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What I should say here is that a lot of the defensive components that are made ultimately in to something offensive tend to be items that are less popular...
But when you get them together on to a hero that can tank, aggress, etc. being able to cast off medallion, veil, blade mail, etc. helps your team out in a significant way...
Like you are out in front tanking because these items naturally do, but you are throwing out unique offensive effects that are beneficial for the team.
Now... does having splash range mean that this qualifies him as the type of hero that you want to do physical damage and crit chance items with? I don't think so, I think we have to re think his role here....
As I was saying, defensive items that progress in to an offensive end.
But we can start with tranq boots in to a soul ring (At that point the breath of fire will work well with the higher breath of fire), then make phase boots for good creeping and great movement speed with Dragon form + Tranq + phase.
(Going back and forth between his life regen/armor skill and breath of fire, but start with the life regen and then 2 in to fire breath, then back and forth keeping fire breath higher)
Now he can get a veil of dichord for protection and keep the enemy team under control in team fights with veil casts. He can get a medallion of courage in there for another way to enhance damage against them while getting more armor.
he could get a Black king bar before getting a shadow blade to run from enemies at high speed already with dragon over double boots, and then cast black king bar to not get stunned...
Then at the end he could just disappear with shadow blade and laugh, having drug the enemy team around the map.
He could use blade mail to reflect damage along side his tanking...
Could use a Hammer to stun since there is a 4 second cooldown on it (not needing high attack speed perse)
Could use a assault cuirass, or pipe of insight in to an ethereal blade, protecting himself from physical damage but using veil over top of ethereal blade against opponents to lower an enemies elemental resist by 65% and slow him down...
Etc. etc.
I don't think the physical damage route is necessarily the way to play him.
It seems that the wisdom gathered from my experience in this game has reached a new height, and that I am finally able to write a viable strategy guide for how to PROPERLY, and when I mean PROPERLY, I mean that you would not play it any other way or you're just flat stupid for not playing in a manner extremely similar to the following.
Strategy Begins
The Lost Art of Handling Harassment(But was it ever found?)
I'm going to attempt to model this game after a rock, paper scissors thematic counter system.
We'll say rock is the tanking method and counters bully harassment of skills.
There's really no one who knows how to counter this method and so people just try to counter it by fighting fire with fire and when they lose because their character was not really meant for aggressive play, they assume that they are less skilled of a player or what ever.
The way you counter team( 2 player) focus fire harassment using ranged attack and skills is through a combination of 3 things.
-Your Hero
-Lane Partner
-Build
If you are laning against a juggernaut and sniper for example, a very skill dominating team, you are going to counter them with let's say... a Dragon Knight and a Treant Protector.
And the dragon knight ought to start with a wand and a defense ring while first skill goes in to dragon blood (Life regen + defense). Don't spend the rest of your money on anything else. When you start creeping must grab life regen ring asap followed by boots for tranquility.
2nd skill goes in to breath of fire, 3rd goes in to dragon blood, and then you flood the rest in to breath of fire as 2 is enough in to dragon blood combined with tranquility boots, wand, and a treant protector support.
The enemies will spam their skills and your wand will just charge, charge and charge.
After wand and tranquility... could get a soul ring for serious fire breath spamming combined with wand. But if they also have wand, might want to skip that.
Now get a shield, followed up by 2 claws in to boots for phase. After phase get veil of dischord. After veil get a Hood of Defiance which will prepare you for using an ethereal blade.(you will be eth and dake more magic damage and hood helps) Now get ethereal blade.
Now you can cast veil + ethereal blade together to lower the elemental resist of an opponent by like 65% and if lucky catch multiple enemies for 25%
Now could get something like a skull basher to go along with his stun and benefit from the ias as the ethreal blade has 40 agility making you attack faster.(more stuns)
Or could get a blade mail... or upgrade the shield you have in to vanguard which might actually be the most thematically powerful thing when you are being protected by tree + dragon blood, veil, vanguard, HoD.
Maybe an assault cuirass would be good, or helm of the dominator and controling the creep that provides the life regen radius....
with area of a effect lower resist and the ability to tank anything, maybe a radiance would be cool...
Anyways, just throwing stuff out there, but this is really the true way to deal with lane bullies.
Oh yeah, rock paper scissors
Rock - Tank > Scissors - skill spam harassment > Paper, pure physical damage for gold farming, last hits > tank.
