i'm very good and i'm coming here to visit the awesomeness that is the hive workshop. i'm not the best, but i'm in some known leagues (and neither am i the -apem guy who says every hero that beats me is imbalanced)
-yes, some heroes are imbalanced. while 80 or so heroes does add lot of replayability to the map, it is guaranteed impossible to balance 80 heroes. when you change even one skill of a hero (say frost nova) so that a certain hero is better, other heroes will become worse against that hero, etc; the whole thing changes
some heroes that are "imbalanced". currently the most recognized are spectre and bristleback. although i don't agree with the latter, i won't go into too many details other than the fact that they deal a lot of damage when let farmed because of their reflection abilities
-also there is the 'tiering problem'. there are heroes that are just better for competitive play (but i think this exists in every aos; some just aren't known because none are really as popular as dota). this consists of qop, warlock, nerubian assassin, beastmaster, zeus, sand king, lina, lesh, etc (dont want too list too many
) who are all better than say treant, spirit breaker, axe, alch, pit lord
-with so many heroes/items, i think it might be hard to learn. not trying to add a subtle 'i am own' message here, but i really didn't take that long. however with the amount of people who are GOOD at dota (even in leagues and especially tda there are a lot of subpar people) compared to the average skill level of pubbies, i'm assuming it's hard to learn the game completely. and even when you learn the game, you still need actual skill and not just knowledge. not only that, but there is even more than just heroes/items; there's a whole section on their forums on mechanics only which will tell you how orbs stack, which spells go through immunity, etc. some pros don't even know how it works.
-also while updates aren't exactly slow, some people aren't really satisfied in the direction of how the map is being updated. new heroes/new items/asthetic things are being adressed without any proper balance changes to those lower tier heroes mentioned earlier. the new changelog was leaked and i can definately say that a lot of stuff was tweaked that didn't need to be, while some major problems still exist
-also mapmakers in general hate dota, although i don't know if this ties here. guinsoo used to steal spells off eul's roc dota and pretty much every one of the heroes 'he made' (read: weren't taken directly from roc dota) were from his forum of suggestions and/or friends
regarding items, while some are better than others there is a lot of versatility in the choices of items you can get already. most aos suffer 'holy shit get this +10 to all stats and win' kinda thing (null talismans anyone), whereas dota you have many different builds for heroes. and the 'crappy items' that all the supposed pro players used to rant about are actually used be real pros. and while i'm not going to say "EVERY ITEM IS GOOD IF USED CORRECTLY" because that's untrue and only said by optimists who don't even play the game, most of the items have use. another thing that ties in with the earlier mentioned balancing 80 heroes point, is that icefrog has to balance for many different levels of play: buffing say dagon for higher level play means probably a lot of whine frmo pub players about how imba dagon is now. anyways, the only item i consider 'true crap' is blademail. and this is out of like 60+ items
and because i already made such a long essay i'll adress some points mentioned earlier in the thread.
pudge is not imba because of his ability to gain infinite amount of strength. in a regular dota game where he dominates, he'll get about 25. in a 2 hour game, i'd predict 40-70.
you have stuff totally wrong about intel. while some do 'decline' lategame, pretty much every hero used currently has some viability lategame. even stuff that people don't use (lich has chain frost, dp has exorcism). also they dominate early game if played properly, so it's a good tradeoff. also any hero with even ONE stun has viability lategame (and aoe stuns even more). no idea why you say their ulti's suck either. off the top of my head i think off tidal wave, rain of chaos, laguna blade, pulse nova and global silence. the only ult i can think of which is bad is kotl's ult, and that still is not TERRIBLY bad but just needs a buff. maybe if you play -em intels are worse, but the level of pubs is so low that you could probably win anyways
regarding rosh, reason why that happened is because no one would ever rosh: it was easy to get ganked. if anything he needs another change because the only time you can really do rosh is if they're either all dead (AND YOU SHOULD PUSH INSTEAD OF DOING ROSH) or b is if you're dominating them anyways so they can't gank you (in which case game is pretty much over and you're just on the safe side anyways). also heroes soloing him is pretty much null; veno/undying take like 2 minutes which is valuable exp and possibility of gank, and ursa can solo him pretty quickly but again there's still a possibility of a gank and that ursa isn't a good hero at all besides that
also if you wish to argue with anything i said, please don't argue on points of heroes only (aka so and so hero is good).
