This buff does NOTHING to his laning phase unless it lasts until you're level 16 or level 11 and get ganked with enough mana to dunk twice.
This buff won't make him stronger in lane, why are people crying already?
Learn 2 Swim50 votesA MELEE GETS A BUFF? BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
not a starburst3 votesAn immobile melee to boot. Pinch me, I'm dreaming.
kcStranger23 votesI haven't heard all the crying, but I do totally agree. (Note: I do main Darius.) Darius's early game didn't need any help, and the buff being tested doesn't give it any help. (And I should note that although Darius is a very good early laner, he is limited by his slow movespeed and melee AA range. Some champions like Kennen can kite him pretty effectively.) And the buff to his late-game isn't gargantuan or anything, it's just a nice little boost. He's now much less likely to be unable to ult for mana reasons, and there's the chance to live the dream with the full reset on the ult. They didn't up the damage on his abilities, though.
Darius has long been a "dominate early game and try to do some things late game" champion (like Renekton), and this buff won't really change that. It'll just make him a little more able to do some things late game by allowing him to ult more freely, which I think is a beautiful thing.
People are probably just remembering release-version Darius and are averse of giving him a buff of any kind. I doubt you'll find a single Darius main who thinks this buff is excessive.
junglerboy164 votesI think this is probably the best change they could give him outside of reworking his kit from the ground up, because it does a few major things for him:
Basically, this change will keep him from being so binary like he currently tends to be where if he wins lane, he has a high chance of snowballing really well, but he rarely can win lane without nullifying his opponent's lane phase. This lets him not have to 100% stomp his lane to be useful, which is pretty much exactly what he needed.
Simshadow1 votesThe problem is you have to survived until the late game, normaly Darius is so feed that he can easily 1v3 everybody in mid game...
Rinky Dinky17 votesBecause people are scared of that champion.
It's an irrational fear.
BatteryDead8 votesLiving guillotines are kinda scary tho
Kuroi861 votesKinda scary? Darius is the only bruiser that I hate laning against. I'd rather lane against Lee Sin at his strongest than Darius.
Orbv2 votesLee isn't really a bruiser. He's almost always an assassin because he doesn't like to be in melee too long.
But I personally cannot stand a 
lane. I even tried using him many times, I don't know how people can do well with him.
BakugoBestBoy1 votesVoli does Melee VS Melee lanes really well. His kit lends well to cheesey early kills by playing "chicken" with your opponent and you can force them to trade in your minion wave by flipping them into it.
Orbv1 votesThat makes sense. I don't know how, but I always forget how much damage early game minions do.
Captain Aishi1 voteshis E also fears your minions so he breaks minion aggro during the fight, that helps a lot in the early levels
Criomhthann4 voteshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlJ2PS0qtYc
Say hello.
Only Play Darius11 votesBecause he's a poorly designed champion.
High base damages, AOE pull, free 25% armor penetration (Thank you CertainlyT, we all love your passives), extremely strong DOT that converts AD into magic damage (WTF), and an ult that does hundreds of points of true damage, now with full resets.
He's only fun for the person playing him. Whether or not you will stand a chance against him is entirely dependent on the champion you picked. If you chose a close range champ with no ranged harass then there is zero counterplay for Darius.
Borigrad22 votesDarius is a full offensive champion with low base stats, low mobility, no defensive steroids or abilities and requires a build time. He isn't Poorly designed, he's designed to do exactly what he should. Become a short range wood chipper that can finish tanks. The only people that have a problem with Darius are people in low elo, Even fucking Morello has said that before. Darius was nerfed because low elo players are bad and Darius punishes bad players.
Only Play Darius2 votesSo he should be able to build only one stat (AD) and still do high amounts of all 3 types of damage?
Borigrad19 votesyes, that's his compensation for having low base armor, low base MS, low base MR, low base health, no defensive steroid, no offensive steroid (armor pen is not a fucking steroid,) very short range, a stacking mechanic and long cooldowns. All because you can't take advantage of his many weaknesses as a player doesn't mean he should be kept trash tier. It means you need to become a better player.
Spitemaster5 votesLow base armour? I think you meant high armour. He's got the second highest level 1 armour in the game, right behind Rammus. His armour per level is nothing to scoff at, either.
