Hand of Midas: How to make the most of it

Are you converting everything you touch to gold?

Every meta sees an ebb and flow in what heroes and inventories are popular. The Aether Lens, which every support made every game when it was released, isn’t seen a lot nowadays. Similar is the case of the Hand of Midas. Since the release of Dota 2 7.00, its use had been increasing with every patch (owing to the longer games, players wanted to be prepared for the late game) to the point where the item got changed for the first time since patch 6.79c when its recipe cost was increased from 1400 to 1550 gold. Since Hand of Midas is purchased mainly for getting quick levels, you can say it was a nerf in some way. But IceFrog found a way to balance it out. Here’s what patch 7.05 brought with it:

Hand of Midas

XP bonus reduced from 2.5x to 1.75x

Gold bonus increased from 190 to 220

Most players probably think it still has Transmute, and still gives bonus XP. Make it and use it on the biggest creep; which would be the best way to go about it before these changes were implemented. But now, it might be the best way to go about it when it comes to Neutral Camps. Let’s take a look at the situation before and after 7.05 from the point of view of the Large Satyr Camp.

Based on the experience and bounty, let’s see what we get after 10 uses of the Hand of Midas on each of these creeps, before and after 7.05. The consideration here is, when Midas is used on one creep, the other two are killed to get their normal experience and gold. The values in the bracket indicate the difference in XP or gold when Midas in used on the medium or small creep instead of the large creep and is calculated for 10 uses (roughly 15 minutes).

In the earlier patches, using the Hand of Midas 10 times on the large creep would give you an XP advantage of 855 over using it on the medium creep, and 1170 over using it on the small creep. At the same time, using Midas on the medium creep would give you 540 extra gold while using it on the small creep would give you 680 extra gold (which has remained the same even now).

Getting extra experience of 427.5 in 15 minutes doesn’t seem all that worth it considering that the XP offered by Golem and Thunderhide ancient camps is nearly the same (393). At the same time, an extra 540 gold could be the difference between having and not having buyback or could propel the user to the next mid game invent. These stats are just for 10 uses and it intensifies every extra time Midas is used. Using Transmute on the small creep will add another 140 gold to the coffers, but it’s not value big enough to make a substantial difference.

So if you ask me, the most value from a Midas can be extracted by using it on the medium creep of an NC camp. In lane, the best bet is to use it on a range creep (90 XP) or siege creep (88 XP). If you’re facing mega creeps however, always use it on the siege creep as its XP does not reduce, unlike the melee and range creeps.

The numbers are right in front of you! Let us know what you think in the comments.

QUICKPOLL After reading this, which creep would you rather use your Midas on? Big Creep: XP is more important

Thank you for voting! Medium Creep: Optimization is name of the game

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