Vengeful Spirit

Shendelzare the Vengeful Spirit is a ranged Agility Hero excelling in ganks, disabling and kill hunts. She is one of the most potent supporters in the game. Effective from early to late game, Vengeful Spirit is typically seen roaming the battlefield, searching for targets to prey on, hitting them with a powerful stun with Magic Missile and reducing their armor and scouting ahead with Wave of Terror. Motivated by her determined vengeance, her Vengeance Aura boosts her bonus attack damage not only for herself, but her allies as well. This makes her an ideal partner for physical gankers and carries, and what makes her a potential Carry herself. Her ultimate Nether Swap switches your position with another hero; ally or enemy. This allows Shendel to swap an enemy key hero making him/her vulnerable or sacrificing herself to save an important ally from death which may be essential to win a clash, or perhaps the entire game. Her unusual reliance on Agility (rather than Intelligence, like most supports) results in her offensive capabilities being remarkably high, at the cost of having a lower mana pool. She needs items perhaps less than any other hero in the game, and as such can be played with great recklessness, as her death is only a slight inconvenience. Shendel requires very selfless and skilled play to operate well, and relies on the competence of teammates as much as herself.

Tips

 * Usually max Magic Missile first, as aside from being a powerful early-game stun it allows allies to land their own, usually-more-difficult spells. Leaving Missile at level 1 in favor of maxing Wave of Terror is a build often seen among professional players however.
 * Besides being an effective disabler, she is a potent interrupter from Magic Missile and Nether Swap.
 * Her Vengeance Aura boosts her own damage as well, so do not underestimate her autoattack.
 * Be aware that Vengeance Aura will push the lane, depriving your lane partner of farm and increasing the risk of a gank.
 * An amazing item on Vengeful Spirit is Medallion of Courage, it gives her a passive +7 armor which makes her tankier, She gets some good mana regen, and when comboed with her Wave of Terror she can drop a target's armor by -13 making most heroes have negative armor while under attack.
 * A ganking trick early-game is to Nether Swap an enemy hero into a tower's range, then use Magic Missile to stun them. With the tower's help you should easily kill the hero.
 * Vengeful Spirit can complement attribute-based carries like Sven, Drow Ranger, and Riki as both her aura and armor reduction enhances their damage. Keep in mind that her aura does not improve bonus damage from items and so is less effective for heroes who rely on such items. She is also effective in helping spells that are hard to land, such as Lina's Light Strike Array.
 * Wave of Terror is an armour reduction spell with very little mana cost, and should be used in every encounter. It can be used to reveal the fog of war to scout out possible ambushes or to reveal an area for a Nether Swap.
 * Without considering raw damage bonuses, the positive aura is equivalent to -2/-3.33/-4.67/-6 armor for enemies while the negative aura is equivalent to 2.27/4.17/6.48/9.38 armor for allies.
 * Vengeful Spirit can be an item-independent hero, meaning she can be effective even with minimal items. She should constantly be ganking your opponents keeping enemy carries in check, warding and de-warding maps or assist in pushes. Reserve the farming for your carries, as they require items and levels to be useful.
 * Nether Swap has multiple uses despite its simple mechanic. It allows Vengeful Spirit to bring an isolated enemy hero into her team, or to exchange her own life for that of a crucial ally. This very often entails suicide, but because of her ability to function with very few items, it is almost always better for Vengeful Spirit to die than for her allies.
 * With good communication, Nether Swap allows you to escape death by swapping with an ally that has potent escape mechanism such as Queen of Pain's Blink without putting them in much danger.
 * With Kunkka's X mark the spot on Vengeful Spirit, she can then swap her opponents while being returned back to her exact location afterwards, effectively saving her from imminent death.
 * Shadow Blade allows Vengeful Spirit to use Nether Swap and then escape from danger, making it a much more useful spell for initiation. Once invisible, She can engage at an appropriate moment in the ensuing team battle, with bonus damage. Ghost Scepter, Ethereal Blade and even Force Staff also have a similar utility with Nether Swap.
 * If being pursued by multiple heroes, Nether Swap can sometimes be used on the enemy hero furthest from you, resulting in the pursuers to overshoot slightly due to a sudden change in direction, giving you extra time to escape in a different pathway though putting you in the opposite direction from your intended escape route.
 * Swap goes through magic immunity and interrupts spells, therefore it can be used to stop Magic Immune units from chanelling a spell. This is Vengeful Spirit's main job when there are enemies who use BKB to prevent their spells from being interrupted. For example: If there is an Enigma on the other team, your job as Vengeful Spirit (or indeed as any support) is to stay at back of your team. Should the Enigma use his BKB and then Black Hole, you can swap him out to ruin the initiation.
 * Vengeful Spirit can be played as an effective carry if needed. She is not the hardest carry in the game, but can prove deadly in this role if played correctly. Items that focus on reducing foes armour, such as Desolator and Assault Cuirass as well as items that boost her primary attribute such as Ethereal Blade and Butterfly synergize with her skill set and maximize her DPS for this role.

Trivia

 * Magic Missile is the first offensive spell available for arcane spellcaster classes in the famed RPG series, Dungeons & Dragons.
 * Previous designs of Vengeful Spirit showed her with a mask that looked similar to her Vengeance Aura ability icon.
 * Vengeful Spirit's fun name, "820", is a tribute to former professional DotA player 820.
 * In DotA, she was the sister of Mortred, the, and her name was Shendelzare Silkwood. In Dota 2, her lore was changed so that she became affiliated with the Skywrath, thus switching her affiliations to Dragonus, the.