I remember the days when Dirge was INT-based and thus had, like, zero good item builds ever aside from auras for his zombies.

then again you could have theoretically infinite zombies given enough things for them to attack and clone with.

visage has been picked recently in the pro scene with great success and has always been considered the king of trilane.

Suboptimal builds are a big part of DotA itemization. Ever seen a Heart of Tarrasque on an INT or Satanic on an AGI? A big part of DotA's itemization is, again, the STR/AGI/INT system, which allows bundling of massive stat bonuses without much second thought. Remember that STR gives health and health regeneration, AGI gives attack speed and armor, and INT gives mana and mana regeneration. In addition that, your primary stat also gives AD, so if you were a STR-primary champ for example, you'd get health, health regeneration, and AD when purchasing STR. Because so many items make use of these stats, most players don't tend to wrap their heads fully around an item's full benefits. And even while every character can utilize each stat's secondary benefits to different extents, buying a non-primary stat and missing out on the AD is still a big deal because of how important AD is to every character in the game. A big reason DotA's itemization tends to blend so well with its characters is because of how incredibly generalized all of the items tend to be due to that system. You're always getting a little bit of everything.

League doesn't have bundled stats; everything is separate and explicit. You could imagine how broad the itemization would be if everything was like a little chunk of Trinity Force.

Not necessarily true. While I may not be able to get my point across in the sleepless state that I'm in, stat stacking is not a prerequisite of itemization. That is to say, more items are situational than not. While more Axe players tend to build STR, it's still hilarious to build Int for Agh.Scep., for an example, and while I don't want to go through the list of heroes and clarify the different ways they can be built, I can safely say that itemization is dependent on the situation. And yes, DEX heroes do build satanic for that neat lifesteal bonus. STR heroes can build INT. AGI Rubick is best.

To answer your first part - that must have been a recent change. Last I played, BKB made you immune to all spell effects, ultimate, CC or anything. You became simply untargetable for spells. A couple of buggy spells could still affect you, but those were bugs because of the implementation, not intended corner cases.

To answer your second part, the reason for the difference is base attack speed on ranged vs melee in Dota. If you look carefully, all ranged champions in Dota have a slow attack speed while some melee have high base attack speed. I remember how annoyed I was when I realized that Drow with Butterfly had the same attack speed as Antimage with Agi boots. Imagine LoL where every ranged champion had Annie's base attack speed numbers. Ranged attack carries wouldn't exist (as they don't really in Dota) because their damage output would be too low compared to casters or melee autoattackers.

You are confirming his point I think it may be because you're suffering from sleep deprivation, but he's trying to say that aside from Agi based autoattack heroes, nobody else gets a perfect stat stick. Axe needs to get at least a bit of Agi or AS to be able to take advantage of the damage from his Heart. Doombringer has to build Int items even though he's a Str hero.

And yes, even Agi heroes have to sometimes get Satanic which is a Str item.

The itemization in Dota is designed in such a way that there is no pure damage build. There is not Bloodthirster or Rabadon's Deathcap. There is an infinity edge and phantom dancer (Butterfly+Burriza) which is why melee Agi is the only autoattack carry path.

Pure tank build also doesn't exist because armor is tied to Agi. You could get a Heart, but that just means it will take that Antimage a few more swings to carve through your armorless body.

To reiterate, Nome is saying that Dota itemization is designed in such a way that you have to get stats in your items that don't work optimally for your champion. That means having to get Str/Agi when you're Int, or any other combination where you have to get primary stats on items even though that primary stat isn't optimal for you. Basically, if Butterfly is cost+stat balanced for Antimage, it will be overpriced for Axe or any other non-Agi autoattacker.

Drow ranger is played more then double the next popular hero, and she has a high win rate

I would hardly call that balance

Only because morphling got nerfed into the ground. Drow was considered trash tier at high level play and I never saw her in pub games until recently where theres been a Drow in every game.

You must not have played for a long time, because certain spells(they're not necessarily ultimates) are hard coded to pierce magic immunity. This is most noticeable for certain skills such as Enigma's Black Hole and Kunkka's Ghost Ship which are only partially affected by magic immunity.

they've been really going aggressive on balance patches in beta.

i wouldn't be too worried about seeing morph/drow/etc getting adjusted left and right because it looks like they are finally targetting a full release. the only hero specific item to give power to someone who needed it was the ethereal blade and morphling iirc.

as for the itemization thing i think s3 changes are in a good direction. there still are some holes that need to be filled but overall the itemization so far feels kind of healthy. i think the 3 jungle options could be balanced amongst themselves just a bit better because i find myself going for the tanky/tenacity one quite a bit if anything to free up a boot slot to go mobilities/swiftiness. still, it feels like there's quite a few reasonable options that players can get vs specific comps that aren't the same old, same old - especially supports, mids, and tops.