SMITE: “Written in Stone” Medusa Overview

The Gorgon is here, and she’s ready to hunt. This along with a slew of other changes are all coming relatively soon™ in the next patch titled Written in Stone.

Here are the full patch notes for anyone interested. When the patch is taken off of the Public Test Realm and implemented onto the real servers I’ll do a full overview, but for now I’d like to just go over Medusa. Let’s take a look at her abilities.

Passive

Her passive seems really interesting. It will make powerful aimed crowd-control abilities like Sylvanus’ pull and Ares’ chains incredibly hard to hit if Medusa is out of combat. In addition, she’ll be able to position herself much more easily for attacks that her support sets up for her.

First Ability

Her first ability is a stacking DoT that procs from her basic attacks. It’s in essence a steroid, but it only lasts for three basic attacks, so it isn’t as effective as Rama or Artemis’ attack speed steroid. If she does manage to hit all three vipers, that’s a whole lot of damage coming your way early on.

Second Ability

Acid Spray is going to be her main clearing ability, and it looks like it’ll be about on par with other hunters’ clear and won’t allow her to gain crazy lane pressure early like Anhur or Neith, at least in terms of minions. The attack speed debuff looks like it will be incredibly strong early game. In Season 2, clearing is mainly about using basic attacks to hit the minions as opposed to dumping abilities on the minions until they’re dead. If Medusa manages to hit the enemy carry with Acid Spray, their ability to clear will be significantly reduced for a few seconds, netting her a lane advantage if she plays her cards right.

Third Ability

Her dashing ability seems pretty effective at what it’s supposed to do, which is stopping someone from escaping. When she dashes forward she’ll do some pretty decent damage and then root the target and herself for a second, reducing the target’s healing for a while. When one enemy is getting away from the fight and about to be healed up by a Ra or Sylvanus, you can close the distance immediately, deal damage, and stop them from healing so you can burst them down in a matter of seconds. Pretty powerful.

Ultimate Ability

I was worried her ultimate ability would be an execute like Ao Kuang, and thank god it isn’t. What it ends up being is a powerful tool for teamfights and rotations. Using Medusa’s passive to position yourself correctly in a teamfight and then dumping this ultimate on them could potentially change the entire face of the match. If you catch mages and hunters who are unprepared with this ability you’ll dump half of their health (nearly 1k damage) with the ult and then shit on their lives with your DoT abilities while they’re stunned. I expect this to get a slight damage nerf, because as it stands if used correctly it could be one of the most powerful ultimates in the game.

Overall

It seems like Medusa is built around one thing: Killing shit. Her kit is mostly single target burst damage and once she blows her kit to kill someone it should be pretty easy to kill her, but that passive makes her a bit slippery (har har har) to catch.

After the whole three week long nightmare that Bellona caused casual queues, I hope that HiRez has learned their lesson with her so Medusa doesn’t end up a broken mess. I’m a little disappointed that we’re getting another hunter so soon after Hou Yi, but hey, new God to mess around with. Maybe she’ll end up being a good late game counter to other hunters’ ridiculous late-game carry potential.