Hum, unfortunately I can't say a lot for other people since I haven't played dots for a while, but most people here start off with either...
A. Fruit Basket.
B. Two Mushrooms, two +3 stat items, healing item
C. Four mushrooms
As for lane strategy, once again pretty different on each person here, but the general idea is that you wait and farm until an opportunity arises. As far as I know, eastern communities(Chinese if I remember correctly) are more proactive and make their own opportunities.
Bans.. Well, The three that are usually banned are Wriggle for being perma-invisible and no one here likes buying wards, Rumia for snowballing really well since no one here generally moves lane from lane giving her a strong roaming, and Sanae for being a slut.