General DiscussionHow to Dragon Knight?

Hey wookie,

I don't play him too much mid, but I typically safe lane with him but I'll give you some pointers:

http://dotabuff.com/heroes/dragon-knight/items

The one time I did go mid it was against pudge, I did the following build:

Skilling order (for safest results and longevity to not go back to base: W,E,E,Q,E,R,E,Q,Q,Q,R,W,W,W,E,R

1: Sages mask/soul ring recipe<ring of health for soul ring Reason: You can skip bottle with this mid, and your dragon blood will regen health, and allow you to have mana by popping your soul ring early/mid game.

2. Power treads: Reason: IAS/stats. Sometimes I just go brown boots until I get HoTD then roll into treads. Depending on how well my farming is going.

3. HoTD. Reason: Get this ASAP so you can stack ancients. Easier on Radiant side since med. creep camp is near you and so is the ancients. I saw a great way to stack ancients easily by hiding a ranged creep behind the woods near the secret shop radiant side, so his ranged attacks or spells would aggro the camp. Takes less micromanagement this way. I am impressed. Stack 3x/4x and use your ult to smoke them fast.

4. BKB: Reason: Well.... most teams will have a few disablers, or silences, slows etc. Easy to farm if you are stacking ancients as a 3 or 4 stack will provide you 2/3rds of your BKB.

5. AC OR Mjolliner. So DK already has great armor due to dragon blood. So you have to ask yourself at this point: "Do they have a lot of push power with heros like Dazzle, or Dark Seer, Natures prophet? Mjolliner is probably your bet here. If they dont, then grabbing that AC for armor boost and tower/hero armor down is what you want.

6. Sell your Soul ring then grab: Heart or Daedalus. So either you need to fill the roll of tank because everyone on your team is soft, and you need to take the dmg, or you have another tank/initiator on the team and you need to deal out damage. This is situational and should be depending on what role you need to fill. Daedalus is great with the IAS he will get from AC or Mjolliner, but if you need to be a big beefy meat puppet then heart is the way to go.

Frankly, of course with any hero you need to be flexible. As with any hero you need to fill the roll your team needs. There is no cookie cutter build but that goes without saying. Big thing here is he is slow, he can't gank very easily like other mid heros or as fast. So farming mid uninterrupted while stacking ancients as early as possible is good. Harder on Dire side IMO since ancients are further away. I prefer him Radiant side if I pick him.

I generally safe lane with DK with a CM combo. I like the DK bash, then chain stunning with CM and provides easy kills. I still get the same build order that I provided here. I'm sure some people will disagree and say armlet, or MoM or something to that effect, but stacking ancients with him is huge since his ult can smoke out a 3 or 4 stack easy. Hope this helps.

ниасилил патамушта многа букаф

I completely forgot about ancient stacking on him. I actually ignored the jungle a lot, probably part of why my farm was so awful in both games.

Yeah GPM is where its at mr wookie. I mean I think 3 stacks give you about... 1200 gold and 4 will do about 1600 gold. I saw the guy stacking ancients using a bigger satyr and he would cast his Q to stack while behind the tree line on radiant side and aggro the creeps. I haven't tried this, but it seemed easier to hide your neutral creep from the enemy, and just selecting the neutral and casting his Q on them. It was the purple bigger satyr with his Q orb.

Yeah I typically do not select heros that stack because I'll forget about it, or I'll get busy with a team fight and forget etc. But when I'm with my friends and they pick a HoTD unit, I usually support, and stack for them since I am not really last hitting and just defending my carry. Just a thought I know you stated you played with your bro a lot, maybe he could stack for ya IDK lol.

Edit:

Yeah 280gpm and 380gpm isn't fantastic for a guy like DK :(

No it's terrible, I just am not comfortable with him, I never have a game plan. If I know what I want to build and do in lane I think I'll do better. My gpm on luna, wraith king, troll, other farming carries is decent enough.

On mid , your main role is to get lvl 6, push mid tower, then start pushing other lanes. Max q in normal circumstances , max e when playing vs qop, invo, sf. Get bottle, pt, medalion, lothar ( shadow blade ) , then bkb, followed up ac/mjol/shiva/satanic/mkb/ etc.

Safe lane , your role is to farm up, then proceed to fuck them up. Soul ring, pt, bkb, shadow blade, folowed by other item named top.

