This guide is designed to help you pick the right Carry hero in various situations. As always, trying to fit heroes into particular categories is tricky and some simplifications have had to be made to allow this. There are a limited number of colours available, and hence a natural limit to the categories. Things will be left out, hopefully people will still find this useful.
Easily the most contentious part of this guide will be the numbers for each hero's late game rating. Again, this is an attempt to let you see at a glance roughly what that hero's late game power is - this assumes the hero has had a reasonable game, is going for reasonably standard items etc...it DOESN'T cover every game, underfarmed heroes, unusual builds etc.
Also, it's MY OPINION, which won't necessarily match up with yours! I've given a brief explanation on each hero, please feel to convince me to change my opinion in comments, but don't take it as a personal slight if I don't!
How to Use this Guide:
You can flick directly to various sections by clicking on the index below. Alternatively, use the "Questions to Ask Yourself" to guide you through the process of picking an appropriate hero. Bear in mind, the sheer number of possible heroes in Dota and the nature of this guide make it impossible for me to mention all possible synergies - by all means ignore the categories if there are particular heroes you will have great synergy with, or counter hard on the opposite team.