Side Note Top
Sorry for not having pictures on Braxis Holdout and Warhead Junction. It just so happens that I'm either dumb and can't figure out how to put that picture or Heroesfire just doesn't have it.
Up to date as of 9th of September, 2017. Does not include Kel'thuzad threat level as he's still fairly new. Updated Threats/Map choices/Talents and fixed the color on the "What your team should have" part of the guide, no more OCD for y'all.
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Arcane Rift is
 Medivh's main way of doing damage. It's decent poke and quite strong if it hits multiple enemies. You should always try to spam it when it's off CD ,assuming you can hit an enemy Hero to refund the mana cost and reduce 5 seconds from its CD. With
 The Master's Touch,
Medivh's damage goes through the roof, and usually takes your enemies by surprise.
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Force of Will is an amazing ability. It does not reduce CC abilities from its target, but it can completely nullify the entire burst from a mage. It's also on a very low CD, making it always available to stop the burst from an enemy. The range on it is pretty big as well. It doesn't have a lot of Talents and the only ones worth picking are
 Circle of Protection and
 Reabsorption at level 16, which makes me sad, since there could've been a lot of variety added to this ability, especially a bit of damage reflection.
An important aspect to this ability is self-casting it with Alt + W, as this makes it so you can keep your aim on your enemy ,and is also faster than having to aim it at yourself + it assures you don't use it on the wrong target.
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Holy s**t this Ability is amazing. This alone makes
Medivh completely un-punishable since he can always just get away using it. It also allows
Medivh to easily dive the enemy back line. Heroes like
 Artanis or
 The Butcher pair incredibly with
Medivh since
Portal allows them to disengage.
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This is
Medivh's Trait, and it's a damn good one. While the channel time slightly longer than a normal mount and the vision radius small, it makes up through some cool things. First of all, you are invincible during
Raven Form, making it the best escape tool in the game if you combo it with a sick
Portal, especially if you Talent into
 Astral Projection. Second of all, it sees through bushes and allows you to go through any Terrain, making
Medivh a mobile Watch Tower.
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The Highs
+ Good damage output with
The Master's Touch
+ Has an easy time diving the enemy back line during team fights
+ Great dueler
+ Great at scouting
+ Enables Melee damage dealers very well
+ Very strong Heroics
The Lows
- Bad waveclear until level 20 along with literally no PvE presence
- Very high skillcap and skill floor
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Portal has a high CD and its position is important
- Team needs to play around him to release his full potential
The smaller the icon, the worse the Talent. Big icon means it's the general pick, small icon means the Talent is not useful, medium sized icon means it's a viable pick.
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Stable Portal is your go-to pick. A 9 seconds duration on the Portal gives you more time to maneuver between your team, and the enemy's backline. Make sure that you place the Portal in a safe spot however. It's also great in duels so you can juke the enemy more.
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Portal Mastery makes you place both Portals, which increases the execution time and makes escaping harder. This Talent should be avoided since proper positioning will do just as much as
Portal Mastery, however it can have its uses since it can effectively increase the range of your
Portal. Can be useful especially with
Astral Projection for some very significant range. The
Portal however is already versatile enough and a 50% increase in duration means you can have full uptime with the level 13 Cooldown reduction.
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Raven's Intellect is a good pick if you tend to run out of mana often, which you really shouldn't since
Force of Will has a low cost,
Arcane Rift basically has no mana cost unless you miss and
Portal isn't something you spam all the time. Suggest staying away from this Talent, since just improving your play will effectively make this Talent baseline.
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Gives 3 weak Block charges when an ally enters a Portal for the first time. 3 Block charges are not to be called weak, but it certainly is the worst Talent at this Tier, however that does not make it useless. Not worth picking, even tho it might look good.
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Gives you increased vision in Raven Form which is needed, considering how awful it is baseline, as well as an active which boosts your view radius quite high. It does not get enemies out of Stealth, but the size of your vision radius is huge. Also note that in Raven Form, Medivh sees through bushes.
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Is a niche pick against Stealthed Heroes. It's a 10 seconds reveal, which might sound nice, but it's just inferior to
Bird's Eye View in every way, especially if you can actually see the Stealth shimmer.
