Shadow Demon/Guide

Lane Support/Gank
This is the most common way to play Shadow Demon. It relies heavily on teamplay as your hero will do very little of the damage himself, serving only as initiator with Disruption followed by Demonic Purge (eventually), while using Shadow Poison to scout and chase.

Illusions
This is a scenario where you know Disruption illusions will do a lot of damage, probably to enemy buildings. This style requires a bit more micro as you will need to control the illusions you're spawning instead of letting them attack whatever.

This style is fully dependent on your and enemy team composition. Your best friend in this scenario is as the illusions will dish out colossal amounts of damage while he's in, also being a lot more durable than his own. These images also serve as the perfect target for your Disruption, as it can't be used as an initiation against Terrorblade himself.

Other friends include, , , and more. All these heroes are also good targets when playing against them.

Since you're maxing out Disruption, keep in mind the cooldown gets shorter and you'll have more occasions to save your allies' lives from a deadly or even a.

Note that in scenarios where maxing Shadow Poison last, it can be interesting to ignore the second level of Demonic Purge at level 12. The damage from Demonic Purge only increases by 100 per level and the slow improves a bit. If you can get three stacks of poison or more on an opponent, the damage from poison actually scales better.

Jungle
This is a scenario where you'll be stacking and farming the jungle, perhaps because the opponents have escape mechanisms and your team has no real catch/silence, perhaps because both teams have a jungler and you cannot gank theirs by yourself. In this scenario, think long and hard before skilling Shadow Poison at level 1 since in most cases, you should prioritize Disruption for your first skill point.

General

 * In most scenarios, Shadow Demon's combo goes as followed: initiate on an enemy with Disruption and Soul Catcher; use Shadow Poison to disable their should they have one, use Demonic Purge when the enemy pops out of Disruption, and attempt stacking more poison on them during the slow period. You can repeat the combo if you have  which gives charges to Demonic Purge and suitable talents that lower cooldowns of abilities.
 * Units hidden by Disruption will still be susceptible to all of your other abilities, taking damage from Shadow Poison and Demonic Purge, as well as receiving debuff from Soul Catcher.


 * Disruption offers numerous utilities from saving allies, setting up abilities, to creating illusions of any heroes.
 * Disruption hides the target, leaving them invulnerable, much like but with some differences.
 * Like Eul's Scepter of Divinity, Disruption can set up for hard to land abilities such as, , , or , or simply buy time to gather allies with any follow ups. Also, it wastes seconds of an opponent's precious buff, such as or . Furthermore, Disruption helps allies by hiding them from enemies performing chain disables, potentially saving their lives.
 * Unlike Eul's Scepter of Divinity, Disruption will not dispel an enemy of a long-lasting buff like or . However, you can use Demonic Purge for that. Also, you can use Disruption on allies to hide them from dangerous abilities like  or.
 * Use Disruption defensively to buy time so you can safely wait for reinforcements or an ally can wait for their cooldowns to escape with mobile abilities like or.
 * Disruption, like most hides, can do more harm than good as it might save enemy heroes from certain death by buying time for their allies to come for the rescue or allow enemies to connect your banished ally with their own initiation and follow ups.
 * Disruption also creates two strong illusions of the target, making Shadow Demon dangerous against illusion based heroes such as or . If the target is an enemy, the illusions will automatically attack it. These same heroes will also work as your best partners when besieging the opponent's high ground at little to no risk.
 * Use Disruption on allied illusions without banishing the original hero.
 * Use Disruption to make allied illusions when the enemies are using Glyph of Fortification.
 * Plenty of heroes have an escape mechanism that can render your illusions useless after the Disruption (,, , etc.); if no ally on your team has any follow up stun or silence, you may be better off leaving it at that instead of wasting your mana. But, you can control the illusions to target a different opponent, or even push out the lane and farm.
 * In the early game, the illusions spawned also serve to fully block an opponent that would be trying to hide or juke in the trees, or that would be carelessly walking close to a wall. Hypothetically, you should even be able to fully block an opponent by your lonesome self with just the help of an : the enemy would be blocked between yourself, two illusions, and a temporary tree. Otherwise, you cannot block someone with only yourself plus the illusions and no extra border.
 * If you are facing a hero with a strong attack modifier like in the lane, use Disruption on them often and force them to flee from the illusions.
 * Check illusions of enemies created by Disruption. You can get useful information such as their items and the levels of their abilities.
 * Disruption works great on heroes with auras either from items or abilities as illusions will take advantage of auras to provide to your teammates. Most notably, look for to turn the item against their heroes and creeps.
 * During its duration, targets of Disruption will still be affected by all of Shadow Demon's abilities, i.e. Soul Catcher and Demonic Purge can deal damage, and Shadow Poison can get new stacks and deal damage.


 * Soul Catcher scales well into the late game since it removes a percentage of HP from the enemies no matter how tanky they are, ignoring damage manipulation.
 * Use Soul Catcher early in fights to reduce the most HP from the enemies. Then, nuke them with Shadow Poison and Demonic Purge.
 * Soul Catcher affects creeps, but not ancient creeps or.
 * Use in combination of abilities that pulls enemies close to each other, such as, , , (Upgraded by ).
 * Tips needed.


