It is said that Shadow Fiend has the soul of a poet, and in fact he has thousands of them. Over the ages he has claimed the souls of poets, priests, emperors, beggars, slaves, philosophers, criminals and (naturally) heroes; no sort of soul escapes him. What he does with them is unknown. No one has ever peered into the Abysm whence Shadow Fiend reaches out like an eel from among astral rocks. Does he devour them one after another? Does he mount them along the halls of an eldritch temple, or pickle the souls in necromantic brine? Is he merely a puppet, pushed through the dimensional rift by a demonic puppeteer? Such is his evil, so intense his aura of darkness, that no rational mind may penetrate it. Of course, if you really want to know where the stolen souls go, there's one sure way to find out: Add your soul to his collection. Or just wait for Nevermore.Pick Shadow Fiend If :
- You need a high physical damage output hero
- You want a position 1 type of carry in the middle lane
- You're teamed with strong roaming position 4 and 5 support players
- Running a minus armor strat, aura strats or deathball strats
- At least one good initiator like Centaur Warrunner
- Fighting against a 4 protect 1 strat, less enemy support rotations
- Another strong core like Doom, Lifestealer, Razor
Do Not Pick Shadow Fiend If :
- Lacking proper support players especially against aggressive team lineups
- Too many core heroes are picked already
- In a 4 protect 1 strat but you're not that 1
- You have poor map awareness and positioning skills
- Against an aggressive ganking lineup (unless you farmed BKB and didn't feed)
- There are no heroes who can help make an impact like Clockwerk or Skywrath Mage
Pros :
One of the best flash farmers
Very high damage output
Incredible snowball potential
Good Mid-Lane Presence
Not that item dependant
Cons :
Pretty Squishy
Reliant on Souls
High Skill Cap
Needs decent momentum
Big early game weakness
Shadow Fiend's overall stat gains are good compared to many other agility heroes. With a very good agility gain and an impressive intelligence gain for an agility hero. With a decent intelligence gain and low mana-cost spells, Shadow Fiend can spam Shadowraze pretty often and that means easy flash farm or push. Although Shadow Fiend has an slightly below average attack range of 500, he makes up for it in good projectile speed. If Shadow Fiend has a weak early game, he can easily farm up his losses if there's room to do so. Shadow Fiend can farm without too much trouble if he positions himself correctly and has good game sense however there are several weaknesses Shadow Fiend face.Early Game Survival
Shadow Fiend has low starting health and below average starting armor so heroes who spam their spells like Skywrath Mage can do a number on SF if he doesn't get Bottle around 2 minutes. That means Shadow Fiend must prioritize positioning to the best of his ability to not only survive but farm as efficiently as possible. If you focus on getting better at positioning, game sense and timing, you will eventually be that much closer to mastering Shadow Fiend.
Turn Rate
As corrected by user HighestHand, Shadow Fiend actually has the best turn rate along with Pheonix. You can read about turn rates here.
Attack and Cast Animation
Cast animation times are pretty long so another big weakness is when Shadow Fiend uses Shadowraze since his cast animation takes .67 seconds and an additional .04 "filler" animation for you to try to cancel. When Shadow Fiend cast Shadowraze in succession, it takes 2.01 seconds including filler animation to cast. Enabling quick-cast eliminates the extra filler animation if cast in succession.
Another problem is Shadow Fiend's attack animation, it's .5 seconds long without the extra animation filler. This means you really cannot do a "brawl" type of fight especially against tanky targets until you have Black King Bar or if you're really farmed in comparison. Having more attack speed will alleviate this problem so buying Power Treads as quickly is possible is highly recommended.
Base Attack Damage
Although Shadow Fiend later becomes a very strong hero right-click hero, his early game base damage is one of the lowest in the game. That means trying to farm against heroes who has higher starting damage than you will be very hard and forces you to use Shadowraze to farm. Until you've absorbed enough souls to increase your damage from Necromastery, levels 1-4 will be Shadow Fiend's big trial to success.
Eliminating (most) Weaknesses
If you haven't noticed, most of Shadow Fiend's big weaknesses are canceled out by having more items (much like any position 1 core). However what's more important is in what order you get the items you need. Shadow Fiend doesn't need damage items until much later since Shadow Fiend's main problem is early game survival.
Necromastery offers a ton of right-click damage (72 bonus) which means Shadow Fiend's early right-click damage is highly dependent on his survival. This is why buying an early Black King Bar is highly recommended since Shadow Fiend's powerhouse potential is in his early game survival.
Item Build :
Standard Build (Ultility Shadow Fiend)
Standard Build (Right Clicker Shadow Fiend)
Situational Items
YaphetS Legendary Shadow Fiend Against EG.Universe Windranger Gameplay
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