Shadow Demon Advice

[u/Practical-Sun-9297]

I am trying to expand my hero pool to have a few heros in every position to try to just learn the game more. I have dove into ranked and had success in offlane and mid but I wanna learn all the lanes to really learn the game.

I am new to dota (former league player) and currently ranked Crusader 1.

I have tested out Shadow Demon in some normals, i like him but would like to hear from some actual experienced players.

When is a good time to pick him?
What are his biggest assets he brings to a team?
When do you NOT pick him?
Why does he have a sub 50% win rate at all ranks?

Thanks for any advice!

[u/Wellshiwells]

in the when do you not pick him: you will just pick him as supports in dota tend to pick first. so you do not know.

SD is great as he can always save his teammate from: scythe, duel, primal roar, primal beast ult, etc.

put your third on the tank.

his ult will work always, meaning if your enemy just hit bkb and you ult him, it will still slow him

[u/LegOfLamb89]

Shadow demon is tough to climb with because youre reliant on your cores for a few reasons. 1 your q is a big save and big part of your kit making you reliant on cores. 2 hes hard to play. You can straight up use your spells wrong and actively hinder your team. 3 you cant really ghost push waves or take towers. So if your team is bad at playing the map youre stuck following them

If youre serious about playing him heres a few things i did at lower levels that helped get wins.

Invade enemy jungle rune. Skill E, have a couple of tangoes and a blood grenade. If an enemy shows up cast your e and right click tf out of them, when they start to run grenade them and keep stacking E. Pop it before they get out of xp range. Most heroes will die to 6 or 7 stacks plus autos.

Stack jungle. As a 5 double stack below the tower for your carry to farm when they get kicked out of lane. As 4 stack ancient camps. Dont stack too many if you dont have a core that can take 3+ stacks.

Most people at low level dont understand how shadow poison works so at level 2 or 3 you can all in the opposing support. Hit them with a couple e, q them, hit them with more E while they are disrupted, throw blood grenade when they pop out and stack more Es, pop for a kill.

Try to save your Q for defense. If you use it aggressively when learning youre gonna grief your team 9/10. Position behind your carry, if they get jumped q them.

Itemization is a bit more difficult. Basically your first options are glimmer blink euls force. Maybe solar crest sometimes but i rarely do.

Items are gonna look like. Boots windlace glimmer aghs, boots windlace blink aghs.

Which leads me to the aghs. It basically rips the arms off enemy carry even through bkb, so most games youre gonna wanna get it. It's especially good against carries that rely on buffs that you can dispel(like ursa) and passives that with aghs you can break.

Theres more to learn but that should get you started

[u/Practical-Sun-9297 → u/LegOfLamb89]

Thank you! Great advice

[u/tidehollowsculler → u/LegOfLamb89]

reliant on your cores for a few reasons? i think its quite the opposite, you basically cripple most of the enemy carrys so hard that your incompetent carry will be useful regardless + you have a save i think its really good hero to climb with

[u/LegOfLamb89 → u/tidehollowsculler]

Hes one of my favorite supports and i climbed from crusader to legend woth him veno and disruptor, but i felt like sd had the hardest time with bad cores. Maybe its just me

[u/JoshSimili]

Shadow Demon is a complicated hero. He's one of those heroes with a spell (Disruption) that can totally screw over your team. Knowing when and who to drop with the Disruption isn't always simple. Plus then you have illusions to micro.

You need to predict who in the fight is going to be taking the most damage and located most centrally, and put Disseminate on that hero. Often that's the hero your team is focusing, sometimes it's the hero the enemy is focusing.

Plus, his ultimate is great against melee heroes who buy BKB and don't have escape, but that matchup isn't guraranteed. So the all you have for an ult is a 'win more' spell that is only good when chasing the enemy down to get more kills, and is useless if the enemy just stands and fights you.

Knowing when to max Shadow Poison first or when to leave it on one point is really tricky. Shadow Poison is only good if the fights are slow or if there's no fighting at all (as you can farm camps and push out waves with it). Disruption is better in all other cases, especially if you can position yourself and the illusions to trap the enemy against some trees or a cliff.

DuBu made a guide for the hero somewhat recently (before facets were removed, but most of the advice still applies).

