Darius: Perhaps a little too much Noxian Might?

I will be perfectly honest here, my thoughts on this are likely opinion based. Darius is probably more balanced than I give him credit for, but it is still my belief that he has too much power and damage output for a champion that typically only grabs one or two damage items at most. I will be dividing this post into sections based on what I personally believe makes Darius ban-worthy.

1. He has both an oppressive laning phase and a ridiculous late game. I think this is fairly self-explanatory. Darius wins the majority of his melee matchups, and nine times out of ten he instantly wins a matchup against a ranged champion if he can land a single Apprehend. There is no good option for melee opponents to fight him. If they get close to trade, he gets free attacks off and will force an extended trade with his Apprehend and the slow from Crippling Strike. These two slows give him enough sticking power to easily proc Noxian Might in lane and kill most opponents that lack a strong escape tool. Later on in the game, as long as he can proc Noxian Might, he can turn around almost any teamfight just off of that AD steroid. Overall, it is very difficult for a single champion to handle Darius. If he gets ahead, which often seems like an inevitability, it becomes extremely difficult to stop him without three or more champions. Regarding this subject, I think the slows on Apprehend and Crippling Strike should be reduced at early ranks. Perhaps starting out as a 50% slow at rank 1 and scaling up as the abilities are ranked up(50%/60%/70%/80%/90%). This would allow Darius's opponents a chance to get away early on, which would allow more melee matchups to at least attempt to play the lane passively.

2. The heal on Decimate is too strong in the mid to late game. Once Darius has a couple of health items, the heal from this ability is ridiculous. When fighting Darius, it feels like the only option is to avoid getting anywhere near him at all. Not explicitly because of how much damage he does, but because if you get into melee range, you no longer have any good options. If you try to get away, he gets a free heal that likely shrugs off any damage you dealt to him during the exchange. If you stay close to him so he can't get the heal, he gets to proc Noxian Might off of auto attacking you, and at that point you're pretty much guaranteed death. Personally, I think the heal on Decimate should work like the heal on Renekton's Cull the Meek (aside from the fact that Renekton's allows him to heal off of minions and monsters). A flat heal that scales off of AD.

3. Hemorrhage synergizes way too well with Black Cleaver. Since Hemorrhage does physical damage, it will proc both the movement speed buff and the armor shred from Black Cleaver. This gives Darius a massive amount of sticking power in conjunction with Crippling Strike and Apprehend. If Darius lands one hit on you, he gains 20 movement speed for 7 seconds (5 second bleed duration + 2 second duration on movement speed buff after the damage ends). This gives Darius enough sticking power to catch most targets that lack an escape tool. Additionally, a single attack allows Darius to get 6 stacks of The Black Cleaver's armor shred. With ranks in Apprehend providing Darius with percent armor penetration, it becomes nearly impossible to build enough health and armor to survive being within his attack range for an extended period of time. In regard to this, I think Hemorrhage should be reverted to magic damage as it was before his rework. Although this would make it more difficult to build against Darius (seeing as he would be dealing physical, magic, and true damage and all of them would scale off of AD), it would prevent Darius from taking advantage of ridiculous synergy with Black Cleaver, which would still be a really good item on him based solely on the stats that it gives. Alternatively, Black Cleaver could be adjusted to not proc off of physical damage over time effects. This would have a minimal impact as there are very, very few physical DoT's.

I believe that covers what I find to be the issues with Darius. Feel free to suggest other ways to balance out Darius, or give me a detailed explanation of why I'm wrong. If you can point out what's wrong with what I've said calmly and provide evidence to back your point, I would be more than happy to rethink my views on the champion.