Dragon Knight

Davion the Dragon Knight is a very tough melee strength hero with a relatively versatile skill set. Dragon Knight has a nuke and a stun, giving him an advantage in ganks. Dragon Knight has no real escape ability, though his Dragon Blood ability and armor make him capable of withstanding strong hits and recovering quickly. He is still very vulnerable in the early game, however, and needs to farm and stay alive in order to be effective in later stages. If he has enough levels and farm, Dragon Knight is very formidable late game due to his strong ultimate, transforming into a legendary dragon, turning him into one of the most dangerous beasts in late game, capable of eliminating multiple enemies at once.

Gameplay
Dragon Knight is a strength melee hero carry. His first spell, Breathe Fire is his farming and harassing skill that deals decent damage and lowers attack damage of enemy heroes. His 2nd spell is a stun that increases cast range while in Elder Dragon Form. His 3rd ability is a passive skill that makes him so tanky, when leveled, his health regen is increased and he is granted bonus armor, making him take as much damage as he can dish it. His Elder Dragon form has 3 different variations that level up and retains attack modifiers across different forms. When in Elder Dragon form, his damage and speed increases, making it easier to push and take down a tower. An essential part of dragon knight is reaching level 6 as soon as possible and farming often as his utility lies in his attack modifiers with his dragon breath.

Tips

 * Dragon Knight is one of the few heroes with no cast-time on his abilities, so spells can be cast in between attacks on the backswing animation.
 * is a powerful ability to have and should be taken before other abilities, but it levels poorly. Some players even choose to take Attribute Bonus over further levels in it.
 * Many guides recommend not leveling at level 11, but those guides are outdated. Prior to version 6.78, the Red Dragon did not carry over the corrosive effect from the Green Dragon, which made it inferior at pushing down towers. It is no longer necessary to skip leveling the ultimate at level 11. As of version 6.81, the corrosive effect also carry over to the Blue Dragon.
 * The splash attack from Red and Blue Dragon form is useful for clearing ancient creep stacks which can provide Dragon Knight a large gold boost. With a Dragon Knight can even stack the ancient creep camps with a creep by himself.
 * is a useful item on Dragon Knight, as it allows him to farm using constantly. The extra health regeneration from Soul Ring together with the regeneration from  offset the health loss.
 * changes Dragon Knight attack from melee to ranged, keep this in mind when building items as it will also change the effect of items like, damage block, bash chance, cleave.
 * Frost Breath and Corrosive Breath are not unique attack modifiers as such they will stack with items granting unique attack modifiers.
 * Lifesteal is a good UAM to have when using an, however does not lifesteal off of the corrosive breath and splash damage.
 * improves Dragon Knight's tower pushing and increases his damage. It also synergizes with an pickup and creates a huge armor disparity.
 * and its upgrade supplements Dragon Knight's damage output and provides a useful deterrent against attacking enemies.
 * is an interesting item to build on Dragon Knight as it provides a slow that stacks with lifesteal from and  that also pierces spell immunity just like the Frost Breath from your level 3 Dragon Form. Cold Attack combined with Frost Breath will reduce an enemy's damage output significantly and will make it hard for enemy heroes to disengage from a fight once they are attacked by Dragon Knight. It also provides a huge health boost rivaling  and can be considered as an offense oriented replacement as it also provides intelligence that helps with your mana consumption, and agility which gives attack speed for more DPS and armor that increases your overall effective health.
 * A or a  will solve Dragon Knight's mobility problem and will allow him to initiate with.
 * However, if your team already has an initiator and you don't need to initiate, will work just as well and provide more durability.
 * Dragon Knight has a high Effective health against physical damage due to his high armor even at the early stages of the match, however he is still vulnerable to nukes and disables as with most heroes. A will solve this problem and will grant a bit of extra damage and health.
 * Even though Dragon Knight already has a huge amount of armor, building armor items like, , and  is still viable as it will make you very durable against physical damage and because most armor items provide some sort of utility.
 * Always remember that even if you're very durable doesn't mean that the rest of your team is and the enemy team might just choose to dispatch of you last. Make sure to build damage increasing items like and/or  or even a  to make the enemy team choose between attacking your teammates but let you deal damage, or focus on you but let your teammates attack them.

Trivia

 * In DotA, Dragon Knight's fun name was Trogdor, the playable character of a mini game from the Homestar Runner universe.
 * He also has an alternate name when he transforms with his ultimate in DotA, in which he is named "Arc Honist".
 * is the longest (guaranteed) level 1 single target stun in the game. 's can stun up to 5 seconds at level 1, but must travel at least 1500 range and as such is difficult to hit with.