When to buy Midas in Dota 2

It’s human nature to be a little greedy – and in Dota 2, that greed often shows up as a Hand of Midas. On paper, the item is pretty simple: you get an active ability that turns a creep into bonus gold. But in practice, getting a Midas can either snowball you into an unstoppable force or leave you useless for 20 minutes. Here is how the item works, when to buy it, and who benefits most. 

What is Hand of Midas in Dota 2?

Hand of Midas is one of the most polarizing items in Dota 2 – when it works, you feel like a genius, and when it doesn’t, you’re down thousands of gold with nothing to show for it. 

The Hand of Midas item costs 2,200 gold and is made up of two components:

• Gloves of Haste (450 gold)
• Hand of Midas Recipe (1750 gold)

With this buildup, Hand of Midas essentially offers lackluster stats for a 2,200 gold item. You’re only getting +35 Attack Speed, with no additional HP, mana, damage, or survivability. The only reason you’re buying this item is for its active ability: Transmute. 

Transmute is what you’re really buying:

• Kills a non-hero target (creep) for 160 gold at a 90 second cooldown.

So, buying Hand of Midas doesn’t necessarily grant you great stats to fight in the early game. Instead, the item is solely used for Dota 2 farming purposes. You’re purchasing a repeatable injection of reliable gold in exchange for delaying your impact in fights. That’s the cost of greed in Dota 2. 

How to Use Hand of Midas in Patch 7.40

Previously, one of the primary reasons players purchased Hand of Midas was to use the Transmute experience multiplier, which grants targeted units 2.1x their experience. This allows heroes to reliably get experience and level up faster, hitting level power spikes such as more points on their ultimate abilities, or reaching a certain talent tree faster.

As of Dota 2 patch 7.40, the Transmute ability no longer grants that experience multiplier, so you’re essentially only buying the item for gold purposes. However, the active cooldown has been reduced from 110 seconds to 90. This change essentially means you’re getting more gold at the cost of no additional experience. 

Back then, players would typically use Transmute on creeps that gave the most experience, such as the biggest creep in a neutral camp, or the ranged creeps in a creep wave. But, since Transmute no longer grants bonus experience, it is best used on low-value creeps, since you’re using it as a fixed-fold converter. 

When to Buy Hand of Midas

Now that Hand of Midas no longer grants bonus experience, the scenarios where it’s worth buying have shifted from “hit your level spikes faster” to “invest in steady, long-term gold.” 

Generally, the rule for buying Hand of Midas sits at two polar extremes: either you’re stomping so hard that you can treat it as an “investment,” or you’re getting stomped super hard and need a “Poverty Midas” to claw your way back into the game. 

The “Free Game” Midas

Buying Hand of Midas while stomping lane is basically like an early investment. If you’re winning the lane hard, you can finish Midas very early on, which means you can start “printing” reliable gold sooner and keep the charges rolling. The big advantage of an early Midas is that it starts paying you back early, so your second and third items arrive faster. 

Yes, Midas does slow down your teamfight impact due to its lack of stats, but it typically doesn’t matter if you’re crushing your lane and getting it before the 9-minute mark. In most games, you wouldn’t be forced into constant fights at minute 8-12 anyway and can focus on your farming patterns. 

In short, if you’re ahead and safe, Midas is a purchase that converts your early advantage into cleaner item timings later. 

The “Poverty” Midas

The other classic scenario is the Poverty Midas. You buy it when your lane went so badly and your normal mid-game items won’t magically fix the problem. If you’re so far behind, and showing up to early fights just gets you killed, Midas can be a way to stop the bleeding and build toward a comeback over time. 

Let’s take Slark, for example. Typically, Dota 2 Slark players want early items that let him hunt and dominate the map, like Diffusal Blade to stick on targets, or Echo Sabre for tempo. But if he gets absolutely crushed in lane and has no map access, those items don’t make him strong – they just turn him into a hero who bought a fighting item but still can’t fight. 

After a bad lane, getting a Diffusal Blade or Echo Sabre can feel terrible, since you’re getting it so late that it wouldn’t really matter. Sometimes, the better approach is to use the gold for a Hand of Midas instead, accept the fact that you won’t be a mid-game threat, and play for a slower, more reliable comeback. 

Plus, the Poverty Midas can double as tilt therapy. When you get stomped in lane, it’s easy to get tilted and spiral out of control, but buying Midas can stabilize your mindset and give you a simple, calming win condition. 

IMPORTANT: Have a “Game Stabilizer”

If you’re planning to buy Midas, it really helps to have a game stabilizer on your team. This is generally a hero that can slow the tempo and stop the match from turning into a 20-minute stomp while you’re still waiting for Midas to pay you back. 

This hero usually does three things:

• Depushes waves, preventing towers from being taken early on
• Creates map pressure through split-pushing or wave cutting to delay games
• Hits a strong 15-30 minute power spike that can take fights and protect objectives

Most of the time, this job falls on the mid-laner, since these heroes come online faster and can control the pace of the game. Heroes like Puck, Pangolier, and Spirit heroes (Ember/Storm/Void) are typically best suited for the job. 

If your team doesn’t have such a hero, Midas becomes very risky. If nobody is there to slow you down, and you’re still useless from investing 2,200 gold on an item that provides no fighting value, you are at risk of getting run over before your Midas ever pays you back.

Best Heroes to Buy Hand of Midas

The best Hand of Midas heroes have definitely changed after the XP removal, but here are some of the best heroes to buy the item on. 

Ogre Magi

Ogre Magi is the most obvious hero that can buy Hand of Midas, as Transmute works with Multicast. You can Transmute up to four creeps if you’re lucky. Whenever you’re playing Ogre Magi with Midas, make sure there are multiple units available when you’re about to Transmute. 

Arc Warden

Arc Warden’s Tempest Double can also use items, so you’re able to double your Transmute uses. It also helps that Arc Warden is a heavy late-game hero, and Midas serves as an excellent investment. 

Doom

Doom creates “inflated gold” with his Devour ability, so it often makes sense to lean into that economic advantage by adding Hand of Midas to the mix. However, since Doom is typically played in the Offlane role, this might heavily slow down his impact. 

Invoker

Invoker used to be the perfect hero to buy Midas on with the bonus experience, allowing him to hit timings quickly. And though the experience change was a huge blow, Midas is still viable on him. Invoker naturally suffers from slow farming speeds, but his many abilities allow him to still find impact in the early-to-mid game without having fighting items. 

Carry Midas Buyers

Finally, we have general carry heroes that fit into the “Free Game” and “Poverty” Midas categories discussed above. Some names worth mentioning include Nature’s Prophet, Lifestealer, Slark, Wraith King, and Faceless Void.