Dota 2 heroes shadow demon

Utility Shadow Demon

General Buildup

DotA2 Hero: Shadow Demon

Purchase Order

Starting Choices

Laning

Reusing Tranquil Boots’ Components

Possible Extensions

For when you’re sitting on an early pile of gold

General Optional and Situational Items

Your Luxuries

Hero Skills

Disruption

Soul Catcher

Shadow Poison

4

12

13

14

Demonic Purge

Talents

Utility Shadow Demon

1.	Introduction
2.	Lore
3.	Your role preference
4.	Spell Elaborations
5.	Gameplay
6.	Why Shadow Poison is not a Priority.
7.	Closing Notes

Introduction

Shadow Demon is one popular hero pick/ban choice in the scene nowadays, not only in DOTA 2 but also in good ol’ DotA. He is fearsome, versatile and not someone that is to be messed with. He can easily mess up the enemy’s laning whether going on solo 1-on-1 or on the sidelanes acting as a support.

Among the sovereign Demons with explicit access to this world, Doom Bringer scarcely bothers with the affairs of Noninfernals and Lesser Spectral Consorts, while Shadow Fiend passes through almost exclusively on collecting expeditions. The Shadow Demon, however, has always taken a deep and ab >

Your role preference

Shadow Demon is a Utility hero that can also be played as a Support early on, his main subrole is to be a Ganker.

Spell Elaborations

Here’s what helps you gain advantage of the laning phase. The spell itself acts like Outworld Destroyer’s Astral Imprisonment, the only difference is once the enemy pops out it spawns to illusions of it dealing 60% to the target for 8 seconds at maximum levels. Because of it’s seemingly high manacost of 120, it is not really advisable that you spam it every time it is off cooldown rather take advantage of every cast by applying constant harassment to the enemy once after it pops out to either kill it or drive it away giving you advantage on the lane.

A damage amplification debuff that targets a random unit within it’s AoE, this spell is the main partner for your Disruption as it is able to hit the Disrupted unit as long as it is within the AoE. Disruption also makes it easier for you to land Soul Catcher which in turn helps in increasing the Illusion damage through the Amplification debuff making them hit a little harder on the enemy.

Tip:
During the laning phase, if you want to make sure that you hit your specified target with Soul Catcher, it is best to land it in an area where your target is at the edge of the AoE marker or at the edge of the Circle away from the nearby creepwave if there is any.

Another spammable spell in the Shadow Demon’s arsenal. A stackable damage spell which quite hurts badly making it a heavy threat to people who wouldn’t know how to deal or get around with it. Although with this fact, it is still deemed to be not something of priority when it comes to leveling because of reasons which will be discussed later on.

A spell with reverse effects of the common Purge, Demonic Purge removes every positive debuff on the enemy as well as applying a heavy overtime slow and also deals Damage after the Maim’s duration.

Gameplay

As mentioned earlier, Shadow Demon can be laned in 2 ways:

Mid Lane Solo
Side Lane Early Support

If you’re planning to go midlane then be sure to rush up for your Bottle and ensure rune control. On the sidelanes, opt to be laned on the strong lane as to have the option to pull creep camps as to rack up some early EXP as well as gold.

Shadow Demon works best if he hits 6 early as that’s the time when he can readily and effectively gank on the other lanes. Having a handy Tranquil Boots does not only provide laning survivability but also keeping your gank constant as you won’t be worrying too much in running back to base because of your HP getting low.

By mid-game you would want to have either your Drums or Urn in hand or better if you have them both. If you’re having some great time farming though and is sitting on huge pile of gold, having an early Dagon is quite useful too as it lessens your kill-time window making ganks quicker and less dangerous in terms of allies backing up. Medallion of Courage, another optional item, can also provide a fraction of this benefit at lower costs but the burst amplified damage still looks prettier, remember though that having Dagon is only effective once taken EARLY.

Mekansm and Vladimir’s are general Utility items and help in giving you some team-oriented benefit knowing that your spells are generally oriented on one-on-one battles or ganking lone soloers and not really on teamfights. If someone else already grabbed an early Mekansm then it’s best if you go for the Pipe of Insight route.

Why Shadow Poison is not a Priority.

Now this question is quite easy to answer, people tend to spam Shadow Poison whenever they could in hoping to increase the stack damage and driving enemies away. The main problem with this idea is that your opponent would most likely be able to dodge the poison in time due to its quite slow missile speed making you not fully benefit from it, and worst it can feed up their Magic Stick/Wand counters.
Having a level of Shadow Poison early on is enough for farming purposes as it helps you in taking down waves with ease.

Closing Notes

All done and polished, a simple way of playing Shadow Demon. Constructive criticisms are very much welcome as to help in improving the gu >