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Midas: A Touch of Gold

By syllable - 15th April 2012 - 23:24 PM

This guide will be about Midas, one of the most flexible heroes in the game right now. This hero is amazingly strong when played right, but merely a shadow of what he could be in the hands of a player who doesn't understand him. The key aspects to successfully play this hero will be your timing, positioning and team fight awareness. Let's get crackin'.

IPB Image


Midas

Writers Foreword


There are many ways to play this hero, it's a very versatile pick. I'm going to tell you in this guide what - in my experience and logical reasoning - works and what doesn't, and more importantly why. It's fine to disagree, I encourage it, but put some thought into it instead of randomly saying things like "that's not how played this hero, therefore it's wrong!". Thanks in advance for understanding. Also I'd advise not to read this all in one go. I tend to make guides a bit long, but I feel like I would be making something of lesser quality if I didn't put all of this in it, and you guys are worth the effort! (I hope) Also important to note, though this guide covers much, it's aimed more at becoming the solo strong hero that Midas can be, rather than depending on your team mates. High level players will do things differently, and they should, because their team always synergizes and at the same time every player plays their hero to close to most of it's potential. In pubs, things are different. Anyway, on with it, I hope you learn something!

When to (Not) Pick This Hero


You can pick this hero in most scenarios, but there are some situations you want to avoid, and others where Midas would thrive. This is when Midas is not a good pick.
  • You cannot get a mid or solo lane, and have to lane with someone who needs a babysitter (Zephyr). You in a dual lane with someone to make kills happen would be acceptable (Magmus / Hammerstorm / ... paired up with you).
  • The enemy team has a Vindicator or Emerald Warden, for obvious reasons.
  • When your team has too many farm heroes. If you can't use your awesome farming abilities when playing this hero there's no point in picking him.
On the other hand, there are teams against which Midas will be a very strong pick:
  • The enemy team has a lot of squishy heroes.
  • Your allies picked good heroes to set up kills, like Hammerstorm, Magmus, Voodoo Jester, ...
All in all, you could say that one can never be wrong with picking Midas. This hero is my personal "panic-pick", whenever I rightclicked something and an enemy picks my shadowpick right before the game starts, I quickly pick Midas (or Valkyrie, my second panic-pick). He can farm very quickly (at the expense of his allies' farm), he's a very good follow-up disabler and nuker, and he can play almost any role.

Stats and Abilities


Damage: 45-51
Attack Range: 450
Attack Speed: 0.68

IPB Image Armor: 3.24 IPB Image Move Speed: 300

IPB Image 20 (+2.2) IPB Image 16 (+1.5) IPB Image 22 (+3)
So you can instantly tell that this hero has amazing starting stats and attributes, and a very nice growth. The only thing lacking is agility, which translates in low armor lategame, but for early-midgame, you're more than provided for unless if you face some madness like Pandamonium + Andromeda + Revenant.

Skillset


Golden Salvo
Midas throws five flasks in a line, coating enemies in liquid gold.
  • Target: position on ground
  • Type: AoE
  • Range: 1000
  • Damage: The first flask impact deals 100 / 140 / 180 / 220 Magic Damage. Each additional flask deals an additional 20 / 40 / 60 / 80 Magic Damage
  • Additional effects: inflicts -10% Movement Speed. Each additional flask inflicts an additional -10% Movement Speed for 3 seconds.
  • Mana cost: 100 / 120 / 140 / 160
  • Cooldown: 13 seconds
Note: the ability is easier than it looks really. You hit buttons, point into a random direction, and Midas will throw out golden flasks. The initial damage will deal damage depending on the level and slightly slow enemies you caught. If your enemies walk along the trail of flasks, they will receive additional damage and slow. The maximum damage of this nuke is 520 magic damage (220+80*4), and a movement speed reduction of 50%. A ridiculous amount of damage that I, personally, have never gotten yet after the tons of Midas games I played. I have more annihilations than I hit enemies for the full damage of this ability. Enemies never move along the trail or will be stunned halfway walking in it. In my experience, you rarely hit people with more than 3 flasks, which should be considered a succes, 2 flasks is nice to have, 1 flask is also good (because it means you hit your abilities).

