5.16 Darius Balance Feedback Thread
Hey guys,
Now that Darius is released, I'd like to follow up and continue to monitor him with you guys.
Please leave feedback on what you guys feel is working well and what isn't going so hot.
Thanks!
462 Comments
Hello, Riot. I’ve been maining Darius since the release due to his unique gameplay and surely unique badass ability to cut your opponent into two ones. When I first knew about upcoming rework (not 2012, the actual one) and deeply checked new abilities and scales, along with new itemization, I’ve came upon some certain issues, which were only confirmed by the release.
- The first one is, probably, the issue the most spoken of in this thread. [Q] might be acceptable in the lategame due to it’s sustaining ability, but it is, without fear or favor, the least rewarding mechanic in the laning and early roaming phase. The formula of it’s base damage (20, 40, 60, 80, 100) speaks for itself. Just think of it, landing a 0,75 delay skill is almost similarly rewarding as inflicting an autoattack blow. While not changing [Q]’s lategame usage, it’s earlygame base damage can be rethought into, for example, 40-55-70-85-100 alike. This will give Darius a higher possibility to protect himself in the earlygame and can make his enemies’ think twice before ignoring his presence. Besides, you also can’t flash during the charge. Even Vi can ;)
Let’s speak about his [E] now, shall we. It’s mechanic before the change surely was frustrating to his enemies, BUT at least his enemies couldn’t DODGE the skill that have ALREADY hit them. And what we have now is a complete confidence in your own safety against Darius and his initiation tools. “Darius will attempt to pull me from the maximum range? I will simply walk away, it’s not very fast and shall not confirm. Darius flashes into me and pulls? I can use any escape skill aswell, I even got a half of a second to derp!” Everything above, along with numerous bugs that make Darius not pull his enemy even from a point-blank range, makes this skill unacceptable for everyday usage. If the old [E] can’t be returned to Darius, and enemies will keep escaping from a grab that already hit them till the end of the days, it’s range still can be slightly increased (550>575, for example) and confirming bugs removed for a smoother aiming possibility.
- The next thing is passive scaling, which is completely unclear. He gets 40 damage on the first level, which grows to 45(???) on the sixth level, and then grows to 90(please?) on level 10. Which means, when normal characters get their powerspike at level 6, Darius remains a complete potato as most of his ultimate damage comes from his passive… but while other characters keep scrapping experience for their second ultimate level, Darius starts wrecking like he already has one, which goes even further when he actually gets his precious eleventh level. I suggest making his passive scaling going up clearly and adequately: from 30 on the first level (he doesn’t lose much from that anyway), going up for 10 damage per level to 200 at level 18. This will give the player much more information of how much damage he will get and how fast does he scale compared to other champions in his match.
[W] scaling is boring. It doesn’t give you any alternative but to level it once and max your [E] as the second skill after [Q], because 1 second cooldown is the only significant thing it gives you per level… wasted. I hope it is possible to change it somehow, so it would scale it’s damage (for example, 120>160), it’s slow duration (1>2 as a variant) or whatever else to give a proper alternative to simply maxing a different skill mainly because of its passive.
- [R] mechanics look smooth and clear, but there is one really dumb thing: frightening your own minions will get you killed in fights not once and not twice. While dunking your opponent in the early part of the game makes you lose all your damage from your winions, leaving you wide open for any opponent assisting your victim’s assault on you.
Itemization for Darius also looks really stupid, slowing his scaling down significantly. As all armor items were nerfed, and Darius is far not the best option to get to his opponent, his item variations leave him completely vulnerable to one or another source of damage. Among that, he is very reliant to his upgraded boots. He always needs the most expensive variants of boots. For example, Green Mercury Treaders cost 1675 in total; any bruiser with mobility spells takes a simple boot and takes either health and armor or damage for the rest of his 1350 gold, which weakens Darius hard, unless he’s far ahead of his enemy. I don’t actually see any solution for this problem, but it would be nice if you pay attention on the fact that Darius needs either extra tankiness or extra mobility for his early or midgame to compare to most of other bruisers (hello, Skarner) without having to spend all his money for expensive upgrades.
- As a conclusion, I wanted to say that everything above is just my opinion on how things might be changed for a better character experience. Some of these suggestions might be implemented, while some may not, but taking these examples as a way of further character changes might be a good way to improve him and finally make him a force that enemies should count with.
My biggest problem is how much harder is it to fight other melees now.
I feel like the safest spot to fight Darius right now as a melee is on him. And as a bully type that sounds really backwards. The vast majority of other melees are perfectly okay with being directly in your face for a full fight now. What are you going to do about it? Your autos don't do much to most other melees and you now have a useless Q and E would only help them. By time you can ult you have either died or they still have more than 50% life.
Q used to be used for 2 near guaranteed stacks. Now, I can't even count on it for 1.
Darius used to feel like, Get in my face and i put you 6 feet under. Now he feels like a coward trying to dance around to get you in just the right spot. And if you have ANY backup Darius is doomed. He has no means to flee a losing fight and no way to take someone else with him before he goes.
