I want Darius to be healthy for the game and viable

His passive IMO is fine as magic damage. But halve it's damage, doubling it vs moving targets. This make him able to punish mobility, something this game lacks. And the loss of power can be pushed elsewhere.

Ditching the % armor pen is for sure the way to go.

Change his W to a ground smash. And give it some range. Lower the overall damage slightly (110-150% instead of 120-200%). This allows him to use the slow on a further away target. Helping him escape ganks. It'll be a "half damage to minions, stops on first champion hit" type ability. I don't really play him, but my understanding as to why he is not viable right now is that he is very easy to camp. If you pick him and the enemy jungler is half way smart, they'll know they can easily camp you.

Overall this may just nerf him. In which we make him manaless. Adjust CD's as needed. Make squishy ranged cry.

I agree a lot with the ideas of your post. His passive should definitely doing physical damage (makes him weaker early because you can itemize for his damage, stronger later because of armor penetration). His Q needs to go though, if they decide to rework him into a champion that would be healthy for the game.

{quoted}

I really hope this sends you to my post in a Darius discussion.

A lot of the problems with Darius can easily be solved by looking at the interaction between Darius' main abilities (PQWE) and his ultimate. Now, as a lane bully, we should at least try to keep the first things I list: Strong Engage, Good Combo, Good(ish) DPS, and awkward team fight utility.

The problems I noted basically go like this:

• Hard to itemize properly against
• He pulls people, meaning Darius normally has to devote himself very, very little every time he engages.
• It's normally a really, really bad move to try to straight up fight him.
• His burst potential is stupid for a lane bully

Solve these 4 problems, and Darius can be played straight as a proper viable lane bully while still remaining healthy for the game.

I put a TL;DR near the bottom for this next part.

Let's look at the first problem: Itemization. Have you ever noticed that Hemorrhage, a rather significant chunk of Darius' damage potential, is magic damage while the rest of his kit is Physical Damage? Speaking of Physical Damage, did you ever notice he has built in % based armor penetration? And why does Darius' ult have to be True Damage? See, all this does is cause Darius to literally be undefendable from; defensive itemizations are the wrong way to go against Darius even though the normal response to playing against lane bullies is to stack up as much defense as necessary to not die immediately, why does Darius get to break this rule so badly? I mean, you could argue that stacking health works, but health isn't exacty the most abundant stat to stack like Armor or MR can be (well, at least Armor), especially when you're on a low budget from getting bullied so bad.

Hemorrhage:

• One possible solution is to give it the Twitch treatment: make it true damage, but every individual stack does virtually no damage at all. What this means is that a lot of Darius' power budget can be freed up to buff the active abilities (QWE) of his kit instead of putting so much emphasis on this passive bleed.
• The other solution could be to convert it to Physical Damage, balancing its numbers accordingly. This is meant to go with another change I'm going to mention later down the line about Darius' Armor Penetration, but basically put, Hemorrhage can remain a relevant part of Darius' damage potential so long as it follows the same defensive requirements as the rest of his kit (in this case, stack armor).

Apprehend:

• Make the armor penetration flat penetration. This graph should give you a general idea of what I am aiming for here. You'll notice that the red line has a higher value than the blue line while x is low, and the blue line has a higher value than the red line while x is high. In english, this means that flat penetration is stronger while the opponent has less armor, whereas percentage based penetration is stronger while the opponent has more armor. If we can implement flat penetration into Darius' kit instead of percentage based penetration, this gives a legitimate "Right" answer to Darius' kit; stack armor. Right now, Darius' kit is confusing because Magic Damage, True Damage, and percentage based Armor pen almost tells you to do the exact opposite, don't stack armor, it's useless. If we convert Hemorrhage to Physical Damage and turn the percentage based Armor pen to Flat Values, we can give good itemization options for fighting against Darius, while still reinforcing his lane bullying. If your opponent is a stubborn butthead who refuses to build defense items while playing against Darius, the Flat Penetration would multiplicatively increase Darius' damage potential against them, which plays straight on Darius being a lane bully. Now though, if your opponent takes a step back to analyze the situation, they could realize that if they buy a lot of Armor, they can hope to survive Darius' onslaught. Look guys, counter play, you can properly itemize against Darius now.

