Head-to-head Dota 2 7.41e win rate from ranked matches.
In Dota 2 7.41e, Sand King wins the Sand King vs Shadow Demon matchup: Sand King beats Shadow Demon in 56.30% of 135 ranked matches.
Picking Shadow Demon into a Sand King often feels like you're playing with a handicap. Your main defensive spell, Disruption, is a liability against his ultimate. Using it on Sand King during an Epicenter channel doesn't cancel the spell; it pauses the cast and makes him invulnerable. He reappears right where he was, ready to finish the channel and devastate your team. This makes stopping his primary initiation incredibly difficult. On top of that, Sand King can safely channel inside Sand Storm, denying the vision Shadow Demon needs to apply his other spells. Even on the same team, their kits clash, with Disruption often saving an enemy from a friendly Burrowstrike stun.
How the matchup shifts across skill brackets — Sand King's win rate against Shadow Demon in recent ranked matches, split by average match rank. Ranks with too few recent matches are omitted. These rows use the last 30 days of quality-filtered ranked matches, all patches in that span combined — a wider window than the patch-scoped count above, so the per-rank match totals can exceed it.
| Rank | Sand King win rate | Matches |
|---|---|---|
| Crusader & Archon | 58.94% | 151 |
| Legend & Ancient | 47.12% | 104 |
Sand King's win rate against Shadow Demon in each recent balance patch — whether this matchup is trending up or down. Patches without enough matches are omitted.
| Patch | Sand King win rate | Change | Matches |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7.41e | 56.30% | ▲ +0.3pp | 135 |
| 7.41d | 56.01% | ▲ +1.6pp | 14,632 |
| 7.41c | 54.40% | ▼ -1.3pp | 7,945 |
| 7.41b | 55.75% | — | 12,939 |
Move this data into a draft
Sand King starts on Radiant and Shadow Demon on Dire. Add the other eight picks to see whether this head-to-head edge survives the full draft.
Data updated Aug 11, 2026.