Shadow Fiend is one of the highest damage dealers in the game, one of the fastest flash farmers and, on top of that, a very strong laner. At the same time, he has exceptionally poor survivability. Even though he has huge potential to take over games and crush his opponents, he is one of the easier heroes to stop by pressuring. Because of this when you play SF you don’t have a big margin for error. Making the right decisions consistently will make the difference between feeding and owning.

Shadow Fiend is a carry hero that is usually played as a solo, mostly in the mid but can work in the safe lane. Thanks to his laning strength he will most likely be able to get all the farm he needs in addition to interrupting the development of his lane opponent. Thanks to the versatility of his item builds he fits various strategies and is not a tactically narrow hero.

Over the years SF has become one of the heroes symbolizing the professional Dota scene, specifically the best mid players.

When you pick SF you want to keep two things in mind – you want to maximize the impact of his damage potential and minimize the impact of his squishiness.

Because of his strong laning presence, flash farming capabilities and carry potential SF is a snowball hero and he is very hard to stop once he gets momentum. Making sure that his development is not capped prematurely is vital if you want to include him in your draft.

Since SF is a greedy pick (he needs some time and resources invested in him to start paying off), it is a good idea to secure the early game when you want to include him in your strategy. You can do this with some active early game picks which create free space on the map for him to flash farm uninterruptedly and become a game-dictating hero in the mid and late stages.

The other way to approach drafting him is to punish the passive and greedy picks of your opponents – if they are unable to apply pressure, SF is likely to be able to outfarm them and make the mid game stages harder for the enemy team. Once he has some core items he can start applying a lot of pressure – he can gank with Eul’s and SB/Blink or even force early fights with some stat items and BKB.

SF is quite tactically versatile. His main contribution to the game is lots of damage, which every strategy can make use: to win team fights; to farm faster; to take objectives faster etc.

The mid lane is the most common for SF mostly because of his strength in 1v1 situations. He is able to win his lane against most heroes and outright crush weaker solo laners. This could force opponents to invest time trying to help out their mid laner in order not to lose the laning stage very hard.

In terms of lane dominance, SF works a bit differently than most other strong 1v1 heroes. He is weak early on, but as he gains more souls and higher levels in Raze he is able to take over the lane very convincingly against any hero. In that sense, the lane opponents that can create the most problems for an SF are heroes that are very dominant laners from lvl 1. For example, with some good creep equilibrium control, a QoP can heavily harass and out-last hit the SF, slowing down his development considerably. If the SF gets some help in the early levels, however, he should do fine later on.

Make sure SF is not going to get constantly ganked. This means picking him when the enemy supports (or even cores) are not particularly strong gankers and if needed to actively protect him in the mid lane.

Against heroes that hit a timing to be able to gank (like Clock or Storm), it might be a good idea to rotate into the jungle rather than stay alone in the lane when they hit that timing. One of SF’s biggest strengths in the mid lane is his ability to almost instantly clear the creep wave with Razas and to go farm the jungle. This increases his GPM, but equally importantly it leaves him less exposed to ganks.

In most games, you want to use SF’s laning strength and allow him to dominate a 1v1 situation. However, in some games, your opponents challenge the SF pick with aggressive counter-picks which apply pressure and gank the SF early on. Putting him mid in that case would be very risky. It is a safer decision to play him like a traditional hard carry and protect him with a support. 

The good thing about SF in a defensive lane is that because of his laning strength he can usually win against the enemy offlaner on his own once he gets a few levels and creeps/denies to increase his damage. This means that your supports have the freedom to rotate and help out in other lanes. Moreover, with a good disable from the support SF has very high kill potential in the lane thanks to his Razes.

Good friends to have are:

Weak Against:

Strong Against:

Shadow Fiend is relatively inflexible in terms of skill builds. Shadowraze and Necromastery are the early game tools you use to dominate the laning stage, so you need levels in the two as fast as possible. Presence, on the other hand, is more efficient in the mid and late game, when you start dealing heavy physical damage. 

A decision you need to make is when to take your first point in Requiem. In terms of damage potential, the skill becomes useful when you get the maximum number of souls, for which Necromastery needs to be max level first. If you take Requiem earlier you are unlikely to use it, while if you skip it the earlier level in Necro could help you out in the lane – you will farm faster since you have higher damage.

For SF there are three types of items that work very well – items solving his survivability issues, items increasing his damage potential and items increasing his mobility. The last type increases both his damage output potential through better positioning (especially important for the ultimate) and his survivability by giving him an escape mechanism.