Lion's Pride
A wave of volatile energy springs forward, healing allies before combusting violently.
  • Target: position on ground
  • Type: magical
  • Range: 900
  • Mana cost: 100 / 110 / 120 / 130
  • Cooldown: 18 seconds
  • Damage: 75 / 120 / 165 / 210, gains 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 damage for each ally it passes trough, to a maximum of 360 damage
  • Additional effects: allies are healed by Lion's Pride for 30 / 60 / 90 / 120 health on contact. Grants 800 clearvision while in motion.
Note: a very important thing you need to know first and foremost about this ability: just by passing trough enemies they will be affected by the Lion's reagent, you don't need to actually hit the ending damage from lions to get this effect. This makes it easier for you to combo your abilities and stun people, even if it's not for a lot of damage. The same goes for the healing effect. Passing trough allies is enough. The only thing Lions will do at the target point is damage enemies inside the AoE, all the other things to gain from using this ability can be gained before that point already.

Elemental Warp
Carry yourself across space, warping matter around you as you enter and exit the plane.
  • Target: position on ground
  • Type: magical
  • Range: 700
  • Radius: 250
  • Mana cost: 100
  • Cooldown: 17 seconds
  • Damage: 80 / 110 / 140 / 170 Magic Damage per shockwave.
  • Additional effects: during the leap itself you are invulnerable, this means you can eat any ability without taking damage.
Note: this ability has a few different usages, they're quite simple. Escaping, initiating, damaging, combo'ing your abilities. We'll talk more about this in the "how to combo" section. Also note that this ability actually deals the most uncircumstantial damage. (by the way, no you cannot trigger your ultimate by hitting an enemy with both shockwaves which are generated by this ability)

Transmute
Enemies affected by more than one of the Midas's spells at once are temporarily cast into gold.
  • Passive ability
  • Type: magic
  • Damage: 50 / 100 / 150
  • Stun duration: 2 seconds
  • Passively reduces your abilities' cooldowns with 2 / 4 / 6 seconds
Note: each of your abilities imbues affected enemies with a reagent, when combined, these reagents will turn your enemies into gold, dealing additional damage, and stun them for a short while. In short: awesomeness.

Skill Builds


There's only one good skill build for this hero since the heal on Lion's Pride was nerfed, there are some early level differences here and there, but once you hit level 4, you should probably have your abilities on levels corresponding to this guide.
  1. Elemental Warp
  2. Golden Salvo
  3. Golden Salvo
  4. Lion's Pride
  5. Golden Salvo
  6. Transmute
  7. Golden Salvo
  8. Lion's Pride
  9. Lion's Pride
  10. Lion's Pride
  11. Transmute
  12. Elemental Warp
  13. Elemental Warp
  14. Elemental Warp
  15. Bonus Stats
  16. Transmute
  17. Bonus Stats...
This is universally the best build out there for Midas. Golden Salvo will always deal at least decent damage, and has the lowest cooldown. Once you hit level 8 you can wombo-combo creepwaves.

Combo'ing your abilities


It might not seem like it, but Midas his abilities are really easy to dodge if you know it's coming and you're not stunned or snared or slowed. There's a few different ways of combo'ing them let's pick the usual method first:
then
This way you first slow your enemies, making it easier for the Lion's Pride to actually hit. Also like this you save your Warp to followup or escape later.

The almost always hit combo (barring major missclicks or big jukes by your target) which doesn't leave you with an escape combo:
and then you can use either or or simply both. This leaves you vulnerable to a counter though because you don't have any abilities left to use and most importantly your Warp is on cooldown.

The "safer" 100% hit combo:
in and use Lions, and Warp out while your initial Warp damage hits the enemy you PK'd on, so he gets affected by your ultimate. Gaining a good position with your Warp and still having one cooldown left, you can combo again as soon as your Lion's Pride is ready again (which is your shortest cooldown, so you can use your Salvo / Lions combo very shortly after your initial opener).

You can imagine there's bunch of other combinations, but these are the ones I choose to use most the time. Always keep in mind that Lion's Pride actually gives clearvision, while Salvo does not. And always remember that waiting two more seconds to pull off a stun is better than nuking once, and nuking again two seconds later.

Item Builds


Early game:
These days when I go mid I like to go for a quick bottle, but I'm kind of a perfectionist so I'll try to have my inventory full, I just feel like it's a waste to not fill up every spot (or use all your gold) when going to the lane. So if you go mid, and if you're aiming for a fast bottle, go for these:
+

This leaves you with 248 gold, while giving you a good amount of stats at the same time, making it very possible for you to get some early lasthits.