Offline , dunno, haven't played that lane with him. Prolly max w+e , not so sure, about items, prolly going some semi support, with drums, urn, meka?!, pipe, disarm

Also, there is roaming dk. Maxing w + stats is really good. Get bottle, medalion, arcane, dager, drums, followed up necro 3, end more on.

mid you max q cause you don't desperately need the regen and armor from E, cuz you'll have bottle
at lv6 you become a pushing monster, just use your Q to wipe creepwaves and ult to destroy a tower, ez.

your dps does not scale very well at late game but you get tanky as shit so you are beastly even late in the game, great hero

about the items i dont know for sure, i WOULD go for PT + Drums + BKB. But DK is a hero that has a lot of viable builds, it all depends on what you intend to do. There is a DPS build, which I assume will have an Armlet early on to boost your tankiness and give you some dps, maybe shadow blade to provide you an escape/initiation (just get invi and stun lol) mechanism. but i think BKB is a must as you are fragile against magical dmg. i've seen some ppl doing him as an utility carry, with drums, pipe, AC etc, and i think it works

he is not much item dependant, all he needs is a boot and a bkb i think, he is natural tanky and his Q can wipe out creep lanes easily, and his ult adds a lot of pushing power.

if you are NOT going mid, i'd advise you to make a soul ring as health is not really a problem for you since you have a natural ring of health with you (your E), and you'll constantly run out of mana

but i'd really put him mid in a push strat, he can do fairly well, take a lot of harass. Also, if you're going mid, just spend 1 point on your W and max Q and E first, IMHO, cause you're not a ganker and your stun is melee btw (unless you are under your ulti)

HotD is good for stacking and grants you a little more tankiness due do the helm, but in terms of life steal you won't benefit that much

i think thats it bro don't take me so seriously though cause i'm not a pro, not even close
just trying to help you

gl

" mid you max q cause you don't desperately need the regen and armor from E, cuz you'll have bottle ", this is particular true, but whenyou are against heroes that can harass you a lot, and rune whore better then you ( qop, mira, od ), then you really need to max e ( or to get at least 2-3 levels of it )

I like peoples thoughts here. I am not a fan of bottle though as its 650, and soul ring and maxing E first seems better but again I am not the end all and play what works best for you.

I just feel that DK has low mobility so grabbing runes is tougher against more mobile heros so you have to end up crowing the bottle or going back to base. maxing E with soul ring allows you to stay in lane IMO. Again its just my opinion! :)

I don't know if I care to bottle either since you're trying to hit 6 asap and push the lane and farm. Leaving to get a rune means you're missing at least a few last hits/xp/push. I know you generally try to push the lane up first but that doesn't always happen.

I definitely need to look into maxing q sooner. I made big mistakes of maxing w before it, not realizing how important q is for the push.

W,E,E,Q,E,R,E,Q,Q,Q,R,W,W,W,U,R

Maybe Vary it with this so you still get some armor/health regen:

W,E,Q,E,Q,R,Q,Q,E,E,R,W,W,W,U,R (u being stats)

I mean I agree having dragon breath allows you to clear waves faster and allows you to grab a big pile of last hit creep wave easier. My first build is if you have a super aggressive mid doing a lot of DMG against you.

My biggest problems with playing DK is his mobility without Dragon Form. A Drum is a core item on him.

Here is my mid build:

Starting: 3x Branches, 1x Tango
Early: Bottle, Magic Wand, TP scroll
Core: Treads, Drum, Shadow Blade, BKB
Late: AC, Daedalus, Mjollnir (replace SB)

Once you have a Shadow Blade, start ganking side lanes. The SB helps get you there undetected and in a hurry. Don't prioritze SB over Drums. You can't chase if your movement speed is 340.

This build is focused on ganking and pushing towers ASAP. Going mid gets your ult more quickly and start DoTing towers.

Ability build: Q, E, Q, W, Q, R / Q, E, E, E, R / W, W, W, stats, R / etc.

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Safe lane build:

Starting: 1x Tango, 1x Healing Salve, QB, 3x Branches
Early: Magic Wand, Boots, Bracer
Core: Treads, Drums, Maelstrom, BKB
Late: Daedalus, AC, Mjollnir
Situational: Satanic, Abyssal, Halberd

Ability build: W, E, Q, Q, Q, R / Q, E, E, E, R / W, W, W, stats, R / etc.

I know some people like HotD early, but I've experimented a lot with different builds, and I think Maelstrom is better because of attack speed and AoE damage. You have a lot of armor and regen already. You don't want your DPS to fall off in teamfights and become the last man standing after your team is dead. Maelstrom lets you farm the jungle faster too. Let someone else stack camps for you. You should be farming the lane, push when its to your advantage and be ready to TP at a moment's notice for a teamfight.

If you want, I can publish my builds.

Yo Stinkoman,

Whats your fastest time grabbing drum/treads/shadowblade mid? Have you finally tried this in pub matches? I always see you doing stuff against bots when ur online and I haven't played with you since the year beast.

