One R from Friend, a guide to Shadow Fiend.

Introduction

Welcome to my guide on Shadow Fiend. Shadow Fiend is a good solo mid that can farm rather easily and can deal a lot of burst and sustained damage if built properly. The writing of this build is currently in Alpha, but I am planning on slowly improving the guide to be easier to read and increase the quality as a whole.

Also remember to comment with positive criticism, give meaning to each downvote or upvote that I see!

Pros and Cons

Pros

-Does great amounts of damage.
-Is rewarded for making last hits and denies more then any character.
-Provides a armor aura debuff to enemies.
-Long range with Raze.
-Easy to last hit when full of souls.

-Very weak at escaping when overextending.
-Squishy in the early game.
-Death penalizes you much more critically.
-Raze is difficult to land.
-Hard to last hit until you get souls. (note: Only early on, this issues disappears near level four to.)

Skill Build

This particular Skill Build was chosen to optimize souls gathered early on and help get an early bottle. Raze is still maxed out first as the burst that comes with a triple Raze is very strong and you may use Raze to farm if you have items to supplement your mana. Be sure to level up Requiem at level nine since you want to maximize the damage by having as many souls as possible. I do not like Presence early on since the skill has very low impact compared to what your others skills can do. You should not take stats over Presence as the armor reduction is very effective after you cap your other skills.

Gameplay

Early game.
At the beginning of the game, you want to make sure you block your creep spawn as far back as possible so you may safely gather farm. This time is very important as you want to get your bottle as quickly as possible so you may roam and supplement your mana pool with the bottle charges. Once you get your bottle, check each rune spot at each 2 min mark. Early warding from your allies will be fairly useful at each rune so ask politely for the coverage early on.(note: Courier>wards) Do not gank if you are not level seven, unless you got a lucky rune at a good time or they keep overextending in crazy manners. Be sure to exploit your lane opponent's misplays and weaknesses at this stage as this will set the tone for the rest of the game. We get Phase boots to improve our total auto-attack much more substantially along with the movement boost from the active. With these boots farming up for your core will be much faster.

Exiting laning phase.
At this point, you should hopefully have Bottle, Phase Boots and Magic wand. If you had a bad early game (died twice or more, lack of last hits), try to gather as must farm as possible so you can get one of your core items. If you are too squishy go for the Black King Bar (BKB) or if you want more mobility(or better initiation) get the blink dagger. Eventually you'll want both so it does not truly matter which one you get first, as long as you get either of them. When pushing with your allies, be sure to try to land Razes on enemies who choose to stick close. If your teammates dive and turret aggro jumps on your, use your manual attack key (normally the 'a' button) on allies or allied creeps to shift the aggro onto them. (note: allied creeps>allies) If you have your Blink Dagger as you push down the lanes and are getting a good amount of gold, try to build the Helm of the Dominator so you can try stack ancients. When you get your BKB and blink dagger, try to set up hotkeys or remember to use item hotkeys so you may do Shadow Fiend's largest combo, BKB into Blink into Requiem. This combo can decimate an entire team, be sure to jump in on enemies who are clumped together to maximize damage. Sometimes you can throw some Razes to finish off stragglers, so just have fun with that. (note: the combo starts with BKB in order to make sure typical crowd control like silence and stuns don't work. Keep in mind that Primal Roar from Beastmaster and Nether Swap from Vengeful Spirit go through magic immunity and can mess up your combo through misplacement.)

End Game.
This stage of the game should be fairly similar to leaving the laning phase. Simply land Razes and do your BKB to Blink to Requiem combo when a team fight erupts. Make sure to keep up with your souls and to try to keep money for buyback so you can jump back into the fray in case you slipped up somewhere. When choosing what to go for next after your Manta Style and Helm of the Dominator, look at what your enemies have. If they have evasion grab Monkey King bar and if they don't have Monkey king bar, choose Butterfly. Sometimes considering to build up for Satanic can be fairly useful as the large amount of gold required for the upgrade is well over your buyback and there is only the recipe and the large Reaver part. Along with the good health boost, Satanic provides Unholy Rage which both lets you heal for a ridiculous amount through lifestyle and keeps you in character.

Changelog

0.01
-Changed the main bodies color to default white.
-Played with colors a bit.
-Added optional build that gives more survivability.

Thank you for the comments so far!