Noxian Guillotine:

• Actually, if you make sure to make Darius' armor pen into flat penetration, there's no need to change Noxian Guillotine's true damage. It reinforces that you should also build health against Darius, which is actually the correct move (don't build just armor guys, mix in some health in there too), and it gives Darius a powerful tool against already tank champions who were going to stack resistances anyway, meaning there aren't just some match ups where Darius is monumentally screwed because the opponent is too tanky for him to crack.

TL;DR: ll in all, the main thing to fix about Darius if you want to fix itemization choices against him are his Hemorrhage bleed and his Percentage Based Penetration. In my opinion, if we want Darius to be both viable and healthy for the game, he must convert his % Pen to Flat Penetration, and make his Hemorrhage not magic damage. His ultimate is fine where it is imo, even as true damage, just so long as the rest of his kit consistently reinforces the same ideal: Build defense against me or you're screwed.

I'm kinda tired so I want to just end it here, but I hope you get the general idea of where I'm going here. Darius can be both healthy for the game and viable, the correct changes to his kit just has to be made. If you thought it was interesting, would you like me to continue explaining how to fix his other three problems/explain why they are problems (pull/bad to fight him/burst potential)?

Actually, I have a challenge to anybody who managed to read this post: Can anyone analyze why his pull is kind of unhealthy for his laning patterns, and figure out a good way to fix it?

I think the only issue with his pull is how it has an aspect to it that's different from the other pulls in the game like Blitz's hook, which is that it has a weird hit box that makes it hard to know if you've been grabbed or not, and it's delayed. Many times I've seen his pull and attempted to flash out of it or boost out of it, but even if you flash and get out of its range before the animation finishes, once it does, you'll still be pulled back to him as if you didn't flash at all, which makes the ability feel unfair even though it's his only means of getting his target.

If you change Darius passive to physical damage I would just get a Black cleaver at that point. One Q in a team fight and you get the full effect of it on the entire enemy team, it's for this reason that I think it wasn't physical to begin with because they knew how powerful the synergy would be.

with those change I think he should get his full reset back what you think?

Well, I think I can take a shot on the whole issue of having pull/bad to fight him/burst in the same kit and how it would be fixed. Basically in the laning phase he has access to everything a lane bully wants. He has DPS (passive) which lets him win a fight over time making it almost pointless to attempt to outdps him, he has safe burst (his Q dealing 105 physical damage at Level 1), and can force an engage (without needing to commit) when he wants versus melees. Like you said, building defense is almost pointless against him because he has so many damage types and for his main damage (Physical Damage) he has free percentage armor penetration.

The main reason why he dominates melees so hard is Burst + Safe Engage. In my opinion, I think the pull should remain (Darius has never been about mobility but requires a way to start a fight) but it needs better counterplay. His early game should still be about bullying, but not so much in how Darius does it now. Darius right now is chunking the opponent down till one combo kills them. He should be more like.... Olaf! That would be, you don't duel him because he WILL beat you in a race of DPS (so if you lack the burst to kill him, you will lose and likely die!). You instead would beat Darius by harassing him until he is too low to last long enough for his DPS to out-damage whoever you're playing.

So to support Darius doing DPS rather than burst, I think his kit may be in need of an update. Remember Scruffy talking about Darius a while back? He said something along the lines of Darius still remaining kiteable, but he would oriented towards duelist. That would be meaning, most champions would be unable to 1v1 him throughout any time in the game. This would suggest a decent early game (not as oppressive as he is now) but better scaling throughout a match (damage does not fall off as hard). I've personally brainstormed some ideas, so bear with me on this.

Passive - Hemorrhage: Darius' basic attacks and damaging abilities cause enemies to bleed for 4 / 7 / 10 / 13 / 16 / 19 / 22 / 25 / 28 (+ 10% bonus AD) physical damage over 5 seconds (scales every 2 levels). This stacks up to 10 times for a maximum of 40 / 70 / 100 / 130 / 160 / 190 / 220 / 250 / 280 (+ 100% bonus AD) physical damage over the duration. While at least one champion bleeds, Darius gains 10% movement speed.

Q - Ruthless Strike: l Mana Cost - 50 Mana. l Cooldown - 10/9.5/9/8.5/8 Seconds. l Range - 400 Units

Darius smashes the ground around him, dealing physical damage (40/80/120/160/200 + 0.5 Bonus AD) to nearby enemies. If he hits an enemy champion, Darius gains a shield that blocks physical damage (20/40/60/80/100 + 10% Max HP) for 3 seconds.