If you're not mid, start out with the basic items required to make what we're getting later on:


This will leave you with close to no gold left. Other options involve which evolves into a and maybe later in
It really depends on where you are laning, and against who you are laning.

Your items now evolve to this in more or less this order if you're mid:
+ + + +

If you're not mid, don't buy the bottle, and try to always carry a with you. When you're playing Midas you have to make things happen, the hero is simply amazing once he gets some levels. So don't wait for things to happen while you afk farm the lane, but teleport somewhere and make them happen yourself.

I've tried all the boots options on this hero, except Striders.
A short explanation of when Striders are good or bad: they're good for your hero if you need to be around the map, when you are a hero picked to make others stronger and set things up. For example Behemoth, or Empath, or Glacius, ... When you are with follow-up abilities for whom other heroes set things up, you need boots that will make you stronger after the initiation because you need to be able to do things after it, while Brohemoth can just sit on the sideline positioning himself until he has another Fissure block ready. The second kind of heroes (follow-up) would basically be anyone that's not in the first category (initiation).

Moving on from this Striders thing, you're left with a few choices. Ghost Marchers, or Steamboots, or Plated Greaves, or Post Haste. Or don't upgrade (this is actually a viable option).

Ghosts will usually leave you too squishy, even though you are a strength hero, Midas' agility and base armor has been nerfed hard, so you will still drop like a fly if anything with physical damage hits you. Steamboots are fine, I like Steamboots. The only thing I don't like about them is that you're not the fastest hero in the game (300 movespeed, not bad, but not good either), and these boots give very little movespeed. Plated Greaves are actually really good on this hero, especially with the new buff (another +2 armor on activation). It gives more than average movespeed, gives you armor which remedies one of your shortcomings, and even some stats which is a nice bonus. Also Plated Greaves are fairly cheap for what they do compared to the other boots, I really think they're underrated at the moment. Then there is the last option you could go for, and the only one I chose for a while now (mostly because of personal preference). Post Haste. Gives you stupid amounts of movespeed, and allows you to teleport to any friendly unit on the map, on arrival you get another speed boost for a few seconds which is very nice if you teleport in the midst of things (which does occasionally happen).

So in the end to draw a conclusion out of this: I love Steamboots stat swapping, but the attackspeed somewhat goes to waste because you simply don't have the stats to scale with attacks, and the movespeed granted is quite low. Ghost Marchers would fix the mobility problem, but leave you squishy as hell, which isn't ideal either (heroes like Monkey King and Silhouette say hi). Plated Greaves fix your armor, give you movespeed. Good option. Post Haste allows for you to be omnipresent around the entire map, with it's insane movespeed and teleport ability. Also it clears up an item slot where otherwise you would put a homecoming stone (and you're always carrying one with you!) Very good choice.

or

Anyway, we finished our basic item setup, so now it's time to go for some real items that will determine how effective we will actually be this game.

There are a few items I consider to be core on this hero, you can get them in the order that fills your current needs. Usually (but not always) the biggest need is mana, and good initiation / followup. What I like to do is build a Stormspirit and Portal Key at the same time.

Which basically means I get the then a and then finish my

As next item you definitely want one of these two:

or


Choose depending on how big your team is on disable, whether or not you need every bit of HP you can get, if your team needs someone with a decent auto-attack and doesn't have it yet, ...

Hellflower pros:
  • Good auto-attack damage
  • Attackspeed
  • 5 second silence + item disabler + silences abilities (this includes passive, such as Armadon's Armordillo, or Night Hound's Invisibility)
  • Increases damage taken by 20%
Hellflower cons:
  • Doesn't slow or stun the enemy
  • Costs a lot of mana
Sheepstick pros:
  • Grants more overall stats
  • More mana regeneration
  • Targeted enemies have their movement speed reduced by 100%
Hellflower cons:
  • Only lasts for 2.5 seconds
With the current nerf to Sheepstick (duration from 3.5 to 2.5 seconds), I'm inclined to say that Hellflower is the better option here.

Later on I usually make these items:

After this you're pretty much stacked on items, and save for buyouts. That's pretty much my personal opinion of the perfect item setup on this hero: Post Haste, Kuldra's Sheepstick / Hellflower, Portal Key, Stormspirit, Frostfield Plate, and a Behemoth's Heart. With this you're actually really tanky, have the ability to spam you skills as much as you want, you're extremely mobile, and your items are great overall to help your team / disable others.

