* All of Shadow Shaman's abilities totally ruin Terrorblade: Ether Shock destroys his illusions, Hex prevents him from using Sunder or Manta Style in bad situations, Shackles not only that prevent him from using Sunder, but he has no way to cancel it and Mass Serpent Ward can help Shadow Shaman push faster than Terrorblade even in Metamorphosis.
Additional:
* Ether Shock, Mass Serpent Wards summoned from both, Mass Serpent Ward and Aghanim's Shard upgraded Shackles can do great damage to both, Terrorblade and his illusions.
* Hex prevents Terrorblade from using Sunder or Manta Style in bad situations. Hex can also destroy one of his illusions.
* Shackles can damage Terrorblade and prevent him from using his abilities and items, whether to fight, survive, or dispel it in any way while also healing Shadow Shaman in process. In addition, Terrorblade has no solutions to cancel it. Aghanim's Shard upgraded Shackles can also summon four more Mass Serpent Wards to attack Terrorblade while he is disabled.

* Ember Spirit can deal devastating damage to illusion heroes like Terrorblade with Sleight of Fist. Terrorblade also has no way of preventing Ember Spirit from getting Activate Fire Remnant off. Additionally, Ember Spirit's ability to fight from long range as well as his wide skill set won't give many opportunities for Terrorblade to get Sunder off.
Additional:
* Ember Spirit can deal devastating damage to Terrorblade and his illusions with Sleight of Fist.
* Terrorblade has no disable to lock down Ember Spirit and prevent him from escaping with Fire Remnant. In addition, he doesn't like purchasing disabling items like Scythe of Vyse or Abyssal Blade, which are the only solutions to deal with Ember Spirit.

* Hex greatly reduces Timbersaw's mobility.
* The stun and damage over time from Shackles mitigates Reactive Armor's HP and armor regen.

* Searing Chains prevents usage of Timber Chain.
* Timbersaw is vulnerable to magical burst damage, which Ember Spirit provides with Fire Remnant and Flame Guard.
* Timbersaw's abilities deal pure damage, thus they cannot remove Flame Guard.

* Shadow Shaman's Mass Serpent Ward together with Ether Shock can easily kill lots of Treants if played defensively.
* Hex and Shackles can disrupt Nature's Prophet's escape attempts with Teleportation.
Additional:
* Mass Serpent Ward can kill lots of treants if played defensively.
* Mass Serpent Ward, Hex and Shackles can catch and kill a Nature's Prophet trying to use Teleportation.

* Ember Spirit can easily deal with Nature's Call by using his Flame Guard and with Battle Fury. He also has multiple ways of escaping Sprout. Additionally, Ember Spirit can break Sprout's trees with Activate Fire Remnant and interrupt Teleportation with Searing Chains.
Additional:
* Sleight of Fist with Battle Fury deals a lot of damage to Nature's Prophet's team if they stand close to his Treants, as well as killing all the Treants with ease.
* Ember Spirit with Fire Remnant and Boots of Travel can be very active around the map, which enables him to quickly teleport and defend the objective Nature's Prophet is attacking whenever he tries to push.

* Shackles and Mass Serpent Ward instantly destroy Refraction

* Searing Chains and Flame Guard quickly burn through Refraction instances exposing her low health pool.
* Templar Assassin has no inherent way to prevent Ember Spirit from escaping, a good Ember player also will be able to dodge her meld attack

* Can easily interrupt and disable Spirit Breaker with hex if being charged.

* Searing Chains can stop Charge of Darkness if timed correctly.
* Activate Fire Remnant can be used to escape an approaching Spirit Breaker, or lead Spirit Breaker into a bad situation.
* Activate Fire Remnant and Sleight of Fist allows Ember Spirit to dodge Charge of Darkness if timed correctly.

* Heroes that can keep Marci for a long time in one place so she can't pursue her targets, like Bane, Lion, Shadow Shaman, Invoker, Disruptor and Kunkka.

