Shadow.Geminus is the most overrated hero in the game.

[Nuparu]

First off.

 

 

 

TL;DR: Shut the flob up about Shade and how he "rapes pubs" or "cheesy backdoor hero".

 

 

 

 

Now, the facts:

 

 

 

A. He's melee- he needs to close in first. Force of Entropy makes this harder for him. Ranged AGI carries flob shade up all day.

B. He's inheritently squishy- easy burst down.

C. He relies on leech- Executioner's axe = gg

D. He also relies on Weapon Speed = There are so many solutions to this..

E. He's a purely AA melee hero = taser + shrapnel, electric mantle, barbed plating + axe, small hadron collider all solutions to such not to mention all the heroes which flob him up

F. His passive- only works if you don't actually glance at the wards/lanes.

G. His ulti - step out of it, use combo items, gg

H. Ranged AGI carries = gg no re, shade fed the game and lost it

 

 

 

 

(This post is directed mainly at Owl and people who believe in crap and play pub games.)

[Legion]

Or you know, you can just scan during his ult.

[Revolution]

Shadow is strong if you position yourself correctly. Like blind siding the enemy during a team fight. If you have the other team saying wtf i didnt even see shadow then you are doing it right :)

[ShadowDancer]

Paper endures all.

[Doom]

I believe in Shadow being relatively balanced, or at least not OP, but allow me to counter some of your points, just because I can, and they are flawed, IMO not even the true reasons for him being balanced:

 

a) Let's do the math here, assume shadow is a dumbass and comes at you from the front, where you can see him at once. Hero vision range is 12. Shade is 3 units blink forward, but since you don't stop, it's basically ~5 units blink forward for it's fraction-of-a-second duration. The cast range of Vortex is, I think, 5, and since it's radius length is a good 1.25 units at least. So vortex cuts away 6.25 units, and shade about 5 units. All of this can happen in half a second. Now, shadow's movement speed is about 4-5, when you factor in heroic passive and items, significantly greater if he uses Sprint. Let's combine half a second's movement of 2-2.5 units with our previous combo, and we'll get a total "reach time" of 1 second needed to move at 13, or maybe slightly more units. All of this unlikely calculations mean that in the worst case scenerio for the Shadow player, he can get your vortex, aka get in melee range, in slightly less than a second. The million dollar question then becomes, "how fast are your reflexes, can you react accordingly, and get out of range in under a second, or "flob him up with a ranged AA hero, with FoE?"

 

Now, assume that as Revolution said, he comes from the side, or back, especially when there is a team fight in progress, and no one is paying attention to that direction, is point A valid at all? No.

 

b) He gets to roughly 1850 hp with just talents and base stats, which is admittedly not too hard to deal with for some of the better burst damage heroes like Rancor, Cyprus, and Raynor, but they aren't many heroes up to that task, and morever, like I said in point A, shadow's strength lies in his opponent's weakness in dealing with him. Finally, Shadow's base AA DPS is strong enough for him to NOT need to get 6 glass cannon AA items like a dumbass. He can perhaps spare an item slot for an Organic Carapace, or if he refuses to get a defense-only item, there is a fine amount of offensive items with defensive stats: Shinobi Style, Galactic Defendor, E. Mantle, Darwin's Might, Sliptide Scythe to name a few. Certainly doesn't make him invincible, but just a few defensive items, or offensive items that give ok defensive stats can make him much harder to kill. OFC nothing can save a Shadow from Cyprus or Rancor, but same can be said for any DPS hero, with possible exceptions of Boros, or Tychus. He is bloody difficult to deal with if you are not one of those two, though. He can easily get to 60% physical damage resist, 80% if he is a try-hard about it. Spell damage can in some cases be avoided through blinks and vortex, and he is not too easy to target with point and click spells, especially in his lag cloud of death. E Mantle (which is debatably OP) and Shrapnel Cloak deal with that particular problem quite well, though, while scan solves the problem of the ult, at the cost of an item slot of a non-carry support hero.

