You probably think you know how to fight Medusa – with a barge pole and a pair of sunglasses – but Dota 2 renders her a little differently. And if you’ve Dota 2 on Steam, she’s probably already sitting somewhere on your hard drive – so you’d better pay attention.
Dota’s Medusa traded beauty for terror, and that terror is reflected in her abilities. Her ultimate is Stone Gaze which, as you might imagine, slowly turns enemies within squinting distance into the grey stuff. What that means in practical terms is slowed speed in all properties, the stripping of status buffs and damage to all illusions and summoned creatures.
When using offensive ability Split Shot, Medusa splits her ranged attack into five arrows. They’ll confer reduced damage and lose their extra attack effects, but with the clear payoff of hits on multiple targets.
Mystic Snake jumps from target to target, taking mana and dealing damage in increasing amounts with each leap. Once the snake has completed its circuit of nearby enemies, it returns to Medusa with its gathered mana. That’s particularly useful for Mana Shield, which absorbs 50% of incoming damage.
Also in the patch is the Dark Chest, filled to the brim with community cosmetics (until January 31st); a new ‘mid only’ game mode for scrims; and all of the below.
GAMEPLAY
– Witch Doctor: Fixed Aghanim’s Death Ward attacking Familiars and other psuedo heroes.
– Doom: Scorched Earth now only applies damage from Doom himself, not all the units affected by his aura.
– Pudge: Fixed being able to get units stuck using Refresher.
– Keeper of the Light: Fixed Recall interaction with non-hero units.
– Fixed Armlet and Power Treads interaction.
UI
– Added a Haste button to the courier HUD element.
– Added Mid Only game mode for private lobbies (disables other lanes and allows the same hero to be selected).
– The Announcer Share dialog has been replaced with a Shared Content dialog.
– Added a badge to the top bar to count the available shared items.
– If shared content is available in a game, a message is now printed pregame.
– Added Balanced Shuffle button to non-tournament private lobbies.
– Added All Chat private lobby option for enabling voice chat among all players.
– Fixed “Equip” appearing in the right click menu for some chests.
AUDIO
– Fixed hearing the wrong announcer after equipping a new item in the loadout.
– Fixed bugs with muting co-broadcasters causing other sounds to be muted.
BOTS
– The bots are now less likely to push with more heroes than what they deem necessary (less 5-man Dota). Probably needs some tuning.
– Made bots slightly less self-concerned when considering defending an ally. Also made them more likely to jump in if they have a slow or stun.
– Bots that are capable of jungling during the laning phase may now do so.
– If purchasing an item from the secret shop would complete an item, desire for going there is now increased.
– When their next item is purchasable, their desire to farm is significantly reduced.
– Fixed bad tuning that was causing bots to almost never farm lanes.
– Improved bot responsiveness to pings on Roshan.
– Bots are now less likely to assume that humans will purchase wards.