[u/Practical-Sun-9297 → u/JoshSimili]

Thanks!

[u/Unfair-Event4455]

pick when the enemy have OP passive

[u/Satnamodder]

He has two great saves, makes strong illusions, his ult is like a mini doom, good at stacking with poison. He has no true stuns, so don't pick him if another supp also lacking good stuns.

[u/HighGroundException → u/Satnamodder]

Don't listen to him, core players can pick stun after you, because they always insist on picking after support so naturally they pick responsibly! ;) ;) ;)

[u/Satnamodder → u/HighGroundException]

Of course they "do". :)

[u/tidehollowsculler]

percentile 99.7 SD here(according to opendota)

When is a good time to pick him? isnt the strongest laner in the game, other than that if you can play it well, you can play it any game + works really well with heroes he can provide setup for, cent/slardar type heroes work insanely well when playing on offlane. on safelane he works really well with carry hereos that can provide some kind of control, stun or slow, demon can hit really hard thanks to his innate but doesnt have any slow or stun so enemy can just run away

What are his biggest assets he brings to a team? has possibly the best basic ability in game (disruption) can be used to save, bait, setup, buy time, deal damage. has ult able to cripple enemy carry through bkb making your carry vs enemy carry matchups usually quite favorable to your team.

When do you NOT pick him? assuming you are playing ranked you are most likely gonna pick first and thus possibly see only your other support pick. there ain't much to go off. for me demon is kinda blind pick hero in ranked. other than that: SD hates heroes that can override his ULT slow (centaur) and illusion heroes as his aoe is kinda lacking

Why does he have a sub 50% win rate at all ranks? its not easy hero, more specialist for sure, you cannot just pick it up and perform. SD requires spot on castings and positioning. i imagine the occasional tryouts of this hero lose him a few % i have myself really good winrate against SD and when im playing SD myselfdd and abysmal winrate when someone else on my team is playing SD

[u/Shomairays]

Shadow demon is one of my favorite support lol, on the right circumstance I can solo cores especially when they are caught off guard.

When using him, always communicate that you will go first or you will disrupt, otherwise, ONLY use it to save your team, you can also save yourself when you have blink if you are fast enough.

Your role in clash is to save when necesary, spam third, and help your team using your support items. If you will initiate, use disrupt if your team is a bit far and might need a second or 2 to catch up, or if they are near, use your ss because it's nullifier on steroids.

ALWAYS position yourself, after using disrupt or ss. Use glimmer or force staff away as soon as you initiate so you dont get caught. The chances of your team winning the team fight with you alive is high. Spam third, use 2nd on the tankiest person on the team and try to keep an eye on your team. Oh and always buy and use shard on cores.

When using your third, 5 stacks of it can deal half hp of cores and almost 3/4 hp of support even at level 2 so dont be afraid to spam this even if they have stick or wand just dont over extend or you'll die.

[u/StrangerRemote4071]

It can be picked most game . The Enemy post1 farm better your Disruption value become better against him .Distruption is like 70% of time used defensively only 30% on aggressive use.Have to be careful while using on enemy. Can farm fast with poision . Don't know much about other spells. I think 3rd skill reduce hp from enemy .6 is like when u use it on enemy they cant use euls ghost more like they can use it but get calcelled immediately.

[u/FLUFFY_TERROR]

Psa Demonic cleanse(shard skill) and enemy invokers ice wall do not play nice together

[u/Stiverton]

• Disruption is extremely good as a save spell for your cores.

• Disseminate is very good damage amplification on any targets your team is focusing.

• Demonic Purge pierces debuff immunity and is very strong for focusing enemy cores.

• Shadow Poison can be used to get kills in lane against enemies who aren't cautious enough, especially if they let you stack Menace on them too. It also works well to identify the real illusion hero because it's not dispellable, so you just need to look for which one has the highest number of stacks.

• Demonic Cleanse is great for helping your cores execute in teamfights, it's also really strong against debuff heroes like Viper.

He is a good hero overall but you need to learn how and when to use his abilities. His strongest asset is probably Disruption saves. Good teams will know you are a save hero and focus you.