 

c) Meh.... pub shadows rely solely on leech, so ax is gg for them, perhaps, but not high level players that also get defensive items. Besides, ax is not that GG-y after all. It does 80% reduction of leech, not 100%. A shadow with JUST leech talent, Darwin's Might can have 34% leech, 84% on active. That's almost a basic minimum. Now, a Shadow can easily reach 550 + weapon damage, but for the sake of the argument of defensive items, let's make it just 375, which is quite fair. Let's omit the TS items too, just for argument's sake. Since a shadow would attack roughly 2.5 times a second in ult, in 2 seconds he'd deal 1875 damage (reduced by armor and abilities, but since leech is based on damage pre-reduction, that's not important). Now, reduce that by 80%, and you get 375 leech per 2 seconds, aka 187.5 life back PER SECOND. That's with Darwin's Might active, ofc, and doesn't factor in Barbed Platting, but then again, it was just 1 leech item, and you only said Ax, so both are IMO, fair game.

 

If a hero gets back 188 life per second through leech, I wouldn't call your so-called counter effective.

 

d) Such as? Shrapnel and E Mantle are solutions to everything AA, that much is clear. You mean A.S. reduction items? Chilling is -35%, FoE is another -35%, and that's the only two items I can remember that reduce A.S. atm. In fact, let's be generous, and say that your total -A.S. is 100%, just in case I forgot something. So shadow attacks 2.5 times a second, and assuming he has no t.s. items, or items who's give more weapon speed than the cap allows. That's an unlikely best case scenario for late game. So, with those 2 items, + another 30% that I pulled out of my hate, Shadow will still attack 1.25 times per second (actually more, seeing as time from ult will not be affected, but I'm to lazy to do that math, so let's ignore it). Ahem. Yes, that's progress, I suppose, but nothing to weep salty tears of admiration about, and praise as the savior against the mighty Shadow.

 

e) Admittedly not much to talk about here, you are mostly right on this one. Still, Parallax is a major counter to Ax, to Shrapnel, and in rare moments to E. Mantle. Vortex effectively counters shrapnel cloak. E Mantle is actually ineffective against Shadow, considering how much T.S. he can get, removing the stun really quickly. Also, items slots are precious. Sure, you can pretend you are safe from shadow with Shrapnel Cloak, Ax, E mantle, Barbed, etc, etc, but what are you actually going to kill him with? And his allies, especially if they are dissablers/ spell damage heroes? Barbed Platting doesn't do anything against those, neither does ax, and shrapnel cloak and e mantle are not miracle items either, even if they do give spell resist.

 

f) His passive makes him invisible to wards, as for lanes, he is visible only near to towers. Yes, if you physically look at the area where he is, as opposed to the minimap, you'll see him, but no other hero has minimap invisibility like that. It has counters like everything else, but it is still a luxury no other hero in the game has. Not op, but certainly not as much of a pushover as you make it seem.

 

g) Mescusi, wtf? How do you "step out of it"? I'm not a Shadow player, so I don't know the exact radius of it, but I do know that it is, especially at 16, big. You don't just step out of one end of the screen to another. Nova can do it, because she needs no vision to press e then run. Even with a blink, you cannot get out of it, if you don't see the area in range of your blink, which you won't. Walking is.... tedious. Everyone knows what's happening while you are "stepping out of it", so I'm not even gonna waste time typing it in here. Ofc, 120 mineral scan is the perfect counter...... except no one gets it in pubs. I tell my teammates, get scan, it is useful, completely counters shadow ult. They say, "I never knew that" and "oh, that's so smart" and "k", yet 20 minutes later they still haven't bought one. Instead they buy truesight. * wild hand gestures and shoulder movment *. Still, like I said, 120 mineral item somewhat counters it (although it creates MASSIVE amounts of lag), so ult is not even close to op. What you said is complete horse manure, however, so I put this small paragraph here to highlight that.

 

