Picking tips!

[[^RawR^]]

Translation he gets fucked over by smoke ganks and about 10 heroes on mid right now and gets outcarried by heroes with 2 items less than him = shit. Having massive dmg from skills usually means the hero can't carry properly as he lacks something else (ursa, sb, sf, lanaya, sk, slard, sven, jugger etc etc)

[[-NoNick-]]

every hero gets fucked up by smoke ganks, also i just went on gg.net, opened latest 4 replays, sf was in 2/4, won both games
[url]http://gosugamers.net/dota/replays/54740[/url]
[url]http://gosugamers.net/dota/replays/54738[/url]
i guess chinese ppl are trying to bring him back into metagame
shadowfiends u can see on ss/other xpam leagues are shit not because of the hero but because of player l2p issue
also heroes u mentioned are countered by ghost scpet thus they cant carr properly, you cant counter sf with ghost scep

[Tayschrenn]

Eurobattle.net dota specialists.

Sf is very good and useful hero, it's just not 'trendy' to pick him nowadays. Obviously the way it used to be played, with solo mid getting bkb mega fast and fast farm + putting pressure on enemy lanes, is not good anymore, but there are other ways to play this hero.

I could write much more about that but nonick pretty much hits the point, so yeah.

Just one thing - SF with phase boots and drums as a core first items will be "the shit" in upcoming future.

[[^RawR^]]

The problem is you usually have to counter powerful carries with something (AM, weaver, naix, lycan, dk, nessaj, storm, tb) or they will just walk over your team from early to late if you've got the wrong composition. SF needs no counters as he dies in 2 nukes early and he's easily outcarried late. There's many very good and useful heroes that aren't picked such as tinker, tiny, viper, necro, dazzle, bane because there are either heroes that do their role better, or just the OP ones are simply stronger.

If SF is one of those heroes it doesn't mean he's overlooked, it means he doesn't fit the metagame where by midgame a 2k hp nessaj/balanar/slardar/dk/lycan is gonna go in like a retard and rape your face without you being able to do anything. He doesn't fit the metagame where positioning is diminished because of ridiculous range on shackleshot, nessaj blink, blink dagger bat/rex/sven/panda/slardar and force staves who do fuck up fragile heroes from over 1k range easily. He's just too easy to stop atm, ridiculous farm ability and powerful nuke damage don't warrant a hero being able to survive early/mid. Kinda similar to necro/krob, and they have it easier since they build tank shit

[Tayschrenn]

sf might not be bright idea in latest dota1, where picks are focused on picking 3-4 stupid fatties such as lycan panda ck slard dk sylla rex and so on.
But he fits very well in current dota2 metagame, being extremely overpowered during mid game.

The point is, you can't just throw him solo mid and expect him to win lane and farm 'just like that'. Mid lanes are won by smoke gangs, not heroes on mid themselves, and sf is not good in killing with help of smoke gang - he has no stun/slow etc.
But, if you lane him well he becomes really powerful mid game hero, with ability to deal tons of both magic and physical dps, and he does not really need that much farm to provide in fights.
Also he does not lose that much in late game, as a matter of fact being range hero gives him nice advantage over certain melee hard carries. It's obviously about positioning in fights, but for example navi used sf to counter am in enemy team many times against top teams, and it worked.