 * Shadow Poison takes some time to set up at the maximum of five stacks. Shadow Poison is at its strongest in drawn out fights where Shadow Demon can stand in the backlines and build up Shadow Poison while bombarding foes with other abilities.
 * Use Shadow Poison to cancel of enemies from far away or under Disruption, preventing their initiation or escape.
 * Shadow Poison gives flying vision over its area during travel time, so use it to deward up cliffs and scout out enemies hiding in trees or highground.
 * Shadow Poison becomes much more lethal when stacked up to 5, so you can destroy enemy heroes from the laning stage, but you will need mana for it so try buying and such.
 * Be wary if your opponent has a, as the charges provided by Shadow Poison will help them sustain in lane and potentially turn a gank around, and they can dodge Shadow Poison easily if they keep an eye on you. So, you should use Shadow Poison from the trees or anywhere out of enemy vision so they will not receive stick charges. If they still receive stick charges, then they have or invisible units on you.
 * Use Shadow Poison to cancel or  usage of enemies from a safe distance.
 * Shadow Poison is dispellable, but the damage always triggers when the debuff expires. Therefore, enemies might die when attempt to dispel with too many stacks of Shadow Poison before they have healed up enough (for example with or ).
 * Ways to safely dispel Shadow Poison include gaining spell immunity, invulnerable or hidden (like, or a self cast of ). You can also hide the target when Shadow Poison is about to expire naturally (with for instance).
 * Shadow Poison fully works on invisible heroes, and it can be your safest way to secure a kill without diving a tower. Since the damage doubles on each stack of poison, it's only interesting to keep the stacks on a fleeing opponent (that could potentially heal while you try to chase) if you think you can get at least 3 stacks on them. If you can only get two, it will damage for the same amount as two stacks of one. In lane however, you have a full ten seconds between each stack to try to add them up to 4 or 5, forcing them to run away. If the opponent is melee and tries to go for a last hit, that is your opportunity to add another stack.
 * You can easily farm the jungle with Shadow Poison, speeding up the process as you level it for more damage.
 * You can also use it double or even triple stack certain camps (and farm those stacks too): the poison will activate by itself after ten seconds so you can use it once on a far away camp around :43 so it will aggro you at :53 and stack; use another on a nearby camp that you don't have vision of at :53; and stack the one in front of you with a right click at :55. You can't be too far away from the first camp you're trying to stack or else it will not aggro you when the poison activates, making the whole triple-stack process rather tricky.
 * Similarly, should you find a bit of space to farm in lane, Shadow Poison will help you stay far away to safely farm or push out the lane.


 * Demonic Purge pierсes spell immunity to kite dependent heroes like, , and.
 * Over its duration, Demonic Purge will constantly dispel many buffs placed on the target such as, , , , and a variety of item buffs such as , , and.
 * grants an enormous increase in potency of Demonic Purge by giving three charges for long spell immunity piercing slow and dispel.
 * Aghanim's Scepter also gives Demonic Purge the break debuff which disables enemy passives over the duration, erasing heroes like and  from fights.
 * Do not forget the huge magical damage at the end of Demonic Purge; with suitable talents, Shadow Poison, and Soul Catcher, Shadow Demon will find finishing off crawling enemies a cinch.
 * Demonic Purge can dispel and stop enemies from using, and.
 * It also instantly dispels 2.5 seconds of invulnerability granted by and prevents healing from.

Items
Starting items:
 * provides cheap attributes and can later build into Magic Wand.
 * provides health regeneration early in the game. Shadow Demon can share Tango with the team's carry, allowing them to stay longer in lane.
 * also restores health for Shadow Demon to quickly get back into action.
 * ferries items to teammates.
 * provides vision over enemies.
 * reveals enemy wards for Shadow Demon to destroy.

Early game:
 * provides burst health and mana, an excellent source of sustain.
 * give Shadow Demon the mobility he needs for ganking and escaping.
 * grants bonus movement speed for cheap.
 * makes ganks easier by hiding your squad and speeding up their movement.

Mid game:
 * gives attributes and more health and mana burst than Magic Stick.
 * provide additional mana pool and consistent restoration for repeated uses of Shadow Poison.
 * improves Shadow Demon's intelligence and utility; a typical support item to either reposition, run away, chase, initiate, or save an ally.
 * provides invisibility and magic resistance so that Shadow Demon or an ally can escape.
 * allows Shadow Demon to rapidly escape from danger, defend towers, join teamfights, or set up ganks.

Late game:
 * increases spell damage and reduces the mana cost of abilities.
 * gives you an extra dispel to work with. The movement speed bonus helps with mobility as well as position, and the intelligence and mana regeneneration aids ability usage.
 * applies break with two extra charges which are well worth the cost, and you should always consider it at one point or another.

Situational items:
 * provides bonus attributes and a defense mechanism against enemy physical attacks.
 * grants an aura of armor and health regeneration that works better on wounded allies, as well as an active to restore large amounts of health and mana in a radius.
 * provides strong mobility so you can setup ganks with Disruption; you can also Blink out of Disruption as a defense mechanism.
 * benefits all abilities of Shadow Demon, especially Disruption, which has a fairly low cast range. The mana regeneration also allows you to sustain while you spam with Shadow Poison to farm or to scout. You can disassemble Arcane Boots to build this item.
 * provides some armor and intelligence so you can stay alive longer to use abilities. The active ability lowers enemy magic resistance, which is great if your team relies on magical damage or to boost your own damage output.
 * gives a good health regeneration aura. More importantly, it allows Shadow Demon to produce a barrier that absorbs magical damage for nearby allies, extending their longevity in teamfights.
 * provides attributes to build up health and mana, as well as a root to hold enemies in place.
 * gives an additional area-of-effect slow besides Demonic Purge. The Freezing Aura, armor, and intelligence give Shadow Demon greatly increased sustainability and mana in teamfights.
 * grants mana regeneration, great intelligence, and other attributes. You can use Hex immediately as it has no cast time, allowing teammates to hit the target with ease.

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