It's been quite a long time since I've played this game , However I've rediscovered how much fun it is. The problem is that my memory isn't all that great. I do remember that there are some truly great hero builds out there , Ijust can't recall any of them. I don't like tanks or assassins and I would like to get some suggestions for a more tactical approach.

I only started recently as well. One I've particularly liked is a thief with poison magic. You do pretty balanced stats (with a slight priority in dexterity). The play style is to exploit running of course, at low levels you have poison cloud, which you can cast. Poison I think is really under-rated (sure- they might be able to cure it, but units with cure come on lvl 4, and it costs 5 times as much mana to cast). Than towards level 40 or so I get 2 lvls of spiders, which are great because it means you can have units with you (in a way without being slowed down).
The cons seem to be that you aren't really as good a caster as a pure mage and certainly no fighter, but good map control should more than cover for this.