An aggressive SF build revolving around pickoffs early on and maximizing the DPS output of the hero later on. Wraith Bands, Treads and Drum's are your early game cheap stat items, which will allow you to be more aggressive in fights. You want to get SB - it increases your right-click damage and allows you to find pick offs and position yourself for good Requiems. Afterward, you need some survivability item (usually BKB) and you can go for your late game DPS choices (Butterfly, Assault, Satanic, Daedalus, MKB). 

The main focus of this build is to give yourself a lot of utility and initiation potential – you can start ganks or team-fights much more easily, which allows you to be active around the map from early on. Treads, Wand and Clarities can solve your mana problems in the early game, before Eul `s. You can use the Blink into Eul into Requiem combo to take solo kills. Later on, when you get your BKB, you can start fights in that manner. The high mana sustain and MS from Eul’s also allow you to flash-farm very efficiently with Razes. In the late game, you go for whichever item fit the game best, but the “core” pickups you want are Octarine and Hex since they synergize amazingly well with your other items and CD reduction talent. You don’t need to rush them – to use them with maximum efficiency, you need your lvl25 talent, which means you usually can build another late game item before them (Aghanims, Shiva’s, Linken’s, etc.).

Winning the last hit war in the lane is very easy for SF if he manages to get to a point where he has very high attack damage because of Necromastery. The tricky part is getting to that point – initially, he has very low base damage.

When you get sufficient attack damage versus most heroes you can easily out-last hit and out-deny them. Using Shadowraze to get last hits is always an option, however, if you want to control the creep equilibrium it might be a good idea to last hit primarily with your attacks.

Later in the laning stage, you usually want to start pushing out the wave with Razes. This will give you free time: usually, you use it by farming the closest camps to your lane. You can use Clarities to sustain your mana and increase your farming speed.

Passive Harass: High damage attacks because of Necromastery.
Active Harass: High damage nukes – Raze. The debuff lingers for 8 seconds. Sometimes it’s a good idea to refresh it with a different Raze (the one you used will still be on CD), especially if you want to attempt a kill afterwards. I.e. you can go; long range to harass; medium after 5-6 sec to refresh duration; long range again when it’s off CD to attempt a kill (or simply to harass again).

If your opponent is harassing you, you need to fight back. Because of your high damage, you have the tools to get the better end of the exchange – use both Razes and attacks. The smartest thing to do is to fight back with the medium range Raze and attacks. This way your other Razes will be free – in case the enemy commits and comes closer, you can use the short one. If the enemy tries to run away you can use the long one. This way you will not let your opponent drive you away from the creep wave and you will always be in position to successfully contest last hits. Additionally, if you keep him/her on below-max HP it will be easier for your supports to rotate and gank successfully.

In theory zoning out is possible by standing between the creep waves and your opponent, however, it is quite risky – if you get initiated in this position by a rotating support you will most probably die. Since you are a carry and for you it is more important to secure your own development rather than stop the one of your opponents, it is generally better to stay at a safe position and concentrate on denying and last hitting. If you manage to deny most of your creeps your opponent will already be getting very little out of the lane.

To put it briefly, with SF you shouldn’t try to pressure your opponent too much – your goal in the lane is to take all last hits and denies, so you should harass only when the positioning of your opponent allows it. If your opponent pressures you, however, you need to stand your ground and fight back.

Even though you have a very high kill potential with SF it is quite hard to capitalize on it. The reason for this is that you don’t have control – you have very high damage, but when your opponent decides to walk away you don’t have a way to stop him/her. Hence it is very hard to take solo kills if your opponents don’t make mistakes. Consequently, it is generally better to play more defensively. You should concentrate on denying, last hitting and harassing without overcommitting. If you take too many risks they might not pay out while at the same time you might get in trouble.

Nonetheless, enemies quite often underestimate the nuke potential you have once you get a higher level of Razes (usually at level 5). Against ranged heroes, with two long-ranged Razes, you can deal a lot of damage – this nuke burst might catch squishier targets off-guard and score you a kill. If you face melee opponents and they walk towards you, you can do the full triple Raze combo starting with the longest one. In that sense even though you are not proactively searching for kills it is important to capitalize on the mistakes of your opponents.

With the help of your allies (mainly through disables) taking advantage of your damage is much easier because you can land your Razes much more easily.  If a support is ganking your lane or attempting a kill, it is important to try to follow up on the disable. Land as many Shadowrazes as possible and finish the kill with attacks. It might be a good idea to save the long-range Shadowraze in case the target walks out of your attack range.