Additional:
* Shadow Shaman can provide an excellent counter-initiation against her Rebound. His abilities can shut down any of her tower dive attempts in the laning phase.
* Shackles keeps Marci stunned for an extended period of time,w asting her ultimate .A combo with Mass Serpent Ward only makes things worse for her, as her armor is low.

* Heroes that can reliably kite out Dispose, Unleash and dodge Rebound, like Ember Spirit, Void Spirit, Storm Spirit, Anti-Mage, Faceless Void, Puck or always build items like Blink Dagger and Force Staff.

* Heroes with both illusions and summons, for Io has nothing to deal with multiple enemies at once outside from Spirit's weak area-of-effect: Broodmother, Chaos Knight, Lycan, Naga Siren, Nature's Prophet, Phantom Lancer, Shadow Shaman, Terrorblade, Visage, Warlock.

* Heroes with either magical, physical or pure damage burst: Bane, Ember Spirit, Leshrac, Lina, Luna, Nyx Assassin, Phantom Assassin, Skywrath Mage, Tinker, Ursa, Void Spirit.

* Shackles and Hex can both be used on Muerta while she is using Pierce the Veil. preventing

* Disruption is not reliable enough to catch an Ember Spirit with a backup Fire Remnant.
* Sleight of Fist will also make quick work of the spawned illusions.
* Ember Spirit usually builds Eul's Scepter of Divinity to dispel Soul Catcher and Linken's Sphere to block Disruption and Demonic Purge.
* The best you can do against an Ember Spirit is to dispel his Flame Guard with your Demonic Purge.

* Ember's magic damage build is able to burst down Alchemist due to his low strength gain and Alchemist's normal item pick up.

* Ember Spirit has much higher mobility in Fire Remnant than Void Spirit.
* Ember's Flame Guard is effective against Void Spirit's spells, as most of them deal magical damage.
* The root from Searing Chains prevents Void Spirit from using Dissimilate or Astral Step.

* The high mobility provided by Fire Remnant makes it hard for Windranger to find a good position to land Shackleshot or a full duration of Focus Fire.
* Flame Guard and Searing Chains deal considerable magical damage to Windranger which she cannot avoid with Windrun.
* Searing chains also negates the mobility from Windrun.

* Fire Remnant allows Ember Spirit to escape while Ruptured.
Additional:
* Fire Remnant allows Ember Spirit to escape Bloodseeker while Ruptured.

* Crystal Maiden is extremely fragile and she's an easy target for him. She has no real disables that can lock Ember Spirit down, and all of her skill damage can be negated with Flame Guard. The damage from Searing Chains, Flame Guard, and Sleigh of Fist can easily take her down.

* Zeus laneing against Ember is going to be punished with Sleight of Fist due to his low health pool
* Zeus's chip damage from Arc Lightning and other spells is nullified from Ember's Flame Guard.

* Ember Spirit's Fire Remnant is an easy way to escape from Clockwerk's Power Cogs.
* Flame Guard blocks most of the magical damage Clockwerk does.

* Shadow Shaman's long disables are effective at kiting and wasting the duration of Battle Trance.
* Mass Serpent Ward are especially effective against Troll Warlord during Battle Trance, as trapping him inside them during the duration is effectively another hard disable, as Troll cannot attack the wards or use Phase Boots to escape.

* Sleight of Fist is the natural counter to Phantom Lancer's army of illusions, especially when combined with Battle Fury.
Additional:
* Sleight of Fist, allows Ember Spirit to destroy all of Phantom Lancer's illusions.
* Flame Guard also deals significant damage to illusions, and protects against Spirit Lance.
* Phantom Rush is unable to catch Ember Spirit when he teleports to his Fire Remnants.

* Shadow Shaman's many disables can lock down Weaver. Even with Linken's Sphere, Weaver might not be able to escape should Shadow Shaman uses Shackles quickly enough following Hex.
* Mass Serpent Wards can make short work of Weaver once he is locked down.

* A pre-placed Fire Remnant allows Ember Spirit to escape Upheaval.
* Flame Guard blocks Shadow Word's damage.
* Sleight of Fist allows Ember Spirit to attack from outside of Upheaval's range, and Searing Chains lets him interrupt it.

