Shadow Demon

Shadow Demon is a menacing ranged Intelligence hero who is most powerful in the early game for his strong set of spells. Disruption takes an enemy or ally out of the fight, banishing them to a shadowy realm and returning them a short time later along with two hostile demonic illusions. Soul Catcher can curse his victims with vulnerability, causing them to take more damage from attacks and spells. His Shadow Poison can harass any unfortunate foe he encounters, gradually dealing more damage with each application until the Shadow Demon releases the poison from the target in a powerful, damaging burst. Demonic Purge, his ultimate, is key for securing kills: The Shadow Demon greatly slows his fleeing victim and removes all purgeable buffs, crippling and weakening them, while also (when upgraded with Aghanim's Scepter) applying a Break that disables almost all passive skills. Heavily reliant on the coordination and effectiveness of his own team, Shadow Demon proves to be incredibly strong as a defensive support by keeping his teammates alive reliably and as an offensive support by amplifying damage and endlessly slowing enemies until they're unable to escape. A formidable ally, who requires little farm to contribute greatly to his team, good positioning and timing from Shadow Demon's spells can make all the difference, and makes for one of the most potentially powerful supports well into the late game.

Tips

 * has many good uses. One way is to save an ally after they get caught (e.g. by a stun) and save them from damage they would otherwise take, as well as prevent the enemy from stacking disables. Another use is to set up a gank: use Disruption, and then your allies can position themselves closer to the target, as well as set up spells that require aiming, or has a delay.
 * If you are facing a hero with a strong orb effect like Anti-Mage in the lane, use Disruption on them often and force them to flee from the illusions.
 * Shadow Poison becomes much more lethal when stacked up to 5, with this, you can destroy enemy heroes in the lane, even in the earliest stages. However, the mana cost is great and you should learn to control your mana or buy mana-boosting items for you to perform.
 * Check illusions of enemies created by Disruption. You can get useful information such as their skill build and item build.
 * Soul Catcher synergizes extremely well with single-target nukes, such as Finger of Death, Laguna Blade, or Dagon.
 * Soul Catcher is extremely effective in conjunction with Pure damage spells since they ignore any kind of magic armor and are amplified.
 * Disruption can be used to help teammates land spells with long cast times or delays. Examples include skills such as Torrent, Sacred Arrow, Light Strike Array and even Sun Strike or Slithereen Crush. When combined with Soul Catcher, this makes for a powerful ganking combination.
 * A Diffusal Blade can be used for much the same purposes as Demonic Purge, while having up to 16 charges (After using all the charges and buying a new recipe, and excluding any Diffusal Blades you might obtain in the future exhausting all charges possible). However, it does not go through Black King Bar (Or other similar time-based spell immunity, such as ) and it does not apply a Break. Consider it a possible alternative if Aghanim's Scepter is too costly and/or you need to purge multiple targets at once, but wish to save your ultimate for the one with the highest priority.

Trivia

 * In Dota, Shadow Demon's hero name was Eredar. This was removed in his transition to Dota 2 to avoid copyright issues with Blizzard as the Eredar are a race of magic wielders from the Warcraft universe.
 * Shadow Demon's fun/alternate name was "Giblet", innards of birds that are used in cooking.
 * All of his spell sound effects are based on some of his voice lines in the demon language "Ozkavosh". This Shadow demon spawn 04.mp3 line (" Sa nith icha gluth.") is used for Disruption, the first part of this Shadow demon attack 12.mp3 line ("Ozh icha tak izh") is used by Soul Catcher, this Shadow demon failure 01.mp3 is used by Shadow Poison and this Shadow demon rival 14.mp3 line ("Ozh icha tak lash") is split up into 3 parts and then used by Demonic Purge.