Nevertheless, with SF you shouldn’t play proactively in the early laning stage – concentrate on winning the lane through last hits and follow up on the actions of your allies.

In terms of levels your timings in the laning stage are set by Shadowraze and Necromastery – the more points you get in each skill the better you are at last hitting, flash farming, harassing and even killing.

Rotating to help out other lanes is usually not something you would want to do early on. Putting yourself at risk before you have your core items might make the game harder for you. Instead, you need to stay in the lane and control it for as long as possible.

If the lane becomes dangerous (strong gankers on the enemy team are missing) you could rotate to your own jungle, where you can flash farm using Razes.

If the enemy mid laner is rotating and is missing in your lane, you have a good push potential – use Razes to clear out the waves and start hitting the tower. However, this is a risky move if you don’t see where the enemy supports are. If you do, you should pressure the tower. If you don’t, better push the wave with Razes and go to the jungle to farm up there.

If you are rushing a Shadow Blade you could rotate to another lane with it because it is important for timing – it will allow you to get in position for a kill with the help of your allies. Your opponents are unlikely to have Sentry Wards to counter your rotation since they don’t know that your SB is ready. The same applies for Eul`s: if you have Eul`s you can try to rotate and set up for a solo kill with Requiem.

You don’t do anything too unique in terms of pushing, however, your potential to instantly clear the creep wave with Razes and your high attack damage which you can use on the tower actually make you a strong early game pusher.

If your opponent has rotated out of the lane in the laning stage you can easily pressure the tower by nuking the creeps as fast as possible and hitting the tower. If you are afraid of ganks and don’t want to overextend you can simply nuke enemy creep wave and rotate into the jungle - your own creeps will still do damage to the undefended tower.

If you are pushing with your allies and your opponents are not defending you can intercept the incoming enemy creep wave and nuke it down with 2/3 razes. This way your own creeps will continue attacking the tower uninterrupted, speeding up the push a bit.

You are a strong laner, however, you shouldn’t get carried away and try to shut down your opponent too much (with harassing, zoning out and being aggressive). You are first and foremost a carry and you should worry mostly about your own farm, levels and safety. Dominating the lane comes as a consequence – getting as many last hits as possible will increase your damage and allow you to deny more and harass more efficiently.

You are a squishy hero so you should position yourself more defensively. Try to control the creep equilibrium so that it is closer to your tower and you can stay on your high ground, having vision of potential gank rotations. If the creep equilibrium is not in your favor and especially if heroes are missing on the map you should nuke down the enemy creep wave with Razes. This way you will take the last hits faster and spend less time in a vulnerable position. The enemy tower will also kill off your own creep wave and reset the creep equilibrium. If you cannot see where enemies supports are, even going in to nuke down the creep wave might be risky - they might be ganking you in this very moment. It is safer to go to the woods and farm up creeps there; with the help of Razes you can quickly clear out some jungle camps.

The tricky part of SF is to get to your higher damage, i.e., to get the initial last hits. To do so, you need to make sure that the creep equilibrium favors you – try to do a good block at the start. The closer the creeps are to your tower, the harder it will be for the enemy to deny them.

The creep block is quite important for SF – if your supports don’t block for you, you shouldn’t go for the bounty rune but you should prioritize blocking your creeps instead.

After you get some damage from Necromastery you should be able to farm efficiently only with your attacks. Shadowraze, though, opens some opportunities for you.

When you nuke the enemy creep wave down very fast you have some free time on your hands. The safe way to use it is to go to the closest camp and either farm it. This is easier to do on the Radiant side since the creep camps are very close to you, but it is possible on Dire as well.

In order to maximize your farm, you would want to do this relatively often. When you have three levels in Raze you should push out the waves and use Clarities or Bottle to restore your mana and rotate between the lane and the nearby neutral camps: wave-camp-wave-camp. This should give you ~180 additional GPM, helping you out-farm the enemy core. If your supports have prepared some stacks for you, this effect could amplify greatly.

Once you start flash-farming really fast, you will likely be able to clear two creep camps in-between waves. This will give you the opportunity to rotate between the mid lane camps and offlane camps – wave, mid camps, wave, off camps. To be fast enough in these rotations you also need some MS items, usually upgraded Boots + Drums or Eul.