But let's face it, this hero has such amazing stats that you can make almost anything on him and be effective. My item build are just guidelines for what I find to be very good on him compared to the other things I tried.

Other very viable options are:

Then there's the special case of Shrunken Head. As usual, it completely depends on the enemy team whether you want to make this item or not. There are some heroes where you will almost always want to build it, others where you never build it, all depending on what kind of style you play, and against what kind of team you play. For example the enemy team is full of spellcasting annoying people with huge AoE damage. Let's just say you face Chtuluphant, Plague Rider, Nymphora, Pebbles, and Wretched Hag, then yes you need a Shrunken Head. Make sure to activate it before you get jumped, because this particular team will have the Chtuluphant charge in, giving you a safe feeling because you feel as if you're not in the middle and taking any focus fire. Then Pebbles and Hag will both jump in to a position of their liking and blow a huge amount of AoE damage in your face. So again, activate your Shrunken Head as soon as the initiation begins and before you get jumped. If you happen to be the one that gets caught, it's usually your own fault for being in a bad spot.

Special item for Midas:

Think about it. RoS will only slightly postpone your mana issues, not fix them for you. In this guide you just find a more permanent solution. What this means though, is that you actually have to manage your mana and not just randomly throw out your nukes at will. You will have to make some brain activity happen as opposed to derp around and hit buttons all over pre-stunned enemy heroes by allies. There are ofcourse some situations where it's an amazing item. These situations are when you're almost constantly around two or three allies (which means you would be running around with three or four people all the time), ganking every dot that shows itself on the minimap. But for the more type of solo play which I prefer over running around with your team all game long (I'm a solo queue player most of the time, so my allies aren't worht running around with anyway half the time), I wouldn't make it. If you do decide to make it however, make it straight after your red boots and Grave Locket (this item shaves 10 seconds off your resurrection timer, which is kind of a big deal, especially in the early - mid game).

There's one more item I didn't discuss, and I would strongly advise to never make it: Spellshards. I know this will cause a shitstorm in the replies telling me I'm a complete pub and explaining how Midas needs his spellshards to "scale" into late, ... But! They don't do anything for you but increase your nuke damage. Let's again use our minds on this one. If a lot of people on the enemy team get magic resistance, it's usually more profitable to get some good auto-attack damage. Think of these possibilities: Hellflower, Puzzlebox (so underrated), Frostwolf Skull (a bit expensive though), maybe even Geometer's Bane or a Savage Mace. All of these items are in 1000-gold range of Spellshards rank 3 and infinitely more effective. I hear you though. Almost none of these items are of the "build and forget"-easymode type that Spellshards is.

And lastly let's take a nice and derp argument for just for arguments sake: how many competitive games did you see with a Midas in them? Now count the amount of times these people made Spellshards and actually upgraded it. What's the relation between them? One Spellshards for every 50 times played? Now don't count troll games. One Spellshards for every 100 times played?

And then there's the final item, which is bossmode on you, is cheap, and has no expiration timer on effectiveness. Obviously I'm talking about a
With this baby (to be purchased after Stormspirit or Portal Key) you can gain full map control, Midas is a great hero to carry it because of him being able to get away quite easily from most enemies.

"Fun" Builds That Almost Never Work


You can make any item on this hero and it will be effective, as long as you throw in any form of mana regen you're good to go. You could try the sneaky build (shroud -> genjuro + codex 5) to oneshot people and get out instantly.

Gameplay


With the recent changes Midas is pretty squishy to physical damage, and is most certainly not meant to stand in the frontlines taking hits. He can but he shouldn't. The core gameplay is pretty much all about correctly combo'ing your abilities. One ability hitting means nothing, two means something, three is a waste unless if you're only going to be able to use your cooldowns once this fight.

Early Game: The Laning Phase


Laning is possible but Midas is a good solo hero. He can't compare to some other solo heroes in the game because of his low agility and armor (Wretched Hag, Bubbles, not even talking about Torturer or Demented Shaman (who often isn't picked as a solo lane, but he usually destroys when he is picked as one). If you are laning solo against two enemies then your goals are simple. Get level 6, and don't feed. Anything more is a good bonus. After you get 6 you can either ask for a gank on your lane, or teleport yourself to another lane and start roaming.

