Semi-daily hero tips. Day 78: Shadow Fiend

DISCLAIMER

A lot of you probably know about the weekly hero discussion, but that often ends up in a meta discussion (whether or not the hero needs buffs, etc) or a meme war than actual tips to play, itemize and build the hero.

This is what I'd like to do. Please discuss any notes I made and possible improvements while also giving tips of your own if you have them.

The roles, skill builds and item builds, as well as a lot of the notes are my opinion on matters and should not be seen as a must do or don't. Also remember that almost every single build or role is situationally possible.

A lot of the tips on heroes were also mentioned in tsunami's amazing hero tips series he did over the last couple of years.

Shadow Fiend

Notes:

• Raze AOE overlaps. You can even hit all 3 razes on a unit at exactly 450 range
• Animation cancel razes you're sure to miss
• If you find yourself in the safe lane, stack the small camp and raze them down for easy souls
• Tread switching is very good for this hero
• Most of the cast animation of Requiem is hidden in shadow blade invis
• Versus: Don't bottle rush, get more stats to deny his last hits and bully him out of lane. Once SF gets souls, he's hard to win the lane against.
• Versus: Gank him with smokes early. He is squishy and has no escape.
• Shadow Fiends ultimate Requiem of Souls reduces enemy heroes attack damage by 50% for 5 seconds.
• Necromastery gains souls from destroying Power Cogs (still the case?)
• Try to stack the closest camp to your lane as much as you can or let your supports stack the jungle.
• You can right click someone and immediately use raze. You will raze the moment you have turned.
• Counters: Tinker (blind + high burst + illusive), TA (lane winner with refraction), Oracle, Halberd (disable attack, get manta and/or BKB as SF)
• Good versus: Omniknight (combination of AOE magic damage and right click makes it hard for omni to keep everyone alive), PA (vulnerable to magic burst, needs to come close), Spectre (vulnerable early game and when SF starts snowballing), [Silencer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1vbL9HVJZQ (You don't really rely on your spells for damage, silencer is squishy)

Role: mid (, hard carry, solo side lane)

Item build: bottle, (RoA,) Treads, (HotD, Shadow blade/Blink dagger/Eul's, Dragon Lance), (BKB, Desolator, Daedalus, Satanic, BFly, MKB, Pike, SnY, MoM, AC, Silver Edge, Agh's, Manta)

Skill build: lvl 1 necromastery, max raze --> necromastery --> presence

PREVIOUS HEROES

• Abaddon
• Alchemist
• Ancient Apparition
• Anti-Mage
• Arc Warden
• Axe
• Bane
• Batrider
• Beastmaster
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• Shadow Demon