Some suprises to players

I was playing Shadow Demon mid yesterday, and I was up against a Mirana. This is the second time in the past week I ended up going solo with Shadow Demon, and for the majority of us that have played dota for awhile, we know he's a great mid. I talked to the player after the game, we ended up winning pretty quickly, and he was pretty shocked, he'd explained how he'd come over from league and has been used to the flavor of the month trends AP games tend to demonstrate, and was not expecting Shadow Demon, as well as him not being used to playing against the hero. First blood happened pretty quick when he came from the side, got disrupion,soul catcher thrown on him, while he was attempting to kil me with a DD rune.
Explains to him how SD works, he began to see his errors in lane, and this is a case in the low-mid brackets that tends to be a common trend, some "old-school" mids tend to screw with some people, Lion, Lina, Bane, and in this case Shadow Demon, because it's unexpected, and a lot of players seem to underestimate how powerful these heroes are in 1 on 1 laning scenarios.
So, for newer players, this a reason why one of the game modes you should focus on when starting dota is single draft. There are a decent handful of new players that are fairly good League players that transition well, but don't understand a decent amount of heroes in the game, and playing as many different heroes as you can it's pretty beneficial, because it gives you a decent understanding of how the hero functions, and what their weaknesses are.

To supplement the OP, if you have never played Lion mid, you are seriously missing out, most of us that played WC3 or HoN understand how rediculous he can be with the amount of control he has in lane, and how easy it is to net kills in lane, and in ganks with Earth Spike, Hex, and Finger of Death

dota is just so complicated. shadow demon and bane are great AT mid. but that doesnt mean they are great mids, as they can be played with almost the same effectiveness as supports.
pudge for instance is exactly the opposide. he is bad AT mid, but he benefits SOOO much more from solo XP compared to a bane or shadow demon.

some of these unconvention mids are: disruptor, AA, bane, dazzle, enigma, leshracc, witch doctor, lina and lion too although i dont think they are that strong at it. rubick used to be a mid but some nerfs to fade bolt and the need for picking semi carries as mids made him fall out of the meta as a mid.

shadow shaman, skywrath, venomancer and sand king and windrunner are still situationally good mids.

shaman in a pushing strat, skywrath dominates some heroes, veno can farm and keep pushing the lane from a safe distance. sand king dominates the safe melee mids like dragon knight with caustic finale, he also benefits a lot from being in front becouse of his ult and he benefits a lot more from an early nlink then some heroes. and windrunner can just make those plays with shackeshot when paired with blink and force, or go semi carry with orchid and late damage items.

People sometimes get very set ideas about particular heroes "he's just a support" - these roles are psychological - there's only convention and a set of skills/stats that tend to inform it. Lion can be a very effective mid, as a can Bane and several others.

The thing is that it's all about what you want from your mid:

- To just "win the lane" and minimise their opponent?
- To gank other lanes successfully?
- To become powerful enough to semi-carry or carry?
- To get quick access to a particular ultimate or skillset?

People sometimes tend to think of mids as pure gankers (a common role), but that doesn't mean it always has to be the case, or that some heroes don't have the skillset to step up into that.

For example, I recently randomed a Huskar, but we already had a Slark who wanted mid. When they picked Shadow Fiend he agreed to let me have it. With pulled in trilanes each side there were very few opportunities to gank early on. So I spent a fair bit of time absolutely ruining SF's day. Every time he went vaguely near the creep line he got burnt (I had a lot of tangos :)), and all he could really do was soak some XP while I freefarmed and denied.

The way the lineups were, we had a better safe carry, so by keeping their carry-type mid quiet and building myself up to semi-carry we won the game easily.

In the same way, it's better sometimes to have a less than optimal mid who can stop their mid, rather than having a brilliant ganker who'll get owned in lane.

Lion is a good example, he can really bully heroes who can't harass him effectively, and a bit of equipment (usually some combination of Blink Dagger, Aghanim's Scepter and Dagon) he's a very scary early/midgame ganker.

And this is exactly why Dota is more fun than LoL imo (not wanting to start a *****torm here, but thats my opinion): there simply are no fixed roles.

In LoL if you see lets say a Janna or Sona pickup you can instantly say that she is support + bottom lane (+ in most cases even her item built) and would be right in 95% of the cases, making this game so reliant on counterpicking, which is far too boring in my opinion.

In dota however EVERY hero can at least fit 2-3 roles, thanks to the enormous variety of skill- and itembuilds making the whole game far more dynamic and fun in general ....you never know what to expect and always have to check enemy inventories and so on, in order to avoid gamebreaking threats (seeing the enemy carry building a Butterfly for instance, should signalize your carry to go for a Monkey King Bar and so on for instance)

Back on Topic:

i think this whole discussion is taking a turn towards "underrated Support heroes, who can also snowball hard if given farm", i will also share my experiences^^

Shadow Shaman is definitely not to be underrated in mid! a Blink Dagger + Boots of Travel rush make him such a good midgame threat, as he can punish overextending heroes sooo good... firs killing them, and maybe even taking a tower right afterwards ^.^

Warlock - im sure most of you already know how devestating a Aghanim's Scepter + Refresher Orb build on this hero is.

Silencer - i remember the days this hero was still considered to be a carry and actually still is good at it. Last Word + Curse of the Silent also make him a lane rapist on mid lane.

It's definitely true that a lot of ganking supports can work mid, but that doesn't make them viable, it just makes them "not terrible" in most cases. I don't like Lion specifically because of his lack of mobility - he feels like a [Queen of Pain]]/ Puck who traded their mobility for a bit more burst (and the mobility is much more valuable).

To me it seems like something that really only works in specific scenarios. Bane for example can win almost any 1v1 matchup and works well against farming mids who like to camp that lane rather than gank (especially if you have a [Clockwerk]] or Mirana who can turn a Nightmare into an easy kill).

That's the only time I think I'd ever consider running a ganking support (Lion/Lina/Skywrath etc) mid (to set up kills against an enemy farming mid). Pushing supports like Shadow Shaman/ Warlock are quite different since they stay much more relevent lategame and aren't hard countered by BKB (which is my main knock on the Lion mid).