The only issue I have with him so far is that his Q just feels bad. The delay is so long it's awkward to use, but more than that it feels so unsatisfying to land it.
I've only tried him in a custom game thus far so I'll have to use him in some normals soon. I'm not sure how to build him, but the build I tried was Black Cleaver, Maw of Malmortius, Randuin's Omen, Banshee's Veil, Ninja Tabi, and Deadman's Plate.
Hey guys,
Dropping by to give you all an update on our current thoughts / plans.
We are planning to hotfix some buffs out for Darius in the near future. The changes revolve largely around making Q much more rewarding to land.
Here's the proposed changelist:
Darius
Decimate (Q)
- Base Damage increased to 40/70/100/130/160 from 20/40/60/80/100
- Missing heal increased to 15% from 10% per champion hit (max still 30%)
Also planning on looking at other potential changes for W and E for the upcoming patches and seeing if we can do some tweaks to make them more impactful again.
Really do apologize to the Darius players who have to tough this out, we definitely undershot on him but we're trying to move as quickly as we can to correct it.
Well, Darius used to be my favorite top lane pick and after playing with him last night, I can honestly say that I don't think I ever want to play with him again.
My biggest gripe is obviously his Q. I feel like Riot missed the mark on this. The delay on cast was given to allow the opponent a chance to react to it, but it feels horrible for the Darius player. It breaks up the flow of combat, leaves you vulnerable, misses all the time now, and just feels terrible to use.
You know how an opponent reacted to his Q before the rework? They stay away from him. And this is where I feel like Riot missed the mark on identifying why Darius players play with Darius. I feel like they took away what was fun about playing Darius. Darius players didn't play for the "pentakill dream," they played for his ability to bully the lane and punish players who didn't know how to fight against him. Honestly, I felt bad whenever I racked up multi kills later in the game because it just felt like I was ks'ing and others could probably do more with those kills. I felt like my job in a match was to basically make it a 4v5 by making sure this Irelia doesn't do anything all game. Yeah, I know, that sucks for the opponent, but I know the inherent risks of picking Darius. If I don't do that job, we lose, because I suck late game if I don't get fed in lane.
Now I feel like getting fed in lane is impossible. I played against a Riven last night and it was probably the most miserable experience I've had playing league. She started out the lane afraid of me (because I'm Darius) and whenever I would start charging up my Q, she would just dash away. I would try to E her into my wave when i had advantage and she would just E away. After a while, she realized how weak I was now and when I would charge my Q, instead of dashing away, she would just dash into the handle into my face. Do you know how embarrassing that is? She sees this JUGGERNAUGHT approaching her ready to attack and her reaction is to dash INTO him because that is the safest place for her. Its frustrating enough that she has sooooo long to react to my Q, but it hurts even more that hitting them with the handle is worse than landing an AA (since I don't even get the bleed stack).
Why do I feel like I am being punished for using my abilities. I use my mana and lock myself into this 1 second animation that results in little/no payoff vs any living thinking human being. I know I've said this numerous times already, but it felt TERRIBLE. Dancing around the wave and opponent to try to time the Q to land at the optimal point (and by optimal, I mean the area that actual does anything) only to follow it up with walking towards them w/o passive movespeed or casually walking away from them made me feel like a real chump in lane.
And I know that the new items are supposed to help him, but what they need to realize is that most games (particularly at lower elo) are won/lost in lane and they took a champion who was the personification of a lane bully and turned him into someone who is terrible at laning. Who are you trying to appeal to with these changes? I understand that you want to try to make playing against him a tolerable experience for those who are inexperienced with the matchup, but you are alienating those who understands what he is and plays with him for those reasons. You took the thing that identified him and ruined it. So now I have to find another go to character for my bullying needs. That's fine. I'm not mad about that. But I have to wonder, who is playing with Darius now? Because after taking away the attributes that defined who he was, you are left with this reworked character who is simply not fun to play with.
The entire rework just feels like it was done by someone who had a bad experience laning against a Darius and not done by someone who actually plays the character and understands why the few people who play him enjoy him. I don't say that try to belittle the effort and hard work of the people who did the rework, but just to express how it comes across as a Darius player. People playing against Darius love the changes and people playing with Darius hate them.
This has mostly been a Rant about his Q, but my thoughts on the rest of his kit: Passive - I miss the move speed because it helped with optimal Q positioning, but I understand it being removed due to the new items and increased slow on the rest of his kit W - Fine. Its the one point wonder now. E - I like the slow, but removing the "bug" really killed this move. It seems incredibly easy to escape now and almost feels bugged in the opposite direction. Maybe I'm just used to years of flash/E being a guaranteed pull/kill, but having people dash away after I flash/E and escape when it looks like my axe is on top of their character model feels incredibly bad R - I like the bloodrage, but getting 5 stacks is harder now because of the Q handle basically doing nothing. It means nothing for laning though (5 Stacks and a dunk kills in most circumstances anyways) and that's where my primary concern is with these changes.
I feel like the rework destroyed him. I didn't play him for "the pentadunk" fantasy. I played him for his ridiculous lane bullying and damage. I'll just give feedback on each of his skills instead of ranting and wasting everybody's time.
