What makes Darius particularly underpowered?

No, this is not a "OMG RIOT WHY BUFF DARIUS DUNKAROO PIECE OF SHIT" thread. This is a legitimate question from a Silver 3 player.

I know Darius has always had weaknesses and he can easily be countered with most ranged champions. But people are saying with the new runes, he is even worse. But why?

I feel as if Darius isn't exactly outclassed by other melee champions. He actually feels quite strong in a melee match up.

Darius has pretty big damage, a heal, 2 CC's (One of which being a slow but a pretty big one), and decent tankiness. These are really all he needs in my opinion.

Also, none of his abilities feel useless.

Passive- Helps wittle down enemy's health and annoy the fuck out of them. Q- Great waveclear tool, can be used for sustain. W- Auto reset for damage and a slow so he isn't kited as easily. E- Pulls enemies towards him to start a combo, CC groups, or just get his W off. R- Can be devastating if he has 6 stacks of bleed and the reset/fear make it pretty good in team fights.

All of his abilities seem useful in some way and none feel any less useful than another.

Now let's get onto the runes. The runes I've seen Darius take in-game are Phase Rush and Grasp of the Undying. A lot of guides say Press the Attack, but that doesn't seem too great, except for the fact that he's auto attacking a lot, but Grasp just seems like a better replacement.

Phase Rush- This is perfect for his combo (always includes 3+ different damaging spells) and helps him not get kited. Darius can use this to close almost any gap even through a Quinn E or something of that sort. This seems like the best one to go overall because it almost completely removes one of Darius' major weaknesses.

Grasp of the Undying- Darius auto attacks a lot in his trades, and in an extended trade he can get this off more than one time. It basically makes him win most trades with the Grasp heal + his Q heal, so he doesn't take a lot of damage. This is a very powerful rune in general though, so it's pretty good by default.

Assuming you take Phase Rush, you only have one real weakness left, absolutely no range.

Darius has very little range on his abilities, his max range being his Q/E, and those are pretty close range. This makes him get dumpstered by most ranged matchups. I don't have much to dispute them, except that one slight overextention by a ranged champion and Darius can E them and probably 100-0 them because most ranged champions are very squishy.

I think Darius having one and a half glaring weaknesses is PERFECTLY FINE. (I say 'and a half' because Phase Rush kinda gives him a gapcloser, just not extremely reliable.) If you try to remove the weaknesses of a champion, or overcompensate for those weaknesses, this is where a champion becomes broken. Darius is allowed to get beaten by most ranged/poke lanes, that's just the weakness he happens to have.

Now, the PBE buffs are not, by any means big. Just a tiny bit of damage on his passive and stuff that probably will make a very minimal effect on gameplay. My concern is that Darius mains will complain that this wasn't enough of a buff, and Riot will overbuff him, so he even wins ranged match ups. And we all know how good Riot is at fixing a champion that they accidentally made broken. Cough Twitch/Tristana/Ezreal Cough. Darius has a pretty big playerbase, and I don't want so many people to have their champion permabanned.

TL;DR- Darius' abilities are good and work well, runes work fine with his kit, and him being destroyed by ranged/poke matchups is okay, and they should not remove that aspect to him.

What do you guys think?