Low base MS? I think you meant normal MS. He's got 340, which is right in the middle. (325-355)
Low base MR? I think you meant high MR. There are currently two different amounts of MR: 30, or 32.1 +1.25 per level. Darius has the higher one.
He's in the middle of the pack for health (which, to be fair, might be a little on the low side for bruisers).
'Very short range' is the same as 53 other champions, most melee champions have 125 range.
Now, this isn't to say that I think this buff is too much - actually, I think it's not a bad change (and I never play Darius). You're just wrong, and they just need to make his pull less reliable (you should be able to dash/flash away).
IsIsGankedParis4 votesDo you have the quote where morello said that? I've never found that quote and I've been looking for a while.
clickhead2 votesNo he has really high base stats. That is exactly his problem.
Droogzy5 votesDarius is a noob stomper, nothing more, does so much damage, but has no means of actually getting to his opponents to do that damage outside of opponents derping. He definitely at least needs some looking at, its a step in the right direction.
You know a champion is in a bad spot when in the pro scene, they tout how early game is the most critical phase, but yet they barely bat an eyelash at using Darius who's pretty damn strong early on.
SpongebobIsLife1 votesgood point.
terkmc1 votesIsn't totatlly useless, he is, and will pretty much forever will be, the anti-melee top laner. You put Darius in lane vs melee and that melee will struggle to even get cs. If you have something that you absolutely needs to be put down early game that is also melee, like Nasus, Jax or Maokai, you bring Darius as a last pick to keep them down
TwitchInMyPants4 votesI hate Bronze level players who refuse to learn counterplay.
Darius is bad atm. He needs any extra power he can get and frankly I think the buff they gave him isn't enough. He isn't getting any power until lategame and his early game power is barely enough to be competitive with the laners he beats. Pretty much every meta top wrecks him. Even when he was considered overbearing on release, he got destroyed by kiting really easily. It's really sad when a character who's been dipping between a 45-49% winrate is hated on for getting a minor buff to let him excel in the only strength he has - destroying people in a melee range sustained fight.
kcStranger1 votesJust one quick correction...based on LOLDB, Darius's overall win rate in ranked solo is 50.3%; for gold/platinum/diamond it's 50.4%/51.5%/51.2%. Now he becomes a lot less popular at higher ranks as well, and isn't a very mechanically demanding champion, so I certainly wouldn't want to interpret these stats to say that he's OP. Probably people are mostly picking him into favorable matchups as well. But I just wanted to point out that his stats actually aren't horrible.
As for my opinion on the buff...I think a small buff is warranted.
TwitchInMyPants1 votesJust one quick correction...based on LOLDB, Darius's overall win rate in ranked solo is 50.3%; for gold/platinum/diamond it's 50.4%/51.5%/51.2%. Now he becomes a lot less popular at higher ranks as well, and isn't a very mechanically demanding champion, so I certainly wouldn't want to interpret these stats to say that he's OP. Probably people are mostly picking him into favorable matchups as well. But I just wanted to point out that his stats actually aren't horrible.
As for my opinion on the buff...I think a small buff is warranted.
http://www.lolking.net/champions/darius®ion=all&map=sr&queue=1x1&league=platinum#statistics
Looked at all 5 of the stats on LoLDB and it clearly has a smaller sample size, especially in tiers like diamond. You see the winrate spike up to 53% and back down to 46% over the course of a day. I find the accuracy of those numbers questionable especially when the grand majority of LoL stat sites match LoLking or are similar.
kcStranger1 votesFair. Looking at lolking, I would say that Darius is close to 50% at every level except Diamond (where he's clearly a bit weak, 47-48% maybe). I usually check both LoLDB and lolking because neither site is perfect (LoLDB is nice because it averages the data over a month and gives you a single number, but it clearly has some bugs), but I got lazy this time.
Crushed lil kid4 votesI love this buff finally something to stop the immortal god 
is viable again
WutsKraken3 votesBah, Darius still isn't the snowball god of lvl 6, so that buff just helped him out a bit late-game. The hate's not very justified atm
ESPECIALLY since he's got really crappy all-round stats. He deserves at least SOMETHING
Immortal Strife3 votesI've seen no complaints about the buff.