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Is a decent pick. It boosts your damage a fair amount, but that amount is still lower than
The Master's Touch. However, this is a good beginner's pick, as dying won't reset your Quest progress ( from
The Master's Touch ). It's also better than
The Master's Touch if you are very scared of staying close to the enemies and can't spam
Arcane Rift every second.
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Makes Medivh go from "Meh" damage output to great damage output.
The Master's Touch isn't hard to complete, but death is punishing. As soon as you complete it, you can 1v1 most Heroes in the game. With this Talent, Medivh should easily top the damage charts while also getting a fair amount of Kills/Assists. This Talent turns the tables and allows Medivh to play the Damage Dealer role easily, while also being a good off-Support for enabling Melee Damage Dealers like
 Thrall,
 Sonya, or
 Illidan. If you get the hang of playing Medivh, this is your must-pick level 7 Talent.
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Is almost as bad as
 Raven Familiar. The explosion gets triggered by any damage, and it's only 200 at level 1 every 5 seconds.
The Master's Touch lets you duel, lets you top damage, lets you kill, outputs more damage over 5 seconds, is more reliable and brings much more satisfaction when used right. Never pick this.
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No.
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At this point in time, people have gotten used to playing with
 Ley Line Seal and spreading out against
Poly Bomb. It won't do much, and you pass on
Ley Line Seal which is a Godly Heroic that allows you to single-handedly win team fights and also games.
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So what can this do? A lot of things, that's what it can do. I'll list them in an unimportant order since they are pretty straight-up : You can steal bosses and camps with it since, as opposed to
 Void Prison it won't put the capture point in Stasis. You can use it as an engage method by using it on their backline to make the fight a 5v4-1 for a brief period of time ; on the more advanced part you can use it right when someone like
 Kharazim or
 Rehgar tries to use
 Divine Palm or
 Ancestral Healing since you effectively stop them from getting in range -- both of those Heroics have a fairly short range. Can be used to easily setup a
 Mosh Pit,
 Ring of Frost or even just a plain old
 Blizzard if you hit multiple enemies. It can also be used to secure an escape since it stops the enemy from doing anything for 3 seconds, or on the opposite side stopping the enemy from running away since it is, again, a 3 seconds stasis. It is also incredibly useful at screwing over your ALLIED
Mosh Pit or
Ring of Frost etc. so watch out will ya.
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Is not half bad, it allows you to have 90% uptime on Portals if you picked
Stable Portal at level 1, and makes dueling against Melee Heroes even easier since you can juke more often. It's also awesome in team fights if you need to move a lot. Although the mana cost of
Portal is 75,
Arcane Rift basically doesn't have one and
Force of Will's is insignificant, so you still shouldn't run out of mana fast.
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The range is already large enough so you won't get much value. It's only use is getting from the bottom beacon to the one on Braxis Holdout, and even then, by level 13, it'll already decided which team controls the map. If you control it, you don't need the range increase, if the enemy controls it, you won't get value from the range anyways.
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Is worse than the 2 Portal talents overall. You should pick it if you are incredibly slow in rotating to an objective in which case you probably aren't past Wood league ( no offense, just kidding ) but otherwise the other Talents in this Tier are just more useful.
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If you're picking
Medivh, you're picking him against heavy single-target damage. This does not help with that, and the heal from
Reabsorption will save people far more often than an AOE W will.
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Is awful, 0.5 seconds worth of duration just won't do much ,those 0.5 seconds of duration will defend less damage on 1 target than
Reabsorption will. Avoid picking this Talent.
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Is so damn good, a 50% heal is incredible and overall just makes Force of Will 50% better. Put this on an
Illidan that dove too deep and they are suddenly safe again. This also lets you do some cheesing, like putting Force of Will on yourself and walking into the enemy's death zone on
 Towers of Doom while Force of Will is active to get some mega-healing.
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Is strong on any map with very close quarters, such as
 Cursed Hollow since it makes the Poly Bomb spread much more. It does however weaken your dueling potential since the duration of Poly Bomb is halved, but that shouldn't matter late-game since you should never be alone at that time.
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Is good if the enemy dodges Ley Line Seal a lot ,or if you just want to take out multiple enemies from the team fights to make it easier. To be noted, you cannot overlap
Ley Line Seal with this Talent by redirecting it in order to get a Hero in Stasis for a total of 8 seconds.
