Heroes With an Identity Crisis
Dota is an ever-evolving game and that is undeniably good. The current balance update drought might be a bit longer than we would like it to be, but even in the absence of updates, there are still new meta developments emerging here and there. Today, however, we are not going to talk about temporary trends and will instead concentrate on heroes who, in our opinion, lost parts of what made them unique.
They are not necessarily worse off and neither are they unviable. In fact, some of them are incredibly popular even at the highest level of play.
The topic we are raising is that they are popular not in a way their design presupposes. This is perfectly normal in Dota — after all, the more sandbox-y and freeform approach to player expression through their hero of choice is why Dota is infinitely more complex and deep, compared to most other games. So just to be clear: we do not consider it a problem, but we do feel like it is something that is interesting to talk about and worth discussing.
Dazzle
As a self-proclaimed Dazzle connoisseur, I feel like the hero started experiencing some issues with the Oracle release way back in the day. 
Oracle did the main thing Dazzle did, but better. And since then, the hero’s been kind of lost, getting a lot of reworks over the last decade.
Dazzle used to be the go to save support. His old ultimate, Weave used to create a massive Armor discrepancy between teams, making his rather tame healing capabilities matter that much more. After all — healing a target with 5 Armor is very different to healing a target with 30+.
He had decently short cooldowns, strong laning presence and high teamfight presence. All of this is somewhat true even now, but now he definitely needs gold to truly shine.
Hence the current trend of picking Dazzle in a core role. Between being Universal and some free instant attacks through Aghanim’s, Dazzle can be an incredibly powerful scaling damage dealer, even though the original design revolved around him being a save support.
The problem is, with how precise Dota’s balance has to be, heroes who are good at many different things are typically not that great at anything particular. And it is, indeed, the case with Dazzle: the hero is outclassed as a save support by many different heroes, and he is way too unreliable as a core. Hence, almost complete absence from the professional scene and higher level pubs.
The introduction of Facets should have alleviated some of the problems the hero is experiencing, but we are still waiting for a support Dazzle to make a true comeback and become part of the meta. Or maybe for him to finally become a proper core hero. Otherwise the hero just feels lost.
Invoker
Invoker becoming Universal is just weird, right? He is the arsenal magus after all. A top of the line Wizard in the Dota Universe. He absolutely should be an Intelligence hero.
If we are talking lore and world-building consistency, Invoker is, maybe, similar to Vilgefortz and maybe arsenal magus being a powerful combatant who uses magic to amplify their physical prowess makes sense. Or maybe we could put him somewhere close to Biomancer Psykers from the Warhammer 40k Universe. They are kind of mages, but they fight like warriors through the use of their Warp “magic”. And lore-wise in the world of Dota Invoker being Universal can kind of make sense.
Right-clicking Invoker in a game of Dota still doesn’t. There is just something wrong with the hero building double 
Wraith Band and 
Manta Style, going around primarily auto-attacking people and scaling into a carry.
Perhaps I am wrong, or perhaps it is me being old, but I would love to see Invoker become an Intelligence hero once again. Maybe with some buffs to his spells and abilities, to compensate for the lack of overwhelming right-clicking potential.
Muerta
On the opposite side of the coin we have Muerta — a hero with a built-in 50% chance to double-attack, with each attack having a chance to crit. A hero, who despite having one of the strongest auto-attack steroids in the game is primarily being played as a support.
This one is weird to us, to be honest. Maybe the problem is that the hero is Intelligence-based and there aren’t many Int-focused right-click DPS items. Maybe it is her lack of farming prowess — the hero has no mobility and is somewhat slow, when moving from camp to camp.
Maybe it is the hero’s squishiness, but the end result is still a character who definitely ended up being played in a way that is different from the designers’ intentions.
Now, much like with Invoker, we don’t think it is a balance issue or that it detracts from the quality of the game in any meaningful way. It just feels “wrong”, but it really isn’t, if we are thinking about the game as a whole.
That said, we would love to see those two heroes swap their primary attributes, so we could end up with a carry Muerta and a spellcasting Invoker. That would feel “right”.
Closing thoughts
What is your opinion on the subject? Do you think it doesn’t matter how the hero is utilized, as long as they are effective and can fill a niche in the game? Or are you more like me, who feels like there should be slightly more connection between hero’s lore and visual design, and their in-game role?
Share your thoughts and other examples of heroes who could use a lore-friendly balance update in the comment section below!
"His old ultimate, Weave used to create a massive Armor discrepancy between teams, making his rather tame healing capabilities matter that much more. After all — healing a target with 5 Armor is very different to healing a target with 30+."
