User blog:RoznosicielCiast/Is Darius being secretly nerfed?

Hey guys!
This is one of my shorter blogs. This time, i want to talk about something specific that is going around one of my favorite champs.

, the badass dunkmaster. We all know him, some people like him, some not. As i said, he is one of my favorites since his release. I've spent a lot of time dunking all around by different tactics. In simple words - i tried to master him, become almost perfect. To be honest, i can't tell if i've seriously done it, though my statistics as Darius are good, and i'm not talking only about kills.

Going further, i've been playing enough long to feel even slightest change done to him or one of items i usually build. After all this time, i think that Riot seriously very slowly nerfs him in ways we can't see that. I'll tell what is certainly nerfed, but let me talk about one thing before.

To be absolutely honest, is oftenly misused and played badly. It's nothing special - every free week champion becomes an object of testing, still... He is different. People seem to really misunderstand his possibilities. I would talk about it for very long time, but not this time - maybe i'll explain it in other post. But as well - if he isn't feared too much, and his competitive/high tier rankeds use isn't outstanding too much, so he is rather under the main scene. So why would even Riot do this? I heard about few items/champions being "OP, but luckily underused", can we consider him as one of these?

To not extend this post too much, i'll show you what i've noticed. Slight, slowly applied nerfs.


 * The first thing that got nerfed was 's AD ratio, though it was mentioned. And that was a good nerf - dealing nearly 2x basic attack damage in magic damage, which isn't really hard to apply, so - 50% ratio drop, and it was K.


 * Second one, was reworked to be less dominating. Simply, after scoring a kill in lane, he isn't anymore able to keep it all the time, and became vulnerable to gank for this time. How much different the game became, i can't tell. I usually didn't used it that much often and i still don't do. This, of course was mentioned in a patch.

And now, the hidden nerfs.


 * First thing i noticed - seems like Riot was moving 's range a bit. Finally, it seems to be reduced by 20 from original. I got this when i was checking one of my old posts, where i mentioned his range as 20 units further than it is now. There is no way it was a mistake - i've written exact same range two different times.


 * Second, strange changes done to . It was noticed quickly, even if official notes didn't mentioned it, it was easy to see as heck - pull animation became slow, clunky and unmatching the sound, and cast time was added, simply became slower. After it was noticed, in next patch you could see it became like before. With one exception - range reduced from 550 to 540. Wait, what?


 * To be honest, it still seems to be slightly slower than before the first change.


 * Third, some glitches that begun to happen, but didn't happened before. Tho', bugs are bugs and can be just unintended.


 * If is active, and Darius begins to perform a basic attack and its duration ends, the basic attack gets glitched and deals no damage. lul Also, the duration of enchanced attack got reduced over time, nearly twice less time to apply it right now.


 * The bug occurs since few weeks.


 * was an fun-to-use ability since you could grab the target even by last bits of the range. Recently, i've noticed you can't do it anymore on that much far point, like another 10 units of range got cut away.


 * I may be wrong here though. Anyone to check it?


 * has different casting time and animations. In some cases, will jump up like basketball player, freeze in air for few miliseconds, and then dunk the target down. In other moments, he won't jump up, instead he will knock the axe like it's too heavy for him, slightly coming up into the air and landing the hit. Surprisingly, the second animation is noticably faster, even if it seems like this armor and axe slow him down a lot.


 * This is actually important. The first animation is much more noticable and gives more time for such opponents like or  to use their ultimates. Second animation seems to occur more often if combining the ultimate with quick combo from other abilities.


 * I've noticed that you don't have to score the kill to get refresh. Seems to be depending on player's ping and server stability - from 0.1 to even full one second of time to grab the kill after using it, or let one of allies to take it. Though, this one rather works as help than power drop.


 * His autoattack targeting seems to reset under some circumstances. Happens to me only when playing as.

Any ideas why Riot would do such things? Is there really any point in adjusting numbers by ~2% or something?

Tell me if you noticed same things or even any further nerf. Also, i'd like to hear if any other champions are changed in this way.