h) Just... just..... just. "ranged Agi carries". Nova, Darpa, Tosh, Toxi, Tass. I'll go through each one, one by one, but first let me say something. What DON'T your FLOBING RANGE AGI CARRIES COUNTER? If think that this is actually an argument, then I feel that it would not even be sporting to make a personal attack on your intelligence, similar to kicking an opponent in a sword fight, while he's down, if he tripped. Ok, regardless, let's start. Nova: in my experience nova would lose, although all the nova vs shadow battles I've seen were noob vs noob. So ok, let's assume so. However, nova is the hardest carry in the game and getting killed by her is nothing special. My prediction is whoever eats more noobs will probably win, so...... Darpa: hurm...... shadow should get taser against him, then whoever gets the jump on the other with the silence will win, unless it's Darpa, in which case he'll probably lose still. A shadow of equal skill will beat the Darpa by simply catching him in ult, silencing, and killing him before he can get out. ofc, it's a team game, so anything can happen. Early late game the scales are IMO tipped in Darpa's favor, late game in Shadow's. Tosh: I've beaten many shadows as Tosh, but I have to say that I feel it's more due to their bludners in item builds and choices than my skill. If Shadow is not a dumbass, he can easily kill the tosh by vortexing, then shading spectres. A SHC, while not a traditional Shadow item would destroy tosh. Blink in, stun, shade, ult. In a single second, Tosh cannot see, and has no spectres. Shadow will obviously win. Toxi: this one a shadow of equal skill to toxi cannot win, unless toxi wastes ult. Either team helps shadow massively by killing toxi or wasting his ult, or they will lose. Tass: it can go either way. Similar story to Tosh: it can be done, I've done it, but for players of same skill........... vortex stops tass ult and drain. A few attacks and a shade kill tass clone, and tassidar hasn't even got the range to deal with Shadow before it's too late. If Shadow uses ult in creep wave, and losses control, MAYBE tass can win that fight. If shadow doesn't lose his wits and actually targets Tassidar, then it will end painfully, but quickly for the tassidar.

[WhaleTits]

eh. he can still snowball, and hes definitely a stronger team fighter than ranged carries except, toxi and maybe tosh, in mid game ~20 minutes in, when people are starting to group push down mid and bot towers to set up levi control

 

he just can't carry late game

 

 

thats kinda how its always been

[EterNity]

Wait is the Shadow the new Boros now?

 

Stun = GG shadow. No need to say more.

 

You don't have to actually see the shadow on the mini map to see if he's there pushing. With the new creep waves, it is very easy to see the abnormal build-ups and spot him right on.

 

E.mantle and Axe are enough to counter shadow as long as he's not overly fed.

 

Also, 99% of the public game players do not check jungle and allow any shadow to free farm till he's strong enough to 1vs5.

[lOvOl]

A. He's melee- he needs to close in first. Force of Entropy makes this harder for him. Ranged AGI carries flob shade up all day.

 

If this is a problem he just needs warp shard/SHC to close the gap. But it rarely is because vortex is his primary gap closer.

 

B. He's inheritently squishy- easy burst down.

 

Huh? He has the highest agility scaling in the game which means he also has the best armor. That means all he needs is health and spell resist in a build and he becomes very hard to burst down as well as take down via AA attacks.

 

C. He relies on leech- Executioner's axe = gg

 

I hardly ever build leech on Shadow because it is ineffective against smart players. You are much better with spell resist and health.

 

D. He also relies on Weapon Speed = There are so many solutions to this..

 

Then don't build him for weapon speed. In the builds I use I don't even hit anywhere near the attack speed cap. Sure you can build him with attack speed items + HoM+Yamato+Masamune but yah shrapnel cloak ruins that in many ways and of course so does axe and a scan, but that is not hard to counter with the right utility items.

 

E. He's a purely AA melee hero = taser + shrapnel, electric mantle, barbed plating + axe, small hadron collider all solutions to such not to mention all the heroes which flob him up

 

He can be a very good tanky/DPS hero if built correctly. His vortex has tons of uses that go way beyond being a simple gap closer (basically it is a free lockbox on Shadow), and his ult can be used strategically as a team oriented ability for its utility alone as he can bring companion heroes along and be the vanguard for the attack, then throw down his ult and before anyone knows what is going on, your whole team just died to Rory's stevie. Not to mention, Shade is one of the strongest AoE abilities in the game.

 

F. His passive- only works if you don't actually glance at the wards/lanes.

 

Yah sure a dumb shadow in the later stages of the game will not use fog of war to his advantage or have elixir to take down the wards.

 

G. His ulti - step out of it, use combo items, gg

 

Again, there are many ways to make use of his ult other than the most braindead obvious ones.

 

H. Ranged AGI carries = gg no re, shade fed the game and lost it

 

Huh? Put spell resist on him to counter pyre, and add solid health and barbed plating and ranged AA heroes will do more damage to themselves attacking him, than they will do to Shadow.