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Grants Medivh great wave clear and makes him into a very good pusher since he can instantly wipe minions and catapults. You just go to a wave, press Q on it and it's gone. If anyone tries to gank you, well, good luck to them cause you have
Portals and Force of Will, as well as a very strong Heroic for running away.
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Is great with Mages such as
 Kael'thas or
 Li-Ming due to the extra Ability Power, but also with Heroes that are mana hungry such as
 Muradin ( used to be
 Valla here, but then the rework happened so she has infinite mana now ) since it does grant 200 mana. To be noted that it also affects you, increasing your DPS by 10%, which is nice.
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Can allow some really cool plays. It's also a very strong defensive tool since, if you are fighting an AA-oriented Hero and you want to run ( or you want to save an ally ), the enemy won't be able to AA your ally due to the Stealth applied by Invisibility. Invisibility is the first active-Talent is the game to have a mana cost, which I find pretty cool. However, this Talent requires fairly good coordination so I wouldn't recommend it in normal games.
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When to draft Medivh Top
What your team should have
+ A Melee damage dealer, such as
Sonya or
Thrall who can be enabled by
Force of Will
+ Any burst damage dealer since
Medivh lacks burst, but he can output heavy sustained damage.
+ A Hero with strong Waveclear such as
Xul ,
Jaina or even
Johanna/
Leoric due to
Medivh's lack of waveclear until level 20 when he gains
Guardian of Tirisfal
What your team needs
These generally overlap with the first conditions
+ An enabler for a Melee damage dealer, which
Medivh is great for. If you don't like
Medivh, I don't know why you are reading this, but
Tassadar is a great pick.
+ A sustained damage dealer.
+ A Hero with strong dive and CC while doing the dive shenanigans.
+ A way to stop the enemy's heavy dive.
You obviously don't need to fill ALL of these conditions with the
Medivh pick. Out of all of these, the most important is to have a Melee damage dealer for Medivh to enable. Without one, just play Medivh as a Mage with a lot of dive and defensive options, but don't forget to help your allies.
Outside of team fights Top
Early-Game
Medivh has weak wave clear, unless he can hit an enemy Hero along with the Minions. He is also a rather weak solo laner since he lacks any kind of sustain. You shouldn't stay around the lanes ( unless there is no ally in that 1 lane ,then you really need to soak it so you don't fall behind in XP ) ,but rather look around and make sure your allies don't get ganked. Your vision from
Raven Form makes that possible, as well as his
Force of Will. He is also a great finisher due to
Portal and
Force of Will, which I'll explain in the last section of the guide. You should stay close to where the objectives will appear since you are pretty slow. Once you get
The Master's Touch, you want to make sure you get it done as soon as possible, so keep poking at enemies whenever you see one, assuming you can run away easily with
Portal and
Force of Will.
The best poke targets are Warriors or Supports due to their general lack of damage or ways to instantly avoid
Arcane Rift.
Chen is by far your best stack farm since he has to drink and that makes him stand still.
Mid-Game
By Mid-game you should have
The Master's Touch reward and Poly Bomb. This allows you to roam around and scout enemy Merc Camps, to see if you can steal any using your strong 1v1 powers. You can also look for easy 1v1s around the map, no one expects Medivh to be able to kill them. Again, make sure
Portal is not on CD when you try to fight someone.
Late-Game
If you get to Late-game and you pick
Guardian of Tirisfal, look forward to clearing some waves so yours push further. During late-game you should rarely solo, but rather stick to your team ( This applies to EVERY Hero in the game ,including
The Lost Vikings )
During team fights Top
At the beginning of a team fight you should poke the enemy with
Arcane Rift as much as possible or keep an eye on the enemy team using
Raven Form.
As the battle rages, you need to make sure you use
Force of Will on whoever is getting focused by the enemy, while potentially doing hit n' runs on the enemy backline using
Portals, if you feel confident in your skills. If anyone dives your team, make sure to use
Poly Bomb on them, specifically on the Melee damage dealers. If you pick
Ley Line Seal, aim to hit as many enemies at the beginning of a fight, making it a 5v3/5v2/5v1 for 3 seconds, which should ensure you a victory.
