Until you're doing something like looking for Plantera bulbs to fight the boss, have a SLIVER of marble nearby, she spawns and suddenly you plummet and die because you have no way of knowing she's there unless you make hunter potions PRIORITY when you want to do ANYTHING underground. Like I can SEE the counter arguments to this but it really isn't fair. The absurd range Medusa has coupled with not even needing to be in the same CAVE with her, just be in a pocket nearby, means that even veteran players are going to be dying a lot unless you SPECIFICALLY REMOVE the Marble patches or find each and everyone and avoid them like the plague.
That or play super duper safe and use multi-hooks just to get around everywhere; that said, hooks are movement OPTION, not how you should be forced to move when dealing with a singular mob. The lengths you need to go through to defend against a singular non-boss mob even in hardmode with MOON LORD gear is absurd. At least give us something that prevents the debuff or nerf it in some way. It's flat out dumb how we can do things like farm all day for things like a Nazar or Armor Bracing or a Bezoar to stop really nasty debuffs then give this ultimate debuff that we have no defense against except for specifically altering our world to prepare for it or lighting up the entire underground to be safe.
Medusa's stone gaze was flawed in it's own lore! She got turned to stone herself from her reflection! And you mean to tell me we can't avoid this debuff, maybe flat out RUIN Medusa with say an item that drops from her that can reflect her gaze and we just have to 'turn around' which is really shoddy unless you know EXACTLY where the Medusa is to turn away from it!? We have bloody HAND WARMERS to defend against the god damn Frozen debuff and the like but we can't get an item that prevents getting turned to stone?
This issue transcends a 'nerf'; it just seems to me like it wasn't fully thought out or tested when it was implemented, or the implications of each possible situation weren't considered when they added this mob. Had we a way to prevent the debuff that isn't a shaky method that requires you to basically dissect the Marble, I could see Medusa being fair, but as it stands it's just dumb. The manner in which you can die instantly to a friggen' woman with snakes for hair that turns you to stone and causes damn near insta-death if you're in the air yet withstand an onslaught from an implied Lunar elder god is just dumb.
Weigh Medusa against the other 'difficult' mobs one has to deal with and you'll notice one of them has a straight up 'this is bull
' factor and the others can be progressively outmatched.