The Kings/Queens of the clock...

hey guys

i would love to say i have a good knowledge of all the hero's and maybe even a respectable knowledge of how each is supposed to be play .

but most of the lads and lasses on here have been playing for many many a year and i would love to know.

who are the best hero's for the different stages/ area's of the game?

and when i say " best " i mean which heroes seem to have the most impact, either it be in kills, zoning, farm speed or just the plain "aww **** i dont want to lane against him/her " factor.

(and in before "but it all depends on who you lane against" .. i know this is the major factor but just humour me and imagine the one hero you think owns in their respective stage no matter who they're playing"

i.e.

top 5 heroes for the first 20 mins
top 5 heroes for the mid 20 mins
top 5 heroes for the last 20 mins
top 5 junglers
top 5 "aww **** im against HIM/HER..."

would love to read your choices :)

cheers

Top heroes are pretty much all situationally, but I'll give you some powerhouse heroes at every stage of the game:
Top 5 Early Game Heroes
Undying, hard to fit into a lineup, but early levels in Decay and Tombstone mean lane dominance, awkward to fit into lineups, and does fall of hard as the game progresses.
Venomancer-all the damn poison, Venomous Gale generally leads to early kills, Plague Ward for defense and pushing are a major pain in the *** at all stages considering how many he can put on out. Poison Nova is brutal if properly set up, and Poison Sting just adds to the beauty.
Crystal Maiden-outstanding lane presence. Frostbite is fantastic and can lead into a lot of first bloods, and kills past that. Crystal Nova damage and slow is great, strong earlier while heroes have lower hp, and makes it tough to escape, giving her time to set up another Frostbite. Arcane Aura is amazing, Freezing Field is a very strong ability at all stages. Not to mention she's quite good at jungling.
Visage- Soul Assumption, and Grave Chill, IMO the most powerful lane support, and it believe he was the hero who claimed the most first blood kills at TI3.
Alchemist- Acid Spray and Unstable Concoction allow him to simply destroy opposing heroes, Medallion of Courage synergizes well with those abilities and makes him an absolute monster. Greevil's Greed helps him transition into mid - late game as more of a carry, Chemical Rage makes him a pain to kill.

Top 5 Mid Game heroes:
Clockwerk and Timbersaw as offlaners can be a big nuisance and give a lot of map control, both have the capability to snowball, and can really lead to early victories. Very mobile, high dps in the early-mid game, with the ability to shut down carries pretty hard.
Pugna- Nether Ward makes laning and team fights a pain, while Nether Blast makes towers vanish, be careful or he will have you defending the throne around 25min or earlier. Life Drain and Decrepify give him sustain and increased damage output, making him quite the pain in the ***.
Dragon Knight- ok, he gets that Black King Bar early enough, you'll be losing towers and team fights rather quickly, huge snowballing capability, and. Mid game murder train if allowed to farm and get his core items up.
outworld devourer- reason I say OD is powerful mid game, is at this point, not all of the opposing cores will have their BKB's to mitigate his magic damage. Astral Imprisonment acts as a steroid (int=damage) and crowd control tool, while his Arcane Orb dishes out big damage, and Sanity's Eclipse with enough stacks of AI, destroys the opposing team.

Top 5 Late Game heroes:
I'm going to go by the carries that are the "hardest" with farm
Anti-Mage- man break increases his dps, late with a high attack speed means you'll die before you can use any abilities, and if somehow you survive, you won't have mana to do anything anyways. Mana Void, if somehow heroes survive his r click-cleave-illusions onslaught, they'll get finished off by this bad boy. spell shield and Blink make him harder to kill, one for sustain, the other for escape, or chase to finish you off.
Medusa- takes about a year to come online, but ******* is she nigh impossible to kill, she will just outlast you in team fights, turn your team to stone, and if she's built a Divine Rapier, which she can reliably handle due to her survivability, she'll be multi-shorting heroes down quickly, just takes forever to come online.
Gyrocopter- when you think of dps, this old fart comes to mind. Powerful early-mid with his nukes, and devestating with items late, Flak Cannon ensures that the entire enemy team gets murdered equally. Self-explanatory
Faceless Void- can backtrack damage, Time Lock you to death, and in the right hands, Chronosphere an entire team. Give him cleave, 6 slotted he's killing the entire enemy team, hardest carry in dota because of chrono IMO, the great equalizer vs other carries that are very capable of killing him, as well as other heroes, not allowing them to lock him down. Medusa late still can survive the ulti, but, won't survive the ensuing chase with the rest of her team dead.
Spectre- queen of pure damage, can kill you because you attacked her, very squishy for a lot of the game, and fairly easy to lock down if you know how to manage her.

