Carries in DotA are picked for very specific reasons and their teams should ideally be built around them.
There are a lot of different carries that bring a lot of different things on the table, they all have very distinct weaknesses and strengths. In DotA a hero is often balanced by either amplifying weaknesses or strengths instead of trying to tweak it, is their strength too much? Make their weak spot weaker. It's also how the main dev has developed the game all long, take an insane mechanic and put it into the game and force it to be balanced. DotA can be look at as this:
But instead of trying to just make something fit in a pre-determined hole, it'll be hammered and bashed untill it fits, just because. It seems weird and at times it can be ridiculous, but the end result are very distinctively different heroes, especially carries.
As said, teams are built around carries.
A very popular carry currently would be Luna, when good teams pick up luna they do not pick her to outcarry another carry, they pick her for how good she is at grouping up as 5. Her lategame power is very meh, but her early to mid-game power is amazing, meaning you group up with your team and march down a lane and claim tower after tower, if the enemies try to fight you'll crush them with luna and your team, ideally, this obviously wont work in all games.
Another carry would be faceless void. He is an incredibly strong lategame carry, but his ulti makes him great for teamfighting too, he will usually be played in a role where his team protects him while he just farms up a few items and then wrecks face by being able to eliminate at least 1 enemy right off the bat.
Then we have carries that can carry by never fighting, theoretically. A carry like anti-mage will farm a quick battlefury(cleave item) and then he is able to farm at insane speeds, he's not really an amazing late-game carry at all, but his strengths are how fast he gets items, and an item advantage is often enough to win fights if it does indeed come down to a fight, but due to his mobility, if your 4 other heroes can defend their towers and base on their own, anti-mage can counter and split push like crazy being a menace for the enemy.
Then we have a carry like Outworld devourer, he has very limited ability to farm and doesn't rack up gold very fast, but his damage output is crazy with very few items. Him and silencer both fall into this category, the problem for both is that magic immunity messes them up badly.
Carries generally either excel in farming faster than enemies, pushing, being amazing lategame(many items), being amazing early game(few items) or by having great teamfighting related spells(Like naga siren). That's generally how you'll classify carries. And even then there are carries that can't be classified with this or carries that fall into multiple categories. The best thing is to learn how each and every carry works and what their weaknesses and strengths are, so you can use them to achieve something that they are good at through their skill-kit.
In DotA you don't need a carry though, nowadays carries are the norm but just a few months back some teams would build teams with no carries and just crush enemies by killing towers faster than the enemy could respond, and then using the tower gold to mow down enemies by simply having a huge advantage from gold.
Re: DotA2
Originally Posted by IllegallySane
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