 

Seriously my standard build for Shadow is:

 

Superheated

Pyre

Ihan

Sliptyde

Carapace

Barbed Plating

Electric Mantle

 

If they have a lot of casters or debuffs are an issue, sell superheated for parallax and you now have a ridiculous amount of spell resist and very high health, not to mention insanely high armor making you ironically one of the strongest tanks in the game with solid DPS. Barbed plating, shrap, and electric mantle won't do much in terms of damage (as well as spells) because of your super high resist, and even though you won't be at the attack speed cap, you are still hard to target and if the whole game the other team is trying to kill Shadow the supertank, they will be ignoring the rest of your team who will be much easier to kill.

 

I mean, I thought everyone already knew that the way to beat anti-AA builds with AA heroes is to get spell resist items with utility or dual use (like sliptyde which I feel is one of the best items in the game).

[Hurricane]

A. He's melee- he needs to close in first. Force of Entropy makes this harder for him. Ranged AGI carries flob shade up all day.

 

If this is a problem he just needs warp shard/SHC to close the gap. But it rarely is because vortex is his primary gap closer.

 

B. He's inheritently squishy- easy burst down.

 

Huh? He has the highest agility scaling in the game which means he also has the best armor. That means all he needs is health and spell resist in a build and he becomes very hard to burst down as well as take down via AA attacks.

 

C. He relies on leech- Executioner's axe = gg

 

I hardly ever build leech on Shadow because it is ineffective against smart players. You are much better with spell resist and health.

 

D. He also relies on Weapon Speed = There are so many solutions to this..

 

Then don't build him for weapon speed. In the builds I use I don't even hit anywhere near the attack speed cap. Sure you can build him with attack speed items + HoM+Yamato+Masamune but yah shrapnel cloak ruins that in many ways and of course so does axe and a scan, but that is not hard to counter with the right utility items.

 

E. He's a purely AA melee hero = taser + shrapnel, electric mantle, barbed plating + axe, small hadron collider all solutions to such not to mention all the heroes which flob him up

 

He can be a very good tanky/DPS hero if built correctly. His vortex has tons of uses that go way beyond being a simple gap closer (basically it is a free lockbox on Shadow), and his ult can be used strategically as a team oriented ability for its utility alone as he can bring companion heroes along and be the vanguard for the attack, then throw down his ult and before anyone knows what is going on, your whole team just died to Rory's stevie. Not to mention, Shade is one of the strongest AoE abilities in the game.

 

F. His passive- only works if you don't actually glance at the wards/lanes.

 

Yah sure a dumb shadow in the later stages of the game will not use fog of war to his advantage or have elixir to take down the wards.

 

G. His ulti - step out of it, use combo items, gg

 

Again, there are many ways to make use of his ult other than the most braindead obvious ones.

 

H. Ranged AGI carries = gg no re, shade fed the game and lost it

 

Huh? Put spell resist on him to counter pyre, and add solid health and barbed plating and ranged AA heroes will do more damage to themselves attacking him, than they will do to Shadow.

 

Seriously my standard build for Shadow is:

 

Superheated

Pyre

Ihan

Sliptyde

Carapace

Barbed Plating

Electric Mantle

 

If they have a lot of casters or debuffs are an issue, sell superheated for parallax and you now have a ridiculous amount of spell resist and very high health, not to mention insanely high armor making you ironically one of the strongest tanks in the game with solid DPS. Barbed plating, shrap, and electric mantle won't do much in terms of damage (as well as spells) because of your super high resist, and even though you won't be at the attack speed cap, you are still hard to target and if the whole game the other team is trying to kill Shadow the supertank, they will be ignoring the rest of your team who will be much easier to kill.

 

I mean, I thought everyone already knew that the way to beat anti-AA builds with AA heroes is to get spell resist items with utility or dual use (like sliptyde which I feel is one of the best items in the game).

 

While I do not build shadow as tanky as owl, i def dont go all wep speed/wep dmg items. if you build with superheated, ihan, sliptide, emantle (usually what i get) and pyre and another wep speed/dmg item, you will pretty much be unstoppable

[Stalker]

If you got good teamwork he's easy to kill.

[lOvOl]

If you got good teamwork he's easy to kill.