If you're laning 1v1 then it's probably going to be hard for you. Again, with the latest changes Midas is actually a pretty weak hero to run in a 1v1 sidelane. The low range and armor are a real issue. What you want to try is exchange as little auto-attacks as possible. When it does come to this, right away use your abilities, because if you don't pressure the other guy harder than he pressures you, you're going to have to back off and you basically lost the lane. This first skirmish usually decides who plays agressive and has lane control for the rest of the laning phase. So again, when it comes to this (and it will), right away use your abilities, and try aiming them well (Lion's Pride trough a bunch of allies instead of just on top of him without going trough anything). Midas' abilities are incredibly easy to dodge, so you really always want to open with your slow or teleport ability, to make sure that it's actually hard to miss the Lion's Pride. Assuming you win this and get to be the one who pretty much controls the lane, you probably want to push your enemy out of the lane and push the tower while he ganks. Let your team know that you enemy hero will be ganking so they can expect it, not feed, and not ruin the advantage you built up. Once you pushed the tower you should go team up and get some pushing done. Now if you had lost the lane and the other hero has the farm and experience advantage, what you want to do is just again, get level 6, and teleport to another lane to make a succesful gank happen. Just keep roaming around and setting up kills, try to defend your towers if possible.

Laning solo in mid


The easiest lane for a solo Midas, because there's little to no room to completely zone someone out of experience range. What you want to do is rush a bottle, push the wave around the 45-50 second mark with your nukes, and thus ensure that you can get a powerup. Getting the powerups is very important, it gives you the chance to gank early game already even before you hit level 6. People sometimes forget that his ultimate isn't everything he has (though it's a lot). Against melees you want to be agressive (obviously) and get in as many auto-attacks as possible without getting destroyed yourself by the creeps. Be careful about creeps really. If you take some aggro and a melee hero turns on you, don't try to fight him because 9 times out of 10 you're going to lose that fight. He probably expected to go mid agaisnt a ranged hero so he'll have a shield, negating a lot of creep damage if your creeps come to fight too. You have nothing of that stuff, so you'll drop really, really fast. So make sure to never man up on melee heroes early game unless if you're sure that you got the cooldowns to burst him and there aren't too many creeps around. Against a ranged hero try keeping the uphill advantage. Midas has a good attack animation, pretty average really, same for his damage. If you face people with higher damage that can lasthit, just pre-lasthit instead of trying to deny. Keeping the uphill shouldn't be too hard for you once you get some levels. All you have to do is play the simple game of lasthit and harass when the creeps are on your hill. If the lane happens to get pushed in the enemy player's advantage, then simply nuke a creep wave as they clash and push your own creeps into his tower. Make sure that your creeps die fast enough though, because if they don't, the creepwave position will still be on the enemy side.

For harassing, try to set up some easy creep kills (two or three) that you can take with a single nuke (preferrably your Salvo), and position yourself in a way so that you can hit the hero. Midas isn't the easiest hero to hit abilities with, so don't worry if you miss. Just make sure that if you use your Warp to go in on someone that you never ever miss that one. Warp is the one ability that's really super easy to land, and usually puts you in a good position to hit a second ability for the stun. But if you happen to miss with Warp, things are going to end up really bad for you.

Mid Game


This starts around that time when all lanes dissolve and people start pubtraining around the map. It's a new thing, so I'll talk about it for a bit. Pubtraining is usually stupid. If you don't have snowball heroes like a Zephyr or the like, it's just not worth it. Running around with 4 or 5 people all the time greatly nerfs your experience and gold gain, while the enemy team is farming 2 lanes and a jungle (a lot more than you). In the special case where you have good heroes for it (some ranged stunners, and a good initiation stunner like Blacksmith, Brohemoth, Magmus, or Hammerstorm, and the snowball hero (let's call him Zephyr in this case)), you can definitely pull it off. Special note: when pubtraining a Ring of Sorcery is awesome. What you want to do is wait until your Zephyr has a Helm, then just go faceroll towers as 5. When the enemy team tries to stop you, simply destroy them. If they don't stop you, then you take all 6 outer towers in a few minutes. With the gold advantage you built up, your supports will be able to ensure full map control for you, allowing you and your team to catch up with experience and creep farm (when you pubtrain usually your gold / xp gain is very low, all you get is towers and map control, if you get kills then that's because the enemy team is stupid). Once you get to this point it's important to know that breaking a base usually isn't as simple as the outer towers. The enemy team will be there as 5, there's a ramp that stops you from getting easy auto-attacks without placing yourself in a vulnerable spot, in short, the enemy team will have the "base advantage" which is kind of a big deal. So just farm up, get a huge advantage, go for Kongor, and when your fatty hero reaches that certain point when he's not getting much tankier or stronger (the pinnacle of his strength / effectiveness when comparing him against the enemy team), that's your cue to push in.