What about phase boots? Still not enough boost to movement? Not worth losing the IAS? If you're going shadowblade for that IAS anyway maybe phase works out.

Or what about sange and yasha? Really easy to build, decent dmg boost, good attack speed and movement boost, seems to fit what dk wants to do well.

Yeah I wouldn't see a problem with sange/yasha since u get more stats/IAS/move speed. I think stinkoman is doing some kind of gank build with DK mid and ganking. I don't see a problem with Sange/yasha its an all rounder item. I would say that HoTD mid is still the WTG and stack ancients man. Its just too much gold/xp to pass up. But I guess if you are a ganker DK then dont do it since you'll be too busy to deal with ancients when you're farming heros. He just seems to have low IAS and takes a long time for a 3k shadow blade and a 1.8k to come online. I feel that is a weak, no health no stat DK and isn't viable to do team fights in just my opinion IDK.

Phase Boots don't improve your tankiness (+8 strength) and you have enough movement speed with Drums and Dragon Form. Shadow Blade is for ganking, not teamfighting. It's a middle lane build item to help you get to the side lanes in conjunction with your Drum. Shadow Blade back stab --> Dragon Tail stun --> a few right clicks --> Breathe Fire usually finishes people off.

Sange and Yasha is okay, but you get some of the same things from Drums for a lot less build up. Also, it does absolutely nothing for your mana pool. At least there is an argument for Soul Ring. I feel Drums are the best of both worlds: mobility, mana, cost. S&Y can be deconstructed later for HH and sell the Yasha once you have enough movement speed from something like BoT. I've never seen a Manta Style on Dragon Knight.

As to comment on your two games specifically (NOT HAVING SEEN THE REPLAY):

Safe Lane:

1) No BKB (core item no matter what)
2) You built a Hood of Defiance, but no Pipe. Pipe is for support DK, you don't need a HoD when BKB is better.
3) You can AFK farm as long as you do push towers if the fight is on the other side of the map. This is where Drums are really useful for your creeps and Dragon Form. Take that tower down!

Middle Lane:

1) Sounds like you won the lane versus Pudge without a Bottle. Good job for that, but you need a Bottle to control runes so Pudge has no chance of ganking your side lanes.
2) You don't really need a QB to last hit. You should rush a Bottle for mana so you can harass and last hit with Breathe Fire. Put a few hits on each creep so their equally low health and then blast them all at once. You can also do this to push the wave at close to the 2 min mark to guarantee rune control.
3) Still no BKB
4) I still don't like HotD that early, but at least you can justify stacking ancients yourself from mid. I would take a Crystalys over a HotD for DPS first since your Dragon Breath cleaves.

You should rush a Shadow Blade only if your side lines are getting hammered. Even then, though, you will probably lose if your carry can't get any farm.

In general, continue to experiment with various builds and watch some pro games. Early on when I trying stuff out, I kept getting in the trap of tank DK. Unfortunately, tank DK does has no damage and no attack speed. Your teammates will always die and then you get focused down. Always think about adding more DPS to DK since his passive takes care of your early armor and regen needs.

Yeah those games I did really bad, the first one pudge was like 18-0 and we had their t2s down so I thought bkb wouldn't be needed and I thought the game would end before I could farm a heart so I went hood. Stupid in retrospect, if I'd gone bkb instead we might have won, we ended up wiping 3 times on their rax and then gg naga throned us.

The things that amaze me about Dota is that you can put a lot of faith in either the suggested items from Valve or the highest rated guides only to find that they suck or they are not suitable to your playstyle. If you can't figure out how to make a hero viable, play offline for a while and experiment. However, most melee carries do need a BKB, even if a guide only lists it as situational. For strength heroes, it adds 34 damage and 190 health, not too shabby in the mid game.

IAS is good for DK since his ult does splash damage so its kind of like a cleave for range. Hence getting AC or Mjolliner later on my suggestion.

I have seen dk go manta once. Can't find the match now. He rushed it, didn't seem very effective but I think they won anyway.

"Yo Stinkoman,

Whats your fastest time grabbing drum/treads/shadowblade mid?"

I'll test this when I get home. My guess is that if you're a good farmer, you could rush the Shadow Blade by the second night (12+) or grab Drums + SB by 16 minutes.

Yeah IDK manta gives you running speed, some defense, a way to dispel some spells, and some IAS, then the split can give you DPS but it sounds like a poop item on him.

@ Stinkoman

Yeah interesting to know. You're including your start build with bottle I'm guessing.

Why don't you try it in a pub match finally stinker? :P

Edit: Do you play against unfair bots or what? I can't watch your games when its bot match only.

