Each gameplay update brings its own “familiar faces”. Heroes that tend to be considered overpowered (often for quite justified reasons) and they’re picked constantly. Usually, these faces will fade away again with the next patch.
However, there are those who simply don’t want to completely vanish. Not to say they’re constantly broken, but perhaps due to their concept, no matter the situation or the meta, they can still kick some serious butt.
: Has there been a patch where Io the Wisp could simply be ignored? This fella can take a carry Hero and turn them into a god. A god with 2-3 times the effective HP, more damage and global teleport. Its Tether’s stun got replaced by a slow. Its Relocate now creates an obvious red mark on the enemy minimap. And still, Io doesn’t seem to care about any of that.
: The ladies’ favourite, the guy who can do everything. It’s a little different case from the rest of the list, because he keeps getting buffed every few patches (followed by some small nerfs afterwards). His weaknesses have been cut off one by one, and now it’s safe to say that he has none, besides being harder to play than most Heroes. Invoker has tons of damage and control, he has great lane control, he scales well into the late game, he’s hard to kill, he won’t run out of mana, he doesn’t need regen, he can solo Roshan. Simply put, his potential to impact the game will always be huge.
: A bright example of this list, the Hero who’s been nerfed constantly ever since he came out and still is top pick/ban material. Earth Spirit is way too cheap for what he does. As far as disablers/initiators/nukers go, he has just as much impact as Earthshaker or Sand King, if not more, but without the need of getting a 2k gold item like Blink Dagger first. What tells Earth Spirit apart from the rest is his threat range. He can initiate from a very long distance without any items (and low manacosts), pull out his allies, stun/silence/slow, all that without worrying about his positioning too much.
: Dark Seer’s lane control as an offlaner can be dangerous even against trilanes. His spammable Ion Shells allow him to farm, push the lane and make the enemy carry’s life hell. Surge paired with his innate high HP and armor make him very hard to kill. He requires too much attention early on, just to make sure the carry doesn’t get completely shut down. Given a good start and his farming capabilities, his team fight potential is also quite feared. Dark Seer hasn’t really any serious nerfs though. Vacuum cooldown has been increased quite a few times, but nobody seems to care about it.
: Alchemist did have a bit of a downtime, but who can ignore a Hero that can play in the late game 20 minutes earlier? There’s isn’t much to say about this guy, other than he’s extremely dangerous to be left alone even for a few minutes. It doesn’t really matter who the enemy is if you can double their net worth in the first half of a match.