As a new player you will be overwhelmed by the amount of different heroes this game offers. Unlike League of Legends, you will also encounter a bit more complicated skill mechanics from time to time, making it even harder to grasp the game.
Here I will give you some tipps how you can evaluate heroes and their possible roles and tasks in a match without knowing every hero the hero pool has to offer.
Attributes:
Every hero has got a main attribute: strenght, agility or intelligence. Each point into the main attribute adds 1 damage. Additionally strength adds HP, agility armor and attack speed and intelligence mana.
Many times this will guide you in a rough direction about what to expect from your chosen hero.
Strength heroes normally feature heroes that can endure quite a bit of damage, especially in early game and most of them fight in melee range. The two exceptions in the Dota 2 pool so far being Wisp and Huskar, which feature a ranged attack. The influence of your attack range will be covered later on in this post. So back to the strength heroes. They can endure some damage from enemies most time can stun or disable single or multiple enemies. Some also act as damage dealers / (semi) carries, meaning they are focussed on dealing a lot of damage given a good item equipment. Only a few of them actually focus on magical damage through spells.
Agility heroes often start relatively weak into gain but profit highly from a well filled inventory. Most of the times you will want those guys to get as many last-hits as they can. If your team only consists agility heroes, chances are high that none of them can get enough last-hits to be effective in the later stages of the game. You will find both ranged and melee agility heroes in decent numbers.
Intelligence heroes define themselves through their spells. Depending on their skillset they can deal a lot of magical damage in a short amount of time, disable singe or multiple enemies or carry your team. Most of them will be rather fragile in the later stages of the game and with the exception of Ogre Magi (which could also be a strength hero) they all feature ranged attacks.
Attack Range:
Melee heroes will have a hard time to last-hit creeps on lanes when there are also enemy heroes on that lane. Simple reason: they need to get closer to the enemy heroes every time they want to last hit. Most of the time they make up for it by being able to endure a bit of harassment with the help of a Stout Shield (which does not work as well on ranged heroes). Still: without help of an allied hero (mostly ranged), you won't farm all too well on lanes, if you don't want to risk getting killed everytime you go for a last hit.
Ranged heroes have a easier time on lane, but are also a bit more fragile to balance out their advantage. They also can harass enemy heroes with their normal attacks, especially the melee ones, to gain an advantage on the lane.
Analyzing skills:
Now you will want to know how to behave ingame: will you support your team mates, gank often, which lane will you chose, will you spend much time farming, is your hero good at pushing towers, good at defending, good at jungling (killing neutral creeps in the forest)?
First of all, determine if your hero needs many items to be effective. Look out for skills that increase your attack speed, grant yourself a chance for critical hit, add damage to your attacks, allow you to keep up with your targets by slowing them, blinking to them, making you faster.
If you got some of those, chances are high, that you will need a lot of items and should be farming a lot (without dying often). Also look if those skills can be cast upon allies or only count for yourself. If you can cast them on your allies, maybe your hero is a supporter after all!
Does your hero have more than one skill, that stuns, slows or disables enemies? Can your hero strengthen his allies? Your hero is probably a supporter or ganker and won't need much farm to be effective. Help out your team mates that need farm, defend and push towers. Carry a TP (Town Portal Scroll). Consider getting wards.
Get a Courier at the start if your team still needs one.
Does your hero have one or more skills that deal a lot of magical damage? Your hero probably does not need many items. Just make sure that you live long enough (and have enough mana) to apply this magical damage to your enemies. Consider getting wards. Get a Courier at the start if your team still needs one. Your hero will also be able to defend tower well, since he can clear approaching creepwaves fast from a safe distance.
Do you have skills that leech life, create summons, send back damage to the attackers or a way to kill groups of 3 creeps fast in the jungle without losing too much HP and mana? Your hero can farm in the jungle.
Being able to summon creeps or wards and to damage towers with skills (Leshrac's Diabolic Edict, Pudgna's Nether Blast, Techies' Land Mine, Krobelus' Exorcism, Tiny's Toss) or just dealing a lot of physical damage over a short amount of time to towers (f.e. Clinkz) makes your hero a decent pusher.
Do you have abilities that disable one or more enemies very well and can take some beating? Initiating fights won't be a big problem for your hero.
Ofc course there are many not so obvious abilities. You will need to do some testing there.
Laning:
Now that you analyzed your hero's skills you can guess his role in the team. If you have time, do the same thing for your allies and you will probably find some heroes that need farm and some that don't. Don't put two heroes that need farm on a lane together! (note: you can click on hero portraits to view their skill descriptions, main attribute, etc. in the HUD). That leads us to lane composition. Lane composition basically means where every hero on your team will go at the start of the game. Lane composition is important, since it influences the ability to farm and gain levels of your team's heroes greatly. Having a hero in the jungle will gain your team a gold and experience advantage. But make sure that your lanes do not get dominated by your enemy. Try to set up the hero+lane combinations in a way that very item dependant heroes get their farm while being rather safe while doing so. Maybe you can even grab some kills on enemies here and there, if you have the stronger heroes on lane (hard to tell as beginner, but you will learn that over time).
Since you do not know all hero interactions yet, you have to work a bit on guessing. Here are some guidelines that will produce okayish lanes most of the times:
Just assume that intelligence heroes (except Ogre Magi) can take every lane just fine, melee heroes should get onto the bottom lane (as Radiant) or top lane (as Dire), at least one of them. Some of them can also solo middle lane.
If you got a hero that can farm in the jungle right off the bat, send him there and leave the top lane (as Radiant) or bottom lane (as Dire) to a single ranged hero. If you've got no decent jungler, send 2 heroes to this lane, or 3 heroes on the other sidelane or let the additional hero roam and gank between lanes - depends on the skillsets. Easiest would be 2 top, 1 mid, 2 bot.
In middle lane you will want a hero that can farm well against his enemy (or enemies), is a bit item dependant and can make good use of experience, so to say gains much usefulness with fast level ups. As middle hero you can also control the runes that spawn every two minutes to gain advantages via gangs on sidelanes or just to prevent enemies from getting those advantages. Use a bottle (an item) to collect runes with a right click on the runes for maximum effect (use the bottle remaining charges before your take up the rune, if your hero need healing).
Once you've gathered experience about the heroes you will find in Dota 2, you can also take into consideration how enemy heroes are going to lane. This helps you to chose the right hero combinations on your lanes and set up a good early game strategy.
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