[Analysis] What constitutes "imba"?

Not all heroes are created equally, some naturally are picked more often than others, however its pretty clear to see that the newer heroes tend to be towards the overpowered side of things. At the moment some of the most dangerous heroes are batrider, tauren chieftain, undying and clockwerk, all of these guys are relatively new and boast great skill synergy alongside nice stat gain. Other picks high up in the pecking list like puck and kunkka were also more recent additions, of the 6.5x series.

Does seem like the reason these guys are so highly thought of is that their different skills seem to complement each other so perfectly. I'll write some brief notes:

Kunkka: X-marks the spot perfectly lines you up to hit a torrent, and then a ship with relative ease. Ship stun allows you to hit a nice big cleaving attack on enemies that it disables. All skills work great together.

TC: Ancestral spirit has an amazing cast range, allowing you to use echo stomp on enemies from far away, them taking damage from ancestral and then minor damage from the stomp. As they are slept for 5 seconds on lvl4, its easy to line up an ultimate to hit all stomped units, and when your spirit returns your damaged is increased for attacking all those slowed enemies. The fact that natural order reduces magic resistance in an AoE around ancestral spirit as well as TC himself means that enemies take even more damage from the combo, and more damage from allies that utilise your combo to place their own spells.

Batrider: Napalm slows units and causes them to take extra damage from fire, this makes it more difficult to get away from firefly (due to slow), and makes them take more damage in the fire trail left behind. Flamebreak will also deal extra damage to units with the napalm on, and as the icing on the cake Flaming Lasso allows batrider to pull units right back into his trail of fire... altogether adding up to massive fire damage. Anyone who watched Jolie double kill a dual lane on early levels with batrider should see this guys potential damage output is crazy.

And it goes on with other newer heroes, their skillsets are just designed to complement each other perfectly. Its great and it makes for lots of fun playing the heroes, skill synergy is always nice, but unfortunately it leaves many older heroes trailing behind with skillsets that just dont make quite as much sense. I of course dont want all the heroes with less skill synergy to be remade, as you lose some of the essence of the hero that way, but perhaps newer heroes shouldnt be made to be quite so perfect with the way their skills work together.

I like tea
As a side note, being English I like tea far too much. My team (the majority of whome are german) have picked me up on this and i've been forced to change my in-game alias to TeAToM, haha. It has started to be a bit of a compulsion that I have to have a cup of tea with me when I'm playing dota, suppose it doesnt hurt to have little habits like that though if they sort of make you feel comfortable :)