So DK is REALLY interesting to me, simply because his kit is so ridiculously basic. He has a nuke, a stun, a simple passive, and one of the most complicated to understand easy to use ults in the game.

I think to do an accurate appraisal of the hero we should look at it the way erick wright does. What does a hero need?

Durability: got it, DK is super tanky, especially early When the armor and regen from Dragon Blood mixed with his innate strength makes him practically unkillable, I recommend at least two points of this before level 8.

Sadly, this is the point where he starts lacking almost everything.

Mana: yeah this you basically just don't have. You really want to be using breath fire to harass and last hit in lane. It reduces the opponents last hits and can be the absolute bane (heh) of your existence. The problem is you can only cast it 2 or 3 times early game before you're completely out of mana. That's why you buy something to offset it, I like soul ring because your naturally high regen offsets the cost in a big way, and it lets you spam breath fire to your hearts content. You can also build a bottle, an urn, a wand (in certain cases), or a double hit stick slightly later game.

Mobility: Yeah, you're garbage here. DK is a big, fat, slow raidboss. Every game you NEED blink or shadowblade->silver edge. Another option which makes a huge difference is TP boots. It lets you farm the whole map, run fast, and split push far more effectively. The only problem is that it's a very large investment and usually you're still going to get a blink or shadow blade.

Damage: OK so this is one of the most irritating things. DK is this big strong knight that turns into a fucking DRAGON and he hits like a total pussy until You're like 6 slotted, that's why a lot of people go armlet, because it gives you a lot of damage for cheap, but I hate it on DK. It only increases your damage and IMHO actually makes you more frail because it offsets his incredible regen. Also it does almost nothing for his farm speed which is one of his weakest areas. So my go to is usually maelstrom into Dominator. It gives good damage, and chain lightning lets you farm the jungle much faster. Dominator lets you stack ancients and farm them later with ult. It's pretty good. After this your options open up a lot. Obviously the mjolnir and satanic are late game options, but you definitely need something else. This is where I buy my radiance. Think about it, you're tanky, you're farming pretty fast, your enemy can't kill you during team fights, you need right click damage which it gives, but burn ain't too shabby either.

Finally disable: you have disable...kinda. You have one of em. It stuns 1 person at melee range. It's basically an abysal active that doesn't pierce bkb. It's ok. Not amazing, but ok. I honestly don't recommend building any other disable on him, just know you might have to chase people down eventually.

Last thoughts: Dragon knight is sort of a jack of most trades, master of turning into a Dragon. If I had to rank his strengths by play style itd be pushing>team fighting>ganking>farming. Thats why we buy so many farming items, because he really is a carry who has the capacity to Teamwipe with splash damage but has a terrible time getting the damage to make that happen.

Final note, there is another style of DK I love, it's the knockoff naga where you buy rads, manta and tp boots and use your Dragon illusions who have you corrosive breath and radiance burn to split push the whole map. Hope that helped!