Please don't ever bring HoN into a conversation, it is an exact DoTA clone and there is no need to speak of it.

-Both games suffer from a bad community, Valve's report system isn't exactly great either, and the punishment is nonexistant. Yes low priority pool is terrible to play in, but if you have a 5 man team, there is absolutely no punishment at all, sans the loss of BP which is useless. You still even get items.
-"Much harder" is an overstatement. LoL doesn't have Magic Immune for all (BKB), A long range blink, instagib item (dagon) nor a free reposition tool (force staff). Active items make the appearance of summoner spells nonexistant. And don't give me **** about having to buy them because most of them are easy to farm. Yep, definitely Centaurs 3.8 str gain per level is just insanely sub par, eh? Not to mention he had a 68% win rate at one point. Mechanics make it harder to play (microing,pulling,denying), most heroes are as straightforward as they are in LoL, with the obvious exceptions (Meepo, Invoker, Chen, etc). Different skills are needed, but they are both competitive and balanced to their own degree.
- It works well with the community, and there is absolutely no problem with it. The same can be said about Valve's holiday minigames. Which even slowed game development as we had no new heroes for quite a while.
- Valve does the same things, and yes Riot does it frequently but they don't let champions run rampant for too long, as Valve did with Drow's infinite push via her global aura, Magnus Skewer+ Ult madness (which is still going), and Centaurs CC fest (toned out a bit after a month) Valve does a better job at balancing though, while Riot sometimes makes questionable calls, I agree.
- Derp.
- No they're not, they have problems just as any other game would.
- Opinion based.

Summoner spells are free from the get go and do not take up an entire item slot. They cannot really be compared to Active items.

Personally, I do not see the need of comparison aside of, perhaps, a similarity identifier to someone unfamiliar to one, but not the other. Maybe why it is seen to be so "neccessary," is that some people may want to know what game they want to play, with or without prior experience and without delving straight into the game itself (as a defense against mishap). Or, those who do compare, see a need to express either how the game is, or how it appears to be (varying with opinion).

I personally play "them all," and see each weakness and strength as individual aspects. When they are not viewed this way, it can be a bit disheartening, which is probably what leads people to a more "zealous" pose.

It's because since they're so similar, people feel like they need to choose one over the other.

I play both. I personally like Dota 2 more, I feel like it offers more and has more depth. But I still like LoL, I don't think LoL is a bad game by any means. My friends also prefer LoL over Dota, which is why I play it just as much or more than Dota.

A lot of those actives cost mana too and have a cooldown, so that's an additional depth.

I also think it's a bit silly for him to say the items are "easy to farm up"; mid and the carry are the only heroes that are going to get decent items; even so, mid is probably only going to get 2 items in addition to bottle and his boots (unless its someone who's a semi-carry like Storm, Doombringer, or TA).

And even mentioning dagon seriously is a bit of a joke; level 1 dagon is extremely situational; additional levels make the item stupidly cost inefficient---Tinker is about the only one who should remotely consider it...but why do that when you can invest in utility?

This is a point I tried to exhibit, and so I completely agree.