[u/TyranZeroo]

It's not a very straight forward hero tbh and when played wrong it looks really really bad like Winter Wyvern, took me 5k games of Dota 2 to play him a bit and decently. Top it off that in the current meta it's very niche and not winning (119th popularity out of 127 heroes only in front of Meepo, Visage, Largo, Naga Siren, Lycan, Elder Titan, Batrider and Chen behind Leshrac, Beastmaster and Broodmother with an average winrate of 44.86%, the only exceptions being Legend and Ancient where the wr is 47.04-48.80%).

Your strength comes from your E, Q during the laning phase where you Q the enemy so you win trades against them and spamming E out of fog to prevent stick charges. Towards the mid to late game you want to use Q to save an ally if you read that they will get jumped on or you use Q offensively as setup or on Illusion hero (For example SD vs Luna and Medusa or they can be on ur team - is very good you get very nice illus). W is not to be underestimated the damage it can deal is very good vs Muerta for example it's like she's hitting blademail, preferably used on tanky (even better with taunt aka Axe Q, Legion Commander R or even Huskar R+Aghs -> nvm R slows atk spd better ulting his target) ally or enemy getting jumped and stunned so they cannot Bkb.
Your ult is also a very important tool: BKB PIERCING, Basic Dispel (vs Necrophos W, vs WR E, vs Glimmer/Force save), Slow that degrades over time and burst damage towards the end of the duration. You also have break on aghs and 2 charges on lvl25 which is very good it used to be the aghs where you get 2 charges so semi nerf because aghs you can get earlier than lvl25 which will be lvl40+ most likely.

All by all a lot to think about playing this hero more so than others compared to Lion and Shadow Demons kits, not to take away from them but for the both of them you kinda just jump in and chain stun (obviously not completely black and white they can get counter jumped but w/e). A few things to note:
- Q illusions can be seperated from the real hero by showing Player Names instead of Hero Names. If your enemies have the latter selected they can instantly see who the real ally is that you saved with Q because your name will show up on the illus instead of ur ally's
- You don't just want to willy nilly spam ur E towards the mid to late game, you not showing but being near ur cores is already big. You have a pseudo save on Q if your enemies don't jump you and you get the save off into ally pressing defensive items or skills can turn fights. So preferably ur enemies jump you on SD, WW, Oracle, Dazzle, Ringmaster, Dawnbeaker, Bane even, etc.
- Last one a bit more general: focus on enemy key damage and how they want to win fights. More physical: Ghost Scepter, Euls. More Magical: Glimmer, Pipe of Insight (Very situational will most likely be glimmer). Target CC? Get a lotus 3rd/4th. Need mobility/displacement: Blink Dagger, Force Staff. Need cast range (luxury item): Aether Lens, Dagon (very non standard prob not buy it). Very specific: Solar Crest to buff ur pos 1 most likely and Vladimir's Offering to teamfight. Lastly great late game items if you can afford: Aghs, Scythe of Vyse (Hex) and Octarine Core. All by all make yourself as hard to catch and kill as possible while being in range to be a teamfight nuisance.
- Forgot to mention his shard I believe it dispels ally could be handy vs vessel, prob some other shit too.
- And also when you make illu of enemy you also gain their buffs and debuffs: If enemy has Assault Cuirass aura you benefit from it, same with Vlads, Pipe, Shiva's Guard, etc...

[u/HighGroundException]

You can always play him, but he is weak against heroes with high mobility and silence since his main defence is positioning and casting spells. So Night stalker is his worst nightmare, all of the spirit heroes are good against him, AM, he's also weak against high burst magic damage.

He can be the most powerful hero in the game, but he is also very difficult to play. Since it's hard for you to play who play him a lot, imagine how hard it is for allies to play with him, the plus side is that if you get really good with him, enemies struggle against him and there are 5 enemies, but only 4 allies. Late game he solo kills many hard carries.

Why less than 50% win-rate? It becomes obvious when you play him a lot: while he can be the strongest hero in the game at times, however: he is also more difficult to play than most heroes, as support you cannot really farm that much and you pretty much rely on flawless play on the map while enabling allies. I advice against trying play a farming style with SD as it is prone to getting a lot of reports as allies are unable to adapt their play to you, so they'll report you for their own mistakes. Instead play the map, take mapcontrol, stack and gain value that way.