I do hard or unfair bots. Sometimes hard is good enough because of the lineups.

I faced off versus Bane in middle lane and missed some easy last hits early on, but with constant bottle crowing, I got Wand, Bottle, and Treads in 6:30. I got my Drums at 10:30 and because of a triple kill counter (Drow came to gank me mid with Bane), I got SB at 14:30. From there it was pretty smooth sailing. I used SB to gank and Drums and chase.

The biggest problem was 30 minutes and onward because my BKB was ineffective against Bane's fiend grip. I died 4 times. Also, my bot allies were shit and fed all game. It was pretty hard to carry because when I died, my respawn time was ridiculous (I was level 25 @ 28 minutes when everyone else was 15-16, and my allies were 12-13).

I built Satanic to replace my Drums late, which helped a little bit, but ultimately I was unsure how much it really helped at that time since every teamfight left me gripped.

Finally I was working on Mjollnir when the Ancient died.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/795190793301790051/7414F98031DADCCB89DDE6076C9408D83BA824AE/

Alright side note, good luck crowing your bottle in a pub match though. People will steal your crow all day or steal your bottle.

WP though WP.

Yeah, it's probably not a good idea to play DK mid when in a pub match. Actually, any time you have to rely on bottle crowing is usually a disaster.

IDK DK is not an unviable option mid I just wouldn't insta-pick it all the time.

I guess times I wouldn't pick DK mid would be:

Invoker
OD
Silencer
Death Prophet
Zeus
Sniper
Drow ranger
Shadow fiend

Usually I see him as a melee vs melee guy. Just my opinion. Those characters I have the toughest time with against in mid anyways, minus the death prophet if I get to pick blood seeker.

Ranged carries mid in general are bad.

Invoker - yes
OD - yes
Silencer - I think you could outlane him with right-click. You wouldn't need to rely on Breathe Fire.
Death Prophet - yes
Zeus - I think you could easily push him out of lane. He's just as slow as you are and he needs Arc Lightning to last hit. Whack him a few times and you'll be good. You have built in armor and regen. He can only cast Arc Lightning like 3 times at start.
Sniper - yes
Drow Ranger - yes
Shadow Fiend - I'm unsure about this matchup. Shadow Fiend's attack range isn't that big, but you have to worry about getting razed when going in for last hits. He's really squishy though, so if you can get help trying to gank him, you could win the lane by default.

I honestly prefer to go straight bottle-treads-mael-bkb-mjol. Drums gives DK low additional impact in fights and is only really helpful for chasing people, which shouldn't be your job (If it is, get blink!)

HOTD is a great pickup, but i usually only get it if the game is even/passive, if the game is either going badly or going well maelstrom gives a much larger benefit for around the same cost

Source: 69% winrate in low skilled pubs
http://dotabuff.com/players/79461888/matches?date=&faction=&hero=dragon-knight&lobby_type=&game_mode=&duration=

Tired some of the suggestions and still went only 1-2 but my farm was a lot better, 430, 470 and 570. Still need to get it over 500 every time. I like this build a lot, 1 tango, 3 branches, quell blade. Grab wand and treads, helm of dominator. All 3 games I was vs a spammer so wand helped a lot (vs bristle, timber and axe). From there I went maelstrom, bkb, finish mjolnir, start on daedulus. Helm didn't seem to help me tons but basically makes it so you never need to go back and I tried stacking ancients. Only worked well in my last game though, first game we had no wards and the other team kept coming and killing the stacks lol. Maelstrom is huge for farming. You can autto attack one wave, couple lightning procs and wave is dead, then fire breath the next. It's quite amazing and easy to build.

Also going tanky items now seems like overkill. I may try to incorporate a sange into my builds somewhere, either as a s&y or halberd but I felt beefy enough with just helm and bkb. And now I could actually do some damage.

Also fixing my skill points was a big deal. New build is w, e, q, q, q, r, q. Getting q maxed early is a big deal I didn't realize before. At lvl 1 and 2 the mana cost per dmg is astronomical, at 3 it's ok and at 4 it's good. Really ups your farm when you can kill a wave with one breath and one maelstrom proc, then rotate into jungle or another lane to keep farming.

Only problem now is I need to figure out how to have more early game impact. I mean part of the issue was my lane support was awful two games, I somehow drew the same guy both games, once on puck and once on rubick supporting me in safe lane. He sucked as harassing and denying so timber saw who we should've easily killed with rubick lived and farmed and bristle went unchecked the other game. Need to figure out a way to overcome poor support or when other lanes feed though at least somewhat. When I mid I can gank those lanes or when I support I can rotate but on dk if I keep farming and pushing a lane it's good but usually other team is too far ahead if my team fed. I guess farm/push faster?