* Flame Guard blocks Dark Willow's magical burst damage, and harms her if she tries to get close to attack with Bedlam.
* Sleight of Fist and Fire Remnant makes it hard for Dark Willow to fully disable Ember Spirit.

* Shackles prevents Chen from acting, and damages him while healing Shadow Shaman, also allowing Shadow Shaman's allies to kill him faster. Aghanim's Shard upgraded Shackles can also summon four more Mass Serpent Wards to attack Chen while he is disabled. And to make things worse, Chen has no way to cancel Reel In on his own, and must rely on outside from {U:Centaur Conqueror} or {U:Mud Golem} under his control.
* Ether Shock and Mass Serpent Ward can often not only kill Chen's allies before he can save them with Hand of God, but they can also be used to destroy Chen's creeps easily thanks to their high damage and area-of-effect.
* Hex will rrevent Chen from any attempt to save himself or his allies with Hand of God.
Additional:
* Shackles prevents Chen from acting, and damages him while healing Shadow Shaman, also allowing Shadow Shaman's allies to kill him faster. Aghanim's Shard upgraded Shackles can also summon four more Mass Serpent Wards to attack Chen while he is disabled. And to make things worse, Chen has no way to cancel {A|Shackles|Shadow Shaman
* Ether Shock and Mass Serpent Ward can often not only kill Chen's allies before he can save them with Hand of God, but they can also be used to destroy Chen's creeps easily thanks to their high damage and area-of-effect.
* Hex will prevent Chen from any attempt to save himself or his allies with Hand of God.

* Flame Guard makes Dark Seer not deal any damage with his skills to Ember Spirit.

* Hex's instant cast time will force Brewmaster into the awkward situation of needing some form of spell immunity or block to prevent being immediately hex upon blinking in, or wait until Shaman has used all his crowd control before entering a fight.
* Brewmaster also has no defense against Shadow Shaman lockdowns.

* Heroes with considerable mobility can easily escape from a rolling Pangolier: Anti-Mage, Queen of Pain, Void Spirit, Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, Earth Spirit, moreover, if a player is familiar with how Rolling Thunder works, they can adjust their movement to avoid it entirely and of course outplay the Pangolier player.

* Sven is very vulnerable to chain stun such as Lion, Shadow Shaman or Magnus.

* Heroes with long lockdowns: Shadow Shaman, Legion Commander.

* Ember Spirit with Sleight of Fist and Activate Fire Remnant
* Heroes that can dodge Glimpse:
* Puck with Phase Shift
* Riki with Tricks of the Trade
* Phantom Lancer with Doppelganger
* Ember Spirit with Sleight of Fist and Activate Fire Remnant
* Chaos Knight with Phantasm
* Naga Siren with Mirror Image
* Tusk with Snowball
* Juggernaut with Omnislash
* Brewmaster with Primal Split
* Lifestealer with Infest
* Phoenix with Supernova

* In general, squishy heroes that rely on escape often struggles against the amount of disables Shadow Shaman can bring. Queen of Pain, Anti-Mage and Storm Spirit are among these.

* Flame Guard absorbs up to 500 magical damage (700 with Level 10 talents), which helps Ember Spirit survive against Storm Spirit's high magical damage.
* Searing Chains can root enemies up to 3 seconds, making Storm Spirit unable to escape with Ball Lightning.
* Fire Remnant deals high magical damage when casting multiple instances at once, granting Ember Spirit the damage to burst Storm Spirit down in the early to mid game.

* Viper cannot interrupt heroes with powerful channeling abilities: Bane, Enigma, Shadow Shaman, Warlock

* Heroes who can dodge Earth Spirit's abilities: Ember Spirit, Puck, Weaver

* Like above, supports with reliable stuns can be a massive problem and force Black King Bar in fights unideally, such as Shadow Shaman, Lion, Nyx Assassin.

* Heroes who can clear the waves of Enigma's Eidolons: Lina, Luna, Dawnbreaker, Jakiro, Shadow Shaman, Death Prophet, Keeper of the Light, Invoker, Leshrac, Puck.

