What's HoN?

Heroes of Newerth (commonly known as HoN) is a free-to-play science fantasy, action real-time strategy game developed by S2 Games for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The game was heavily inspired by the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne custom map, Defense of the Ancients and is S2 Games' first game title in the Dota genre. The game was released on May 12, 2010 and re-released as a free-to-play game on July 29, 2011.Heroes of Newerth runs on the Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems.
Pebbles(HoN) and Tiny(DoTA) is an equivalent heroes

In October 2009, Associate Game Designer Alan "Idejder" Cacciamani claimed that Heroes of Newerth had been in development for "34 months, but the first 13 were spent on engine development. The entirety of assets, including maps, items, heroes, and art were made in 21 months."

New features, balance changes and new heroes are regularly introduced with patches. Most game mechanics and many heroes in Heroes of Newerth have a direct correlation from Defense of the Ancients. The additions that differentiate Heroes of Newerth from Defense of the Ancients are features independent from game play; such as tracking of individual statistics, in-game voice communication, GUI-streamlined hero selection, game reconnection, match making, player banlists, penalties for leaving and chat features. Several features added via updates include a Hero Compendium (a list of the heroes in the game with detailed statistics about them), the ability to set a "following" trait on a friend which makes the player join/leave the games that a friend joins (similar to the "party" feature in other games), an in-game ladder system, and a map editor. The game uses S2 Games' proprietary K2 Engine and a client-server model similar to that used in many modern multiplayer games.
Heroes of Newerth was in beta from April 24, 2009 until May 12, 2010. Throughout this time, over 3,000,000 unique accounts were registered. S2 Games used a Facebook fan page and word of mouth to attract players to the game. Many people who had bought one of S2 Games' previous games also received an invitation to the game through their registered email.
On August 22, 2009, the pre-sale of Heroes of Newerth began for members of the closed beta. Players who purchased the game at this time received additional benefits, including name reservation, gold-colored nameplate, gold shield insignia, and an in-game taunt ability. Open beta testing for Heroes of Newerth began on March 31, 2010, and ran until May 12, 2010, when the game was officially released.
S2 Games released Heroes of Newerth 2.0 on December 13, 2010. Features included in the update were casual mode, a new user interface, team matchmaking, an in-game store, and an offline map editor.Microtransactions were also introduced via the in-game store with the use of coins. Coins can be used to purchase cosmetic changes within the game, such as alternative hero skins, avatars, and customized announcer voices. The in-game currency can either be purchased with real life currency or earned via Matchmaking games.
S2 Games released Heroes of Newerth as a free-to-play game on July 29, 2011. Accounts that were purchased before this date retain access to all content and updates without additional charges. Accounts made after this have 15 free-rotating heroes to choose from, the 15 heroes rotate every week. These accounts only have access to the game mode All Pick. Through purchasing coins or earning them in play, players can purchase the ability to use additional heroes. Players must pay for tokens to play additional game modes, so that they may temporarily have the hero pool available to provide balance in hero selection.
<<Deadwood(HoN hero) Ultimate Skill

Source:WIkipedia