It was the one buff he needed. He has some of the worst attack speed growth in the game. He did not need a mana refund on his W because no one last hits with his W unless there was no other way to get the minion because they were getting another one. Besides Darius has never had mana problems since his costs are super low with a healthy mana pool.
YUUKI VK1 voteswith the changes they gave him, if he got the AS buff too he would be too powerfull
just run AS runes (this is coming from one of the best darius players)
The Sword Saint1 votesI guess for some reason they wanted darius to be able to cs under tower better in the rare case that he actually loses lane.
Probably because it's almost impossible for him to lose lane unless it's against some ranged lane bully who he has zero way of interacting with.
It's that 'fallback pattern' that designers talk about sometimes.
DreamLeviathan1 votesOf course nobody was last hitting with W, it didn't have a mana or cooldown refund on it for the sake of making it a helpful last hitting tool.
They probably decided to do this instead of buffing his attack speed to give him a bit more of an option to help with last hitting under tower or pressure without also just buffing his ability to reach 5 stacks on an enemy.