W - Crippling Strike: l Mana Cost - 30 Mana. l Cooldown - 6/5.5/5/4.5/4 Seconds. Darius' next basic attack deals bonus physical damage (30/60/90/120/150 + 0%/5%/10%/15%/20% Total AD) and applies 2 bleed stacks instead of one. Crippling Strike also debuffs the target (applied after this skill applies bleed stacks) based on their number of Hemorrhage stacks. 4 Hemorrhage Stacks: 50% movement speed slow lasting 2 seconds. 8 Hemorrhage Stacks: 25% Attack Speed Slow lasting 2 seconds.

E - Apprehend: l Mana Cost - 60 Mana. l Cooldown - 24/21/18/15/12 Seconds. l Range - 300 Units to 700 Units. After a brief delay Darius pulls in all enemies in front of him, reducing their armor by 20/25/30/35/40 for 4 seconds. Darius can charge this ability over 1.25 seconds to extend Apprehend's range but slowing his own movement speed by 20% while charging.

R - Noxian Guillotine l Mana Cost - 100 Mana. l Cooldown - 140/110/80 Seconds. l Range - 460. Active - Darius leaps to an enemy champion and strikes a devastating blow, dealing true damage (110/220/330 + 50% Total AD). For each stack of Hemorrhage on the target, Noxian Guillotine deals an additional 10% damage (Maximum 220/440/660 + 100% Total AD). When Noxian Guillotine kills the target, it's cooldown is refreshed.

Notes on all of this:

1. Numbers likely need changing, I'm no expert so this would be left up to experts.
2. His Q could be changed entirely, my goal with it was to give him some type of defense steroid or an outplay mechanic (one that wasn't mobility). The options I came up with were a spell shield, a physical damage shield, Armor/MR Steroid, or % Damage Reduction from a targeted champion. Shielding Physical damage made the most sense.
3. He can keep his pull because he doesn't burst as hard, but he does have greater DPS (W on lower cooldown, more damage from it,). His Ultimate is still a massive finisher nuke though.
4. Speaking of his Ultimate, increasing the cooldown early but allowing him his full reset makes it imperative that you use your Ult to finish off in lane should you want to keep the kill potential going. Makes the difference between experienced Darius players and people new to him a bit wider.
5. E's charge up gives him greater potential (longer distance grabs), but adds counterplay (enemy can see him charging unless he isn't visible). Also reflects Nacho's ideals of making it flat so it is better versus squishies but you can build armor against it.
6. Passive change also shows Nacho's ideals, normalizing it to Physical damage. You can counter Darius with armor now, in which case he could max his E to combat it (but he loses out on some damage from Q and a slightly smaller shield).
7. The change to his Ultimate's base damages and ratios may look scary. At first glimpse it looks like his early game has been weakened a lot, but not quite. For all intents and purposes, with the total AD ratio his rank 1 Ultimate remains mostly untouched, rank 2 is likely dealing more damage, and rank 3 is dealing more damage unless you would have an absurd amount of attack damage (talking about beyond 300 AD).

why all u act like ppl even play Darius anymore lol i havent seen one in a while i feel like he is designed to be a tank killer the only time i would play him is if other team had like 3 tanks which wont ever happen. But he does smash tanks pretty hard that being said i would like to see some kind of rework on him to make him a viable pick in the meta

[{quoted}](name=Charles Barklius,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=q5RH1hXE,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2014-12-25T20:44:38.739+0000)

riot pls I need lcs big dunks in my life again

Thats why I think they need to make him flashier and more about skill other than "yeah you auto win against melees because dunks"

Imagine if his pull was replaced by a jump forward that threw back the first champion you collided with

Imagine if his W was something more than an auto reset that makes it impossible for people to fight you

Imagine if his Ultimate straight up dunked an entire area in an AoE rather a single target so it not only hurts more and is flashier but takes actual skill to land

Imagine if his passive was more than just hit them 5 times to auto win extended trades and get slightly faster

IMAGINE

Until they start doing crazy shit like this they can never afford to buff Darius because he is the epitome of lane bully and destroy people without trying aka pub stomp

Also Dunk Master Darius with these sorts of changes in LCS would be so much money for Riot, so they should get on that shit

• Rito, 2014

Oh, don't worry, I have ideas for that too when I talk about straight up fighting him/burst potential.

But again though, I'm just kinda tired and don't want to type long stretches of text without someone else asking for me to elaborate.