My opinion
Ok guys, I know you put a whole lot of well-thought out comments there, but I just ignored them because they were too damned long
The bold catches attention
Ok, the way to do anything right, is to get inside the heads of your enemies, understanding every single movement and why they did it
After that, they are so easy to read, they are pretty much your trained monkeys (they trained themselves, all you gotta do is press the buttons)
Here we are dealing with wc3 players
Let's analyze this a bit
GENERALLY SPEAKING
A) They are obsessed, leading to delusion (double-negative), often leading to a very lacking social life (their whole perspective on life becomes distorted and people become uncomfortable around them)
SOME PEOPLE ARE LUCKY AND ARE NOT AFFECTED
This leads to insecurities, which leads to being scared and always taking the "safe path", in other words
THESE PEOPLE ARE EXTREMELY RESISTANT TO CHANGE!!!
B) The people who play DotA are generally unhappy with their own lives, when they play DotA they are in a new world where they reign supreme
Please Note: People will always look for a single tactic that they can use over and over until it doesn't work
Once you understand that, you see that people begin to become set in their patterns, often becoming
EXTREMELY RESISTANT TO CHANGE!!!
C) Part of B, Dota Players are increasingly cruel to new players, their fantasy world where they are kings, it's a well known fact that angry people want to release their aggression.
If the angry person has only targets stronger than said angry person, they will find a weaker target (new DotA players) and unload on them (the DotA players could just mess up ever so slightly, and the people get so set in their ways, it's like pulling a hair trigger)
_________________________________________
Anyway, my point to this whole mess, is you need to feed people
It's not about making a "good" map or a "cool" map
Those terms mean sh*t
THE WAY TO GET A PERSON TO REPEATEDLY PLAY YOUR GAME WITH UNFAILING UN-ATTENTIVENESS IS TO PUT THEIR TRAINED MINDS INTO AN ENDLESS LOOP!!!
Making it difficult, but just enough so they feel challenged but
NOT overwhelmed, an interesting effect
Now, this is the difference between a "good" map, and one that is played over and over
"GOOD" MAPS - Have some cool effects, occasionally a great idea, always balanced fairly well, in the balancing, is where the problem lies
I
LOVE to play risks, BUT to the average person, they feel overwhelmed, and try to find something to blame their failure on, they can't imagine that you are simply better (you have some kind of tactic, cheat, anything)
They leave, crying and never play again
PLAYED REPEATEDLY - The game is exactly the same as the "good" maps, *EXCEPT*, it works on the sub-conscious of it's players, usually on accident
Ways that affect the average players mind
COMPETITION - People love to prove themselves, allow them without overwhelming them
SELF-IMPROVEMENT - Another way of proving themselves, people like to build and then show it off, RPG's are a great example (Why the fuck would somebody play WoW for days???, this is why)
Lastly
SELF-COMFORT - People want to always be comforted by a back-up, something they can ALWAYS use, and it will work EVERYTIME, in real life such rules do not exist, thats why video games are so appealing, they can do the same thing every time, and have the same end result (some form or pleasure)
When players play DotA, Counterstrike, WoW, all three of these points are present (just forming an RPG characters SETS you in one strat until you build a new one [the more you go, the more the strat evolves, but I'm not gonna get into that])
My suggestion, when you balance the map, make a few strats extremely attractive to achieving the
PLAYERS goals (see above to predict what they would like)
Make these strats luscious, make many of them,
BUT
___________________________________________
ARE YOU STILL READING THIS!?!?!?!?
ALWAYS MAKE A COUNTER!!!
THE COUNTER MUST BE DIFFICULT TO PULL OFF!!!
But still possible
If the counter is impossible, or doesn't exist, the strat will be imba, and the players will feel overwhelmed, cheated, and will never play again
If there is no luscious zone of comfort for people to repeat, they will play the game a few times, but then just leave, saying it's just "OK" (footies)
Lastly, there must always be some sort of notion of building upon oneself, but thats easy
So is making it competitive (make damned sure it's PvP, or PvComp, making the comp continually adjust to allow the player to win 20%-40% of the time, but the comp generally wins)
Another example of these things are TD's, although, there isn't much to compete against once you've beaten it, until then, TD's are excellent
PLEASE NOTE I have said it before, there is no such thing as a set rule when it comes to real life, so there are exceptions to these general rules, people who just don't work like that
Fill these three points, and you WILL BEAT DOTA
(By the way, these explain very well why Risk is dead, and Devo Risk is the only one ever played [Hint: Self-Comfort > Competition for this one])
If you actually read this whole thing, put "I" as Title for your next post and I'll give you +rep 
...
