Some Tips to play Lone Druid Dota 2

Lone Druid is the epitome of a seemingly simple hero who has a huge amount of tricks and techniques... so here are some of tips

When you reach level 7 don't immediately upgrade the Spirit Bear to level 4

Run at an enemy and attempt to get an entangle. Most likely they will panic if rooted and will stun the Spirit Bear. If that happens or as soon as you get a root, upgrade the Spirit Bear. This will "resummon" the Spirit Bear on the spot and will purge debuffs from it, disjoint projectiles and reset the 5s cooldown on entangle. You can do this once to practically guarantee a kill against pesky heroes who can disable your Spirit Bear like Tinker Laser (6s miss chance)

Lone Druid is a very quick farmer if utilized efficiently

When you are clearing camps or waves in ranged form start shuffling your Lone Druid inbetween auto attacks towards the next place you want to go. when the creeps are nearly dead start running to your next location with Lone Druid and recall the Spirit Bear the moment you finish the camp and then use phase so the Spirit Bear runs through Lone Druid quickly. this greatly minimizes downtime and lets you farm much faster than most heroes, even Anti-Mage if you have a Maelstrom.

Earlier on Lone Druid has a faster attack speed than the Spirit Bear

This means that Phase Boots grants him more DPS. When you are jungling with phase (around level 7+) put the phase on Lone Druid and use the trick above to Rabid alternate between farm locations. it is also very useful if you get ganked because you can use the active to quickly run away.

Work on your lane positioning as  Lone Druid

You need to find the sweet spot distance between the Lone Druid and the Spirit Bear so when you attack with both units, both attacks land at the same time effectively giving you a much higher base damage

When you are being healed switch to Druid form

You will have the same % of HP but a much lower max HP. this means if you are given a Healing Salve/ Urn of Shadows/purification, ... you can quickly recover thousands of HP quickly when you go back to  True Form.

At level 1 w/ a Stout Shield you are very capable of fucking with the enemies creep waves. use the bear to redirect their creeps from your own so they are forced to lasthit and tank under tower. Example:

Use True Form to dodge projectiles such as autoattacks and stuns such as Vengeful Spirit, Chaos Knight, Sven and magic nukes like Phantom Lancer, Dazzle, Sniper. You can do this very often and it will allow you to avoid ganks and tons of damage.
For the love of god buy a Cloak for 550 gold. when you have 2-3 levels in True Form your HP pool is massive and the extra magic resistance gives you a ton of bonus effective HP.

If you end up getting a Quelling Blade (which you should. it allows you to farm creeps and navigate the jungle faster) and you end up getting ganked, use the quell to cut a hole in the treeline, run your Lone Druid into it and use the Spirit Bear to block behind you so enemies can't get in to kill. most of the time it won't work but if they lack any treeclearing or jumping spells it might save your life

At lvl3 recommend you usually get 2 points in Synergy

The extra damage and movespeed will allow you to lasthit/deny much easier and trade harass better. if you feel level 2 Spirit Bear at 3 is more important for rune control, creep pulling, scouting or blocking then do that.

It's a lot less reliable now but in the lane try and use Return to let your Spirit Bear dodge attacks thrown by the enemy to waste their time and save Spirit Bear hp.

Build Mjollnir instead

It does way more damage than a Radiance could ever hope for and offers insane attack speed for the Spirit Bear. since the Spirit Bear is nigh immortal it is one of the best Mjollnir shield users in the game. tank huge damage = output huge damage. rapes heroes and towers much faster than Radiance. if you struggle with quick swapping items you can get a Point Booster on the Spirit Bear like i do. gives it some mana and a noice 2900HP pool

Similarly feel free to get a Maelstrom instead of a Hand of Midas.

Basically Maelstrom is a better version of Hand of Midas on  Lone Druid: more attack speed, more damage, lighting proc and lets you clear camps and waves much faster thus more xpm and gpm. if you are free farming you could get both.. it will make you skyrocket in farm.

The level 4 Spirit Bear demolish works on friendly towers

If the enemy is pushing a tower you don't think can be defended, switch to True Form, use Battle Cry and have the Spirit Bear safely deny the tower with it's bonus damage and armor without endangering any heroes.

You can deny your Spirit Bear

If you do it successfully you won't take bonus damage or give the enemy XP
Similarly you can deny your Lone Druid with your Spirit Bear. check to see if the enemy has Queen of Pain, Venomancer or Doom. if they do focus on denying yourself if you get ganked and havn't got any chance of survival. it shouldn't be hard if you manage to get your battle cry off.

Against Bane or Mirana you shouldn't worry if you get nightmared use the Spirit Bear to either block the arrow or transfer the nightmare easily.

In True Form you are extremely slow but extremely tanky

If you get ganked hard have your Lone Druid run somewhere far away by clicking on the minimap and try and use your Spirit Bear to body block the enemys

Necronomicon is legit as Lone Druid

The warriors benefit from your Battle Cry so they do insane damage. note: warriors summoned by the Spirit Bear aren't treated as Lone Druid units and won't get the damage/armor buff.
Tell your teammates to use  Overcharge, Press The Attack, Bloodlust, Empower, Alacrity,  Inner Beast, Necronomicon, ... on the Spirit Bear. it makes it absolutely shared towers in seconds. no other hero can really compare

Which is the most preferred lane to go? Safe, Off or NC?

Lone Druid can offlane well if played decently but frankly he is a carry that is entirely dependent upon a huge amount of experience and gold and he is actually very vulnerable if Lone Druid is caught out of position. He is very squishy, susceptible to nukes and he has no escape or defensive capabilities apart from high base speed which usually doesn't mean much if you are getting ganked. I find Solo mid or safe is your best bet because you know you can easily farm 1v1 with your massive base damage.

You are very strong at guarding the runes with the Spirit Bear

Over half the time I find myself going mid with Spirit Bear for a few reasons: It is the safest lane usually. You are one of the best heroes at maintaining creep equilibrium. It's extremely easy to deny the enemy mid gold and experience. You are very strong at guarding the runes with the Spirit Bear. You will be level 5 and likely have boots and orb before the enemy has Bottle and level 4 meaning 90% of the time if you get an root you will get the kill. The jungle camps are very close so once you have phase you can easily flash farm the lane and camps without missing out on XP or gold. I'm really sick of the Tinker craze that is happening every game in my bracket so I run Lone Druid against him so he can never get last hits and I block his ancients with Spirit Bear when he goes for a stack.

He kinda plays like Outworld Devourer in the respect he shuts down nearly all standard mid heroes you face in pubs and he doesn't gank other lanes since he's a carry. In most pubs you can get away with anything and offlane Lone Druid can be quite fun so go for it.