Darius rework broke him. in a bad way.
So I used to main play Darius is competitive play, up until patch 5.16. I no longer see him as a viable pick for top lane anymore. Pre 5.16 I used to play him as speed Darius, as fast tanky, bruiser. Since the rework, I've tried multiple different builds from speed, to damage, tank, cdr, hybrids builds, but with no success. Darius doesn't have a great early game anymore, he can no longer bully. instead he has a so called "improved" late game. which make it difficult to get to cause he can't farm early game. In addtion to his ability to bully early game, his farming capability has decrease drastically.
His Q needs to change.
Having his Decimate (Q) Wind up is a huge nerf, causing him to pause his damage for .75 seconds, forcing him to hit the edge of the blade for Hemo purposes, and leaving him vulnerable to attacks and unable to flash while in wind up. Instead he got a crummy 10% missing health heal for sustain purposes.
Having the delay of .75 seconds also makes it harder to get in and out for farming purpose while using a hydra. This is where everything bottlenecks for hims early game. I mean if Riot really wanted to change him, get rid of the heal and make it instant again.
Apprehend- the new apprehend causes them to be pulled and slowed periodically by 90% for 1 second, which isn't really useful cause usually when you pull a champion its followed up by his crippling strike. so instead Darius gets a double slow (which is not needed in most cases). Using his Apprehend with his Decimate is no longer a good combination. the wind ups causes too many issues and its too difficult to hit with the outta edge of his blade Instead apprehend active needs to give him Increase armor/magic resist or increase attack speed/damage and or hemo stack.
When a champion is pulled, they need to be penalized, not rewarded for turning to fight a slow attacking Darius. Since this patch, i found that it's harder to get 5 stacks of hemo on a target, (due to his q changes and his attack speed nerfs) as well as his ability to scrap 1on1. His group fights remains more or less unchanged in my opinion. Transitioning from 1 target with 5 stacks to the next, usually leaves darius with not enough hps to engage a 2nd, furthermore, blood rage only last 5 seconds. With this short duration you yell in all chat for them to group up nice and orderly for you to ult.
With the current changes that cursed Darius, I'm looking for a similar champion to play top lane in competitive plays. Anyways i just wanted to know others suggestion/opinions on the new darius and what they miss if anything about the pre-5.16 darius.
