Darius Nerf Context and Overall Thoughts on His Rise to Power in Top Lane

No, I'm not asking for context. I'm providing it, or at least what I would see as valid reasons for the Darius Q nerf. It's the culmination of two big factors: other top laner nerfs and Darius's accessibility as a champion.

Here's the thing: Darius has soared in popularity recently as the premier bully in top lane. A lot of this is due to Riot's recent trend with popular top laners. Riot nerfed every decent top lane tank except Poppy (Trundle, Ekko {thank God}, pretty sure Maokai got hit too, etc.) and left the vacuum open for Darius to walk right in. Further, after Tri-Force champs caught popularity with the attack speed change, Irelia got nerfed. Then, Gnar and Shen got nerfed. Gangplank had already been nerfed about 20 times by this point, and Fiora got the same treatment. And now they're nerfing Poppy too, along with Kennen, which just ensured his superiority. Moreover, Darius plays well into Yasuo top lane, who has also grown in popularity. All these factors contributed to both a high pick rate (2nd highest top lane) and high ban rate (2nd highest top lane).

The other issue is the fact that Darius himself is not a complex champion. I main him, and I'm comfortable saying that. He's nowhere near the complexity of Orianna or Azir, which increases the ease in newcomers picking him up, which has been becoming a thing. His pick rate started to increase due to public perception that he's the best top laner early and scales decently into late game. He lacks late utility, but makes up for it in teamfight presence, which both Poppy and Kennen provided the former in teamfights. This, in turn, led to an increased ban rate because, fact of the matter is, Darius is a superior pick in the lane due to his early pressure, late game presence in teamfights, and Ghost becoming standard on him top lane after it got buffed and Teleport got nerfed. The Telepot nerf meant that using it to get back to lane was just less efficient, which meant early laning against Darius got more dangerous since you couldn't take as many risky trades and think that you could just TP back and everything would be fine. Ghost buff also reduced the issue of low mobility in Darius, which increased both his lane presence and team fight presence. It's easier to land Q's if you're faster and it's easier to dive carries if you're faster.

All these factors have contributed to making Darius the optimal top laner for both experts on him and newcomers.

Now as to Riot's plan to take care of this:

> Q handle damage reduced to 35% from 50%.

So, I'm actually OK with it. Here's the thing: you shouldn't receive much reward for hitting the handle. You already don't get a stack of bleed, you don't get the heal, and the damage is already really low. Further reduction accomplishes reducing Darius's accessiblity to newer players on him. Most experienced Darius players aren't going to miss their Q blade very often, so it won't affect them very much beyond their opponent outplaying the blade, which is the entire mechanic of the Q. Reduce his openness to new players, and you reduce his viability on those new players, while also maintaining his efficiency on higher experience players.

That's my 2 cents. Honestly, it's a fair nerf. However, I am concerned about this trend of nerfing strong top laners. Every time a top laner becomes strong, they're almost instantly nerfed, unless they're Riven. I just wish other top laners would be buffed before we go to nerfing the strong ones, because all that does is reduce the efficiency of the role. This isn't even a top lane exclusive problem; we've seen it happen with Kindred, Warwick, and Sejuani in the jungle, Kalista in bot lane, Azir, Vlad, Malzahar, and probably several others mid lane. I'm probably not giving the balance team enough credit for their hard work, and I apologize for that. It's just I'm concerned about Darius. I'm willing to trust for a little while, but if they do to Darius what they did to Kindred or Kalista, then I'll probably be quite adamant about my displeasure in the direction the balance team is going. That's the nicest way I know how to say that.

Hope this discussion helps you guys understand why they're nerfing him.

Tl;dr The Darius nerf is acceptable because it reduces his efficiency on those who don't play him a lot, but I'm concerned he could get Azir'd if things keep going the way they have been with strong top laners.