With over a hundred heroes and items to pick from, it's no wonder that Dota 2's balance isn't perfect. Depending on the patch, some choices will be seen as downright worthless, and anyone who picks them will likely be accused of trolling.
- Techies is infamous for this. While a skilled Techies player can be a greatly useful asset to a team (such as stopping enemy pushes in their tracks and having bar none the highest burst damage capability in the game), a majority of the time they can end up becoming The Load, forcing their team to fight 4 versus 5 while they're busy laying traps that may not even end up doing anything in the long run. It's gotten to the point where even picking Techies is bound to catch you some flak. Upon his introduction into the pro scene in 6.84, most of the vitriol they get has been completely flipped on its head with the complaints that he is not just overpowered but also very difficult to counter even by the pro players. Even a mediocre Techies player can cause trouble, as they're amazing pushers, a massive drain on the resources of opposing supports, and they can deny a large area of the map just through the paranoia that there might be mines there, as well as being able to drag games on for long enough that their team's carry(s) can farm up enough to be able to mount a comeback. But then 6.85, he permanently resides in the low tiers after Techies' mines were nerfed, both in damage, area and by making them no longer explode when destroyed.
- This finally led to Techies being reworked come 7.31, where the patch removed all of their mines except for their Proximity Mines (and also keeping Blast Off!), which has been moved to become their ultimate, adding in new abilities that enabled Techies to become a more active hero. While nothing much has changed in terms of pub winrate, it has resulted in more appearances in the pro scene since then, making the rework a relative success; in fact, as of 7.33d they're one of the premier supports in the game.
- Ever since his illusions were brutally nerfed in health and damage, along with a few other nerfs, Terrorblade has been mocked by the fans as likely the worst character of 6.84, where he was completely ignored in both competitive and casual play alike. Ironically, the 7.00 era saw Terrorblade making a comeback and appearing in the lineups of professional teams.
- In the early 7.00 era, Chen was widely viewed as useless outside of the most dedicated/micro skilled players. A large factor to his lackluster performance was how painfully bad his ultimate, Hand of God, was. With an almost two and a half minute cooldown, Chen could heal all allies globally for a measly 225 at level 6 (two minute cooldown and 475 healing at level 18). Players joked that Lycan did his job better as with the way bonus hit points worked a max level Howl effectively healed 200 hit points to all heroes (400 if it was at night), had half the cooldown, and granted attack damage buffs to all units.
- 7.07 Morphling is a perfect example of a reworked hero that does not be reworked and actually made the hero worse. Prior to the patch, Morphling is known to be a slippery hero thanks to his two skill Waveform and Replicate, the former allows him to dash at a targeted location and teleport out during the skill while the latter allows him to create an illusion of a hero that allows Morphling to switch places with the illusion and immediately escape from a gank which allows him to be an effective split pusher. 7.07 however, removes Replicate in favor of Morph which allows the hero to copy an enemy hero and gain their skills. Aside from the fact that you could no longer split push, the ultimate has a very poor synergy with the hero given the fact that it also copies their stats but not their ultimate and items which you wouldn't want given that Morphling is supposed to be a carry and wouldn't want to copy other heroes. This result in Morphling suffering form the biggest drop in win rate to the point of being the worst of 7.07. It took several buffs (most notably giving Morphling the ability to switch forms at will while Morph is active and causing Morph to also copy the target's primary attribute) before he was finally fished out of the Scrappy heap.
- Jakiro was considered a trash-tier hero for the longest time. This was largely due to his Ice Path being a non-targeted stun with a long delay; combined with his god-awful cast time, Ice Path was nearly impossible to land, and Jakiro needs to land it in order to do anything significant. While he could be played as a pusher, a lot of other heroes could do that better. Ice Path was eventually buffed to linger for its duration, stunning any enemy that comes into contact, instead of only applying the stun once; this bumped him up from "garbage" to "playable", but he's yet to make any significant waves in the meta, and has the dubious honor of holding the lowest win rate of all heroes at The International.
- In 7.20, Clinkz joined Morphling in the "unnecessary reworks" pile. While his new ultimate Burning Army is pretty impressive-looking and scary on paper, the problem is that it replaced Death Pact, taking away his primary source of survivability and a good chunk of damage in favor of an unreliable AOE effect. As such, Clinkz quickly fell by the wayside and rarely saw play. Valve eventually decided to let Clinkz have his cake and eat it too in 7.23 by giving him back a modified Death Pact as a basic ability replacing Strafe, whose attack speed buff was instead given to Skeleton Walk (although Clinkz would take a couple more reworks before 7.33 finally gave him a solid role as a burst-damage ganker and allowed him to finally see decent amounts of competitive play).
- Riki is already a situational hero only effective in pubs and marginally effective in pro gameplay but it is universally agreed that his 7.23 rework made the hero worse. To put it simply, 7.23 has his Cloak and Dagger and Tricks of the Trade skillset switched so the former becomes an ultimate skill while the latter becomes a regular ability. True it does work what Riki originally was when Permanent Invisibility used to be his ultimate skill but since Backstab has been merged with Cloak and Dagger, this means that last hitting will become much more difficult during the laning stages now that his backstab bonus damage is locked behind an ultimate. Not that it really mattered because his starting Agility and growth has been nerfed to non existence, from a respectable 30 + 2.5 to meagre 18 + 1.4 (for reference, Crystal Maiden now has better Agility growth than Riki and almost as much base Agility) making the backstab damage hit like a wet feather. And then coupled with the nerfs to his other skills, Riki's win rate plummets down the dump and is now considered to be the worst hero in the game.
- Troll Warlord dropped from being one of the terrors of the "HO HO HA HA" era alongside Sniper into something of a joke in 7.20, which reworked his ultimate Battle Trance. Instead of giving a huge attack speed bonus to all allied heroes, it now gives Troll Warlord a huge bonus to attack speed, movement speed, and lifesteal while making him unkillable... which would be incredible if it didn't also force him to attack nearby units uncontrollably for the duration, making him a Skill Gate Character at best since casting Battle Trance means either Troll murders his way through the enemy team or dies as soon as it wears off, and if the enemy is even somewhat competent it'll be the latter. To give an idea of how bad it is, the Aghanim's Scepter upgrade for this version of Battle Trance let him cast it on enemies as a disable. He's since received a number of compensatory buffs, but hasn't been able to escape his ultimate's laughable reputation until 7.33 gave him the ability to use items during Battle Trance (meaning he can, among other things, use Black King Bar to prevent the enemy from just stunlocking him until Battle Trance wears off).