Top 5 Junglers:
Doom- has a built in Midas essentially, Devour boosts his farm, while granting abilities from jungle creeps to hasten farming, increase durability or dps. Scorched Earth assists with camp clearing, with aoe burn damage, while healing Doom. His ultimate is great for those lane ganks, pop out of the jungle, silence, and dot you, chase you down.
Chen- control the flavor of creeps you like, and heal allies all over the place? Micro intensive as ****, but an all around powerful hero, and nightmare in the laning phase. When a few centaur run out of the jungle and stomp your face in, it's painful, plus he's a big fan of pushing. If you can't micro, don't pick this hero.
Enchantress-Spoink!! Great ganker, fast farmer, can transition pretty well into mid game, falls of late but can still put out high damage.
Nature's Prophet- well this one is fairly obvious, Rat Doto king. Next
Enigma- demonic conversion makes it fast and easy to farm, while Malefice gives him solid Ganking potential from the jungle, and Midnight Pulse and Black Hole can win games in combination.

Top 5 dammit not that hero again:
Slark- annoying freaking hero, very hard to kill with an ulti that makes him undetectable. Very good at Ganking, he's just silly.
Nature's Prophet- evaporates towers, and is a constant nuisance with a global presence rat doto king.
Pudge- thanks Dendi!! Not as if the hero is difficult to beat, in good hands he obviously is, but he's played SOOO much, that dodging hooks in 4-5 games in a row at times is annoying.
Broodmother-not hard to counter with vision, but she can be a nuisance, especially if the player can micro the army of spiders she poops out, she will inevitably push entire lanes down, it's just keeping her down, and dealing with the damn spiders that can make her annoying. Ok main reason, I hate spiders.
Earth Spirit- hero is rigged.

Uh...this is difficult, there is a whole lot of "it depends" and "yes, but they're countered by..." so a lot of this is opinion. There's also big issues around snowballing and hard carries successfully AFK farming, but will have a stab at this:

Top 5 Early Heroes: (Potential impact, difficulty for some heroes to play against)

Queen of Pain, Batrider, Bane, Leshrac, Venomancer

(Honourable mentions, Pudge, Night Stalker, Enchantress, Chen, Juggernaut, Huskar, Chaos Knight, Razor, Earthshaker)

Top 5 Mid Heroes:

Timbersaw, Clinkz, Pugna, Storm Spirit, Shadow Fiend

(Mentions Death Prophet, Juggernaut, Ursa, Slark, Outworld Devourer)

Late Game:

Faceless Void, Phantom Lancer, Lone Druid, Spectre, Medusa

(Mention Morphling , Sniper, Anti-Mage, Lifestealer, Legion Commander, Troll Warlord)

Junglers:

Chen, Enchantress, Enigma, Axe

I don't like playing against/think are strong:

Abaddon, Phantom Lancer, Bristleback, Templar Assassin, Visage

God yeah, a good Earth Spirit is horrible to play against. Broodmother is very dangerous if you have the wrong heroes against her, or a pussycat with some others.

The reason I didn't put Lone Druid up there is simply because even with 12 items, the bear can be killed so easily by farmed carries, just wanted to point that out, I want to make an honorable mention for mid game for Razor and Lone Druid

I would put Doom Bringer in the top 5 late game heroes.

A full six Doom Bringer with 8000 E-hp and 1000 damage crits every second can kill just about anyone. The only heroes that can stop that are PL, CK and Void can only do it with a refresher.

Sure doom is decent but he is essentially a tiny without cleave, less burst, no craggy but with a DOOM.
He doesnt tear apart every support like a spectre, splitpush you do death like naga or PL. And doesnt have the sick AOE damage and tankyness like medusa.

i would mostly agree with sulaxrox's suggestions.

my top 5 for:

a.) early game: Alchemist, Crystal Maiden, Visage, Lich, Chen / Enchantress

Basically all of those are very strong laners, with lots of killing potential and you have to be extremely cautious of your positioning...which makes laning a nuisance. Also good alternatives: Jakrio, Earth Shaker, Witch Doctor, Leshrac, Naga Siren, Io..etc.