First off, if youre going aginast a jugg sniper lane, your mm ranking must be super low. Plain and simple, you dont put 2 carries in a lane together. Plus, DK doesnt go eth blade and veil. Breath fire isnt any special nuke and your pooling all your gold into items just for the little nuke? Eth blade wont do much special as DK doesn't buy mass stat items like a morph. Veil is a support item and provides little to DK who doesnt need tranquils or much regen thanks to dragon blood. Jugg and sniper have no spammable spells, blade fury-30 sec, healing ward-1 min and snipers dont get shrapnel early. As for radiance, thats an item you rush by 15 minutes. You also skipped leveling a 2 second stun at level 1. That build is completely defeated by DoT and burst damage. Plus its a dual melee lane that can be kited hard by any support hero. At most, youre gonna get 2-3 breath fires off with DKs small mana pool. With that build, your assuming that you can CS very well (im assuming 50 or so every 10 minutes) which isnt happening with that dual lane.
Then the approach is for any character pair you feel is op and can bully you out of your lane early on... any.
You're saying what he doesn't go while not telling what he should go. As stated before, he is a strength hero, not agility, less offensive naturally, he has no damage enhancing ability, no crit, and no attack speed enhancement.
The one thing he has is splash, but that can always be good for farming lane creeps with out the need to leave one's lane.
I know it's a support item because he can support super well with dragon blood and stuns. His last dragon form can slow groups of guys down which serves a good purpose with out even needing damage.
Just because he has no damage enhacing ability doesnt mean hes cant be carry or less offensive, he has his poison dragon. He starts early with good base damage and can go late with his 2.2 agility gain which is fairly high for a strength hero. Veil is picked up for a magic heavy team, not character unless the supports have money to buy it but there are items with higher priority. Building DK around his 1 average nuke is never a good idea. Its like saying I build SK around hellfire blast or kunkka around torrent. The reason he isnt played as a support is dur to him having such a small mana pool and dragon tail being melee range. Plus, late game all he offers is a 1 hero stun and a slow thats only good for chasing.
His breath of fire may not be considered a nuke but it has the potential to hit a whole team... but the point is to use it + veil in a team fight while veil helps you tank up front with your dragon blood.
Veil + Breathe IN A TEAM FIGHT is far from bad.
then Hod in to ethereal blade, you could tank everyones spells and then when they try to finish you off naturally you could cast veil and then eth blade making yourself untargetable for a while and shoot stuns/ fire breath etc.
Poison Dragon... lol, you got me there! This proves he is a physical carry!
It seems that the wisdom gathered from my experience in this game has reached a new height, and that I am finally able to write a viable strategy guide for how to PROPERLY, and when I mean PROPERLY, I mean that you would not play it any other way or you're just flat stupid for not playing in a manner extremely similar to the following.
Nope.
You see, you claim that AGI heroes are more offensively inclined but that's wrong. That may be true in some way, but what you're thinking is that STR heroes are merely for tanking- that's wrong.
You say that he does not have any attack enhancer, but if you think about it, being durable in itself is one. Rather than dying quickly while dealing huge damage, surviving while dealing slightly less damage than the former is certainly better, especially because of dota's death system. And it allows you to give more attacks.
Also, his splash damage pratically multiplies his attack damage to all enemies in the area. It's pretty much a 100% cleave. You ever tried pairing this guy with magnus in a game? Just wonderful.
[Damage(number of enemies in 0~100 AOE)] + [Damage(3/4)(number of enemies in 101~200 AOE)] + [Damage (1/2)(number of enemies in 201~250 AOE)] = DK's collective damage per attack. Now that's certainly better than a typical battlefury wielding AGI hero, right? I mean at max, it would deal the quintiple of DK's refular damage in total assuming you're against 5 heroes.
Anyway, there are certainly different ways on playing DK, but taking physical defense over physical offense with general defense (health) is just... wrong. He can be used as a tank by getting raw health through STR, and that is the most basic and (this is subjective but) most effective way to play him. Thus, armlet + BKB.
And support DK is just a total waste of his abilities. Why would you get "support" DK if all you're going to do is stun one target, tank only physical damage and use your ulti just to farm creeps? That's not only a very weak support's job, but it also contradicts with the role of the support itself.
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