Passive: The bleed change to physical was a good step towards balance, as being able to do almost 600 magic damage with a full ad build was just downright darius. However, the reduced damage makes it feel worthless, even with black cleaver synergy. The loss of ms also hurts a lot.
The second portion of his passive is a huge problem. It doesn't fit thematically, and it makes it so you have to destroy his ratios so he doesn't just absolutely faceroll with 5 stacks. Either cut the bonus ad to a more reasonable amount and add ratios to his skills, or just change it to something more thematic. The idea of applying 5 stacks of hemorrhage to the next target is great, but the bonus ad is not.
Q: This was his bread and butter skill. This is what allowed him to bully lanes so easily, even pre-6. Now it feels like a horrible Renekton q. Like Twitch e vs Kalista e horrible. The windup was bad enough, and it feels incredibly clunky, but the reduced damage and not applying bleed on the handle is just bad. I like the idea of a higher reward for hitting the blade, but doing that by making the handle worthless was not the way to do it. Shorten the cast time, remove the heal, raise damage, and give the bleed back to the handle. As everyone else has said, the closer you are to him the better, which is counterintuitive to his juggernaut theme. If anything, it should do more damage the closer you are, kind of like Tiamat. The way his q works anti-synergizes with the rest of his kit more than it did before. Also the cast time makes it much harder to dunk, since that's almost a whole second where you can't cast R.
W: This skill also got dumpstered. The lower cd with level I can dig. The increased slow I like a lot. The static damage and no attack speed slow ruin this skill. If I can't have attack speed, neither should they. Give him back his as slow and increase damage.
E: The "bug" that allowed him to pull people who had already escaped was one of the things that allowed him to fight mobile champs. Please put this back.
R: The biggest mistake you made with his ult, and his kit in general, is balancing it around his Bloodrage. Any good Darius knew how to use his ult with 2, 3, or 4 bleed stacks. As far as the new ult is concerned, those stacks don't matter. It's damage it pitiful now when you're not at 5 stacks, and not noticably better than 5 stacks before. Maybe it's because it's almost impossible to reach 5 stacks against an opponent without them trying to run or kill you, but I found myself doing no damage with his signature move. Yes, it is easier to "pentadunk" with the new passive, but the key part to the pentadunk is getting that first kill, which you made exponentially harder.
Sorry for bad formatting and grammar. Typing on mobile is hard D:
Coming from a Darius main, you ruined this character. You have successfully took a fun, smooth, rewarding character and made him slow, clunky and downright boring to use.
Practically everything about him was nerfed into the ground to accommodate his new passive. The problem is you never get to use it to its full potential. Trying to get 5 stacks is downright laughable. Team fights are often decided in the first 5 seconds and it takes Darius a hell of a lot longer then that to get 5 stacks on someone.
Whoever is responsible for this update should be drug tested. You have a "lane bully" who is vulnerable to people standing right next to him. Da f**k? People should be doing everything in their power to run from him not charging into his face where he is incapable of doing anything.
I could spend an hour pointing out every flaw with this update but I won't. All I have to say is RIP Darius.
I first want to mention that I like the idea and feel of the rework. Making darius into a bulkier fighter that still feels very powerful if you play it right and get your passive. I like the feeling of getting bloodrage off and going ham, it is super fun.
My primary concerns are his e and q, most of all his e, actually. His e pretty much can no longer be used to grab foes at all. It used to only be usable BECAUSE it would pull people back if they walked or dashed out of its range, but now that it can't, any target moving away from you or with any mobility whatsoever, won't get hit by it to begin with. This was darius's only tool to keep targets in range, and it no longer works. (Some might say his w was as well, but now its duration is too short to even auto attack again before the slow ends).
Now for his q, I hate the change. It now lowers your dps even if you hit with the blade, most of the time will hit handle or miss entirely if your enemy is paying attention, and won't even give movespeed if it lands to help chase since that isn't a part of bleed anymore. I found in the last half of my last game with him, I didn't use q at all except to farm minions because there was no reason to lower my dps for a chance to heal a small amount of hp. I built entirely full tank, since his kit no longer rewards building attack dmg.
Darius's overall usability is completely destroyed. He cannot bully anything out of lane since he no longer has harass, and he can no longer grab any targets that have a movespeed above 500, or any mobility late game.
As far as recommendations that keep the feel of the rework, make darius's q have only a .5 sec delay or less, and boost its dmg by 20-30%, and revert the change to his e.
I fought a game against 
as 
and lost. Thank you riot. I can't even out trade his passive lifesteal with the pathetic damage on Q. (100 damage with a longsword)
-
Who asked for a heal on Darius? Running
and 3 
has been more than enough sustain. Is it possible to move it somewhere else and give some damage or speed back to Q. -
I've even tried AS runes so he just doesn't feel so sluggish. I just don't know. He just feels awful. It's like he is a worse Sion.
-
The times I even get bloodrage activated. It takes so long to get to that my opponent has CC, or a summoner spell ready to escape, or I realize man look at all this minion damage I've taken trying to get this passive to proc so maybe I can do some damage.
