LogFAQs > #966555504

71 - Shadow Demon (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/7/2/AAAACbAADcy0.jpg
Basic Abilities: Disruption, Soul Catcher, Shadow Poison, Shadow Poison Release, Demonic Purge
Shard Ability: Adds new ability "Demonic Cleanse," which levels with Demonic Purge but uses a separate cooldown; Demonic Cleanse constantly dispels debuffs from its target and heals them at the end of its duration.
Scepter Ability: Turns Demonic Purge (and Demonic Cleanse, when Sharded) into charge-based abilities with three charges each. Demonic Purge will also affect its targets with Break for the 7 second duration.
7.31 (and onwards) changes: Shard rework to grant Demonic Cleanse (used to be tied to casting Demonic Purge on an ally for the same benefits, now uses a separate cooldown, which directly buffs himself and nerfs Rubick) Slightly more initial damage per level from Shadow Poison (+4/6/810 damage.)

You'd expect something this frickin' spooky looking dark demonic skull and stripped demonflesh and robes to be an unholy terror, and he sort of is if he gets going, but make no mistake; Shadow Demon is an unlikely support through and through. He occupies a seldom-used niche in video games in general - Burst-over-time, which is both a blessing and a curse, but also has scouting and saving capabilities.

As for the prior hint, he's got some slight notoriety for being the ONLY hero that was in the game at the time that was not picked during 2017's International qualifiers, and is seldom picked in competitive outside of Mirana or Kunkka shenanigans. Anyways, as ever, let's go over the abilities.

Disruption targets a hero (or illusion) and tucks them away in a pocket dimension where the only thing that can affect them is Shadow Demon's abilities. After two seconds in this pocket dimension, they will reappear next to two SD-controlled illusions of the original hero (so yes, you can inadvertently swipe a Phantom Lancer Doppleganger to build your own clone army.) Today I learned they will have the caster's name rather than the target's name, so mind that if trying to use it to help an ally juke.

Soul Catcher has changed a bit throughout the years. Once upon a time it was a huge area ability that cursed one target in said AoE to take extra pure damage. Now, it has a rather small area of effect (a bit larger than Maledict) that only strikes enemy heroes and immediately strips them of a percentage of their current HP, and after a short window of time, half of the stripped HP is returned to the victim. Note that this does NOT count as direct damage, so Blade Mail won't immediately kill him off, nor will it be affected by damage reduction modifications like Crimson Guard or Pangolier's Shield Crash. For every enemy hero struck by this, SD gains a temporary buff to his spell amplifciation.

Shadow Poison is a very low cooldown ability that sends out a loud, slow cloud in a line that deals a small amount of damage on its while providing vision around the cloud. If it strikes an enemy unit, they gain a stack of Shadow Poison's debuff. Whenever this debuff expires, either over the duration or when SD casts Shadow Poison Release, the target suffers a sudden burst of magical damage based off of how many stacks of the debuff have been applied - and each stack of Shadow Poison multiplies the damage received, up to five stacks (every additional stack only adds an extra 50 damage to the final burst, plus the extra initial damage from striking them with a cloud.)

SD's ultimate (ultimates, with a Shard purchased) is(/are) Demonic Purge (and Demonic Cleanse), a long cooldown debuff (buff) that slows and constantly basic dispels (just basic dispels) enemies (allies) for 7 seconds, during which their movespeed increases back to normal (isn't reduced at all, since most slows are purged during the buff.) After the seven seconds has elapsed, the enemy (ally) will take burst damage (burst heal.) With a Scepter purchased, this can get kind of silly, as Shadow Demon can have three different enemies crippled and three different allies have a heal-in-waiting.

Shadow Demon's abilities all have nice synergy with one another. Disruption can be used in conjunction with good timing and Demonic Cleanse to give an ally an un-interruptable potent heal spike, or set up an allied AoE stun to lock down a victim. Soul Catcher can also be used on disrupted enemy heroes to deal a slight amount of burst "damage" that also amplifies the final strike of Shadow Poison or Demonic Purge - which can also strike enemies stuck in the pocket dimension. Shadow Poison itself, meanwhile, is a bargain bin scouting and jungling tool; despite repeated nerfs to its vision throughout the years, it still can catch people in the treeline with its spammable nature, and if a Smoke is not broken, SD can clear stacked camps by himself with 5 quick casts of poison (or, even better, stack two camps at once while NOT smoked through the initial damage hit.)

I, however, have Shadow Demon down in the mid-low section of this list for a few small reasons rather than one big glaring one - points in his favor being some actually decent base stats and growths (apart from movespeed, but them's the breaks) AND having probably the best consistent "use enemy heroes against themselves" abilities (Dark Seer's ultimate/shard and Grimstroke's scepter don't count for "consistency," and Terrorblade's enemy illusions forever suck.) Nevertheless...
1.) Shadow Demon suffers from the "Dota is nearly twenty years old and people in pubs still don't know how he works" argument that Oracle, Chen, Io, and some others just because they're "more complex." You *will* get pingspammed for fucking up a Disruption because you can't read the peanut brain of your resident Juggernaut spammer. Bit of a double-edged sword for this lack of knowledge, however, because I've absolutely gotten first blood -> triple kills multiple times because people misunderstand "exponential growth" on poison damage stacks.
2.) Unlike other "Famished Supports," Shadow Demon at a severe disadvantage does not work well from behind - by the very nature of SD's kit, it is extremely easy to shrug off his burst damage in comparison to, say, the initial blast of a Crystal Maiden's nova/Lich's Chain Frost/Witch Doctor's Maledict. All the more so since nowadays he's expected to have a Shard at earliest convenience, and a Scepter slightly after that if the enemy team has a bunch of Passive reliance, which really blows on a support budget.
3.) For as much as he wants to spam Shadow Poison, it often winds up benefiting your enemies more than you if you use it carelessly and aren't paying attention to Magic Wands.
4.) Why the everloving shit does Shadow Poison Release have a cast point? SD should not be punished further for successfully bamboozling an area with multiple stacks of poison. Just give it a cooldown or something so Ability Drafters can't abuse Aftershock or something with it, and people with ADHD-on-Ritalin reaction speeds can't eternally cancel their way out of the burst window with a reactive cyclone during a windup. Yes, I'm sore here.

Next hero hint: Hi, yes, I'd like to file a bug report.