cents.

phase boots, always

@Pilot no no its fine i appreciate the comment, i tried Arcane Boots and it worked well in the early game if you mid lane, but i understand phase boots boost your damage quite a lot, my problem is i usually forget to activate them.. annoying as hell.

Arcane wouldnt be bad if you think about it and later disasemble it for a bloodstone, apparently its a very good defensive item for her.

I go tread or phase depending of how i feel that day lol. Theyre both good.

Hell no, arcane boots are terrible. Mana is good on medusa but it's still a secondary stat to your dmg/agility. Don't rush linken's or other shitty survivability items cus you won't have dps to farm.

In probably 8/10 matches phase boots are best. Why? Medusa has bad base dmg. If you get those phase boots up quickly it will help tremendously with your last hitting in lane. Sometimes I'll buy the blades before the boots just for that reason. Phase is more dps early. The attack speed on treads is more dps late game when you have more dmg to increase. The other BIG reason is medusa is freakin' slow. Her base move speed is 290 which is like bottom 20 heroes. For example, with boots she is only 5 speed faster than a naked luna. Phase is a big deal, especially before skadi or people will just run you down and kill you or run from you when they are dying.

http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Movement_speed

Also don't rush linkens. It sucks for dmg. It's situational as well. Check out this game. We played awful early game, enemy medusa had all game to free farm. And her farm was shitty. She rushed linkens. Why? We have like zero disables for her. Kunkka's x marks the spot? Spectre's dagger? Wtf is she trying to block?

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1398999230

Would have been tons better going yasha into skadi or some other farming item. My personal favorite dusa build is phase boots, aquila, mask of madness, yasha skadi or skadi then manta if I need manta, s&y if I don't, then daedulus/butterfly/mkb. Dusa with split shot maxed and mask of madness farms incredibly fast.

i think arc is decent for mid dusa agaisnt certain mids/lineups and if you plan to go Bs later.
dont forget to drop the boots when receiving snake.

@solaire Bloodstone for me is one of those items i never seem to buy, if i play timbersaw the maybe ill rush build it, never thought about it for medusa, all of her items are so expensive since shes so item dependent, youd rather build daedalus then try and build a bloodstone but then again it might work haha

@Timberwolf mask of madness i thought was a good shout, but i'd probably have bought helm of the dominator to increase her damage but i know thats a bad idea since she needs the attack speed to make up for her poor lane presence, but yeah ill try phase and see what happens

Phase Boots, as it have been already said.
Best boots on Medusa by far, I even don't change them for Travels until there's no slots left. It helps you with lasthitting, gives you some chase/escape potential, accelerates your farm, and most importantly - gives a way to set-off your Gaze.
Snake is able to sustain itself after lvl2, if you hit at least two targets with mana (a hero and a ranged creep for instance).

@Timberwolf
Mark the spot is like one of the best reasons to go Linken's.

@epsik-kun how would you feel about power treads on her? its just a thought haha

I think Phase boots allow faster jungling. More DPS early.

http://www.dotabuff.com/players/98167045/matches?date=&hero=medusa&skill_bracket=&lobby_type=&game_mode=&region=&faction=&duration=&enjoyment=any

I used to play her with PT only, but I tried Phase now and can say that both work pretty well.

Boots of Travel are definetly my favorite boots and the one you should get ~40 minutes when you can no longer carry a scroll.

@N4randza i always thought boots of travel but the games that i play in..... i can never afford them after ive built the offensive items i need, even though in one game i played really well and had 3 Daedalus on medusa hahaha

I don't like PT on Medusa. They're bad. The only thing it does - it increases the coefficient of mana you get back by Snake. I wouldn't get PT over PB just for that.

@epsik-kun well thanks :) nice to have some constructive advice so much appreciated

phase all the way. her ms is incredibly low

if you are going for a no snakes build go phase, if you are maxing snakes power treads. travels are best late game.

You have 3 choises, Treads, Phase and Arcane.

Arcane is nice if you finish it PRETTY fast, i mean faster than normally you do, and when you gonna do BloodStone (Bloodstone is much better than tarraske for her).

You can phase boots, helps her with the leak of mobility and increase the damage that you will loss from multiple atacks, also takes you to the late game. This boots is needed when your team has no starters or you need to escape more than atack.

