Shadow Demon: What Will It Take

So as some of you might know, I love Shadow Demon. As an avid support player I just find him to be an amazing disabler that has a very powerful laning presence with his spammable nuke Shadow Poison. He has some of the best kill potential at level 2 when combo'd with heroes such as Slardar or Leshrac. His ultimate gives him an 80% slow for 5 seconds. Great for easy pickups on low mobility heroes. And the Aghs upgrade just makes it more incredible than it already is.

So why are we not seeing him more often in professional games. Is it just that he isn't a strong hero in the current meta? Or just weak against high mobility heroes like Storm Spirit and Queen of Pain who are so common in today's non-stop brawling playstyle. Or does he just need a certain team built around him that is easily countered?

So my question to you is what will it take for SD to be picked and played more often in Dota?

-BK

He still gets a lot of competitive love in this patch, because he is a good hero. He scales really well into the game without needing any farm, which rare for any hero, and wonderful for a support.

He just doesn't get as high priority as he used to because there are other supports that are a higher priority right now, like Winter Wyvern, Dazzle, Earthshaker, Lion ect ect.

He's definately viable competitively, and will no doubt getting plenty of love at TI5.

he is actually picked 15.8% of the time which is pretty high. http://www.datdota.com/stats.php?p=draft
the only supports who are picked more are: shakira, rubick, witch doctor, lion, dazzle, disruptor, io and undying. ranked at 21 in 6.84 as a whole, and lion for example has dropped below him in recent games. but wyvern has overtaken him.
hes not a hero that you pick every game, but that is also not in the nature of the hero since he does a very specific thing, so hes fine now.

Sorta offtopic, but you will like this
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And Sando will 'loooooove' this. Play Video

Oh god...100% uptime on Minefield Sign with Refresher Orb...the cancer is real -_-

I like the Shadow Demon one. Pwned a scrubby 4.5k Techies tonight...oh dear can't suicide when you're silenced? Boo hoo hoo. I'm soooo sad. Scum.

But seriously, SD is pretty legit, nicely balanced at the moment. You've got to be very careful in pro with his balancing as he extremely effectively when your team plays off your setup well - it wouldn't take that much to make him hideously OP.

As it stands, he has some squishy and early mana issues, but his ult is always useful against BKBs. Has issues against very mobile heroes though, not the best choice there. His aghs is pretty legit too, I likes it.

There's my favourite combo too:

Shadow Demon + Kunkka + QE Invoker

Disruption + Soul Catcher + Torrent + Sun Strike deals so much damage because of Soul Catcher.

Like, 300-800 pure damage (depending on Exort) or something.