Skill Build:
1. Breathe Fire
2. Dragon Blood
3. Dragon Blood
4. Dragon Tail
5. Dragon Blood
6. Elder Dragon Form
7. Dragon Blood
8. Dragon Tail
9. Dragon Tail
10. Dragon Tail
11. Elder Dragon Form
12. Breathe Fire
13. Breathe Fire
14. Breathe Fire
15. Stats
16. Elder Dragon Form
17. Stats
18. Stats
19. Stats
20. Stats
21. Stats
22. Stats
23. Stats
24. Stats
25. Stats

Item Build:
1. Ancient Tango of Essifation
Try to make the first 3 charges last. After that Dragon Blood should keep you alive.
2. Animal Courier
With Dragon Blood hopefully you won't be going back to base.
3. Lesser Clarity Potion
Optional. If you are really spamming Breathe Fire then I say go for it.
4. Bracer
5. Bracer
Health, attack speed, mana. Double Bracer really rounds out the Dragon Knight into the mid game.
6. Power Treads
Same idea as Bracers, gives more Health attack speed, and the much need movement.
7. Maelstrom
Really helps with attack speed and will transition into Mjollnir nicely.
8. Heart of Tarrasque
HOT will really turn you into the tank you always wanted to be, and adding more damage to the attack speed we have been improving on.
9. Mjollnir
Finish the Mjollnir. The major attack speed buff will add to your DPS and the active ability gives you damage return, which is good for any tanky hero.
10. Sange and Yasha
11. Satanic
12. Monkey King Bar

Early Game:
Starting Items

clarity-tango-circlet-gauntlets

or

tp scroll-tango-circlet-gauntlets

The only decision being made here is scroll or clarity. Again, get the clarity if you like to spam Fire Breath!

Laning

-Take side lane. The middle is usually reserved for your hardcore ranged carries.

-Team up with a ranged partner. This will allow you to last shot better because you ranged teamie will (hopefully) harrass, keeping the other team off your back.

-Last shot and deny of course. if you are having trouble running up to last shot because of enemy harassment, use Breathe Fire, and try to last shot with it, and hit an enemy hero. 2 for 1!

-Focus on laning until around level 8-9 when you can then team up and arrange some ganks with your newly upgraded Dragon Tail ability.

Ganking

-Level 8 or 9 is when you should go looking for kills.

-Try to team gank or go with a couple others, and make sure you are in Dragon Form for chasing and range.

-Try to run up behind a hero in a lane, or come out of the forest and get them with your stun.

-Whack 'em a good couple times.

-Save your Breathe Fire for when they do try to run.


Middle Game:
Mid Game Items

Around this time (lvl 9-11) your inventory should be around here:

bracer-bracer-strength power treads

(plus a courier on the field)


Tip: Hotkey your stuff!! You can hotkey an object (hero, courier, power circle) by holding shift and pressing a number on the keyboard. Then, to instantly select it, press that same number. Also, by double tapping the number, it automatically changes your screen location to the hotkeyed object.

Personally I hotkey:

Hero to 1

Courier to 2

Power Circle to 3 (for easy Glyphs of Fortification and Buybacks)

Pushing

-Always push (and really only push), when there are no enemies in the lane.

-So, the best thing to do is gank an opponesnt or two in a lane, then, 1 of 3 things can happen:

A. you kill the opponents. Now you are free to push.

B. They get away. You are now free to push. (Yay

C. They kill you, or you have to run. (This should never happen if you size up your oppenents before rushing in and make sure the advantage is yours. i.e. two on one, three on two, ect..)

- If you become level 11 right after a good gank and are planning on taking down a tower, consider suspending red dragon form until level 12 because green form does extra to buildings



Late Game:
Late Game Items

Just so you can have a feel for your items into the late game, here is a Dream Build for DK.

BoT-Mjollnir-Heart-Sange and Yasha-Monkey Bar-Satanic


Other good choices to replace the MKB or Stanic would be Buriza and Radiance.


Late Game Tips

-I consider the late game to begin once you get your last upgrade of your ULTI (lvl 16)

-At this point you should be finishing up your Heart of Terrasque, and selling bracers if necessary

- In order to get Mjollnir, you will need money, and your main source of income happens to be TOWERS!!

- Towers give loads of gold so try to move from lane to lane and gank then tower kill. This is the best way to farm up your luxury items.

- Also, don't be afraid to kill Roshan. an Aegis of the immortal and a bunch of EXP and Gold never hurt anybody. If you go with a friend or two, try it around lvl 11. Otherwise, you should be able to solo her after getting HOT.


Conclusion:

Finishing the game is extremely easy if you are a well-fed Dragon Knight!

There are 2 ways to end any game of DOTA:

1. The One Lane All-In

This is the riskier of the two, the idea here is to end the game fast. Push into the base, kill the ancient. simple.

Pros:

-Game will end faster

-Puts more pressure on the enemy

Cons:

- If you are killed, the other team only has to deal with one lane of creeps

- It is easy to get ganked inside the enemy base with only 1 lane of Supers backing you

2. Creep Pressure

This is the strategy tou should use. Once you get a lane of super creeps (you kill the tower in their base and the 2 buildings behind it) you should move to the next lane and get supers there. Once you have got Super Creeps in all lanes you will get mega creeps and then the game is yours for the taking!!


A Special Thanks

A special thanks to Flodian for his guide, "Go Go Dragon Ranger." I read that when I first started playing DK and this is just my improvement and tweaks upon what I learned from his guide. <http://www.dotastrategy.com/strategy-20462-GoGoDragonRangerByFlodian.html>