My little nothing:
Mid DK should go PB IMO - to have more reliable way to land a stun and better roam ability. Safe lane is PT for sure.

Also, great early game impact items are PB, Drums and Armlet. I think, Armlet is great for DK. IMO you can delay HotD for a bit, you'll not be able to clear stacked Ancients efficiently until lvl 11 anyway and for ganking and combat purposes Armlet is better.
BKB too could be delayed for a bit if you are ganker.

But that's just my theory crafting. I'm awful with this hero.

Guide to teamfighting with DK:

1) Stun their carry.
2) Firebreath a buncha people.
3) Rightclick people.
4) Don't die because you're tanky.
5) Win.

Yeah there are sooo many ways to build him. Thus far IAS seems to be the key to his dps. But I'm going to try some other items like s&y soon. Still haven't done the ganker build with shadow blade yet. Also wondering what mask of madness would be like on him hmmmm maybe I'll try it in a normal match.

why should mid DK go phase when he's going to get a bottle which is much more effective when tread switching. DK shouldn't even be roaming as a mid, you just sit in lane and bottle crow, and your ganks are either going to be tp supports or if you get a good rune. otherwise use dragon form to damage the tower.

maxing Q is always the way to go, even with no items you can still contribute a 300 damage nuke. hp regen from E can be solved by cheap items, 300 magic damage can't. if you are behind, what does 1 extra HP regen offer you. same logic applies to people going 1-3-1 on faceless void or 1-1-3 on spectre because they're getting harassed too much.

the extra regen of dragon's blood is also negligible in the safe lane, 60 extra HP every minute will not keep you in lane, the enemy could probably attack you 10 times in a minute. the best thing you can do in a losing lane is farm stacked camps with maxed fire, use it for cs whenever possible, or try to get a kill with it.

also your skilling order on the mid lane does matter, it should be 3-1-1 by level 5, but not set in stone at WEQQQRQ, because then you won't be any lane pushing power until level 4 or 5. if you get Q earlier that allows you to get last hits that would've otherwise been denied, allowing you to level up quicker and therefore get points into your other skills earlier.

e.g. I picked up a DD rune at the start of a game, was vs a SF. once I was in range of him to stun, I levelled it up and traded hits to force him out of lane.

However, you may want to get Q at 1 if you see an opportunity to get 1 or more creeps as well as harass the enemy.

tanky items aren't necessarily overkill, if your team are squishy then it'd make sense to bear the brunt of the damage. if you're the primary damage dealer, let the supports use their spells before dying so you can make use of your damage items like dominator / maelstrom.

as for item choices

drum (1875) vs dominator (1850)
dominator for stacking to farm for the late game
drum gives you and your team strength in early teamfights / pushes

maelstrom (2700) vs armlet (2700)
maelstrom gives you more aoe damage, synergises with splash (kinda) and farming speed
armlet gives you more tankiness and more single target damage

bkb is kinda like why you get it on gyrocopter, you're going to be standing in the middle of a fight aoe-ing everyone down, which leaves you suspectible to stuns and nukes.

"Only problem now is I need to figure out how to have more early game impact"
tp when people are tower diving or after your team gets a kill and you have a numbers advantage to push towers. dk doesn't do alot of damage compared to carries with the same farm.

your stun has low range so if you don't have supports with stuns, the only lane presence you'll have is fire spam which requires mana regen. as for being against timber, he will fuck your shit up, no matter what, since you're a strength hero. the attribute decrease of whirling death even goes through BKB

however (correct me if i am wrong) but from my experience dk cant compete with the 5 star agi carries in late

Yeah but that's true of every strength carry pretty much. With equal farm most will get out damaged by an agi carry but they tank better in team fights. They aren't supposed to 1v1 peeps.

Honestly i don't think dk would be that scary with mom. Considering his very high armor value, his real weakness is nuke damage. Mom amp kinda makes this way more noticeable, if you get hit by 4+ nukes with mom on you pretty much just die.

Also part of the reason i love mael/mjol is because despite dk's frankly shitty early right click damage, the lightning means you farm quickly and hit very hard early-mid game, mom doesn't give this.

What about the dread hand of midas? I was wondering cus what does dk need most? IAS and levels. Midas gives both. I may try it if I can get free farm in safe lane. Getting to the red dragon asap could yield some strong pushes.

If you get first blood. get midas otherwise probably pass.

Anyway, Protip from me. and My own expierience.

If you go Ptreads BKB AC probably best to not get drums after that and work on crits or lifesteal or something........

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