* Heroes with escaping and disjointing abilities can be good against Juggernaut:Anti-Mage Riki, Queen of Pain, Puck, Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, Slark etc.

* Heroes with silence and mana drain abilites, as Ancient Apparition relies entirely on his abilities: Invoker, Silencer, Nyx Assassin, Skywrath Mage, Shadow Shaman, Lion and etc.

* Heroes with high mobility will be able to avoid Gyrocopter's area attacks: Storm Spirit, Morphling, Ember Spirit

* Any hero who can counter-initiate in anticipation without getting caught in Reverse Polarity: Sven, Omniknight, Enigma, Luna, Naga Siren, Mars, Jakiro, Venomancer, Elder Titan, Faceless Void, Rubick, Keeper of the Light, Pugna, Invoker, Spectre, Alchemist, Treant Protector, Lina, Oracle, Zeus, Shadow Shaman, Phoenix, Razor, Huskar, Batrider, Kunkka, Tidehunter, Wraith King, Sand King, Medusa, Dawnbreaker.

* Heroes that heavily depend on illusions or summons, (Naga Siren, Terrorblade, Phantom Lancer, Lycan,...) are vulnerable to Sleight of Fist and even more so if Ember Spirit has Battle Fury.

* Any hero with teleport abilities (e.g. Ember Spirit, Storm Spirit) can easily break Static Link.

* Heroes that heavily depend on illusions or summons, (Naga Siren, Terrorblade, Phantom Lancer, Lycan,...) are vulnerable to Sleight of Fist and even more so if Ember Spirit has Battle Fury.

* Shadow Shaman has many disables to lock down Queen of Pain, preventing her from Blinking away, even through Linken's Sphere or her spell block talent.
* Mass Serpent Ward can tear through Queen of Pain's low health pool once she's locked down by Hex & Shackles.

* Hex can be used immediately to destroy Spectre's illusion when she Haunts.
* Shadow Shaman can use Shackles to lock down Spectre for his team.
* Shadow Shaman's Mass Serpent Ward and Ether Shock help him push lanes and end the game early before Spectre can come online and take over the late game.

* Sleight of Fist keeps Ember Spirit invulnerable until he hits every unit in its area of effect allowing him to stall for large amounts of time against Broodmother and her large amounts of spiderlings, or potentially damaging them enough if equipped with an item to improve wave clearing such as Battle Fury or Maelstrom to prevent her pushes entirely.
* Flame Guard will damage any of Broodmother's spiders in an area, deterring her from attempting to kill him. It can also be used during Sleight of Fist to amplify damage done.
* Fire Remnant allows Ember Spirit an escape from Broodmother that is unaffected by her Incapacitating Bite.

* Ember Spirit can close the distance between Sniper easily with his Activate Fire Remnant and further keep Sniper in place with Searing Chains.
* With the help of Aghanim's Scepter, Sniper cannot outrun Ember Spirit or chase him, even if Sniper builds mobility items.

* Heroes with strong area damage to destroy Phantasm illusions: Axe, Ember Spirit, Legion Commander, Phoenix

Additional:
* Ember Spirit is evasive and can dodge close encounters with melee heroes like Chaos Knight. Ember Spirit can't be caught with the slow from Reality Rift, and Flame Guard and Sleight of Fist can bring Phantasm's illusions down quickly.

* Heroes with a high degree of mobility and invisibility are hard to catch with Meat Hook: Ember Spirit, Riki, Clinkz, Queen of Pain.

* Heroes with good mobility to avoid Jakiro's abilities and with good chase to punish Jakiro from pushing a tower: Bloodseeker, Ember Spirit, Juggernaut, Phantom Assassin, Weaver.

* Heroes with long or multiple disables will prevent Legion Commander from winning Duels: Shadow Shaman, Lion

* Mass Serpent Ward rips apart Huskar quickly due to his poor armor.
* As soon as Huskar jumps in, he will be vulnerable to Shadow Shaman's disables if he does not have Black King Bar.