b.) mid game: Timbersaw, Pugna, Life Stealer, Clockwerk, Earth Spirit

the midgame is the stage of pushing and team-fighting ....at least in pubs this stage is were the outcome of the game can be decied very quickly, as advantages can be accumulated to such a point, at which most unorganized teams cant make any sort of comeback any more. Honorable mentions: Mirana, Dragon Knight, Invoker, Shadow Fiend, Nature's Prophet, Clinkz

c.) late game: Anti Mage, Faceless Void, Spectre, Gyrocopter, Luna

This is the stage every decently farming Hard Carry is looking for. Heroes with abilities like Flak Cannon, Chronosphere and Moon Glaive can take down an entire team all by themselfs, making any mistake a team makes, costing them the game .... a 50 second respawn is more than enough for a 6-slotted AM to take 3 entire sets of RAX. Other good hard carries: Medusa, Phantom Assassin, Wraith King, Phantom Lancer, Chaos Knight.

d.) Jungles: Chen, Enchantress, Enigma, Natures Prophet, Doom Bringer

jungle heroes usually tend to be off use in the early to midgame, but need a safe farm environment in order to get their game up. Getting important core items on those heroes early on, can put the enemy team at an early disadvantage.

e.) Generally annoying heroes to play against: Natures Prophet, Slark, Doom Bringer, Naga Siren, Undying, Rubick, Treant Protector

there is ofcourse a difference between heroes who dominate the lane early, or heroes who can gank early.
For example queen of pain can dominate the lane but enchantress is extremely good at really early ganking.

But i dont actually know why people think anti mage is THAT good at the really late stages of the game. His main strengths are outfarming anyone and being able to escape while splitpushing. Heb doesnt hit that hard or survive in a fight with 6 items compared to a 6 slotted spectre, morphling, exetera.

The HARDEST late late game heroes are.

Spectre, for one she is absolutely rediculously tanky, while damaging all opponents around you, and having anything global makes your late game so powerfull, as one mistake can lose you the game. She instantly makes supports life a nightmare, while removing them from the fight almost completely. If you want to completely break your opponent when they are on the backfoot, you can also charge in, with your team backing you up from a safe distance, do a ****ton of damage, absorb every big spell they have, die, then instabuyback and use your ult, GG.
She can even be 7 slotted, just get a refresher orb and put them in your boots slot, haunt, refresh, put on boots, wait out the duration of haunt, ult again, reality in and kill everyone who is not yet dead.

Medusa, although she is really situational, and needs a lot of protection from her team, and is a bit dependant on rapier to really start doing hard work, she is an even more tanky rampage machine. but she really lacks mobility.

Naga siren, why is she better lategame then the lancer? lets compare skills. lategame lancers Q is not really relevant apart from spawing 1 illusion and a slow, compare this to naga's single target skill, ensnare, which is much more usefull and allows her to hunt down enemies, or just hold their carry in place while your team destroys their other heroes.
lancers escape also isnt that amazing once gems come into play and supports have enough money for detection.

now compare the illusions, naga uses one skill for them, while PL uses 2 passives, one of which is his ultimate, yes lancer can make more, but he needs to build them up, making him much worse then naga at base defence becouse she can just spawn an army and cut of the creepwave. plus naga has riptide, dont underestimate that since it wrecks creepwaves.
but PL's ult is about illusions? so that has to count for something right? well in the end naga's illusions are MUCH stronger, doing 45% damage compared to lancers 20%, and they take 200% compared to 350%, that is pretty damn huge.
and then we didnt even count naga's ultimate, which is probably the most broken, atleast the strongest, ability in the game after elder titans aura.
you can sleep half a team while you murder the others, you can kill the only BKB'ed hero. and it allows you to play extremely balsy and close to their base, since it is an extremely reliable escape, since almost none exept a clockwerk can stop her from just TP'ing out.
she also has that rediculous movespeed.


i was writing this frikking story earlier but it was only yesterday that i witnessed the naga in person, and i played it. =D
http://dotabuff.com/matches/473974399

at one point we were 15000 gold behind, and SF and wind had a higher networth then me. but i had much more creepkills and after 20 minutes i had my radiance.
30 minutes later i had about 16000 gold more then SF and tiny couldnt even touch me, i just ran circles around him while killing 2 creepwaves, at the same time.
invoker and legion were piss poor and low level, andtusk did a lot of damage but he also fed a lot, while raging at me and my friend who played KOTL, while we both had more networth then him.
we 2 pretty much won the game by ourselves, after getting stomped earlygame.