DK : What's The New Build?

What is the best skill and item build now? Im assumin Max Breathe Fire is pretty good now. Whats is a good item build? Im thinking Drum, Vlads, BKB, Basher, like his old build. Yeah?

You always maxed Fire, even if you needed one more blood point, you max it by 8, but when to get his other skills is dependent on the siutation, hard harasser? Blood. First blood? Tail. Lane can easily be taken over? Fire.

As for the item build, depends on your goals, but I would say that not that many items changed.

Early Deathball Doto, your build is not bad, although he's not a fantastic carrier of those items, seems more like a PA build to me, since you are mostly fighting in ranged form. If i was gonna Deathball Doto, probably Drums, Sange Yasha BKB, and a steady supply of arcane boots and healing on the team, mostly the same, except less Maelstroming, since you want more HP and movespeed against all the nuke you'll be facing.

Also a space creator DK build is to go Shadow Blade into BKB into Silver Edge and look for easy ganks, and is maximizing damage reduction so no carry can dps race you until some bkbs come out. Basically, the Shadow Blade DK has much better late now.

Or if you want late game teamfighter carry, Dominator, BKB, Moon Shard, Daedalus, watch entire teams pop as they fail to fight back to your damage and have theirs reduced. Moon Shard was one of the best items for buffing DK's carrying potential so he can do it much better now.

Or if you want to be more balanced late, relying less on your Dragon Form, and being a good kiter, SnY, BKB, Radiance, Skadi to be a real menace to the enemy team. Radiance's buff makes it a legitimate pickup now once you have acquired BKB. You can go manta afterward to go splitpusher or blinker hunter.

4-1-4-2 is usually the best skill build by 11, because you need to max Breathe Fire first due to it being your nuke and laning skill, and your passive second because it makes you one of the tankiest heroes in the game when you get it. Like it makes sieging so much easier when you are that tanky to physical damage.

People usually get the value point in the stun at like level 4, because it just makes you more versatile early on, better when people rotate into your lane, and an actual change to solo kill with level 6. Especially since Dragon Blood is a pretty good value point in the laning stage as it is.

Item build on DK is kinda weird. If you are ahead (And you probably should be since he's a deathball pushing hero, not much else), then value bracer into Shadow Blade is really good, because the towers you are getting early makes the item more valuable due to the map being more open, that and it has something to build into that synergises well. BKB and something like AC are pretty good after that as well, since both assist with the pushing ability. Just tanking up a bit is the first thing to focus on with either drums or bracer.

Just Built:

4-1-4-2

Bottle
Drum
Treads
BKB
Silver Edge

No mention of Pipe of Insight? if you want to play deathball / pushing DK, it's the best item in a lot of games. It fixes one of DK's biggest problems, his vulnerability to magic damage in the mid game. And it brings a lot more to teamfights and pushes than rushing a Black King Bar.

Drum of Endurance on strength heroes is pretty bad. Drum is really a midgame item for AGI carries and that's it. As an early fighting item Armlet of Mordiggian is just better. The only benefit of drum is that it improves your mana pool (that's why it's decent on e.g Kunkka or Chaos Knight), but DK doesn't have mana issues to begin with since bottle and wand give him all the mana he needs.

Essentially :

- If you want to play pushing DK, build items that bring something to early-mid game teamfights : choose between Pipe of Insight, Vladmir's Offering, Armlet of Mordiggian, Black King Bar.
On pushing DK, there's no point in building chasing/movement speed items like SnY since towers can't kite you. You don't care if heroes run away, if they do you can just be the tanky frontliner and hit the tower.

- If you want to play ganking DK, rush either a Blink Dagger or a Shadow Blade/ Silver Edge as a first item.

Farming DK with Helm of the Dominator ancient stacking or Hand of Midas just doesn't fit the patch (or the hero's strengths for that matter). If you want a farming item on DK, Maelstrom/ Mjollnir is IMO the best choice since it also helps with teamfighting and pushing.

Also don't forget Manta Style that both dispels break from Silver Edge (that disables your passive Dragon Blood) and gives you cleaving illusions.

Also, can people stop going Assault Cuirass on DK? It's just sooo freaking bad! AC only makes sense on low armor strength heroes like Tiny. DK doesn't need armor, he's naturally at the optimal HP/armor ratio with his passive, he even has too much armor - there's really no point in sitting at 45 armor and mediocre HP, it does nothing. Only thing you need to build on DK is attack speed and damage. So the natural attack speed item on him is either Mjollnir or Moon Shard, add in a Daedalus and your hero actually deals damage. Since he has naturally high armor, the only tank items that make sense on him are those that increase his HP e.g Eye of Skadi or Satanic.

The thing with Assault Cuirass on dragon knight is that unless you have a lineup that pushes REALLY early, you will be able to have cuirass when you are going to break the base, and as a pushing items its really good for you and your team. And usually in those kind of lineups with DK +luna/gyro there isnt anyone else to build it.

But i agree that if there is another AC hero on your team or you wont use the cuirass advantage in a push that you should just get a mjollnir.

AC isn't an armour item as much as it's a pushing item. You are building it for the aura armor and aura armour debuff to make your pushes stronger, and your sieging better. It's why Heroes like Razor build it for sure.

Okay, it's techncially both, since you can build it in either situation and be justified, but you can't say that a very strong pushing item. But there's a viable argument to build AC on DK if you have no other natural carriers, and it to not be a mistake.