In pretty much all other scenarios you're going to be outfarmed, outleveled, and eventually owned even if you manage to break one barracks. Many teams give up though because they simply don't understand how to win against people that run around as 5 all the time, so yeah in pubs I suppose that pubtraining is still effective.

In the event of pubtrains not forming, you just gank and farm every possibility. Now be wary, there are certain things that are not to be farmed by you! First of all: never push your easy lane if the tier 1 tower has fallen already, your carry can make some big plays there and hit creeps for a loooooong time to get some serious farm. Don't touch mid lane either if it's in close range of your jungle. Basically what you get is the hard lane, and mid lane if it's on / over the river. Your carry heroes get priority to farm every safe place over you.

So being the smart person you are, you already derived the main locations of where an enemy carry hero will be when trying to farm. So even when you have this "omfg glacius no wards nub!" thing going on in your team, you should more or less always know where they (the enemy carry heroes) and their team are, at least in the midgame stage of "charging mah farm up". Later on you do need wards because people will be looking to pick someone off, but that's for later in the game. Knowing all these things, you can actually push the enemy easy lane, knowing that someone will definitely come to farm that lane (hopefully some weak squishy carry hero that can't do anything to run away like Flint). So you hang around with a few people, and gang up on him, blow his face up, and get out, because you're close to his base.

Other useful pickoffs happen around warding spots, so if you can try to keep track of when and where the enemy team warded. More or less 6-7 minutes later, there will be a wardbitch in more or less the same place, to drop a new ward. And when they come you have to be there to drop some gold on his face together with your team mates.

Lastly you always need to keep track of your main carry hero. Is he getting ganked? Does he need help? Can I teleport to save him if so? Etc... Usually you can just throw an eye on the minimap every now and then to see around what area he is, but you should be able to see ganks incoming on him if you have good wards, and you should be able to react in less than 5 seconds if he gets ganked, even if he doesn't ping or voice chat a million times. In fact, keep track of all your team mates like this, but it's not the easiest thing to do in the world, so just your most important team mate will have to do if you don't feel up for watching them all 5.

So do what Midas does, farm, gank, don't feed, protect your team mates. On to the lategame.

Late Game


This is the part of the game where the smallest mistakes will actually lose you the game. Once you get into that place where you're gone for 70+ seconds when you die, it's really really important to not die. In this stage of the game carry heroes should have finished all their core items and they're actually able to play that role of a "carry" hero that will destroy everything if left alone in a fight. If this is not the case and you're turtling, make sure to nuke the creepwaves even though you're defending as 5 and your carry is around. You can't have your base tower drop, and usually people on the enemy team don't really want to tank it themselves if they don't have a token because you could simply use the base advantage and kill them without really going in. So keep this in mind, base towers and the ramp provide a huge strategic and positional advantage, which you shouldn't easily give up, also make sure to destroy those sneaky wards people will try to place inside your base to gain vision.

If, on the other hand, things are pretty equal and everything will come down to that one dramatic team fight, you want to pick it in the right position. This is where map control is very important, and things like Tundra's bird are invaluable. With the Bound Eye someone in your team should have, you should have the upperhand here. It's very important to not take a fight unless if you have a good position, otherwise you've lost it even before it began.

Picking people off becomes increasingly important. Getting two support players or one carry or one farmer is huge here! If you find yourself in a position where you've picked some people off, you can usually push the barracks or take Kongor, to ensure an advantage in the next fight (if you take barracks you can pretty much choose when and where the next fight will be unless if the enemy chooses to push trough a lane where you pushed the barracks, which also gives you the positional advantage).

Ganking is really really hard without getting into a full-blown team fight though, because people will almost instantly be there to help team mates when someone gets attacked. So you have to make sure that if you do make something happen, it happens fast. If you catch someone off guard you need to drop them within seconds.

Again, always carry a Homecoming Stone or make sure that you can always be anywhere in time to help when stuff happens, and in this stage of the game, you might want to save for buybacks (4500 gold should do it).