 

So is Micro or any other hero on the front lines. The issue is how much of a problem/threat do you pose to the other team. An instantly dead Shadow from one shrapnel cloak, a scan, and some focus fire is not a very threatening Shadow, but one that can take some damage and force the other team to retreat so that his team can pounce (even if he dies) is a lot more threatening.

[Psyght]

if shadow is so unstoppable, i welcome you to get a team, and IH against me, go shadow, and id love for you to feed the game away. he is the weakest AA carry in the game. I'd rather have AA raynor than shadow.

[MarXX]

anyone tried chilling artifact to counter shadow? the 35% weapon speed reduction should make him clickable.

[Apollo]

anyone tried chilling artifact to counter shadow? the 35% weapon speed reduction should make him clickable.

 

Oooo...and perhaps DST (dark steel titan)

[MarXX]

known counters to shadow are

shrapnel cloak

electric mantle

executioners axe

barbed plating (not so because of leech, unless paired with executioners axe.)

darksteel titan

chilling artifact

 

darksteel titan and chilling artifact are not as popular though....

[rayn]

lets face the hard facts:

 

glasscannon shadows are a bad choice of playstyle no matter how look at it imho.

the whole concept of shadow seems just too easy counterable unless their opponents are not prepared.

ANYTHING shadow has is counterable.

 

best example is have a cypr in your team and shadow wont even get more than a hit off in most situations before getting 2shot.

[Qlx]

Right, Shadow is UP if you (approach a) teamfight like a Cain, or a Drake would do.

 

You're supposed to backstab them, not Rambo. If you can't, well fail.

It's harder to play shadow, but if done correctly worth it!

[Apocalyptic]

Shadow is well balanced in team play. If your team has a lot of loners (aka bad teamwork) then he will most likely be fed. Either way, hes going to be quite weak late game.

[Hogwarts]

rofl more fail threads,

 

shadow gets cc so hard no real point in playing him, we only use him in a ih if were doing a shadow rory lane and rory falls off like a boii too so u never see that any more

[BestZeratul]

except there is little to no cc in aos lmao roflmao

[Climax]

if u team fight anf shadow ultis u all and maybe u have an mk its gg no re for sure

[Hogwarts]

if u team fight anf shadow ultis u all and maybe u have an mk its gg no re for sure

 

if u get ult simply step outside the ult

 

if one person has a scan every one can see shadow,

 

if one person has a shrapnel cloak, shadow is useless in his ult,

 

not to mention the almost game breaking item that is electric mantle

 

etc........ ... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... ... ... ... .. shadow is pretty weak compared to nova, darpa tosh grunty etc... ... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ... he is one of the weaker agi dps carries, he is weaker then leo

[rayn]

its so funny. actually shadow only works vs people who either cant or dont read.

 

of course his <pub snowball potential> is quite high due to the insane high amount of ppl fitting above description.

vs players who know what they're actually playing he can hardly get fed enough to cause a lot of trouble thus being inferior to most other agi carries.

[Takeray]

In my opinion, Shadow is a good hero with some weaks to deal.

 

My build is based on spell resist and timescale mainly ( Some leech and hp).

 

All I want is resist the one shot way an enemy could do.

 

As carry and being an assassin I will decide and my team should know when I enter into battle and where I come from.

 

I am reading full of posts about what to cast to shadows, and what to do. You are assuming Shadow is in front of enemy team waiting for you.

 

 

Btw one of the very good counter to Shadow is Leo due his reflect. But leo is the most anti carry from all the Agi setup not just a Shadow counter.

 

For the rest, at same speed Darpa can be a Pain, other way no. Nova usually isn't a pain. Of course shadow can be owned by everyone of these and shadow can own all of this, but there's no an special core of natural owning on this combats.

[Qlx]

Shadow is well balanced in team play. If your team has a lot of loners (aka bad teamwork) then he will most likely be fed. Either way, hes going to be quite weak late game.

Funny cause Shadows lategame is due to 500% Attack speed and complete untargetability stronger then his early/mid-game.

 

Khali Blade, Lethal Barbed, Any other crit item (optional), and about 2 Seconds into a fight you have 500% Attack speed.

Now get a Stun baton and watch them die...

Sure it can be countered, but meh - who has boundary Lategame when everybody's Maxed out?