The Maps Top
Disclaimer : While some maps will, theoretically, be horrendous for
Medivh, a great player will still single-handedly turn the tides of a fight, making him useful on any map. Just make sure you can play him well before you draft him on one of his worse maps.
Cursed Hollow
Great map for
Poly Bomb due to numerous tight quarters, making it easy to spread, as well as the double Boss. Medivh can also very easily poke away at the enemy that's channeling due to the low CD on
Arcane Rift or just
Portal if they are out of range.
The map is huge however, which is awful since Medivh's
Raven Form can only move so slowly.
Medivh also lacks wave clear until 20, making it tougher to defend with him in your team, especially if you get cursed. If your team lacks wave clear,
Medivh just isn't worth picking instead of a Hero with greater wave clear.
Due to the high amount of impassable Terrain, Medivh's
Portal is significantly stronger.
Dragon Shire
Dragon Shire is a map heavily based on duels and skirmishes, both of which
Medivh thrives in since he has ways to Support teammates during a skirmish if the Support is not there yet or dead, while also providing a good amount of damage and CC through
Poly Bomb. Not a lot of Merc Camps on this map, however all of them are in very tight quarters ( especially the 2 Siege Camps ) ,causing
Poly Bomb to gain great value, as well as
Arcane Rift if you are fighting for one of the 2 Siege camps.
The map is fairly small, therefore the reduced movement speed on
Raven Form is not a big flaw.
Also, hitting the Dragon Knight with
Arcane Charge gives you a stack for
The Master's Touch, making the Quest easy to finish.
Blackheart's Bay
While
Medivh can certainly interrupt the enemy from paying the Coins to Blackheart for a long while, this is one of his weakest maps. It does not feature any tight quarters, the area from most Merc Camps is spread out, the map is large and taking Merc Camps is important, which
Medivh can't do. Waveclear is also fairly important and
Medivh has none.
Sky Temple
This is one of the best maps for
Medivh. He gets a lot of space to maneuver with his Portals, which helps a lot in team fights or just for duels. There is a Boss and the enemy will generally split during Objectives due to greed, causing skirmishes which Medivh thrives in. Not a lot of tight quarters or impassable Terrain, but
Poly Bomb will force enemies away from the Temples, assuring you a few shots and a better position.
Tomb of the Spider Queen
A god-awful map for
Medivh due to his lack of wave clear, which significantly weakens your early game. However, on the bright side,
Medivh gets a bunch of place to maneuver with the Portals and scout out the enemy's attempts to turn-in due to
Bird's Eye View vision radius.
Battlefield of Eternity
Another awful map for
Medivh since he lacks single-target DPS on non-Heroes. He can be picked if your team already has heavy damage with
Lunara or
Greymane, and even then racing for the Immortal is harder. Not a lot of place to maneuver either, making his
Portals weaker due to the stuns from the Immortals.
Infernal Shrines
Not a bad map for
Medivh since his
Arcane Rift will usually hit some skeletons as collateral damage when you attack enemy Heroes. The map has an average size so
Raven Form isn't a big drawback. Can be incredibly useful for snowballing as you can just teleport your entire team past the enemy's gate to force a fight along with your own Punisher. Talk about 6v5s.
Towers of Doom
Great map for
Medivh since wave clear isn't as important, you get a teleport to the middle of the map in mid-game so
Raven Form's movement speed isn't as bad, poking to stop channeling is great and
Medivh can try to 1v1 whoever goes for the bot Altar in the 1st and 5th phase ( the 2 phases that have 3 Altars spawn, one of them being near the bot lane ). Overall awesome map for
Medivh. There is also a boss that you can steal if you manage to do it. You're probably best off picking Ley Line Seal due to that and the fact that there's not a lot of places enemies could clump up.
Garden of Terror
Medivh is fairly good on this map. He's a good Hero to put in the Garden Terror since he can get away easily with
Portal, wave clear isn't that important and he can poke poke poke and dive the enemy backline easily.
Poly Bomb gets great value on this map ,due to a bunch of tight zones and lots of Merc Camps for
Medivh and his team to steal.
Also, hitting a Garden Terror with
Arcane Rift will give you a stack of
The Master's Touch, making it easy to finish the Quest.
