I really like Darius and it's a shame he can't be competiively viable

Not with his current kit at least. For starters, he's easy to starve out in 1v2s and doesn't offer much to a team when behind. But that's besides the point, because you can't exactly buff him with his current kit either. He's way too oppressive, especially against melees (and anything that isn't 600+ range on every thing).

Honestly, he's legit a bad ass. His walk animation is awesome, he's a dunk master, his name is badass. He's a giant dude wielding a giant axe with spikey shoulder things and a freaking cape. He has a cape. A fucking cape. That matters. He even makes sense from a champion standpoint, his E being the coolest thing about him. This dude carrying this giant axe is sick of your shit, he's going to pull you to him by the tip of his axe and Stone Cold Steve Austin the shit out of you. It's also a very unique ability as well, which makes him even more badass. Do I even need to mention his dunk? Hell no, that shit is for men. Real men. Real Americans. Darius is sick of your shit, he's here to dunk freedom onto everyone. MURICA.

But...that's kind of where it ends. His Q is okay, it also has a really unique feel to it. The outter edge doing damage not only makes sense, but it means he has something to aim for and as an opponent, you're looking to be up in his shit so only that limp stick hits you instead of that skin peeling axe end. Here's the problem, what's your reward for this as an opponent? Eating a huge AA steroid reset that also slows your attack speed, rendering any opportunity you have to fight back and out-trade him to about zero. This makes him extremely oppressive, and not in a good way. This is why he basically destroys every melee champion. The only real opportunity to beat Darius is to camp him, and that's basically Yorick 2.0, which everyone agrees his design is cancer.

Id really like to see a rework for darius, I know it's been planned and discussed but i feel like two essential things that need to go in order to make him much healthier (and potentially stronger) are his attack speed slow and his ult consuming his bleed stacks probably after he's applied 4-5 stacks. Because as it stands, you can't beat him in a short trade because of bleed stacks and Q/W. Any long trade/all-in is suicide. And even with all this, he still loses most games unless he absolutely snowvalls to a point where the game is over in 20 minutes, which isn't very satisfying for the darius player or his opponents. Being a pull bot and chain dunker late game as your only source of relevance feels underwhelming, especially for a champion with his kit and character. I don't pretend to know how to fix him but i feel like I've mentioned the essentials. And I would love to see his E be even cooler or be more rewarding for landing pulls (or dare I say, anytime he gets a kill or assist, the cooldown of it is reduced).

So Pls riot, make Stone Cold Steve Darius the real bad ass that he is with a less oppressive play style but in exchange a real late game so he can knock some heads, chew some spit and spit some tobacco and dunk kids.