Ember Spirit:
Just went 4-4 and 13-2 with him. He's okay. You can tell Icefrog intended him to be a midgame ganker and never a serious carry.
He has atrocious base & stat growth (+1.8, +1.8, and +2) and squishy as hell. He NEEDS Phase Boots to chase, which makes him even squishier. Drums is a near-must to pad his stats all around. He is desperately mana starved. If you get BFury on him, he'll be low as 1000 hp at 20 mins.
He has no real sustained damage. His shtick is his ult damage and HIGHLY spammable W skill (mini Omnislash). W has amazing reach and always brings you back where you started - you can do some serious tower diving with this skill. His Bola and Flame Shield are pretty straight forward- lockdown + AOE dmg + bit of magic shield. Even Slark is more fun with Pounce and dispelling mechanic and doing ultimate and stealing stats.
Because of his relatively moderate CD of his ult and non-scaling damage for most of his skills, he fizzles out fast against real carries or even semi-carries at 40+ mins.
Oh, his ultimate's 'destination' range is global. You can TP home and use the skill to instantly come back.
Overall a boring hero I must say. The mechanics are straight forward, and the ultimate wasn't that high ceiling of skill as I had anticipated. He's not particularly fun either like Tiny with Toss shenanigans or Timber with Reactive Armor + forever escape + pure dmg hell.
He's already in Captain's Mode in Dota 1, but no one really picked him in competitive. I don't see him getting used consistently in pro games. He doesn't really offer much- there are better
gankers/initiators and carries (which he isn't even one).
Earth Spirit:
WTF am I playing? For someone who masterfully plays Chen, Meepo, and Invoker, I have to admit I have no idea wtf I'm doing with this hero. I SAW the vids, READ his skills, and even watched his COMBO and 'set up'. But my brain doesn't register. I guess I know what I'm SUPPOSED TO DO, but my brain just derps and my poor ES just fumbles all his skills. I gotta keep playing him. It's funny, when I first saw Timbersaw- he immediately made sense: what he's supposed to do, how his skills work, how Stout + Reactive armor makes him OP offlaner, etc.
I'm currently stupid when it comes to Earth Spirit. WTF is going on? Why is his silence so long, wtf (5 sec AOE), and how did I die from his ultimate somehow? Right now I'm just a big derp when it comes to playing him or against him. Stay tuned.