Contesting the rune after clearing the wave with SF is only a good idea if you know where the enemy supports are. You can easily die if they catch you on the rune spot.

CTOMAHEH1 starts with Wraith Band (upgrade to Aquila) and Branches (upgrade to Wand) for maximum starting damage. He gets Necromastery lvl and with the help of his support (Bara is not even trying to kill Invoker, just secures SF damage) SF gets some early free souls.

There is one key point in the laning stage - at 2:20 when SF sees that Tuskar is waiting for him in the mid lane, he pushes the wave as quick as possible (using 2 Razes) and goes to the jungle. There he clears one medium camp and stacks the big camp for later.

By doing this, even if he misses some lane creeps, he is safe from the enemy roamer. After lvl5, Aquilla and some Clarities, SF pushes the wave all the time and farms the jungle.

After getting Eul`s he rotates top to push the tower and even manages to kill Huskar twice, starting his mid game very favorably.

In a defensive lane Nevermore functions quite like a traditional carry. Yet, because of his laning strength, he is likely to be able to handle the 1v1 situation against the enemy offlaner once he gets some levels and last-hits to increase his damage. This gives freedom to the supports to rotate out of the lane and help out the rest of the team.

Unlike in a 1v1 situation, in a 2v1 you are likely to have uncontested access to creeps in the first few minutes of the game. This will allow you to easily get souls for your Necromastery despite your low base damage. What this means is that you can afford not to use Shadowraze to help in last hits, which in turn will let you preserve the creep equilibrium more easily and save your mana for harass or kill attempts. With control from your support you can easily threaten a kill by hitting all three Razes.

In the later laning stage with a few levels into Shadowraze, you have the option to do something similar as in the middle lane. You can use Razes to kill the creep wave as fast as possible and go to the closest camps (the large and small pull camps) either to farm with more Razes or to stack so that you can farm it later.

When you are pushing the wave you are giving access to farm to the enemy offlaner, so this tactic is a tradeoff. If your supports are in the lane, it is better to control the equilibrium and let them stack the camp. If you are alone and the offlaner can reach the wave anyway, you should attempt to push out the wave and farm the jungle. You will give farm to the offlaner (you will not be there to try to deny creeps), but you will get more than him from the stacking and farming.

You can use this tactic also as a defensive mechanism. If the lane is pushed out and you don’t feel safe, you can instead farm in the jungle - you are harder to gank when you are out of vision.

In terms of levels, your first timings are connected to your Shadowraze. Once you get it at lvl3 or 4, and ideally level 5 you can start flash farming the jungle. The other important checkpoints are synched with your ultimate –a higher level of it (especially when you have Eul`s) increases your team fight and solo kill potential greatly.

Eul`s/Shadow Blade and Blink Dagger open up opportunities for you to be active. The Blink goes hand in hand with the BKB and increases your team fight potential (especially ultimate wombo-combos), while Shadow Blade and Eul’s are very useful for pickoffs. 

Try to make use of these items as soon as you get them – rotate to other lanes and try to get pickoffs with the help of the positioning of the items (useful for Requiem or Razes). The idea is that your enemies will not be aware of your newly picked item and might very well catch them by surprise.  Don’t overstay your welcome – forcing full-on 5 on 5 engagements is a very bad idea without BKB. You are a slow hero and it is hard for you to disengage.

If the laning stage went very well for you and you got a really fast core item you can pressure your opponents. In what way depends on your team lineup, strategy and even your item choices. With a fast SB/Eul`s it would be smartest to try to gank, while with a BKB you can force team fights and take objectives (towers, Roshan). SF is a snowball carry that can fight efficiently even without luxury items and because of this once you get an advantage the best option is to pressure your opponents. When you take map control it would be much harder for the enemy team to stall the game and reach the later stages.

Since SF is a snowball hero, however, he will not be too efficient in fights if he is behind in items – he needs items to be survivable enough.

If the laning stage went poorly you need to catch up. To do this you would want to flash farm as much as possible in the jungle while your team is hopefully successful in avoiding big fights. Keep in mind that you are a fast catch-up hero – even after a bad laning stage, you can catch up quickly. You can ask your supports to stack camps or you can do this yourself to get back into the game.  Once you get your core items (BKB or SB/Blink/Eul`s) it is usually best to attempt a Smoke Gank – you need to regain map control so that you can start flash farming even more efficiently.

Sometimes it is not a good idea to take fights, however, even when you get these items. In that case, continue flash farming and split-pushing whenever possible until you are certain you have the required items to take a fight.

