Should You Spam Shadow Fiend In Dota 2 Patch 7.36c?

Not that long ago, Shadow Fiend was a dead hero. Almost nobody picked him because everything except for his laning phase was weak. But nowadays, this hero is quite successful and many players are spamming him again.

At the community level, SF appears in nearly 22% of all games and his win rate is 52%. In this guide, I will explore some of the reasons why.

Shadow Fiend’s Strengths

SF has one of the best stat increase per level in the game. He gains 2.7 strength, 3.5 agility, and 2.2 intelligence. So he quickly becomes tanky and capable of casting his spells with high frequency. On top of that, he gains lots of attack speed and right-click damage.

SF also gains bonus damage and attack speed by acquiring and utilizing souls. He gains souls simply by killing enemy units and heroes. Feast of Souls allows him to spend 5 souls to gain 40 – 70 attack speed for 8s. If you combine this ability with Drum of Endurance, you can gain 115 attack speed for the first 6s. That’s a huge bonus.

To make SF even stronger, IceFrog gave him a powerful passive ability: Presence of the Dark Lord. This ability reduces the armor of nearby enemies by 4 – 7. The radius of this aura is 1200. If you decide to buy a Desolator on top, you will decrease most heroes’ armor completely. With 0 armor, enemies are much easier to kill using physical damage.

In the laning phase and when farming jungle stacks, SF can use Shadowraze to quickly deal 300 AoE damage. This ability can be used three times in quick succession and its cooldown is just 9s. That means that you can deal 900 damage in around 3s and then get the job done using basic attacks.

The hero’s ultimate, Requiem of Souls, reduces movement speed by 20 – 30% and magic resistance by 5 – 15%. It also applies the Fear debuff to all enemies. The damage is considerable, especially if the target sits close to SF.

This is a hero that depends a lot on the souls gathered from farming. If he can farm without getting killed, even for just a few minutes, he turns into a high-damage core that can shred his enemies in seconds.

Just buy a Dragon Lance when playing Shadow Fiend to guarantee yourself some easy attacks during fights. Apart from that, your item build is entirely up to you. Some players decide to skip this item and go for a hybrid build. Others like the high physical damage provided by this hero. Coupled with a Vengeful Spirit or a Slardar, he is very hard to fight into.

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