-
Riot could maybe implement a speed burst or immune to the next incoming CC after bloodrage is activated. Perhaps lock it away in his ult?
Overall he just feels terrible and just too sluggish. I don't even want to play him anymore. Quick Qs just felt so good to land.....you will be missed.
Just gonna leave what just happened to me, felt sick by this.
So I'm laning vs a fiora and fb her at lvl 3, i come back to lane with a pickaxe she came back with another dorans blade, she immediately goes full retarded on me i go full retarded on her and she...fucking...wins without even taking half hp...Why?Because darius has no fucking dmg outside is Q from the blade side, if someone actually goes full retarded on you and has a dash(herp derp, almost everyone nowadays) they destroy darius, so darius has gone from lane bully which wasn't ok by any means, he auto won every melee pretty much, to someone with 0 escapes like before and that get's destroyed by anyone with more mobility.
Conclusion: Mobility>Immobile like always, why play x champion with no mobility when they are build to be raped by Y champion with mobility+more/same dmg and 58734987598734 less counterplay and more safety.
PS:Why do you at riot HQ think everything needs to have either 0 counterplay (aka:instant), or so much counterplay even a blind person can abuse it, why does everything need to have almost one second delay, why did veigar need to get butchered by having 0.75 delay on is stun, and why does now darius have the same absurd delay on a even smaller skill that if failed pretty much warrants him leaving the lane or dying since he has 0 means to actually escape ppl, he either kills or gets killed he doesn't have 4 dashes like riven to disengage someone, and right now if you fail the Q and someone dives you afterwards or just dives you while you are using the Q and you miss the blade side, you die. Meanwhile le blanc W get's buffed because herp derp some need to have 0 counterplay while others stay on the dumpster.
Salty AF, reduce the stupid 60% dmg reduction on the Q and give the W the dmg back or some of it or he will be trash pretty soon.
Darius Doesn't feel rewarding and satisfying anymore due to the Q delay and the attack speed nerf, My idea would be to make his Q instant again and maybe tune down the healing if needed and buff back his attack speed.
Also something I noted is that noxian guillotine damage is WAY too weak without 5 stacks, and put 5 stacks on someone in a fight with that q delay and attack speed nerf is painful, almost impossible before dying and very unsatisfying.
EDIT: I'm used to his new kit now he is fun again, he is too weak in the lanning phase but hopefully the buffs to his q fix that :)
The main problem with darius is that he's even more sluggish than ever, so he feels more like sion, which really doesn't fit him.
I have a friend that was a semi-professional MMA fighter, one that teaches sword combat, and if i learned one from them, than that a proffesional fighter reliesmore on technique, speed and cunning(study your opponent, find a weak spot in his defense) rather than on raw power. Some baseline power and endurance is surely needed aswell though.
And for me, Darius is a Proffesional fighter. He's expereienced warrior, a professional Combatant, a warlord of noxus. If their is one person that knows how to fight, then it's him... Old darius had just the right mix of speed and power for me, the high AS, the instant Q, the ms from passive, just enough to feel somwhat fluid and swift while still low enough to keep his powerfull hulking warrior theme intact, he wouldn't dart around the fiels like a Yi or Fizz, but neither did he slugg like a Sion or Alistar. He walked fast enough with determination, quickly strikeing down enemies that cross his way.
New Darius hower has no more mobillity, his base AS was simply butchered, no other way to say it, and even Sion would feel sad about that Q delay... What he gains is rather little, a heal on Q and a bit more damage once he gets some ad, and an insane dmage boost IF he gets 5 stacks from the passive or an execute with ult. Imo he became far to sluggish with to much power shoved into bloodrage. Vs totally imobile enemies that are bad at disengageing, hr's pretty broken, if he reaches bloodrage AND can land some hits afterwards, it's devastateing, and landing Qs vs such champs is easy aswell. But vs anyone else, anyone that can properly disengage, especially ranged champs, he's totally trash now. Not only has he less tools to get/stay in range, but also far less damage if they can get away befor you enter bloodrage.
- less AS that pathetic AS leads to way less potent trades, worse farming, worse jungleclear, worse dmage vs tower and more time needed to aquire passive stacks.
- Less potent slow on W with more cd(uptime>power for sticking), no more AS alow i can understand the change, as it is far more punishing vs melees than it is vs ranged, but W could use some change that gives more per rank than 1 sec less base cd, rankeing it just feels futile
- Less burst potential Seems somewhat justifyed to me, allowing more counterplay, less punishing vs any mistake, but vs slipery champs, he needed to be that punishing, as he has little tools to play with. If you want to keep the burst low, then increase his options vs slipery and/or ranged opponents.
