As you can see, the AoEs of Shadowraze can seem bigger than how you might have imagined it-and technically if the target you are Shadowrazing is at exactly the 450 range mark, he will receive the damage of all three Shadowrazes. However, it is still important as a Nevermore player to imagine the AoEs of your Shadowrazes a tad smaller than they are in reality, so that you have that feel of the 'pin-point accuracy' that is really required to land a nice, solid, accurate Shadowraze.

A popular strategy amongst many beginners, therefore, is to attack the target first and then immediately press ‘X’. Most of the time, assuming the target is slowed or stunned, the Shadowraze will hit. ‘Z’ is relatively simple to hit as it is literally at melee range, whilst ‘C’ is simply 3 AoE’s away from Nevermore. ‘C’ is possibly the hardest to aim out of the three Shadowrazes and a great deal of practice is required to aim them properly.

There are some cases that really don’t give you the chance to attack the target first and you must use your instincts and your experience to aim those razes. I usually right click on the ground closest to my target before I calculate the distance in my head and decide whether to use ‘Z’, ‘X’ or ‘C’.

In most cases, there are about 4 kinds of scenarios that may arise when you try Shadowraze someone:

1. A stunner (e.g. Sven) comes in and stuns someone. You raze him twice, most likely with your ‘X’ and ‘C’ razes (the 2 second stun doesn’t really allow for all 3 of your razes to hit) and hopefully with a couple of extra attacks, you’ve managed to rack up a kill. This is the safest, and by far, the most common way of killing someone with your Shadowrazes. This accounts for around 70 % of my kills with Nevermore. Heres an example when my teammate Furion and Spectre (some sort of global strategy there, once again one of Loda's creations) helps me gank the other's team's main carry, Drow Ranger.

2. You’re retreating into the Fog of War (your opponents can no longer see you, for that matter) and a bunch of enemy heroes are chasing after you. Because they can’t see you, you turn around and raze them (most likely ‘C’, ‘X’ then ‘Z’) and they walk right into your razes. Or your might cast your powerful Ultimate and they run right into your Requiem of Souls.

This is called abusing the Fog of War (even though it is in fact perfectly legitimate and forms interesting mindgames) and is mostly used when you have very little HP left and you want to pull off a kill—assuming you know what you’re doing. This accounts for around 5% of my kills, but are satisfying in a way as you’ve literally cheated death…and brought demise upon your unlucky opponent.

3. You managed to get a rune (haste, invisibility etc), but there are no allies around and you’re absolutely sure the guy you’re killing doesn’t have a stun on his back, or a windwalk, or any mana. Let’s just say Zeus who only has enough mana for a single Lightning Bolt. You basically walk right up to him, or try sneak near him, and you raze him and hopefully all 3 razes hit.

To be honest, this is risky game play because there are no allies to help you. Nevermore is a fragile hero and in order for all 3 razes to hit he must be very close to the target first. The main problem, of course, is to actually deal enough damage, as the 3 razes only account for 675 damage and it is important to ‘snuck in’ a couple of attacks so you actually kill him.

Unlike a hero like Tinker who can just nuke the crap out of anyone, using Nevermore’s nukes require patience and a cool head as a single miscalculation or misclick can result in a miss, and the target gets away with red HP. This probably accounts for 15 % of my kills with Nevermore, and most of those kills I garnered in the past few months as Shadowraze takes time to master completely.

A hero with nearly no HP turns invisible and thanks to the fact your Shadowrazes can actually hit invisible units, you try raze where he’s going to be in a few seconds and hopefully, you pull it off. What I define as ‘blind raze’ is not someone running into the fog for less than a second and having pressed ‘x’ already, I press ‘c’ and ‘magically’ my ‘imbaness’ allows me to hit the guy who tried sneaking into the fog of war.

A blind raze is when the target has literally vanished off the map for more than three seconds and all you’ve got is your instinct. An experienced player will most likely know where you will target your blind razes and will go the opposite way and landing a blind raze is really the same as landing a no-scope with an AWP in CS: in most cases, it’s about 40 % luck and 60 % map awareness.

