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Ring of Regen
Tango
Iron BranchIron BranchIron Branch
Soul Ring
Power Treads
Helm of the Dominator
Armlet of Mordiggian
Crystalys
Black King Bar
Daedalus
Satanic
Heart of Tarrasque
Assault Cuirass
Mjollnir
Sange and Yasha
Phase Boots
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4 | 5 | 7 | 8 |  |
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1 | 12 | 13 | 14 |  |
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2 | 3 | 9 | 10 |  |
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6 | 11 | 16 |  |
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15 | 17 | 18 |
This is a guide to Basic Dragon Knight Play. My build is mostly so you can blow people up by level 16-22, should they have a carry that is matching you, you'll run into trouble so get your farm up and you'll be solid.
Starting Items
You're going to start with a ring of regen, simply so that it stacks early with your level 2-3 dragon blood and give you some nice regen so you can take hits from the enemy and still get your last hits. The Tango is self-explanatory and the 3 iron branches will give you a slight stats boost.
Early Game Items
For Early Game items, the Soul Ring goes with your breath fire build and it's pretty simple. Pop Soul Ring, breath fire for damage and let your dragon blood plus the regen from soul ring repair your health. That's really all you need to do for early game, spam breath fire after popping soul ring, and regen.
Power Treads are just for a health boost, some more damage with the str clicked on, and attack speed, you can go phase just for damage and the speed, but the attack speed comes into effect with the later items and strategy.
Helm of the Dom is for Armor, lifesteal obviously, so you can turn it into a satanic later, it's also so you can stack ancients without having to be there. Run into the jungle, grab a creep and have him stand near your ancients. Then anytime it's 52-53 seconds of each minute just have your creep pull the ancients so they stack. For early game, you only want about 2-3 stacks of ancients, anymore then that and you won't be able to do it.
Mid Game Items
This is where people differ with my build. I prefer to go Armlet as soon as I have that helm of the dominator completed. The lifesteal is just enough to offset the damage from armlet, also gives that increased attack speed and increased health which as DK you need quite a bit even with the armor stacks from dragon blood. Crystalis is because even with the armlet your damage is ****, and the bkb is for survivability, some more health stacking and more damage. U should be sitting at around 2200 health with armlet on and these items, and around 150-160 damage plus crit, which with fire dragon is a good amount of damage for early game.
Late Game Items
Turn that Cristalis into a Daedalus and ur doing quite a bit of damage, same with helm of the dom into a Satanic which again bumps up your health to around 3k. So now you're sitting at 3k health, 200+ damage per hit with large crits and solid attack speed. U should have frost dragon which makes them slowed, and if you get the heart ur at around 3500+ health and around 250 Basic Damage critting for around 650-750. That's 2 hits with crits and you wipe out half a team. Should u get a bit low in health, pop the Satanic and you're golden.
Optional items
If you find that people are getting away too much, you can go the Phase boots instead of power treads, and s n y instead of armlet. the SNY will still stack health but with the added bonus of movement speed thrown in, it's pretty hard to get away with those 2 items on your DK.
i've seen people go Mjollnir rather then armlet for the attack speed, but it's not really my style atall, too random and too much money even with a lightning shield. It's easily countered by someone having a bkb.
Assault Cuirass is a solid item but very hard to farm for. Aside from the reavers and demon edge you can piece meal the entire item collection here should you find that you're dying a bit much for early game. If you find that you aren't dying nearly atall and you're dominating early, picking up an early AC is pretty beneficial for your entire team.
Onto Skills.
Onto the Skills portion! yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Skill 1. Dragon Tail.
Why Dragon Tail rather then Dragon blood? Cause what if ur dumb and get out of position, or your lane partner does, or they overextend, or you decide on that deadly level 1 5 man gank. BOOM, 2.5s stun instantly.
Skill 2-3. Dragon Blood.
This is obvious from my previous explanation, stack up ur health regen and armor so you can just beat on the creeps and ignore the potshots that the enemy is shooting.
Skill 4-5. Breathe Fire.
The First skill is so minimal it's not really worth using, at the 2nd level, it hits for 170 which makes last hitting much easier and try to angle it so you hit the enemy as well, you should have a soul ring at least by level 5 and hopefully boots as well. So that makes any harass your lane partner does, plus the breath fire to initiate(to allow the c/d to pop at the end of the fight so you can use it again) plus the 2.5 stun you leveled earlier, I tend to get a easy kill by about 2.5-3 minutes without too much threat from the other enemy(assuming there's 2 and not 3 or 1) due to Dragon Blood.
Skill 6. Elder Dragon Form.
This is your push ability. The Poison Ticks on towers as well so it makes taking a tower down much much easier with just your first skill into Elder Dragon Form. I also suggest you use this for those early kills as it extends the length of dragon tail by a large portion, making your stun easier to land and you can still beat on them from afar with the Elder Dragon Form, then finish up with Breathe Fire.
Skill 7-8. Breathe Fire.
