Which is better?

I'm currently in the process of building a hero pool. My problem is that I'm not very good at balancing things out.

A lot of who I enjoy learning/playing - Timbersaw, Techies, and Skywrath Mage - are all capable of falling victim to an opponent that has Mana Leak, Last Word, or any other silencing spell. All three NEED to have Mana regen and some levels to be useful after the early laning phase. I could probably start looking at Treant Protector or another hero that isn't mana-needy.

When you guys were looking to expand your hero pool, how did you go about doing so? I'm referring to the point AFTER you find 3-5 you "like to play as" and are now filling in blanks for games in which they have counters at the ready.

It's kinda what takes your fancy and suits your playstyle as much as anything, but I'd try to pickup a least one hero for each major role - say an initiator, a support, a mid, a jungler, offlaner and a carry. That way if your team picks a bunch of stuff that leaves you needing to play one of them, you have at least something that's vaguely appropriate.

I'd recommend grabbing a hero who's fairly straight forward to play in that role with reasonably easy to execute skills. Sure, every hero can be mastered further and develop more advanced plays, but if you can at least do the basics ok, that's a good start.

For example, you could pickup Lion as a support, Sven as a carry, Tidehunter or Warlock as an initiator etc. If you try to do say Visage, Meepo and Earth Spirit you could be making life very difficult for yourself.

BTW Treant Protector is also quite mana dependent :)

I personally am good with almost every hero, with the exception or Slardar. And I find it very rewarding. You widen your spectrum of play styles and gain a better understanding if the game overall. You get a feel for it. Also it benefits your team. If you are that one guy that picks Lion or something every game, you 1. Will not know anything about anything outside of what that hero does (and so you cannot understand the struggles of the rest of the heroes) and 2. Lion just might not be the right hero for this match. Also playing one hero over and over gets WAAY boring. I play a new hero every game almost.

While I might be decent with almost all heroes, I do have some heroes that I do play more and are better with.

My top 10:
1. Morphling
2. Slark
3. Treant Protector
4. Spectre
5. Chen
6. Meepo
7. Silencer
8. Chaos Knight
9. Invoker
10. Beastmaster