Hand of Midas

My main hero that i get Midas on would be lifestealer. I have realized that it truly is a situational item. When i get it depends oon how the game goes, am i laning or jungle, am i getting last hits or being harrased out of lane.

One good thing about Midas is that you can always but the gloves of haste. If building a Midas is not worth it, getting an armlet or power treads became 500 gold easier.

Hand of Midas is a situational item at best, Though situational only depending upon your ability to farm. I usually get it by the 5 min mark, 6 tops otherwise abandon boat sailor.
It pays for itself in cost in bout 19 min the upside however is the increase in exp.
It is a godsend for a level dependent hero and makes you get really far ahead of others.
Dont underestimate the bonus AS.
Only downside i can think of is for a 2k item it doesnt really provide any survivability.

I think the thing with Nature's Prophet is that he's so versatile - he can play as a pusher, ganker or farmer - and he can do any of those pretty well. Unfortunately a lot of people just seem to play him as a farmer by default, rather than looking at the team layouts and making a choice.

For example, I played a game yesterday, I was mid as Death Prophet, we had a Dark Seer, Nature's Prophet, Ursa and Earthshaker. We were against Tinker, Skeleton King, Phantom Lancer, Bounty Hunter and Kunkka.

It's pretty obvious to me that we had a lot more push, and they had too much carry - unfortunately Nature's Prophet went Hand of Midas and contributed nothing until very late - we took rax at about 30 mins, but the game went over an hour and we ended up getting massively outcarried. Really poor decision by him to focus farming over the other two options...

I get it most often on Profit and Void with equal frequency of ~40% of games. I get it on Spectre, Silencer, and OD maybe 10% of the time and on others if the game calls for it (first blood, etc).

It's a good item but not really. It's situational. Some heroes make better use of another farming item (Bfury AM), others are better with an early aggression item (Riki, Spectre).

I also like it if I know someone likes to/is going build Necrobook. Like I know Blitz Spiritbreaker always builds necrobook so I get midas against that, or if there's a NP I check his game history for profit games and see if he builds it.

The gold is probably the least relevant part of the item -- the exp is what makes it.

Yeah, please don't think I'm saying it's a bad item - in the right situations it's fantastic and worth every penny. I'm complaining about people grabbing it against a team of pushers or when the game is obviously going bad early!

Thanks for all the discussion guys, very informative!

8 minutes is my cut-off point. 5 and a half minutes is perfect farm. Anything after 8 is just too slow.

Generally speaking, Midas can be a good item as long as you get it early enough. After the 12 minute mark you're better off just going onto your other items, but if you can get it quick (especially on attack-speed heavy heroes like Faceless Void), I say go for it. But I never buy a Hand of Midas after 12 minutes unless I'm really close to getting it.

It's definitely never core on any hero, not even Prophet, people just tend to get it a lot on him. Prophet can benefit from so many other items with that early 1900 gold, and you can easily make up the gold and XP you would get with Midas through ganks. It's also not bad on Void, as he at least benefits from the Attack Speed more than many other heroes.

It's really good on any hero if you can get it early enough. Not saying you should just because you can, but if you somehow got 1900 gold in 5 minutes, even someone like Tide could make use of it, as it pays for wards every time it's off cooldown and can progress to him getting better items early on that can make a big impact.

I personally rarely ever get midas, not even on Prophet (I tend to rush a Medallion). If I do go Midas it's because I can tell I will have un-contested free-farm for a long time as a carry.

I still consider Midas as a core on Nature's Prophet if you have access to the jungle (which means you can go for it even if you're soloing the hard lane, because you can still jungle between the creepwaves), as that will make your experience rise after a couple of minutes in which your farm wasn't that efficient. Every competitive player does so unless they're forced to rush a Mekansm or just go mid and I don't think it slows down your Shadow Blade/ Orchid Malevolence/whatever so much. :D

Also, about this:

Again, you're completely right: even when you're playing with "experienced" players you sometimes see a guy rushing that Hand of Midas even though the enemy team has already destroyed 3 towers; then, they tell you HoM is core on that Hero. It happened to me more than once.

I'd say even for Nature's Prophet that it shouldn't be an automatic core item choice. He's very capable of early pushing or ganking instead, and that 2000 gold can buy you several items that can make that very successful. Also means he doesn't disappear for 15-20 minutes and leave his team 4v5.

You can potentially get far more levels/farm from ganking and/or pushing than you can from Hand of Midas - although it does depend on team composition and opportunities.

The overall point I'm trying to make is that it should always be a situational choice once you've had a look at the team line ups and how the game is progress!

The only Hero whose core items comprehend a Hand of Midas is Nature's Prophet: I never buy it on anyone else unless I get free farm with someone who can benefit a lot from it (almost always STR carries like Lifestealer, Doom, Dragon Knight...). I really think it's a waste to take it on, let's say, Phantom Lancer, Faceless Void or even Gyrocopter as their strengths come from either an item rush ( Diffusal Blade/ Battle Fury) or mid-game presence ( Call Down).

It takes 17 minutes of using midas (that's if you use it RIGHT when the CD is off) to pay for it. This doesn't account for XP though.