Faith Breaker1 votesWhat is this Darius buff.
LoLKiru6 votes[{quoted}](name=Faith Breaker,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Xu5wYsrM,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2015-03-12T19:38:48.933+0000)
What is this Darius buff.
Mana cost on R decreased (100 at all ranks --> 100 / 50 / 0)
Full reset on kill at rank 3.
Karlyr4 votesThat's not even close to being a buff in fact... all it does is helping him clean long extended fights.
Gorsz8 votesObviously you dont know what a buff is.
Also its a huge buff to his late game. "all it does" I love how you try to downplay that, when the only factor to keep darius from dunking everyone late game WAS the mana gate.
DropFill14 votesObviously you dont know what a buff is.
Also its a huge buff to his late game. "all it does" I love how you try to downplay that, when the only factor to keep darius from dunking everyone late game WAS the mana gate.
And how easily kited he is And how useless he is lategame And how full damage darius is not a thing And how immobile he is, how low is the range of his pull
But DW, just the mana gate was the problem. People are just too hyprocrite to assume Darius is garbage right now because they lost lane to him.
Gorsz2 votesimmobile/kited easily is the same exact thing. He wont be as near useless late game when his ult costs no mana to spam on people.
Also, thats all the problem there is with darius, eh? Mobility? Well grats, I guess darius stands with 70 other champions.
Borigrad11 votesUdyr is kited easily but he isn't immobile.
Darius has low base stats and zero defensive abilities or steroids, you honestly have no idea how this game works if you think Darius can function in a late game team fight.
Karlyr5 votesUdyr has a movement speed boost, which darius has not. Honnestly Darius is one of the most immobile champs in the game currently. (Alongside Ashe, Zyra, Xerath, Brand, Cho'Gath, Mundo, Heimerdinger, etc)
Heck, even Gangplank has a MS boost.
aperson12 votesDarius' passive gives him 5% MS for every champion currently affected by his passive IIRC. But he'll rarely get an opportunity to have more than 15% in a teamfight I'd imagine.
terkmc2 votesWhat do you mean "even" Gangplank is actually very mobile, or at least pretty damn fast with TF+E
Auz the Ripper1 votesRUNNING!
Captain Aishi1 votesplease, full damage darius is the ONLY thing! :P
Faith Breaker2 votesAnd people are crying about this? Ah man gotta go top lane Today Also This isn't in the patch notes did Riot relay this QoL change for Darius or did you just notice it?
IsIsGankedParis1 votesPbe notes for 5.6
Faith Breaker2 votesI don't ever check on those. So, this thread you made provided me with genuine useful information for my every day life. Nods to
S H A Y C 02 votesthat sounds a little rediculous...and i dont even know how it works now, it still looks a little stupid powerful.
LoLKiru1 votesBasically it works like this currently: If Darius gets the kill with his ultimate, he gets 20 seconds to cast it again (this timer resets every time he gets a kill with it; if he fails to get a kill within the time limit; it goes on its actual cooldown) complete with its full mana cost
Rank 3 will actually give him his ult back on the PBE now, complete with no mana cost.
S H A Y C 01 votesand on pbe it doesnt do that anymore until rank 3 where it has 0 cooldown?
S H A Y C 01 votesi read the pbe patch notes...so basibally at rank 3 if he gets a kill...he gets another kill...and another kill...and can just keep killing with no worry of every losing his free ult that does true damage and cant be blocked or reduced in any way...im thinking this is a little too strong, and if it goes live i can say one thing, you will see darius in the lcs.
LoLKiru4 votesI wouldn't count on it to be honest. If only because Darius has far bigger problems in terms of viability than his ult, mostly that he's REALLY easy to kite due to having no real gapcloser.
He's a pretty good counterpick to melees, but in the LCS lane swaps happen frequently, so Darius could just quickly get put into a bad situation where he either has to play safe and can't get fed, or feeds himself.
Edit: Oh yeah Darius is pretty easy to gank too since he doesn't have an escape. Bear in mind the buff only does anything once he reaches level 11 (reduces the mana cost on his ult to 50 down from 100, still has the same cooldown restriction though)