- No more passive-MS this is probably the biggest issue, the new Darius should excel at cleanup with his new bloodrage, but due the lack of mobillity, he is worse than befor for cleanup as it is so easy to kite him for those 5 sec of bloodrage. For cleanup, you have to reach the fleeing foes... it also makes his life misserable vs mobile and/or ranged champs, no way to catchup after they use an escape...or getting away your self
- The Q delay a good idea to allow counterplay, but atm a bit to extreme which leads to him feeling more like sion, just unlike sion with little payoff for than he lands it
- The E change The probably most brutal nerf he recived. it might not seem like much, but the difference between enemies getting reliably hooked and punished if they get into the 525range and between enemies flashing/dashing or even walking out of range duering the 0.25sec cast time is insane. I used old daruis as counterpick to slippery melees, cause my E could screw their disenage from melee range, and he also worked well vs shortranged adc that rely on escapes. New darius can't do shit vs such opponents anymore, as they can easily avoid his E now, and with that him doing anything against them.
So over all, far less potential to trade in melerange(less passive damage, far less AS, no more AS slow, less W damage, more W cd) unles oyu reach 5 stacks and can followup with some more hits, makeing use off the ad-boost, And also **WAY ** less tools to get/stay in range to ever reach 5 stacks than befor...
So things I'd like to see changed:
- base AS: Give back his old base AS, and maybe a bit as/level(lie atleast 1.5-2% instead of a meager 1%). He really needs some good base AS to not feel sluggish, as he won't get some from his items usually.
- Passive: Half the bonus AD. Instant 5 stacks for full-damage ults really is all it needs to give him the 'Cleanup Throne' of juggernauts, so free that power and give it to the rest of the kit
- Q: Reduce the delay to 0.5(still enough time to react), increase the inner aoe by 25-50 and the outer by 50-75. That should still make it easer for melees to avoid the bladem as the handle aoe is now bigger, and it would make it far better to land vs ranged enemies. Old darius needed to take a small step back in melee distance to land the Q-blade, as his AA range was shorter, which was a nice little thing that sepperated experienced Dariusplayers from the rest. With that range increase, this would once again be the case. Maybe either slightly up the damage or ad half the heal on handle hit so it feels a bit more powerfull to use.
- W change the Slow to 55% for 1.5sec, maybe ad a cripple effeckt if you ever implement it, change the damage to 130/135/140/145/150 and the cd to 8/7.25/6.5/5.75/5 sec, so ranking it feels slightly better while it offers a bit more sticking power and lategame damage
- E Either ad a 0.25sec snare on cast(like scarners ult does), or increase the range by 25-50, and evt lower the cast time if possible. Maybe lower the cd to 21/18/15712/9 so his only tool vs ranged enemies is up a bit more often, so he's not 100% reliant on 1-shoting them if he ever gets them.
- Ult Fine as it is, maybe slightly more base damage to compensate the less ad from bloodrange, would help to make it more effecktive vs not max-stack targets(so vs slippery guys)
Especially the bas-AS and Q changes are important to give him a more fluid feeling. The rest would just be nice for balance and a less binary( and thus more healthy imo) gameplay.
Not a darius main, but someone who played him a decent amount - for about a year he's probably been my top main (though I'm a jungler main.
That said.. Holy shit. Was this character ever ruined. I won't bother to give a detailed QA because it's already been done.
Q hits like a wet noodle, is almost impossible to land 'well' and even then doesn't reward much.
W nerfed into the ground - lost its damage, CDR which ramped up in the fight, and most important part - that it made him able to fight fast AA based champs.
E utterly almost entirely worthless due to a combination of passive delay and miniscule range making it all too easy to dash or **even walk **out of
R also trashed. Darius pretty much never got to get a 5 stack dunk on people unless they were seriously out played, or just very bad in general. In fact he rarely got the opportunity to dunk people for the kill unless the same things happened. Yet now it's worthless below 5 stacks, and at 5 stacks not noticeably stronger.
Passive: You took a small movement speed buff away from a champion who has no dashes, long cooldown short range grab and no longer-ranged skills?
As others have said, Riot totally missed the mark on why people play Darius. I didn't play him for the "PENTAS!" fantasy. Sure, every now and again I'd get them (got 3 in one game once) but that wasn't the point. I played Darius because controlled the hell out of his zone. It was a small zone and getting people into it could be difficult, but good god was it his zone. Properly piloting this zone around the lane (or even teamfights later in the game) would kill people and win games.
Now he doesn't have that. Now Darius has some bizarre short-but-not-quite-melee-ranged ring where which he'll heal from and hit a bit harder into with his Q. But it's easy to just walk out of that ring due to his horrifically weak E, and if you just walk inside of the ring all he can do is fail at autoing you to death.
You know how Draven has a skill where he throws pool noodles at people? They should have replaced Darius' axe with one of those. It'd be more fitting for how he functions now.
Seems like the people doing these reworks have never even played the character. It's like a Riven main was asked to do this and is simply taking away all the things that made him strong and instead giving him useless stats and passives that look good on paper.
Well, I used to be a Darius main, but now that champion doesn't exist.
- All skills nerfed, passive nerfed other than the potential to gain huge bonus AD, which however I haven't seen in any teamfight once, not without Darius dying shortly after.
- No longer a lane bully, he's so pathetic even Nasus can push him out of the lane and start killing him over and over.
