Old Harbinger
League of Legends is generally credited with causing casters to scale with the addition of ability power and cooldown reduction, however, this is wrong.
Meet Harbinger, the Obsidian Destroyer.
When you lane against Harbinger, he'll do a spell called Astral Imprisonment, what this does is REMOVES YOU FROM PLAY FOR X SECONDS and gives him some of your Intellect. Intellect gives you mana, which allows you to cast spells, which means if he does this enough, which he will, you will have a mana pool of below 100 if you're certain unlucky heroes, which means you'll get to cast one spell, tops.
You might be thinking "Oh he'll just run out of mana", but Harbinger has a passive (AURA!!!) that means any spell cast has a chance to restore one quarter of their entire mana pool, which means that hypothetically, he'll keep on doing this until mid game, since he'll tire of you.
Harbinger will then go and farm, and leave you alone, if you're a newbie, you'll think it's because his reign of terror is over, but to be truthful, it's just beginning.
There was an item called Aghanim's Scepter, which boosted ultimates of certain heroes (except for Tinker because he's broken anyway) and gave them sizable health, mana and Intellect. Harbinger would begin to farm these up, giving himself an obscene mana pool (think in the thousands) and a absurd amount of Intelligence.
His Ultimate was pretty much a giant algebra problem that boiled down to "IF HARBINGER HAS MORE INTELLECT THAN YOU YOU GET HURT A LOT". Harbinger was stacking items that gave him huge amounts of Intellect and unless you're a caster, you're going to have around 50 Intellect, if you're lucky, soyou're getting hurt by that.
Harbinger's Q was something called Arcane Orb, this was an autoattack modifier that cost him 100 mana per hit and caused him to do extra damage equal to 9% of his current mana pool. Go work out what 9% of 3342 is and then realize this is true damage, and then realize he'll get stuff to make him hit you faster.
Now if you're sort of smart, you'll work out that he'll run out of mana if he keeps on doing this, except his Aura procs on his Arcane Orb, which means he's never going to run out of mana, and keep on doing his obscene damage.
So yeah enjoy caster carries with built in positive feedback loops and disgusting damage, then realize this guy isn't even top tier.
Goblin Tinker (Manta Style)
Once again you get told this dirty, horrible, terrible lie about DotA where casters cannot scale and after 25 minutes they become totally useless. That is completely untrue, there are Int Carries, and they scale off mana.
Meet example number 2, the most broken hero in the history of man, Boush, the Goblin Tinker.
So you begin laning against Tinker and you notice that once he hits around level 4 he just begins nuking the fuck out of you with a spell called Laser, this has the twin honour of being one of the few spells in the game that does True damage (which means it can't be mitigated by any form of armor or magic resistance) and that it's also one of the most damaging nukes in the game, you're going to see around a quarter of your health wiped out every time he uses this, and only its steep mana cost prevents him from completely spamming it on you.
After he hits you with around 3 or 4 Lasers, you think you're going to just play it safe and hang back at your tower, you have around 150 health so you know the next Laser will kill you, but Tinker isn't around, so you're fine, and then a missile comes out of nowhere and ends you instantly. Tinker's next spell is called Heat-Seeking Missile and fires two rockets at the closest heroes that he has vision of, however, this spell has a range of 2500(!), which is around 2 screens away, and the vision only has to go one way, so expect to get killed by a hero you can't even see.
After getting his fill of your lane and hitting level 8, Tinker decides to go and gank other lanes, this is just quite simply him looking at another lane, noticing a hero around the health range of 640 and telling the guy already in the lane to "Hit him once.", once he does that Tinker fires off both nukes and deals 600+ in the space of 1 second, getting yet another hero kill.
Now you might be thinking Tinker is a one trick pony, but then you notice him beginning to pick up items that can best be described as "Really fucking weird", namely because they all have active components (think Deathfire Grasp, but more interesting). Why would a hero be getting an item that casts Cyclone (3 second removal from the battlefield), Boots that give you an inbuilt teleport to any creep or tower on the map (with a 60 second cooldown), an item that lets him cast Illusions, and an item that lets him turn an enemy hero into a sheep?
