Meta Analysis Dragon Knight!!
Dragon Knight is one of the heroes who have a special ability, changing from melee hero to hero range through ultimate is very powerful: Dragon Form.
Dragon Knight rises in popularity because this hero can fill many roles at once, from initiation, tanky front-liner, to push tower. More than just a hero tutorial, DK is a worthy hero to learn for those who want to better understand the concept of pushing and essence pushing in MOBA/Action RTS.
All In One Hero
Dragon Knight (DK) is one of the heroes that has a complete toolkit: Stun, Wave Clear, Pushing, Initiator, and Front-Liner. This hero goes into different categories and is very flexible yet, because it has too many toolkits, Dragon Knight does not tend to have one prominent aspect.
Similar to Death Prophet, DK is a hero that is oriented towards early-mid game pushing. Compact play with the team is the key to DK's success.
Some teams take advantage of DK as pushing heroes because, whenever Dragon Form (Ultimate Dragon Knight) is ready for use, it can directly push lane starting from 6-17 minutes. The reason, at the same time the other mid hero may still need time for farming items to be confident pushing.
DK is able to push first because it is equipped with passive armor and regen are very high. Because of this, it does not take many items to get the tower. Generally, DK only need Power Treads, Soul Ring, and Armlet of Mordiggan/Drum of Endurance, to be able to do the gank to another lane to continue with the push on the lane.
The drawback? Similar to Lycan, DK will find it difficult to teamfight without ultimate. In general DK will be farming and playing more cautious without ulti.
Dragon Knight is known to have a simple build and also a simple hero for beginners. And easy to execute by Pro team. For players in 3k-4k mmr, DK is a worthy hero to learn to keep Creep Equilibrium, when it's time for Lane's whining, when ganking, and how to get last hit and more denies from enemies in the early game.
While in the pro level, Dragon Knight can do the same thing but better. Generally the team will be grouping in the early game when DK get ulti and eyeing the first tower. The towers that are usually targeted are Tier 1 mid or Tier 1 Safelane that can open access to the jungle and the enemy's Ancient Camp.
Ancient Camp is important in this patch because heroes like Gyrocopter, Medusa, Luna, and Sven now often get priority stacking in Ancient so they can play more efficiently.
If access to this area is open, then the team can reduce the enemy's resources. If the previous team did not really care about the Ancient stack, now it is back to being highly-contetsted-resource.
DK can also be the initiator in teamfight with items like Drums, Blink Dagger or Shadow Blade. DK's Dragon Tail is also one of the best stuns in Dota 2.
DK player is good dare to initiate because this hero has high armor and tanky naturally, so do not hesitate to jump if playing Dragon Knight.
What about the Talent?
Dragon Knight's Talent Tree is arguably one of the best in Dota 2. This Talent Tree makes Dragon Knight more frightening in the late game because it helps DK as a hero for scaling against other mid's like TA or SF Scaling is much better than the previous DK .
With this new Talent, DK at least has a chance to become a strong hero even to the late game phase against heroes like Shadow Fiend or Kunkka.
Image Source: Dragon Knight