- "His skills are so bad it's not worth it to build CDR" - a friend, and I agree
- A passive character with no aggressive options all game, he's for pussies now and that's what I hate the most
- E is so bad Nautilus can walk out of it (tested)
- Q doesn't do anything, you get dashed into/dodged/stunned/whatever and lose, or hit it and still lose
- More importantly Q feels like a pussy skill, you want to slow your enemy and run away from them because the hilt doesn't do anything
- No attack speed slow makes Irelia and such run over Darius in lane
- The slows feel impactful though, so that's nice
- Also nice that you're now a troll whose only gameplay is flash ult killstealing ~100 hp targets so you can unlock your kit, encouraging that is pretty funny
- From smooth, quick and aggressive gameplay into clunky, sluggish and cowardly sniveling about. Could as well play Braum toplane.
Well, he was only the most fun champion in the game, for me at least. I hope he'll appeal to the new audience of last hit under tower for "late game" and hope to get carried.
Darius is no longer good at any point in the game.
He used to be a lane bully. He can no longer lane bully.
He is still just as kiteable late game. Doesn't matter how much damage he does if it cannot disintegrate the enemy front line, since he can't reach carries anyhow.
What i don't get is the utter nerf to the AS, at lvl 18 he has 0.70 AS...that with the butchering on the W dmg makes it very painful to dmg ppl outside of bloodrage, titanic active counts for the passive but that's pretty much the only thing to help him, and even if you Q>E>AA>W>Hydra that's only 4 after that even if you get another AA or Q on them they just run away from you while you burn bloodrage.
I have not played Darius yet but I have played against him. The new Darius feels really useless in the lane. I was playing Garen and I was able to bully Darius out of the minion wave for nearly the entire laning phase. Darius's Q is so useless because as soon as Darius used it, I would use Q as Garen and only take damage from the handle. Darius could not trade with me at all and he was so useless.
Also a Darius main who has given up on him. I told people I played with he was gutted before anything went live. They all disagreed " his 200 extra AD late game and healing ". First off, Darius never, ever needed healing in his kit. He does damage, plain and simple, and he builds life steal to get this sustain mechanic. This is why life steal is available on items, not because your kit just doesn't give you enough.
Q - I agree with what everyone has said regarding it. It's ridiculously slow. People that knew how to fight Darius knew the match up was a game of cat and mouse. Them trying to come in and take CS while avoiding the Q. If I missed, they could safely take the wave, if I hit them, they backed off and I continue being The Lord that Darius is. It is so easy to dodge now the ability is a joke. Try laning against a smart Fiora that can easily stun you with her parry when she sees you wind up. Now you're dead. A Riven can dash and stun you before that swing takes effect. Honestly 0.7 seconds is a ton of time against gold + players in a game that relies on strategy and reaction time. Also the damage is a joke, it'd needs to be brought up by about 30.
W - Basically useless. No point in levelling this unless you want to maybe use it twice in a team fight. Aside from Q and his ult it really doesn't matter where his points go anymore. I feel he has lost a giant power spike in his levelling because of this.
E - Worse as it no longer catches people mid flash. Sure that was an issue that needed fixing, but when you enjoy and rely on it for over a year it becomes a nerf instead of a fix. It's like buying a drag car with nitro installed but then the car manufacturer comes back a year later and takes it out saying you weren't suppose to have that, but hey it's still a drag car and good luck. It caught all types of mobility as well. It helped Darius get to that back line ( which he still can't, more on that later ).
R - As a high level player I can count the number of people I have killed with my ult. In many team fights or melee fights, I need to ult before 5 stacks in order to do enough damage to a) scare my opponent into running or b) do enough damage that a swift Q will be the finisher as the ult just don't do the last bit. This idea that Riot has that people only use his ult with 5 stacks gives me a migraine. It's as if Morgana only ults when she can get a full team, Orianna only ults when she gets a full team, Amumu only ults a full team and so fourth. The Noxian Might is such a niche mechanic that it only makes a difference in maybe 10% of games.
As a whole all us Darius players knew that he got kited and became useless late game. Because of this you owned early game and hopefully snowballed fast enough to close the game out at the mid point. I was completely OK with that. With picking Darius I signed up for it. However now, I'm getting my ass handed too me in lane by casters still AND melees. Riven vs Darius to me was a skill match up I personally felt comfortable with. Not it's heavily in Rivens favour.
At the end of the game he still gets kited to oblivion. I still can't catch anyone, and unless I somehow land 5 stacks on someone or get the perfect numbers to kill them with my ult, I do no damage. I personally hate when Riot does a rework. The only champs I feel they ever reworked well was Sion and the recent Fiora. Darius has lost who he was as a champ.
As a recommendation, revert his Q. Don't be a buncha pussies Riot. It doesn't make him OP. He needs this to solidify his chances to win in lane. I don't need 10% life, my early dorans and V.Sceptre give me 11%. Upgrade the damage on his W. Give me a reason to put points in rather than lower the cool down. Keep or ditch Noxian Might, I really don't care, I'd never depend on it.
With all respect.