Then suddenly, out of the blue, one of the creeps at the top lane begins glowing and Tinker appears, splits into three and casts March of the Machines, which fills the screen with Goblins that explode on impact with creeps, damaging them and beginning to clear the lane. Apparently not happy with taking just 10 seconds to clear the lane, Tinker casts his ultimate, Rearm, which REFRESHES THE COOLDOWN ON EVERYTHING HE HAS (It also has a cast time of 1 second at maximum level and has no cooldown at all.) and allows him to cast March of the Machines again, destroying your creep wave.
He then proceeds to teleport to middle, splits into three again, casts March of the Machines, casts Rearm, casts March again and then teleports to bottom, before repeating the process again. Apparently worried about his mana pool, he teleports back to fountain to get his mana back to full.
This time though, you're ready for him at top, you'll get him when he ports in and beat him up or something. He then proceeds to teleport back, turn you into a sheep (which means you can't move, do any damage, or do anything at all), throw down his Illusions and nuke you with everything you have. He then rearms, TURNS YOU INTO A SHEEP AGAIN and nukes you again. And then he'll keep on doing this until you're dead, then if he's low on mana he'll port back to his base and get mana back, and if he's really low on mana he'll just run back with his Sonic the Hedgehog class movement speed, otherwise he'll just keep on pushing in creeps, towers, barracks, anything that he can reach while maintaining relative safety.
Now for the scary bit.
You find out you're investing at least two heroes to stop Tinker, and then you remember, he's only one hero, and they have at least four more.
tl:dr version:
AM I PUSHING AS TINKER
10 TELEPORT TO A LANE
20 CAST MARCH + MANTA STYLE
30 GO TO 10
AM I KILLING AS TINKER
FIND HERO
10 USE SHEEPSTICK
20 NUKE THEM AND MANTA THEM
30 GO TO 10
Nerubian Assassin
Ironically, one of the heroes in DotA that suffers from a lack of scaling the most isn't an Int hero, it's an Agility hero, one that looks like a tank, but is anything but.
Meet Anub'arak, the Nerubian Assassin, and owner of one of the best voices in the game.
So you're a caster, you're young, level 1 and waiting to beat the shit out of some poor Agility or Intellect hero with your broken damage spells. Instead you see this giant Beetle which runs up and just instantly removes around a fifth of your mana pool with his half screen range Mana Burn, then he heads off for a bit and starts getting some creep kills, before burning your Mana again, and again, and again, and again. After a while, he has around half his mana, and you have barely any, you've been completely and utterly neutered spellwise, you've been unable to harass him with anything but physical attacks and he's just been sitting there removing your mana like an asshole.
Eventually he hits level 6, but he doesn't seem to be using his ult, instead he just continues to burn your mana. After a while, he seems to get bored and heads back to base to buy some items, you decide to start pushing up, getting some last hits, enjoying your solitude at being allowed to farm back your mana. While you're doing this Nerubian Assassin has used his ultimate, named Vendetta, which turns him invisible and causes him to do major damage upon hitting a target (ps the target is you, you are marked for death he is going to kill you and then laugh about it in chat you are so fucking dead).
Then Nerubian Assassin decloaks and hits you for 270 damage instantly, does his AoE stun for 200 damage and then Mana Burns you for around 150+ damage. If you're lucky you live, but if he's good with numbers, you're dead. You either limp home or you have to wait to respawn, with Nerubian Assassin getting gold either way.
As Nerubian Assassin levels up, Vendetta starts to do more and more damage, finally culminating in a 50 second long invisibility and 20% movement speed boost that does 525 damage upon hitting a target. His AoE stun does 260 damage, and because this guy really, really, really likes killing people, he's going to buy an item called Dagon that lets him do a nuke that begins at 400, and ends up being 800 damage by the time he upgrades it fully.
Factoring in passive magic mitigation, Nerubian Assassin is going to end up doing 1450 damage per combo, if you have less health than that, and you're not some sort of crowd control wizard, you're going to die, each and every time, and you're not going to see it coming unless you have Wards or a Gem of True Sight, and if you have a Gem and you're not a high HP hero, he'll just kill you and then destroy the Gem over the mangled remains of your corpse.
On the bright side though he doesn't scale past that.
ps Old Gorgon vs Old Nerubian Assassin was one of the worst matchups in the game.
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