As a new player, what makes certain heroes so much better than others?

Death Prophet

With Death Prophet, a lot of the issues reside in the way her ult works:

It's good for pushing, but not so great for team fights

• DPS isn't necessarily great or focused

You only get the benefit of the heal after the spell ends

• A lot of players are calling for an ability to recall her ult and get the heal

Comparison

I'm not the best mid, but I feel that she's a bit lacking compared to other top tier mids. Like you could draft Dragon Knight and get most of the same benefits and more. For instance:

• Dragon Knight has an excellent stun (Silence is something you can break out of using Manta Style or Black King Bar)
• Dragon Knight can push with his ult and teamfight very well (one of the few ranged splash attacks)
• He has a decent cone nuke (similar to Death Prophet )
• He doesn't really win mid, be he doesn't really lose it either
• He is far more durable than Death Prophet

Death Prophet doesn't do much in terms of ganking either. She's just pretty lackluster at the moment. I'd almost say she'd be more suited as a #3/#4 in terms of role (i.e. utility or 2nd support), but she has no hard crowd control (again, yeah, her silence is good, but a lot of the time stun > silence, because silence can be broken, stuns can't).

Other Top Tier Heroes

Many of the top tier heroes can:

• Do a lot of things
• Make the other team play differently
• Are very annoying to play against
• Can be played in a variety of ways

Let's take a few heroes for examples:

Batrider

Batrider can be played a lot of ways:

• A year ago, he was the most dominant mid hero
• Now he's often run as an offlaner
• If the offlane is too difficult, he can sacrifice the lane (only returning to prevent tower pushes) and farm the jungle

In addition, his skill set brings a huge variety of great things:

• Firefly gives amazing flying vision, which is huge when scouting rosh, finding heroes in juke spots, and checking dangerous areas in general
• Firefly is good for pushing, team fights, farming jungle camps
• Sticky Napalm is hard to play against and can give him substantial DPS
• He has a mini-stun and knock back
• His Flaming Lasso is the big thing, it has far more potential to pull a hero out of position with basically 100% success, it goes through Black King Bar as well while providing a pseudo-stun

Wisp (Io)

Io makes your team play differently. You always have to watch out for Relocate ganks. It's just incredibly hard to deal with and Io also makes your carry a lot stronger.

Outworld Devourer (OD)

Outworld Devourer basically always wins mid, except against Razor. Any INT hero will be completely dominated by Outworld Devourer and that's essentially a lost lane unless you gank Outworld Devourer over and over again.

Outworld Devourer will farm quickly and snowball pretty hard. His orb attack is Pure Damage (ignores armor), and he can build a lot of support/utility items, taking pressure off the rest of your team.

Weaver

Weaver can be run as offlane, carry, or situationally as mid. He's very difficult to deal with because you need detection, lockdowns, and nukes.

If you fail to kill him before he's no longer stunned, then he'll ult and backtrack all the damage you just did to him.
In addition, he's very elusive, has a strong auto attack (with Geminate attack), and the swarm is excellent for team fights.

Razor

Razor is a situational pickup, basically considered an anti-carry and hard counter to Outworld Devourer. People have run him as 2nd support too, but it's less common lately. He's picked usually in response to a hero like Lifestealer or Alchemist (a kiteable melee right-clicker).

Razor is often a hero that either gets a good start and dominates or just becomes dead weight.

You'll usually see him in a 1v1 lane (mid, or some 1v1 offlane), and occasionally as an aggressive trilane farmer.

As for his tier, he's basically really good against some heroes, but wouldn't really fit against highly mobile lineups, heavy nukes, and that sort of thing. His bread and butter is really the Static Link + his  Eye of the Storm.

Phantom Assassin

She's a pretty rare pickup. I think only Alliance really runs her because it's one of Loda's heroes. Phantom Assassin has a lot of good traits, but there aren't a lot of reasons to pick her.

She forces opposing carries to go Monkey King Bar, but she's easily dominated by nukes (until she gets Black King Bar) because her base HP is absolute shit. Her attack speed is also pretty low unless you use her Phantom Strike.

I'd think you get her as a carry to get aggressive aroudn lvl 6 to blow up squishy supports and snowball with kills, or you could get her to farm super hard and hit like a truck late game.

But you could also get Alchemist to do much of the same. He has a better stun, Greed lets him farm hard, and he's far more durable. His physical burst is just lower.

Gyrocopter also gives you more flexibility in that he can nuke and has an excellent splash damage attack. He can also get aggressive way earlier because of Rocket Barrage.

Anti-Mage is another hero that does a lot of Phantom Assassin's job. He can quickly jump into a fight and do damage fast (not as bursty as Phantom Assassin, but still does good DPS + mana burn + mana burn damage). He also split pushes a hell of a lot better and he can blink anywhere (whereas Phantom Assassin needs a target to blink to).

Overall, Phantom Assassin is fairly low tier because there aren't necessarily a lot of lineups she fits in or a lot of reasons to pick her up over another hero. A lot of that can change based on preference and how a team plays (look at Duza for instance - they pick Tiny even without Io because their carry is exceptional ly good with Tiny ).

A list of common supports:

• Crystal Maiden
• Lina
• Witch Doctor
• Shadow Demon
• Shadow Shaman
• Silencer
• Lion
• Pugna
• Ancient Apparition
• Vengeful Spirit
• Jakiro
• Naga Siren
• Omniknight

All of them can be negated by a Pipe of Insight and/or well timed Black King Bars. Vengeful Spirit , Naga Siren and Silencer can transition into high physical damage but they need farm to do so. The common supports left are easy to ban out: Treant Protector and Io . This leaves you with less common heroes in support roles like Gyrocopter, Spirit Breaker, Sven and Clockwerk . Point being, picking Batrider and Death Prophet tells your opponent quite a bit about who to ban and who to pick.

On Naix (Lifestealer), One of the best descriptions of him is an anti-tank. His passive scales with the amount of hp that the opponent has. At level 4, on top of his regular attack, he takes 7% of the enemy's hp and heals himself with it with every attack. Alchemist naturally gains quite a bit of hp during a game due to being a STR hero with decent stat gains, so Lifestealer is already a decent counter for him. Ursa and Spectre are both heroes that scale off of their own max hp. They are both likely to build STR items to gain hp and Lifestealer is a natural counter. Timbersaw is also a counter to any STR hero because Whirling death removes 15% of their STR (at 66 str it does effectively 440 damage; at 100 it does 535, aka about 1/3 of your hp)