• Split-Pushing
  

You can split push quite fast thanks to your Razes and high attack damage, yet this activity is quite risky because of your vulnerability to ganks. Therefore it is smart to do it only if you have some escape mechanism (Blink Dagger, Shadow Blade). You should push out the wave and damage the tower and when a dangerous enemy hero goes missing on the map you should back off immediately using the Blink or SB. The safest way to push out the wave is to send your Manta Illusions forward.

• 5-man Pushing
  

There are two ways to push as five – if there is a farmed tanky hero in your team you should leave that hero in the front lines and stay at a safe distance. When the enemy team initiates on your ally you will be able to counter initiate with a very devastating Requiem, especially if you’re equipped with a Blink BKB.

If there is no farmed tank in your team you should be the one staying in front of your allies and hitting the tower. Make sure that you have a plan for how you are going to survive the initiation though. Your allies should be ready to counter-initiate and buy you time to click your BKB and Requiem and start hitting people. Consider doing this kind of push (especially base push) when you have an Aegis.

You are not a support so you shouldn’t worry about warding and dewarding too much. If you suspect that the enemy team has a ward somewhere you need to tell your allies. Your only tool for giving vision is pushing waves quick and forcing rotations, which will give vision to you and your team.

You don’t have control, so in ganks, you are the person that follows up the initiation of an ally. Wait until the target is disabled and then use your spells (multiple Razes or a Requiem) into right clicks. Your raw damage potential should be enough to secure the kill until the disable ends.

In the late game your right clicks might do more damage than your Razes – if this is the case don’t lose time using your spell, just save the long-range Raze to finish the kill if the target exits your attack range.

You also need to think about the use of Requiem. If it is an important target to pick-off it is always worth it to commit your ult. If you are ganking a support or another very squishy target, however, you should be able to save the ultimate for a team fight.

Don’t overextend and chase opponents – if you get counter initiated you would easily die. Just attempt a kill and if it doesn’t work out simply back off and continue farming.

In a team fight, you generally have a wide variety of choices. You are a glass cannon type of hero and your behavior should account for this: stay behind your fat allies and focus down the prime targets (you kill off even tanky heroes fast). Yet, your Ult gives you an opportunity to be part of the initiation; in addition, if you are the most farmed hero on your team you could become the front line hero for the lack of a better one. If you can catch many people around you with your ult, you should cast your Requiem at the start of the fight to not only damage opponents but also to reduce their damage and slow them.

• With other good initiators:
  

The best option is to stay behind initially and then follow up the initiation of your allies. If you have a Blink and BKB you can do this with a very well positioned ult. Without a positioning item, it is better to move forward and land multiple Razes and save the ultimate in case enemy heroes start moving towards you.

After the initiation, you need to start attacking as much as possible. Even though you want to focus the prime target, of course, you want to do it if it the closest one to you. If not, then you should attack another target. It takes time to reposition yourself and you do very high damage, so every second you are not attacking is lost potential. You need to do as much damage as possible and if your opponents run away on low HP it is the task of your allies to pick them off or secure the kill with a disable.

Na'Vi demonstrate the devastating team fight combo potential of SF - Naga sets up his ultimate with Sleep into Hammer and the follow-up disable of Ravage secures the three kills.

• Without other good initiators:
  

If you don’t have good initiators and you have good initiation items (Blink BKB or Eul`s) you can be the first one to start the fight with a Requiem. To do this, however, you need to be certain that you will survive – you are going to get focused after the initiation so your allies will have to create space and allow you to fight back. When you are jumping in it is generally a good plan to start with Eul`s combo and burst down one target. If you manage to nuke that hero before it has the chance to fight back, your team will have a 5v4 situation and a much easier fight.

• Desperate situations:
  

If you are about to die it is important to try to get off a Requiem. The secondary one (the death effect) could swing the fight in favor of your team. You need to decide if this is the best option, though. If you have few souls and you have good damage items you might have a higher impact by simply hitting until you die.

Because of your very high attack damage and minus armor farming is pretty straightforward for you: for groups of creeps use multiple Razes to bring them down, for tanky (or simply too few creeps) use your attacks. If you have the opportunity it is always nice to stack a camp and farm it with Razes.

Nevertheless, don’t lose too much time doing so. For the 10 second you would waste waiting for the stack timing you would otherwise finish off an additional camp – the best way to increase your GPM is to have yours supports stack camps and Ancients while you are simply moving from camp to camp and killing creeps.