The hardest razes to land, in my opinion, are in fact not the so called ‘blind razes’ but ones that require some very precise ‘clicking’. As I said before, Shadowrazes require pinpoint accuracy to land (even though there is a small AoE with each raze) and it is important that you understand how to face your opponent ‘properly’ so you can hit them with the correct corresponding raze.

So you may ask—what do I mean by precise ‘clicking?

It is important to do this as fast as possible as multiple adjustments can result in your opponent getting away (which is always annoying) and experience, plus practice, would eventually increases your chances of landing such razes drastically. It is still quite difficult for me, to this day, to land such razes and I would think my accuracy in such razes would be around 50% -- assuming I do not cancel it with ‘Stop’ and readjust myself. Sometimes, a single click could decide whether you land yourself a kill or end up dead. Using the ‘Move’ command on Nevermore and adjust your direction is a bread and butter skill for every Nevermore user.

I was soloing mid against Morphling. I managed to get a couple of hits plus two of my Level 4 Shadowrazes on him and he gets away with only a tiny bit of HP left. I didn't YET have mana for another raze and he turned on Morph to stay alive, and it wasn't when he reached the runed spot, did he have just enough mana for a Waveform.

It is virtually impossible to list every scenario where precise clicking is required, but here are a couple of hints:

1. Never actually click on your target. Instead click on the ground right next to the target.

2. If there’s something between you and your target (for example, trees, hills etc.) never try click on the target or anything around it. Instead, click on the foot on the obstacle that enables you to line yourself up with the target (Nevermore-Foot of the Obstacle-Enemy Target).

There’re two more things that need to be talked over about Shadowrazes—Canceling your Shadowrazes and Quick-Raze. Mastering those two elements can improve your game in ways you cannot imagine, just like how mastering Quickswitching and Quickscoping can give your AWP game a real boost in CS.

Shadowraze takes around 0.5 seconds to cast and sometimes due to unforeseen reasons, your razes will miss once in a while. Canceling Shadowrazes is simple—before the cast animation of Shadowraze finishes (Nevermore raising his hands to deliver a raze) and raze comes out, you press the ‘S’ or ‘Stop’ key and this means Nevermore stops everything he was doing.

Fluid motion is the key here. Great concentration is required for you to actually stop that raze in time and a lot of the time, rapid reaction time is very important. Try practicing cancelling your razes when you’re bored—just create a single player game and try ‘feel’ that delicate timing of Nevermore’s casting animation. The more your practice, the more fluid your gameplay will be. This also applies to Nevermore’s Ultimate, and unlike Sand King’s Ultimate, Nevermore’s can be ‘Stopped’ an unlimited amount of times. Use the ‘S’ key to throw off your opponents patterns and tempo!

Quick-raze is something that a lot of players haven’t really heard of, but it’s something that every experienced player will always do. This is exceptionally useful if the stun on the target is about to almost wear off, or the target is merely slowed by Shadow Strike, etc. You’re assuming that your opponent is going to travel in a straight line for the next 1.5 seconds and what you basically do is use your ‘X’ and ‘C’ razes (or your ‘Z’ and ‘X’ razes for that matter) in rapid succession. I’ve come to realize that if one simply pressed ‘X’ then ‘C’, Nevermore will actually stand still for about 0.2 seconds after the initial raze before he casts the next raze.

Now here’s the trick: press ‘X’ twice (or more times) then ‘C’ twice (or more times) and you will find that the two razes will actually come out faster than if you just clicked once. This is because Nevermore delivers his raze when his hands are in the air—there’s an animation of his hands coming back down that that corresponds to that 0.2 second delay.

Pressing the ‘C’ key twice is a bit like using ‘S’ key except you’re cancelling out his after-animation (that’s how I try describe it). Technically, you can press ‘X’ then press ‘S’ immediately after Nevermore delivers the raze, but it’s just that much safer if you just press ‘X’ twice then ‘C’ twice, because with ‘S’ you’re risking cancelling that raze.