Darius Dominion Trip Report:
My kind of guy <3
So he's a melee dps, occasionally a tanky one, but don't count on that. What you're supposed and even mechanically encouraged to do is killsteal. Killsteal with your ult, killsteal with your Q, killsteal with your passive, which does about 350 damage with 5 stacks, which are not that hard to build, honestly. I levelled Q first because it's direct damage, the slow is not that useful in Dominion, and you only need one point in the hook to hook people, but damage is damage.
I also found that while you could build tanky - phage, fratmas, frozen heart, it's not in any way useful. You are not an initiator, you have no way to initiate a fight, because your pull is really short-ranged and more serves to stop people from running away and annoy your teammates when they miss skillshots rather than start a fight a la Blitzcrank. All a tanky build accomplishes is to reduce your damage. My last few games I built mainly damage - start Prospectors and boots, Ninja Tabi/Merc Threads, Sanguine Blade, Warden Mail, More Damage(Last whisper/Brutalizer, whatever), finish Randuin's because why not. Run around, catch their carries out of position, slap casters for a quarter of their health, kill EVERYTHING with your ult. If your ult goes on cooldown, you are A Bad Darius, yes you are.
Darius feels and sounds incredible, except his laugh, which is fit for annoying your teammates pre-game and nothing else. The skill sounds, especially Q and R are amazing, his voice is not annoying. He looks like a Space Marine which is good, since I like Warhammer 40K, but his hair is silly and in all honesty he is not an interesting or original looking character in any way.
And now the most important thing : yes, he kind of does need a nerf.
His kit is decent, not too much utility, no escape mechanism apart from a single slow, but the damage he does is rather huge even with tanky items. I've heard a full tanky dps build still gives him about 200 total AD on SR, which is 1k true damage ult with 5 stacks of bleed - that is fun for the player, not really for the other team. Even on Dominion I've had cases where I go to gank bot, kill whoever is there, then run top where a teamfight is going on and just triple kill the point since everyone is low. The ult basically is an automatic -30% to people's health, since if they go below that it's QR rinse repeat. I don't think nerfing the cooldown reset on kill would be worth it, though, since it's what makes him feel so damn powerful; just reducing the damage gained from the passive stacks seems the most reasonable solution. Also the passive might need a bit of a nerf too, but it's quite hilarious to still get kills after you're dead.
All in all, I'm really happy with Darius not just because he is overpowered right now (at least on Dominion), but because playing him feels satisfying. Landing his Q, his hook, his ult - it makes you feel like a murdermachine. He is a low skill ceiling champion for sure, but we can't have all champions be Lee Sin now, can we.
edit about the meta : JC, it's kind of hard to explain, but the meta is basically the strategy beyond the individual game. It's the preferred way to play the game - having top be solo lane, AP mid, AD carry/support bot, jungler - this is the meta. Breaking the meta is ignoring this over-arching strategy to accomplish a different goal - the kill lane bot, not having a jungler, sending an AD carry top vs the enemy bruiser - hoping that this counters the commonly accepted over-arching strategy. It also determines which champions are considered good, since they fit this over-arching strategy - things like Soraka as a support, junglers who clear fast and can counterjungle now, compared to the old jungle which favoured junglers with a safer clear like Warwick.
The thing is, it's accepted because it works without too much effort, although the meta shifts around often, mostly around tournaments, since the pro teams really understand what makes things commonly accepted, what makes them work, and how to work around them, while Johhny RandomeloScrub just knows this and this works fine, go for it. It also makes things a bit boring occasionally, though with the advent of Moscow5 and their comparatively more unorthodox strategies (you can thank them for popularizing counterjungling, for example, with Shyvana) this has forced even other teams to try out new things, thus spreading some weird choices.
Also holy shit this post is long.
edit : 800 god damn words. I have written essays for contests that are shorter than this. God have mercy.
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Topic: League of Legends - Patch 7.22 - Runes Reforged (Read 1270781 times)