User blog comment:Lunarlark/Niche/Uncommon Junglers/@comment-4921386-20130821034836

I think Darius is highly underrated as a jungler. I generally pick him against weak early duelists (hecarim, Vi, skarner) or junglers with slow early clears (maokai, nautilus, sejuani, amumu, etc. His early damage allows you counterjungle fast, and should you get caught, you can just dump all over the other jungler. Even if laners get involved, its still possible to turn fights around due to Darius' sheer damage output.

His overall clear speed is very, very fast, with Q's obliterating the small camps, and his W coming up faster as you stack bleeds on the big creep. His E also allows some pretty hilarious buff steals all throughout the game, particularly blue buffs, since the wall is significantly more accessible than red.

In lanes with poor CC, his ganks are only strong if the enemy is heavily pushed and poorly warded. However, should you allies have any form of movement impairing CC, you're more or less guaranteed a kill, burned flash (queue E hook), or the enemy is going to have to base after you're done dumping on them. His real strength comes in counterganking. Anyone who has played against a Darius knows that he has some serious turnaround potential on ganks, solely due to how much damage he puts out, combined with his massive true damage reseting ultimate. Bringing this to a counterganking situation, you're easily able to close since the enemy jungler/laner are on top of your (likely fleeing) laner, and you can proceed to start doing the downright darius thing you do. Hook ensures that the first escapes blown are wasted, and the combination of your bleed, Q bonus damage on the far end, and your guillotine, anyone fleeing from you is likely going to get picked off.

I generally run MS quints, Flat AD reds, Flat AR yellows, and a combination of flat and scaling MR blues. I run 19-11-0 masteries, spec'ing into CDR and all the Armor penetration masteries in offense, and making sure to pick up two points in Unyielding.

I tend to rush a Spirit of the Elder Lizard, then build Full tank, prioritizing Randiun's Omen or Aegis/Banshee's depending on need. You can usually rough out your build with a Last Whisper as your final item for what amounts to, if I recall correctly, ~50% total armor penetration. Should you somehow manage to accrue more gold, you can sell SotEL and buy a Black Cleaver for extra no-armor nonsense.

The primary downside is that you're a weak initiator, outside of Flash+hooks, so you need to make sure your team has strong engage. Champs like Malphite, Ashe, Elise, ect. can all engage or pick very easily, and synergize well with Darius. In teamfights, you generally just want to sit next to your ADC. Darius is a tank, despite what people may think, and he applies a massive amount of pressure and prescence simply by existing, solely because of how much damage and pain he can put into a target. Since you have some much armor penetration, you can easily make mincemeat of bruisers or even CC-happy tanks that attempt to dive your carry. And if any squishy happens to get close enough for you to land a hook, you'll more or less evaporate them in a single rotation.

Happy Dunking!