Shadow Demon — hero grid for mains

Shadow Demon is what the game calls the hero in every client; Russian-speaking players say “Шэдоу Демон” (or “шд”, “сд” and “демон”). In chat Shadow Demon also goes by “sd”.

Valve sums the hero up in one line: “Stacks exponential poison damage against his foes”.

Search in the hero picker is forgiving: “Shadow Demon”, “Шэдоу Демон”, “sd” — each of them lands on Shadow Demon.

Shadow Demon is an Intelligence hero (34 of them in the game), ranged, complexity 2 of 3 by Valve's rating.

Valve's roles for Shadow Demon, rated 1 to 3: Support ●●○, Disabler ●●○, Nuker ●○○, Initiator ●○○; none reaches the full three dots.

By attributes puts Shadow Demon in the “INTELLIGENCE” (24th of 34) block; By complexity — in the “MEDIUM” (41st of 59) band.

Two positions for Shadow Demon: soft support (4) first, hard support (5) second, both with a score of 0.5 or more (1 and 0.96). The site's position scores (best = 1) are carry 0 · mid 0.04 · offlane 0 · soft support 1 · hard support 0.96, so Pick by stats puts the hero into the “4 · SUPPORT” and “5 · HARD SUPPORT” rows only.

Where the scores come from: in 860 parsed OpenDota matches (data as of 23 Sept 2026) Shadow Demon went safe lane 47% of the time, mid 7% and offlane 47%. Median gold per minute is 337 — pure support gold on the site's scale (360 or less); experience per minute is 512.

The rows of Classic: positions 1–5 hold the 18 most played heroes each and Shadow Demon is not among them; there are two free slots per row, so drop the hero into “4 · SUPPORT” yourself.

Shadow Demon in other layouts: not in Meta by stats (ten heroes per position); Two columns — “SUPPORTS”, 44th of 44.

For a main, the handiest layout is Mains + situational: the button above puts Shadow Demon first in MAINS with the biggest portraits, next to Lion, Grimstroke and Skywrath Mage: all three share the same main position (soft support), the same attribute and ranged attack.

The file goes into your Steam folder, 570 → remote → cfg of your account, with Dota closed — step by step in the install guide.

In the OpenDota snapshot of 23 Sept 2026 Shadow Demon shows up in 90,296 games (116th most played of 127) and wins 45.1% of them (121st).

Results climb with rank, from 42.7% at Herald–Crusader to 46.3% at Ancient–Divine. Shadow Demon's share of games is 35% above its average at Divine and 17% below at Guardian.

Shadow Demon in the snapshot's pro matches: 5 picks, 3 wins, 1 ban. Turbo: 43,096 games at 43.6%, about the same as in ranked brackets.

Main in a skin covers arcanas and personas only, and Shadow Demon has none there yet; to draw the hero anyway, upload any art to Picture to dots. Among the heroes with skins that are also played as soft support, the closest to Shadow Demon are Skywrath Mage, Rubick and Mirana — their dot drawings are ready for a soft support grid.