Treads, a good option, no mobility no mass mana but a good atack speed (40% when agility), its nice to get medusa farmed.

Anyway it always depends on the game you play, but as standard i would go Phase boots, there is no mistake doing that.

@WooT i only thought treads since they boost her damage and seem to help her survive longer in the team fights since if you use her split arrows the damage is reduced to only 80%, i used to buy treads to make up for the damage lost from the split arrow ability but ive found it doesnt really work that well haha

Arcane is garbage, you need dmg to farm. Imagine a medusa going arcane and then rushing linken's lawl. Shit dmg for ~30 minutes. I mean dusa's biggest problems early are dmg and speed. Phase helps both those, arcanes doesn't. She doesn't need a big mana pool until later when you want to tank an entire team of 5.

@WooT
While I can't argue with Bloodstone being better than Heart on Medusa, I have to ask - who in a sane mind will make Heart on Medusa?
Bloodstone is a bad item. It only works in situations when everything works (aka when Linken's into straight Manta works).

If you can finish Arcanes pretty fast, you should finish Phases pretty faster.

@OP
The problem with Threads is they don't have much of a value in the early game, where Medusa is on her weakest. They kind of out-dps Phases due to extra 30% IAS, but you not likely to use this advantage - no one is going to just stay there and trade attacks with you (and you are not going to do it either). Phases will improve your lasthit and your harassement. Also, when roaming between lanes and jungle, PB allows you to farm faster.
After few big items, both IAS bonus from Threads and damage bonus from Phases become neglectable, but the Phase ability itself doesn't.

Actually that's not really true, the part where you say it becomes negligible late game. It only comes into play late game as the more damage you acquire the more that 30 IAS starts to outshine the treads. But because IAS is basically a dmg multiplier, when you turn on split shot and drop your dmg down to 80% that multipler helps a lot less. So it takes a LOT of items for treads to be much better than phases with split shot on.

Look at http://devilesk.com/dota2/apps/hero-calculator/

At level 5 with no other items dps with phase vs treads with agi is about equal, but like you said phase much more dmg per hit which is a lot more important in lane that early for last hits and harass.

But go to level 18 (so 3 stats) with skadi, aquila and manta. Raw dps (before any armor reductions) phase is 268 vs 285, but with split shot on the difference is only 224, 231. Hardly anything. I'd much rather have the move speed from phase.

If you add big dmg items the difference grows, same items but with daedulus, phase dps is 384 vs 419 with treads. But again turn on split shot, dps drops to 340 vs 366 (I ignored crit dmg for both).

However if you go more IAS items with phase than straight dmg the difference will be less cus now you're getting a bigger multiplier for your greater raw dmg. With butterfly instead of daedulus it's 443 vs 466 and 388 vs 377 with split shot on.

This is another reason to go mask of madness if you go phase though cus the increase IAS benefits more from the raw dmg phase gives. Anyway just food for thought, treads is not bad if you have like complete free farm and are going for an end game build, but like I said in probably 80% of my matches phase is much better.

You can go arcane if you want but your gimping yourself even more by not addressing her weaknesses.

i think mana boots can be pretty nice if u use snake and do the bootsdrop
farming should be quite same as phase boots since u can spam snake to farm jungle
but if u cant execute snake into bootsdrop u should stick to phase 100%
and i would only go this build if u have to expect to get ganked a lot and need the extra survivability
else pb aquila mom is way better

But snake can already sustain itself with just an aquila at like rank 2 or 3. You can pretty much spam it in the jungle with phase boots and aquila anyway. So again what is the point? It's the same argument people make for linken's rush, trying to say the mana regen and hp regen off perseverance help you farm when they are not needed.

Another tip, get a quelling blade when you start clearing out the woods. By cutting the right trees and pulling you can get two separate camps to hit with snake. If you manage to get two double stacks, holy hell those will be some jumping snakes! I'm never that good but it is possible.

phase every game just get aquila then rush skaidi

phase boots always. reason 1. helps you become mobile faster movespeed = faster getting around farm 2. mobility again, helps you get into the faces of the enemy when in ulti + yasha skadi is deadly. 3. damage is always nice , treads is nice but phase is far more superior

I guess its Phase Boots haha i think it was a silly stupid question anyway i was just curious, thanks everyone for the constructive comments though its much appreciated :)