What to Do in a Team Fight


There's a few ways to go about a team fight for you. First method: tunnelvision one key hero and spend all your resources to disrupting his / her influence on the fight. This could be killing a Plague Rider before he ults, it could be trying to control a Parasite, trying to help burst down a carry auto-attacker, ... This is good to do when there's no one else doing it. But not the best thing you could do.

The second thing you could do is use your items (Portal Key or Tablet of Command) / abilities to gain a good position, and stun 2 or 3 people. If you manage to catch 3 or more people in your stun, then you should win the fight honestly.

Now both these things are based on how the fight begins: not with you. Let someone else initiate. The easiest way to get a good position for big plays is to wait until the fight begins and the enemy team derps around to help their team mate. Initiating is definitely possible for Midas. When he has a sheepstick and certain way of getting out after the first jump in. Otherwise it's a waste of ... yourself. If you take focus fire you will probably die. If you die after one combo you didn't do a very good job in the team fight. You're supposed to get off at least two stun combo's on people, if not more.

Even if you happen to have a Sheepstick, I can recommend a different style of play other than sheep someone -> hit buttons on him. Remember Sheepstick will completely disable your enemy for 2.5 seconds. There's no need to cast a stun on someone that's already disabled. Save your abilities to make a CC (crowd control) chain. Overlap a bit (0.2 seconds or so, just to be sure) if the enemy has a Shrunken Head.

Another direction you can take in fights is to fight defensive, and basically keep key heroes in your lineup alive by stopping people from attacking them. Stormspirit allies, tablet them, stun anyone going for them, heal them.

In the end it doesn't really matter what you do if you're in a bad position. The first thing you must learn when playing this hero is to be in a place where you won't take too much focus. Don't get me wrong, Midas is a hero that's quite tanky compared to the usual casters (Bombardier, Pyromancer, Aluna), but still not a hero meant to take a beating.

Most important as well, don't forget to use all your items. Hellflower an Armadon, Stormspirit an enemy right next to another and drop your combo as he comes down, Tablet allies away, apply your Plated Greaves to your team, use your Frostfield Plate, use all the items!

Good Allies and Worst Enemies


Your best friends are allies that have an ability to set up the kills, while you do the follow-up. Some of the heroes I list here are great laning partners, others just good heroes to gank with. I prefer to be a solo lane with Midas for the fast levels, but if you have to lane try to pick a long ranged hero with you because your range isn't that great.

Pretty obvious. Magmus is simply one of the best heroes in the game with his near-instant long range AoE stun.

Perfect hero to lane with you. Can stun a few times, and lowers magic resistance as well. If you happen to lane with this guy, either of you should make a Ring of Sorcery and you should run around with the two of you all the time, killing people everywhere.

I'm not a fan of playing support Midas or Jeraziah, and I'm not a fan of sharing farm either, but if you can get a good teleport on top of some enemies and nukes, while Jeraziah throws a healbomb on top of all that, you can definitely do some damage.

Stun, slow, magic damage. Great hero to combo with, once you're level 6 and chain up some abilities you should be able to drop anyone.

Awesome hero to have in your jungle. You get levels, he gets a fast Ring of Sorcery and ganks for you, after the gank he gives mana, repeat when he gets a good new neutral creep.

Aura, slow, the freeze. What more to say.

Adds some nuking power, a stun, endless mana for you guys.

Excellent jungler to have when you're in the solo lane. Also if he lands a good ultimate, you can combo quite a few people.

Standard 1 million disables.

Great setup hero in any situation.

Huge early game stun, can grant a movespeed and armor bonus which you can definitely use.

Invis for the element of suprise, slows and deals a ton of magic damage himself, while lowering the enemies magic armor.

Stun to hold them in place and a disco floor to damage them while they're affected by your stun. Not to mention the lategame spellvamp.

Glacius 2.0, a retardedly strong hero.

On to your worst enemies in this game:

Anything with a silence:

As if those weren't enough heroes that are really annoying to deal with for you, there's some other honorable mentions:
Manaburn, a lot of magic resistance, and can easily chase you.

This heroes' middle name should be "control". Can hold you in place for almost 9 seconds. That's right, 9. NINE.

Another hero with massive control over others, but she shouldn't be focusing you.

Massive physical damage heroes:


Changelog


16 April 2012 - First release