Braxis Holdout
Not the best map for
Medivh as, despite his strength on a map such as Dragon Shire where skirmishes will happen often, having him in a constant 4v4 lane will mean you don't have a proper secondary Support/Warrior/damage dealer, and if you fall behind he's worthless in defense. Very risky pick, but oftentimes not worth it.
Warhead Junction
A very large map which causes
Medivh's Trait to be more painful. If you don't draft a global (
Dehaka,
Falstad,
E.T.C.,
Brightwing ) or a splitpush Hero, you'll be at a great disadvantage due to
Medivh. If you can, however, force team fights all the time, you'll still be capable of doing well, however the odds of that happening aren't that favorable.
Haunted Mines
Since the map was never played in competitive it's hard to know what the meta for it actually is. Some believe it's just splitpushing while the enemy team gets the Golem since it's so bad, some say you just need to push with the Golem and win. That means I'll talk about both cases where you'd pick
Medivh. In either cases,
Poly Bomb only ever gets value inside the mines themselves, so in a splitpush oriented comp it's not going to be as useful. Unless the enemy gets a 100 Skull Golem and you have to defend, then it's actually pretty good at shutting down divers. Either way, back to the comps : In a splitpush comp you want to play him defensive and make sure to save your
Portal for escaping an enemy gank. On a typical comp that bases around getting the Golem and pushing with it, play like you normally would.
"Advanced" strategies Top
Hit n' run
You need to move very quickly during this one, so make sure you know where the enemy squishy is.
1. Place a
Portal from a safe position all the way behind the enemy's backline.
2. Enter the Portal, make sure
Force of Will and
Arcane Rift are not on CD
3. As soon as you exit the
Portal and are in the enemy's backline ,use
Force of Will
4. Use
Arcane Rift on an enemy squishy, such as
Li-Ming
5. Use the
Portal to get away safely
6. Repeat from step 2. Repeat from step 1 if the
Portal expires.
This puts pressure on the enemy backline and possibly forces a heal to be used on them. If an enemy squishy is very low on Health, stick around until you kill them ,but make sure the
Portal doesn't expire, which is why I really like
Stable Portal at Level 1. Make sure that you don't attempt this if you are half-done with
The Master's Touch ( or closer than that to finishing it ), unless you are absolutely sure you won't die.
Fort Dive
If you fight an enemy and he is low on HP, but runs away behind a gate, you can still kill him easily, assuming you aren't far too low on HP. You need to make sure that none of your Basic Abilities are on CD, an that the enemy has no very strong CC to stop you from executing the whole combo.
1. Go into
Raven Form and see where the enemy is. Try to be out of their CC range, but also be in range to cast
Arcane Rift on them
2. Bash them with an
Arcane Rift
3. Immediately after, cast
Force of Will on yourself to avoid damage
4. Put a
Portal outside the Fort, to safety
4.5 If the enemy is not dead and you are healthy, stick around a bit more until you kill them. Otherwise, go to Step 5
5. Use the
Portal and, if you are out of harm's way, go into
Raven Form
If both you and the enemy live, that's fine, you gave the enemy a heart attack.
If the enemy dies, good job, you made the enemy mad.
If you die, look at what you did wrong. Maybe you got heavily CC'd, or you didn't have mana to cast
Force of Will and
Portal, or you just had low HP and stood around for too long.
Quick escape
If you are being chased by a lot of enemies and you can't quickly use
Raven Form, consider doing this.
1. Look for the farthest away bush/steam vent that your
Portal can reach
2. Use a
Portal on that bush/vent. If the enemy quickly changes direction and no longer follows you, skip Step 3.
3. Go in the Portal ,and make sure you are in the bush so the enemy can't AA you
4. Immediately cast
Raven Form
This is the most effective way to run away from the enemy(ies) that are following you. However, if is a lot of unpassable terrain around, you can also cast
Portal behind all of them and quickly go into
Raven Form as soon as your go through the
Portal. Your enemies probably already used their gap closers, and little of them can go through terrain easily.
If only one of them follow you and your
Poly Bomb is not on CD, you can fight them. Someone like
Zeratul should be an easy kill if you use
Force of Will and
Poly Bomb at the right time.
If you picked
Ley Line Seal, try and hit all the enemies chasing you with it. It lasts 3 seconds, and the channel time for
Raven Form is about 2 seconds.
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