Shadow Shaman is back in the meta (Dota 2 patch 7.34b)

Some years ago, Shadow Shaman’s combination of long-duration Shackles, high right-click damage and AoE nuke made him a terrifying hero to play against in the laning phase. In turn, this made him a highly contested pick.

Then, after a series of nerfs and meta changes, he fell out of favor. But now his pick rate is at almost 13% again, while his win rate is 51.5%. These Dotabuff statistics clearly indicate that Shaman is now a very popular choice for the position 5 role.

What makes Shadow Shaman an excellent choice

Like other support heroes, Shadow Shaman can use a combination of magical damage and disables. But he also has a powerful ultimate that can be used for pushing towers, as well as a powerful AoE nuke that can be used to clear creep waves quickly.

Combined, his 10 Serpent Wards deal 500 damage at level 1 and last for 45 seconds. That’s enough to farm a large Ancient stack if you have something else to tank the damage, or take down a tower. Or perhaps just kill a large creep wave plus its reinforcements.

Shaman’s level 10 talent gives him -2s cooldown on his Hex, which lasts for 2s and can be cast every 10s (or 12 without the talent). However, many players prefer to choose the Shackles damage talent, which gives you +170 bonus damage for this ability, which ends up dealing more than 300 damage at level 2 while being channeled for 3 seconds.

Or you could maximize it early for a total duration of 4.2s and 470 damage, which is quite amazing. When combined with Juggernaut’s Blade Fury, you end up dealing more than 250 damage per second to a target while immobilizing it. That’s a death sentence for most heroes during the laning phase.

Shaman’s Hex doesn’t need more than 1 level initially, because the hex duration remains the same. But the cooldown and damage amplification get significantly buffed, which is why many players like to maximize it early.

Ether Shock deals 140-320 damage to 3-9 targets and has a cooldown of just 8s at level 4. This makes it a very powerful nuke that allows Shaman to farm quite easily.

What’s great about this hero is that his early talents are very strong. That’s a good thing for any support because you rarely get to level 20.

Header: Valve