User blog comment:RoznosicielCiast/Idea for balanced Darius' nerf instead of reworking him/@comment-5266525-20130215011148/@comment-5266525-20130218101810

The AD ratio does change things. If I go for an AD rune page I'm now going to do more damage than I did before, and at a higher range. The cooldown change hurts the most when you commit to fighting a Darius - something few champions are going to do anyway. For mere zoning purposes it does it just as well as it did before.

You don't 'force' anything with a mana cost change to W, that's the thing. I can still cast the ability whether I'm at no stacks or five. It only ever matters when I'm at low mana, a time when I probably shouldn't be committing in the first place.

Penetration/reduction is multiplicative, not additive. It's actually 25% reduction and 55% penetration. That comes out to ignoring about 66% of armor. But remember this is assuming you took both Last Whisper and Black Cleaver.

I said it's a buff for laning. The reduction on the mana cost is glorious for Darius and makes up for the increased mana costs you've given W and E somewhat. The 3 second cooldown means nothing in 1v1 duels. Lategame in teamfights it does stop him from hopping around like a squirrel pumped full of methamphetamines, but you said yourself that you deliberately hold back on this skill anyway and leave it for securing kills. While technically it is a nerf, in practice it doesn't mean much.

It goes back to what I said, though. You believe your own personal views are more credible for determining Darius' current state of balance than both pro games and every single person who plays Darius in LoL. You just brush aside both issues with a general, "Oh, people just don't know how to use him!" when Darius is simultaneously decried as one of the most braindead and easiest champions to use well ever. He has a really low skill ceiling.

Please please please point out to me where in recent times Shaco was used and suddenly became insanely overpowered. So far as I know, the last time Darius was actually used competitively was at the Season 2 world championships by team Dignitas in the top lane, in which he lost both the lane and the game. He hasn't seen heavy usage since then. If he was ever sleeper OP, somebody would have noticed by now.