Heroes of the Storm Dragon Knight Who to Punt Guide

Heroes of the Storm Dragon Knight Who to Punt Guide by Tommyhillpicker

So after playing Heroes for a decent amount of time, I feel that I have an alright enough understanding of the individual heroes, and more importantly how different roles interact with one another, and how those interactions influence the outcomes of teamfights.

With that being said, there is still a great deal of nuance to the game that is very difficult to boil down to an exact science, with defined rules and outcomes, particularly when it comes to how the various map objectives throw a huge monkey wrench into teamfights.

As you can see from the title, I am trying to develop a more strategic mindset when controlling the Dragon Knight: I need to know who to punt!

Many players seem to punt whichever enemy is closest to them whenever the punt is off cooldown, but I don’t necessarily think this is wise. I think it is usually best to determine a priority target, and repeatedly target them, effectively removing them from the fight.

My general strategy follows a list, targets at the beginning of the list being highest priority and those at the end being lowest. It goes something like this:

1. Tanks – Tanks offer the best opportunity for mitigating the damage that your team can deal once you take control of the dragon knight, mostly because they are integral for sponging the immense damage you can deal, and are normally very good at controlling their opponents’ positioning (e.g. Stiches, Diablo, Johanna, ETC, etc…). Constantly removing the tank from the fight leaves the enemy team in a position where they cannot commit strongly to your team without suffering huge losses, which means an even more intense push especially in the late game.
2. Ranged Assassins – This seems pretty self-explanatory to me. Being able to deal massive damage (single-target or AoE) from a safe distance means a faster death for the Dragon Knight, and a sad face for the player controlling him :(.
3. Specialists (except 1/3 Lost Vikings, and Abathur I guess) – This one being as high as it is on the list is situationally dependent upon the build that the Specialist-in-question has taken. but generally takes the number 3 slot because of their lane-pushing capability. Similar to Ranged Assassins, they are able to push out lanes very quickly, and provide a lot of resistance to the Dragon Knight without really putting themselves in harm’s way.
4. Melee Assassins – Melee assassins don’t particularly excel against the Dragon Knight, especially if you are isolating one of the above from them, turning the fight into a 4v5. It is almost always difficult for them to commit everything they’ve got to defending a Dragon Knight at the gates without over-extending, and are thereby mostly irrelevant. You should use the punt to cover your squishy team mates if they are being tunneled by a melee assassin, however.
5. Supports – Supports are the lowest on the priority because they usually don’t pose much threat to your team mates, or to the Dragon Knight himself. They can prove difficult to push into if you are devoting a lot of resources into the dealing hero damage, but that defeats the point of the Dragon Knight. It’s all about swingin’ away at buildings, and if you are removing any of the above roles from the team’s defense then the efficacy of a support is greatly limited.

Let me know some of your thoughts, and please convince me to revise the order if you feel you have a compelling argument, or if you take a different strategy towards punt-targeting altogether.

Tl;dr – Punt the tanky ones > then ranged assassins > then specialists > then melee assassins > then supports.