Please for the love of god, the people that have only played darius a handful of times, STOP coming on to the boards posting that the new change is good. No it is not fucking good, you dont know how to play him, everything besides his passive now feels like dirt shit. I dont care if the new delay makes you feel like your wielding a powerful fucking axe when in reality it spins and hits like a noodle. Your painting the wrong picture for Riot and how they can change him back to the lane bully that he once was.
The delay has took away his ability to chain combo and THATS what makes him the Lord Darius that we all fear and love. In his current state he wont even be able to beat riven or any melee for that matter.
So please Rito I hope you take careful consideration into what the darius vets and mains are suggesting. ahem DROP THE DELAY ON HIS Q
PS- Im not saying that the ones that only played him a handful of times cant voice an opinion. Its just not fair to the vets that has played him longer and knows him inside out trying to gain riots attention on fixing him to only come across this......
I've never had so much fun playing Darius in my life since the update.
facepalm
While all of us vets knows that darius is in a shitty spot right now
OK as an avid and passionate Darius fan, I am compelled to give my thoughts
I've boiled down the community fustrations into 2 key areas you screwed up in.
1. Darius's flow and smoothness
I remember when you did the GP rework you guys noted what exactly GP players enjoyed with the current GP and then took care to make sure they remained core. However you somehow forgot to ask darius players the same thing.
Darius Players dont play darius bcos he roflstomps or is meta (hes been both of those sometimes but not always). We play darius because his combo is smooth, he feels smooth and lithe to play. His combo might be simlpsitic but the most fun combos ARE usually simplistic. ie. veigar combo or lux combo or reksai combo. Its about that feeling of playing a responsive and lithe champion with an almost graceful kit that outputs tonnes of damage that we REALLY enjoyed. This new darius delay not only feels clunky, unresponsive and stupid but the fact that the hit-the- handle penalty is SO much higher than it used to be means that his kit DOESNT EVEN WORK. what do i mean? well normally when a champ has a pull, they then offload their damage after the pull. Darius on the other hand CANNOT q after he pulls or the enemy will take that moment of vulnerability and just all in him. If he doesn't q? well his mega nerfed AS and W means he cant trade either.
In my experience with the new darius laning phase, the only times i landed q's were on fleeing enemies after jungle ganks and when i was running from someone. The fact that those were the ONLY times i landed them speaks for itself
2. Balancing around a passive is stupid
I distinctly remember old fiora in s4. She was a crappy champion back then for a simple reason. Too much of her power is locked away in her ult. her damage was basically crappy until a SIGNIFICANT level 6 SPIKE. This rediculous shift of SO MUCH of darius's power into and unreliable and hard to proc passive has DESTROYED darius. I thought RIOT was trying to move away from sticking so much power into 1 element of his charachter. ESPECIALLY when they nerf him in almost EVERY SINGLE OTHER CATEGORY just to balance that passive.
I would recommend either buffing his skills back up by a lot or shifting his power back from his passive to his actual QWER kit.
TLDR in conclusion, Riot I could not care less how you categorised Darius, but you CANNOT RUIN HIS INNATE PERSONALITY JUST TO PIGEONHOLE HIM IN YOUR CATEGORY OF JUGGERNAUT. Somehow give him that 'flow' back and make his passive a less core element of his kit. Right now EVERYTHING ABOUT DARIUS REVOLVES AROUND THAT PASSIVE and its downright darius.
Laning phase seem really weak and he's suprisingly reliant on the new items to just do anything, was that intended? The reliance on new items is actually a thing that all the juggernauts share, were they designed to revolve around those and why?
I just destroyed a with 
. Even my fat fish butt was able to waddle out of his Q's before they went off. I think he needs some power shifted back into his Q since it is so easy to dodge. I would recommend buffing the damage and/or heal or shortening the delay. I'm no balance expert, that's just where I feel he is lacking.
I like how the PBE talked about these changes being bad but riot did nothing until the live servers said something.
Statikk, ask any Darius main how many times they were able to apply 5 stacks on opponents in game, even with a tanky build. The answer is not very often. You now made a rework where you gutted all his strength, and moved it into this limited scenario. You also made it significantly harder to do than before as well.
There were many very obvious mistakes in his update which were already explained before 5.16 release. Honestly it can't be a surprise to you he is underwhelming now.
The old Darius never had any problems dealing damage and being relevant if he reached 5 stacks on a target. his issue is he cannot get there consistently. Throwing more damage into this scenario does not help even the slightest.
I'm so disappointed with Darius, I thought he was going to be the most OP of all the juggernauts, but the more i play him the more I think he is the worst of the four.
The biggest problem is achieving 5 stacks, and the problem only gets worse as the game goes on. I think the severity of the attack speed nerf was major overkill. Darius needs a failsafe if he can't hit Qs, which is his only other method of stacking. The whole point of him is ignore him and die, but you can pretty much ignore him right now and get away with it because it takes so damn long to hit 5 stacks, especially if you don't hit Q which can be tricky in a teamfight when you're such a kitable character.
He also feels super clunky. I don't know what changed, but sometimes he just stops autoattacking and stands there. It might be after he Qs or Ws, I don't know which. Also, sometimes his W animation won't play. It's like he was released in an unfinished state.
