Locked out of the Meta: Dragon Knight

Continuing the series, today let's discuss Dragon Knight.
Dragon Knight has been phased out of the meta ever since his relative popularity in TI4. Early pushing is out now because of all these glyphs, and he’s not really strong enough at anything else for players to want to pick him in any environment. As he has lacking laning, even if he’s hard to kill, and is lacking late, he has disappeared from a popular pick into a experimental pick that always loses. I feel it is a good time to give him a buff and bring him back as an option in the meta.

I have proposed two possible ways to do this, focusing on different parts of him.

Approach 1: Early/Mid Game Buff
Base damage increased by 8.
Dragon’s Blood armor reduced from 3/6/9/12 to 3/5/7/9
Dragon’s Blood Regen increased from 2/3/4/5 to 3/5/7/9
Breathe Fire Mana Cost from 100/110/120/130 to 80/90/100/110
Breathe Fire Cooldown from 12 to 9.
This approach will make Dragon Knight’s spells stronger and his laning much stronger as well. He’ll actually be able to last hit with increased damage, more regen (though less armor, think alchemist), and a lower mana cost on his nuke to get last hits and take control of the lane with. It’ll be much easier for him to gain momentum and stay out. This will make him a stronger mid solo.

Approach 2: Late Game Buff
Strength Gain increased from 2.8 to 3.3
Agility Gain from 2.2 to 2.8
Elder Dragon Form BAT decreased from 1.7 to 1.6
Turn rate in Elder Dragon form from 0.6 to 1
Dragon’s Blood Armor Bonus is added to base armor now.
This approach makes DK’s late game much stronger. As he lacks a natural steroid, it seemed good to give him a much higher stat growth to play up the “Level dependency” part of him. Dragon’s Blood as part of Base lets him build tanky illusions with his new stat growth (Titan will counter this tho). The Form’s BAT decrease is a small damage buff, and the turn rate lets you actually maneuver in late game clashes with your tails and fires. This will greatly increase his viability in the safelane.


So what do you think about DK right now?

I'd agree with the general premise - there are a few heroes who need a little help with the mechanical changes last patch.

Think you need to be careful of making him too strong, as he's already pretty good and doesn't need much.

His natural role really now is mid, as he's not really a hard enough carry to be safe lane in most games. So a little help with this role would make sense - he can still hold his own pretty well late game anyway as a #2.

I'd suggest some things like:

- More damage on stun (say 50/100/150/200)
- Slight buff to strength gain
- Slight buff to turn rate in Dragon form
- Slight buff to starting intel or intel gain
- Rescale his nuke to make it more regular/better early 100/175/250/300 dam, 90/100/110/115 mana.

The nerfs to Bottle Crowing has made it extremely hard to lane with him, which I think really hurt his useability in comp and in pubs.

I think DK is right now not too far off from LD in how weak he feels. Maybe the buffs I'm hoping for are too big, but right now, it feels like Sven, Magnus, and Troll Warlord all offer much more than him.

What you suggested is an over buff. IF won't increase his AGI gain to the point of being unable to kill. The only thing he needs is starting STR increase and damage increase/rescale on Breathe Fire.

• Starting strength increased from 19 to 25
• Breathe Fire damage increased from 90/170/240/300 to 100/150/250/325

He needs to have his dragon blood reworked into something more useful to the team. Maybe an aura perhaps.

Otherwise than that, including number value decrease to deagon blood you can buff his late game by putting in better stat gain. Particularly agi gain. My opinion is that dk has a fast farm rate with his breathe fire. His stun is good for duration increase and not the damage. So what he needs a bit better rightclick. Possibly a teensy bit more startong int for being less mana hungry after a fight.

Tb gets 1.55 bat by a non ulti ability, why cant dk get something like this on his ulti?


So i would change dragon blood to dragons' defense that provides 4/6/8/10 aura to team in 900 AoE, no regen. And BAT decrease to 1.6 in elder dragon form.

Dk can then benefit more from mjollnir, he can be a carrier for vlads situationallykm hoping they will stackl. More so than ever, he now scales better with attack speed.

the health regen is one of the main reasons he is able to sustain in pretty much every lane you can put him up against.Remove that = even more useless.

BAT change is acceptable.

There are some nice looking buffs there, but I'm going to be honest, they still won't make me pick him.

DK's big problem is that he's pretty mono-dimensional in what he does. He's good at getting his farm mid and pushing the tower early, he's a very tanky teamfight carry, but...he's completely limited by his low mobility and almost-zero solo kill potential.

So how to play him? Traditionally he was about grouping with his team and pushing towers, but this no longer works, does it? So what do you do instead? You farm? Why not, but DK is an easy gank if he's farming empty lanes with all the Slarks and similar lurking around so it's not that good. He's too easily picked off and I'd really prefer a hero like Imba Spirit who can escape ganks reliably.

So you're more or less left with playing a ganking oriented DK. Problem is, I think the Shadow Blade build on him is pretty terrible. You hit, you stun, and you Breathe Fire? It's like 500 burst damage at most! Sure you sneak up on enemies but you deal no damage to them and you can't disable once your stun ends, I really think DK is a horrible ganker.
On the other hand Shadow Blade Tiny has a scaling 1200+ burst damage combo and one-shots anyone.

DK is a pretty solid teamfight-oriented carry but the only problem is that his mid-game is pretty awkward, before he hits level 16 he's a bit of an useless walking tank that gets kited easily.

If I had to choose something I'd go for Cuttleboss' late game buff, but honestly I'd prefer the "more damage on stun" buff because I'd like him to become a viable ganker.

Give him more burst damage, and I'm playing him mid and rushing blink.

Essentially I'd like the 4/4/1 skillbuild to be viable on him and to play him as a ganker. Take 1 value point in passive for lane presence, max Q and W and go gank.

Example :

Dragon Tail
Damage rescaled from 25/50/75/100 to 25/100/175/250
Stun duration rescaled from 2.5/2.75/3/3.25 to 2/2.5/3/3.5

Dragon Blood
Regen rescaled from 2/3/4/5 to 3/4/5/6

Elder Dragon Form
Now grants 1.6 BAT

The tower gold changes were bad enough, but i havent even thought about how much the glyph change ****s him over.

We will see what the frog wants, earlygame or lategame buffs.
I dont think he needs laning buffs, yes bottle crowing was nerfed but he is still ok at getting his farm.

Soul Ring >> bottle crowing anyways. His lane sustain is never a problem, even in the safe lane.

I don't think he needs early game buffs, he can already do all he needs to to in the early game : flashfarm his lane and stacked jungle camps with Q, and have enough armor and regen to be essentially immune to harassment. Buff his base damage if you want to buff his early game, but he already has Q so it's not even needed.

His late game is already really good, with both the cleave and the naturally high armor. All his skills scale really well especially the free 12 armor. Just stop going Assault Cuirass on him, it's completely inefficient in terms of HP/armor ratio, there is such a thing as having too much armor and this crosses it. If you want a defensive item get a Skadi instead. He needs more HP not more armor. And go manta or mjollnir for attack speed.

The real problem is the mid game. He's useless in the mid game since you can't go full push strat anymore, he's too easily picked off if he goes full farm, and he's a bad ganker. Same problem as Alchemist.

Lone Druid is actually semi-viable right now if you play him as a lane dominator/mid game fighter. You can do other things than push with LD, he ganks pretty well, he wins teamfights with a radiance, etc. He's just weak against imba spirits and Slarks that's why he's not picked.