why is Shadow demon so disgutlingly useless?

[JolyJew СлаваУкраине]

im honestly seething while writing this. i never had a worse match in my life

picked shadow demon after the latest diretide patch - ended up being underleveld, undergeared and hated by my team. and there was NOTHING i could do to fix things,

early game is now pathetically miserable - i was against Bounty Hunter and Pangolier: they constantly harassed me and Faceless void forcing us to hug the tower. but when i tried to harass back or simply keep them away NOTHING worked.

use disruption? extremely short, and the clones barely do any damage, and besides, they easily just ran away from them and then come back 5 seconds later while i have a whopping 26 sec cooldown and wasted 1/4 of my mana pool.

shadow poison? lol, total waste of time - went out of my way to apply 4 poison stacks, ended up wasting all my mana - did pathetic 200 damage, and they just used a tango and recovered while i had no mana left.

hell, at some point i managed to get 7(!) poison stacks and all it did was like 400 damage but at level 5 that was only a 3rd Gondar's hp and not only did he survive that, he started chasing me after i ran out of mana and killed me with zero effort.
and from that moment the enemy didn't even care about my shadow poison, they completely ignored it no matter how much i spammed it

their abilities cost 4x less mana, and do just as much damage. couldn't even afford arcane boots with all the gold i kept wasting on hp recovery, couldn't pull creeps because then pangolier and bh could just kill us under the tower. so i was useless, helpless and a constant free kill

Shadow Demon's early game in nothing short of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ disaster, it doesn't matter how good he becomes in late game when he is so laughably useless in early game. this has to change. he was one of my favorite heroes.

[Rambit]

yea ive never had good games as shadow demon. glad i havent been getting SD in my cavern crawls

[rtx]

dont use that hero wait for new buff for shadow demon

[Dominic]

SD is not a good safelane support imo, but he is much better offlane. Esp when paired with axe, he can make illu of axe who can also proc spin. use those to tank tower, kill enemy pull camp, etc. with a few lvls into your disruption you will win most 1v1s against other supports as the illusions actually do quite a bit of damage. I typically max disruption as its just more useful then shadow poison (which will feed them stick charges) and disseminate (which is like AOEblademail. Make sure to pick up shard too as soon as you can cuz its a pretty hefty heal and itll protect your carry from almost every slow in the game in addition to things like urn/vessel

[hadrian900]

SD is generally an epitome of bad character design gameplay wise, pro don't play this hero, so icefrog doesn't care about doing any significant improvements to him. He simply does not fit DOTA 2 meta gameplay at all. He's extremely slow, no really, he's extremelly slow and extremely niche. Shadow poison is either too weak, or too expensive to use. 45 point of mana for 1/3 chance to hit an enemy character on a lane is just... well... i really wish to punch the person who came up with this brilliant idea.

[Zagryzaec]

He is actually pretty good. You just need to hit poison reliably early.

His 5 stack poison deal MASSIVE damage from about 400 up to 1000 damage for 5 stacks from skill level 1 to 4. That's huge considering that damage dealers spell deal about 150 at best. Now imagine you hit both characters.

His disruption can both Create strong illusion from enemy carry which outfarmed your and turn the match around or to save your teammates both in Chrono and disruption and that will even allow them to use their bkb.

His disseminate also allows utilise any situation in the game, if your team has lots of damage, if your team doesn't have enough damage, if enemies have lots of damage. Help to focus, to survive, to team fight.

And his two ultimates dispell most saving abilities from enemies whole giving uptime, break that is not often skill and work almost like bkb dispelling continuously all slows and attack debuffs.

The only problem of his - you need to know how to play him.

For example in early game most chars can't trade with him because he can easily stuck poison on them, and then just retreat with dispersion whenever he feels like it. His poison range also allows to apply it from safe position while refilling with clarity.

[Absche]

Good idea, haven‘t played SD for a while. I will try him at the week end after updating my build.

[Alpha Omega Pepega]

pos 5 who cant heal or solo win lane are just not good rn.

[iPunkBuster]

SD is fun hero atleast for me, good skills set.......but i like SD the old days, which i can spam skill 2 and dagon lol

[Worm original]

skill issue

[JolyJew СлаваУкраине]

Originally posted by Zagryzaec:

He is actually pretty good. You just need to hit poison reliably early.

For example in early game most chars can't trade with him because he can easily stuck poison on them, and then just retreat with dispersion whenever he feels like it. His poison range also allows to apply it from safe position while refilling with clarity.

well that is just BS. i specifically explained how i trade trading with BH and got destroyed even after applying 4 rank2 stacks
and later after applying 7 stacks.
he can't trade AT ALL at early levels that's what makes him so terrible

[hellatze]

Originally posted by Worm78:

skill issue

say this and still call lifestealer a support.

lul

[Logan Oak Worm]

Originally posted by hellatze:

say this and still call lifestealer a support.

lul

lifestealer is a support

[Will]

Originally posted by JolyJew СлаваУкраине:

im honestly seething while writing this. i never had a worse match in my life

picked shadow demon after the latest diretide patch - ended up being underleveld, undergeared and hated by my team. and there was NOTHING i could do to fix things,

early game is now pathetically miserable - i was against Bounty Hunter and Pangolier: they constantly harassed me and Faceless void forcing us to hug the tower. but when i tried to harass back or simply keep them away NOTHING worked.

use disruption? extremely short, and the clones barely do any damage, and besides, they easily just ran away from them and then come back 5 seconds later while i have a whopping 26 sec cooldown and wasted 1/4 of my mana pool.

shadow poison? lol, total waste of time - went out of my way to apply 4 poison stacks, ended up wasting all my mana - did pathetic 200 damage, and they just used a tango and recovered while i had no mana left.

hell, at some point i managed to get 7(!) poison stacks and all it did was like 400 damage but at level 5 that was only a 3rd Gondar's hp and not only did he survive that, he started chasing me after i ran out of mana and killed me with zero effort.
and from that moment the enemy didn't even care about my shadow poison, they completely ignored it no matter how much i spammed it

their abilities cost 4x less mana, and do just as much damage. couldn't even afford arcane boots with all the gold i kept wasting on hp recovery, couldn't pull creeps because then pangolier and bh could just kill us under the tower. so i was useless, helpless and a constant free kill

Shadow Demon's early game in nothing short of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ disaster, it doesn't matter how good he becomes in late game when he is so laughably useless in early game. this has to change. he was one of my favorite heroes.

I TRANSLATE WHAT U SAID...( im so stupid to play sd and yet so proud to admit it so i blame the hero for it)

[Candy Angel]

Originally posted by Crashing this game:

pos 5 who cant heal or solo win lane are just not good rn.

Why are you trying to solo win a lane as a POS 5? That could be the problem...

[Rabbit 🍌]

Originally posted by hadrian900:

SD is generally an epitome of bad character design gameplay wise, pro don't play this hero, so icefrog doesn't care about doing any significant improvements to him. He simply does not fit DOTA 2 meta gameplay at all. He's extremely slow, no really, he's extremelly slow and extremely niche. Shadow poison is either too weak, or too expensive to use. 45 point of mana for 1/3 chance to hit an enemy character on a lane is just... well... i really wish to punch the person who came up with this brilliant idea.

Pros do play this hero at least in pro matches. Good save and damage potential + usually illu push strat sometimes. There's been a patch where SD was a first phase hero in every single games for illu pushing with Luna and/or Centaur.