Ultimately, I feel like Darius got the Ryze treatment where he's underwhelming until he gets his passive up, except it's much harder to activate Darius' passive so in the end he ends up being underwhelming all the time.
Hello Riot, Excuse my spelling and grammar. I've have not felt the need to ever complain till now. I play Darius alot, and he is my favorite. I am so disappointed with his rework. The concept was awesome, giving him sustain was awesome, the Noxian Might is Awesome. But giving him such a cool passive and ult that you literally destroyed him from the inside out. you have made it practically impossible to get his passive off to do what you intended. I see the hot fix is coming, but the dumbest thing about Darius now is that your laneing and farming is hurt so much that when it comes to team fights you get annihilated even worse than before because of his passive. So you nerfed his laneing phase and made him such a threat that you focused weather your fed or not. I've played him a lot the past few days and I've tried many combinations, but its so plain. You wanted to make Darius Unique right? Well he is so plain now, and I'll tell you why. As stated above his passive is very hard to get off, It doesn't last long enough because people scatter, your original target runs away, you get CCed. Darius's ult combo is so situational it happens maybe one per 5 games, and you might get a double kill or a triple. Once in 10 or 15 you get fed and do it twice or three times. Q your upping the damage and heal which is nice. but can't you make it so that it at least does the equivalent of his old Q at the end game? or if W Is boring. Has 90% slow and scales in dmg. nothing unique. Why make such a borring skill almost as bad as Garen's W E the slow is nice I'll give you that, but the old bug was better and was more fun. R His Ult is nerfed unless you get the passive........
Was He really Broken before the patch? No he wasn't. In fact he would win lane just as well as other lane bullies and was less snowbally than most other top laners. Yea he crushes Bronze but then you don't see this champ in LCS, or any other higher level game play cuz he was so one dimensional. Now He is even more one dimensional. Take black cleaver get tanky, try and get stacks in team fight, KS to get Passive try and Catch the other team oh wait... they scatered and you cant catch them. not with zepher and boots of swiftness.
Passive: buff. Fantastic idea Q Nerf: Less Dmg, with a Delay BUT has a heal that only helps when your about to die? even then your either getting kited or they are in your face. you could W slow into a Q for the heal but its likely not enough since its only one second and its likely that it is already on cool down W Nerf everything about it is a nerf. Was it really that broken before? E About an even exchange, Exchanging the bug for the slow R Nerf, less damage. cool minion effect too!
My ideas to help him out just throwing some out there.
Q: the delay is fine, but It sucks because now he has three spells with some sort of delay Q,E,R. Up the damage. and heal for percentage of damage delt to champions rather than % Health missing. or a set number instead of percent missing health. Max 5 champs/ Maybe to big monsters as well. for Jungle viability, but its not necessary. The Percent health missing is cool. Just throwing out ideas
W: Add some of his old stuff back. OR let it apply 2 stacks at lvl 3 or 5 (helps late game), perhaps make it so if you land a W, then within that bleed period a Q would Apply 2 stacks. or it could buff his Attack speed. Or maybe it adds a percent health dmg. like 5%. Or perhaps you just hit them twice. IDK just somthing more has to be done. by far the weakest ability in his kit
E: If unwilling to do the things above you could let it apply a stack. but then that's the only buff I think he would need in general. or just revert it with the bug.
R: Its Fine the way it is if you make it easier to get stacks. It could apply a speed buff to help try and achieve the dream penta dunk. But is more likely to help get a double kill or escape, it could be like a Blitz speed up too. once the Noxian Might wears off he is slowed.
I agree that its in the right direction to buff his Attack speed.
He isn't fun rt now and thats very unfortunant. I was looking forward to a small buff to make him better late game, but his early game nerf, nerfs his late game.
Isn't your goal to have each champion Viable for pros to play? or to be viable at higher level play?
Hopefully its not to harsh I'm just upset at his performance
Crippling Strike (W) new effect: "Crippling Strike refunds its Mana cost and 50% of its cooldown if it kills the target"
Did someone else get a good laugh?
I haven't been able to play AS Darius, but I played against him. I can say that the only issue I had with him was it was pretty easy to dodge his q. Also, I felt that when I did get hit by it, it didn't deal enough damage. I was able to out bully Darius pretty easily. I would recommend lowering the delay on his q, possibly increasing the damage by 10-20%.
i found it pretty hard to get 5 stacks off in a teamfight so i became useless
First game
Q feels really really bad to use
The champion just doesn't feel fun. He's slow, clunky, and frankly doesn't do much.
why does the Q silence you? ... does a champion, on normal ability with a lowish cooldown, really need to silence himself? I don't understand. This may very well be one of the worst abilities in the game as it sits.
overall it was not an enjoyable experience
Second game
Up 5-1 30+ cs can't duel people
Why does Q have a wind up time? If so why does it silence? Who's idea was this?
Can i get a refund for my dunkmaster skin?
A question not about Darius but will reworks/mini updates in general.
Do you plan on doing threads like this for mini update/reworks in the future as well?\
EDIT: Sorry if this is a bad place to ask lol.