The Darius Rework, shortcomings

So with the new Juggernaut rework I thought I would pick back up a champion I have always enjoyed, Darius. I was previously playing lots of Garen before the rework, and NEVER got to play him because of all the bans, so I was really disappointed there. But I picked up my trusty Dunk Stick and lumbered off to the Fields of Justice. I was met with a clunky display of disappointment. I am no stranger to skill laden abilities. I like playing Swain and Yasuo, and both of those champions have abilities that require timing and spacing to be used effectively, Yasuo more so than Swain, but the delayed root still applies. The problem I had was that several things about the new kit just make him really awkward to play and left me feeling, well, less Darius. Here are some of the biggest issues I had with the changes:

1. The new Q damage. It seemed like giving Darius all that huge damage and scaling would have been a giant boon to the big guy, but the Q rework on damage just fell short, dealing less damage at almost all points of the game. Since he is so item dependent, not hitting your stride until very late in the game damage wise makes you a giant anchor for your team. I just felt like for all the changes that were made to the ability to make it less reliable to hit with and give it counterplay, it should have packed a bigger punch.

2. Th Q delay. This is by far my least favorite part of the champion, and coupled with his other changes, it just makes him unfun to play with a lot of the time. So here are some of the highlights I felt playing and testing him after his release. Darius is a short range melee brawler, he's meant to get into the fights and stay there. He needs staying power and the ability to have his passive and ultimate go off to be effective. So being in melee, in the middle of a fight, up close and personal... the WORST thing that you can do is CC yourself. The 0.75 second delay means no auto attacks, no other abilities, up until the hotfix you couldn't even flash. That leaves him in such an awkward and annoying position. There's nothing like getting into the middle of a fight and then just wandering around and rubbing up on people as you try to get your blade to hit as many enemies as possible, when you don't want them to get away. It's just bad, bad all around. I love the idea of bringing some kind of utility to his kit, but for the love of God give us some QoL fixes to that delay. Between his lower attack speed, delayed Q, and self cc, he does very little in a larger skirmish without having previously gotten some hits in before it began. He's also the least mobile of all the juggernauts, making him so much more reliant on positioning, which makes this delay even stranger.

3. Utility, utility, utility. Champions that get utility over damage usually do far more and are much stronger in the games. Damage almost never helps a champion, especially if they lack the tools to secure that damage in a fight. Darius fits into this category, he is raw damage but lacks some vital utility, and what utility he is given is glaringly easy to avoid. With mobility being so easy to obtain in league, I just feeling like having a melee with so much delay and counter play options will put him in a bad spot overall. It just feels like he needs to be less lumbering and slow, and more like a fighter. He swings an axe, not a bus.