This is self explanatory, just max out your breathe fire for maximum damage, keep using that soul ring as by now you should have at least your helmet of iron will on your ways towards a helm of the dominator, so the added armor plus regen makes the soul ring incredibly useful and not taxing atall. This is also the time that you can be stackign the jungle a bit, so you can run up and breathe fire, go back to lane, then go back and breathe fire again to knock out some jungle creeps and get ahead in levels/gold quicker.
Skill 9-10. Dragon Blood.
Just to build up your tankiness a bit, I leave the stun for last simply because it's not much of a jump in time on the stun or damage, so i'd rather be more tanky and have greater survivability.
Skill 11. Elder Dragon Form.
This is the big jump, hopefully by now youv'e stacked the ancients 2-3 times, i prefer 2 as 3 will normally get you close to dead with the item setup I listed earlier. Once you have the stacks up, run up to them, and go to Fire Dragon form, which gives you some nice aoe damage, plus a 7 damage bonus and with your armlet, lifesteal and powertreads not to mention your nice health regen from all the items, you'll burst through these faily quick and that's a heavy load of exp and gold.
Skill 12-14. Dragon Tail.
Now you level up the stun just for a increase in stun time as again, the damage is very minimal, remember that in Elder Dragon Form your stun range is much longer.
Skill 15. Stats for obviousness
Skill 16. Elder Dragon Form.
this is the killer skill, most teams will try to keep the enemy DK down and out of 16 so that he can't collect items before he hits 16. Frost Dragon Form is one of the best ults in the game by far. The AOE Range is massive, and it's a giant AOE Slow on top of it, with all the items it works pretty great at tearing through teams, especially when u pop a BKB as well as having a daedalus. Also keep in mind, That in Elder Dragon Form, you get a slight speed bonus which helps with tracking people down and goes into the SnY Options I posted earlier.
Laning Partners that work great:
I love laning with anyone that has a double burst. Reason? Shadow Shaman net with DK beating on them, then when the net releases you stun, beat on him some more, then shadow shaman throws out a lightning as you throw out breathe fire, kills just about anyone in the early levels that doesn't have blink. Really you can lane him with any of the following heroes and dominate if you have decent coordination, but try to always keep your lane partner as ranged to assist with the harassment.
Lina
Shadow Shaman
Lich can work simply due to denying back to tower, but other then frostbite spam he's not great for kills
Wisp works due to the movement speed bump
Rubick is ok due to telekineses, if he lightnings early the c/d is normally up again by the time the enemy is running, u should be able to get a kill based off of lightning as the opener.
Jakiro is pretty boss as a lane partner but not many see the versatility in him as a Dota 2 hero, I think he's great is played correctly
CM's amazing of course due to the freeze, mana regen and slow
KOTL I don't see enough of, you can kind of skip the soul ring with a kotl in lane and should he get mana break it's a easy chase, but really if you have him max illuminate and do a surprise hit that's just about a insta kill in early game.
Pugna actually works with max breathe fire to burn someone down quickly, but you're not going to get many kills till you have that stun reach at level 6
Venomancer and Vengeful Spirit both work great as well, Veno is one of my favorite lane partners of all time with his multiple ticks and massive slow, VS works great with dk due to how physical DK is and that armor debuff only stacks with his melee damage after stun, you need to open with the debuff rather then stun first, simply because it lets the rest of your abilities hit that much harder.
Basic Fight Combo's:
Normally between 1-6 I start with a hit or two when laning near creeps, then should my partner be there I let them open up, beat on them, stun, beat on them, breathe fire and hope I got the job done. Should I be solo i sit in the back and breathe fire till they either pop a tango/health pot, back out or be dumb and stay till I get the catch on them with a stun or well timed breathe fire yet again.
6-11 you're going to want to ult right as the fight starts for that Dragon Tail extension and just beat on them as much as possible. If you're smart you'll start with a breathe fire, turn on armlet/ult/stun him and beat him to death, if it doesn't go your way, run towards the ancients or your creeps and use the ult to get extra gold/xp and heal using the helm of the dom.
11-25
FROST DRAGON. Can never say how truly great this ability is. Get those ****in items, hit R, pop dat BKB, and chase people down, use your stun if it looks like they might get away but 60% of the time I'm outleveling or outdamaging their carry and with the lifesteal I don't even have to stun, I just beat them to death. If you follow the Item and Skill Guide I set forth and you don't play completely ****ty, you'll dominate the hell out of all your DK Games.
Pros:
Fast
Cheap Stun
Incredibly Strong Ult
Quick Healing/tankiness from the start
Goes from Melee to Ranged when needed
Cons:
C/D on ult is longer then it seems, without it, you can still do damage but you're very limited compared to other carries
Very Mana Dependent Early Game
While the stun is cheap to use(low mana comparatively) it's only single target so use it on those getting away or the main damage dealer.
Easily countered by Blade Mail Late Game.
That's it, let me know what changes you think I should make, or what you think of the guide.
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