What does the last sentence mean? Is Dazzle healing amplified/reduced by the targeted ally armor? Or is it just the fact that a 5 armor target will get shredded by enemies faster than a target with 30+ armor and you have less time to react?
@laliban it's the second. Imagine missing 100 health and you have either 25% or 50% reduction for armour. The one with 25% reduction recieves 133 effective HP vs physical (100:0,75=133) from the heal, where as the one with 50% reduction recieves 200 (100:0,5=200). You are increasing how much HP someone can tank with the heal by giving them more armour/resistance.
You are doing these in very unusual hours lately and you are actively hurting my ambitions to be known as the biggest dotabuff fan in history
I shall up my game, this is not over
Regarding Dazzle, I mostly agree, and I think he should be a support first and foremost; I also think there is a hero with a complete opposite problem - Silencer. Neither a good lane support, neither a good safelaner or mid. I think the hero always wanted to be a carry, but was always pushed into a support with numerous skill reworks. As a support, he still doesnt do enough until he becomes a dps after 40 minutes.
As for Muerta, i think the problem lies with her clunky first and second spell; i do not see her shot as a great or overly reliable disable; and the silence, while being good, is easy to almost completely avoid (and there is no reason for it having that "kill in aoe = bonus spirit" upgrade, which I also find clunky).
We agree completely on Invoker.
Waiting for your next one!
Really nice article. Great thoughts!
Talking about identity crisis look at Tinker. Since rockets got removed hero felt like he lost an arm and a leg. And march jumping from ability to shard to being removed at all to then becoming ability again, certainly doesn't help either.
Also, i think Muerta actually found her role, instead of losing it. For example, remember when people tried to go Ringmaster mid? First week of hero release they shoved him every role, but very fast realized that number-wise he only works well as a support. Same with Muerta here. People tried Muerta+IO or Muerta mid, and not like it did terrible. But it performed below average, and in high level dota it is the biggest factor.
I long for the days of old dazzle ultimate, the new one makes no sense to me, being able to sacrifice health constantly to put up three graves in a row is ridiculous to me, I would much rather play around a strong cooldown.
For muerta, I just think having the calling is weird, it is a very strong utility spell on a hero meant to be a ranged right click carry which is apperantly so useful some people run her as support. The rest of her kit seems fine to me and makes sense, so if you really want to force her into being a core, then just looking into changing that ability
Dazzle briefly had some weave functionality back with the last juju rework. 1/2/3 armour per stack for 8/10/12s. Could keep everyone up with an extra 9 armour at max maybe with much more individually from casting juju as well.
7.36 killed this aspect for some reason, capping it to 1 per stack as an innate at all levels.
At this point, abandoning item cdr should hopefully mean he gets pushed back to being a viable support
The Dazzle and Armor thing... The heal goes a lot further when you have 65% damage resistance compared to 15%... That is effectively 50% more HP from the heal. This is why healing a high resistance target is always better than that Skywrath Mage with 500 hitpoint pool looking to be one-shot by an errant right click. Just and example, I know he has gotten tools to be less one-shotty but he is still quite vulnerable to physical attacks.
This is what the Dazzle and armor thing is about and the old ult that used to buff up friendly armor meant that the heal was effectively better than what the numbers told you. Now they have changed the ult and based on that, the healing potential of Dazzle has gone down the drain as well... He really is poison touch and shallow grave now more than a heal bot he used to be.
There are quite many heroes that could use some love and attention in the game... The same 30-40 heroes seem to be repeating in almost every game...
Poison also just isn't worth anything as a support once you get out of lane to be honest.
It's another ability the core emphasis has really ruined with stacking slow and only refreshing on your own attacks. Used to pair very well with chase heroes like pa, ember or weaver.
Too much of a liability to cast as a save hero and the shard doesn't even redeem it much anymore.
The contents of these articles are always good, but sentence structure and flow is stilted. I've put some suggestions:
"They are not necessarily worse off and neither are they unviable. In fact, some of them are incredibly popular..."
> They are not necessarily worse off or unviable; in fact, some of them are incredibly popular
"He had decently short cooldowns, strong laning presence and high teamfight presence. All of this is somewhat true even now, but now he definitely needs gold"
> Dazzle previously had high teamfight impact and a strong laning presence due to his short cooldowns. While he hasn't changed drastically, he is more gold hungry than before
"...but we are still waiting for a support Dazzle to make a true comeback and become part of the meta. Or maybe for him to finally become a proper core hero. Otherwise the hero just feels lost."
> We are still waiting for Dazzle to make a comeback in the meta - either as a true support, or proper core. Currently, the hero's identity just feels lost