Tips

• Attacks from illusions of Shadow Demon, like by self-casting Disruption, can apply his Menance innate on enemies.
• The damage amplification from your Menace innate works on Rosh.
  • However, it doesn't work on Tormentors because, unlike magic amp and armor reduction, barriers ignore generic damage amp.
• If you select your Disruption illusions you can see how the enemy is skilling themselves since your illusions' skill points will mirror the enemy's.
• There are pretty much only three reasons why you should ever Disrupt an ally to save them. Either you're trying to protect them from a few seconds of a disable they're in, you're helping them avoid damage until their Blink Dagger comes off cooldown, or they're about to die and you're using it like a Dazzle Shallow Grave. For slows, blinds, silences, or disarms, unless you're communicating with your allies, avoid Disrupting them. 9 times out of 10, people will get mad at you even if they were dead anyway.
  • However, there are plenty of occasions to use Disruption on allies in other situations. During tower pushes, make more Lunas for maximum Glaives. During defenses, make fake Batriders and send one in. When warding, make more yous to bait a gank attempt.
• You can cast Disruption on debuff immune/BKB'd enemies. You won't banish them, but you'll still generate illusions of them.
• You can banish debuff immune allies with Disruption.
• Disseminate deals a separate instance of damage to all affected enemies. The damage will be the same type as the incoming damage, but it will be sourced to Shadow Demon.
• Disseminate works on all types on damage. Magical, physical, pure, right clicks, items, every source of incoming damage (except HP removal e.g. Soul Ring or Terrorblade's Sunder) can react with Disseminate.
  • Disseminate even reacts on self damage. Like Pudge taking damage from his own Rot or Pugna taking damage when healing allies with Life Drain. Strangely, it does not react on Techies' Blast Off self-damage, though.
• Disseminate can target Rosh, but Rosh is immune to Disseminate damage. So it won't help your team take Rosh faster, but you could make the enemy team hurt themselves while they take Rosh.
• Shadow Poison impact and detonate damage fully affects units in Disruption.
  • Disruption banishes a target for 2.75 seconds. Blink Dagger's damage cooldown is 3 seconds. Cast a Shadow Poison while a target is Disrupted to keep their Blink Dagger on cooldown. You don't even need to use the Detonate because the impact damage from the Shadow Poison will disable Blink Dagger and then they'll immediately take damage from the illusions afterwards.
• Shadow Poison can't be dispelled. This could be handy to identify heroes who can create illusions easily.
• Shadow Poison is a great spell to use to stack camps because of its ludicrous range and cheap mana cost.
  • With practice, you can stack multiple camps at once (old map, but you get the idea). If you're crazy, you can use your Disruption illusions for even more stacking!
• Stacking camps is useful with Shadow Demon because he's actually great at taking stacks himself with Shadow Poison. Once maxed, it takes ~6 stacks of Shadow Poison to kill any camp.
• Shadow Poison is a great spell to draw creep aggro off a tower during defenses.
• Shadow Poison's projectile gives flying vision as it travels.
• Be aware that enemies only get Stick charges if the caster of a spell is in vision. If you're spamming Shadow Poison against enemies with Sticks, try to cast while hiding in tree fog.
• Demonic Purge is a constant dispel that can go through debuff immunity/BKB. Here are a few choice applications of this rare interaction:
  • Slow and dispel debuff immune enemies. That one's... obvious.
  • Target and bring down enemies who are cycloned from their own Eul's Scepter. Will also instantly cancel any self-Eul's the enemy casts while Demonically Purged.
  • Will instantly dispel any movement from a Force Staff.
  • Insta-dispel things that can save enemies like: Ghost Scepter, Glimmer Cape, Crimson Guard, Aeon Disk's Combo Breaker (the Combo Breaker hard dispel will still go off, but the no-damage grace period is dispellable).
  • Constantly remove any dispellable buff abilities like Storm Spirit's Overload or Ursa's Overpower.
• Demonic Purge can be used to slow couriers, but won't damage them.
• Agh's Scepter upgraded Demonic Purge Breaks passive abilities.

Counters

• Beware of trading right clicks against Shadow Demon in lane. The damage amp from his Menace innate can add up quickly.
• Because Disruption illusions spawn one "tick" after the real hero emerges from the banish, you can attack+move the ground right underneath the Disruption before it ends and you'll always start attacking the real hero (assuming no other targets are closer to draw your attack+move aggro).
• Any level of Dagon can instakill illusions. As do spells like Disruptor's Glimpse, Pudge's Meat Hook, Skywrath Mage's Mystic Flare, and any Hex.
  • Brewmaster's Storm Brewling with Dispel Magic deals full damage to all types of illusions.
• You can disassemble Radiance while under Disruption and your illusions won't have the Radiance aura when they spawn. You'll have to unlock the components and re-assemble it afterwards, though.
• Enchantress can take control of enemy illusions with Enchant.
• Disseminate can be dispelled, but Shadow Poison can't.
• Get a Magic Stick if he's spamming Shadow Poison. Just remember that you only get stick charges on spells cast in a 1200 radius if the enemy is in vision.
• The only reason Shadow Poison is balanced is because the projectile is very easy to dodge. Don't get lazy. You won't see a fat 4 above your head, but you can look in your status bar debuffs to see how many stacks are on you. If you've bumbled your way into 3 stacks, it's probably time to start backing off.
• Even though Demonic Purge will instantly cancel a Eul's cyclone, you'll still get the basic dispel from casting the Eul's.