Champion Spotlight
Recommended Items
Tips
- Playing As
Darius
- Decimate is a powerful harassment ability. Strike an enemy from maximum range for the greatest effect.
- Noxian Guillotine does more damage the more attacks you can land prior to it. Use Noxian Might for maximum damage.
- Darius benefits greatly from enhanced survivability. The longer you can prolong a fight, the more powerful he becomes.
- Playing Against Darius
- When Darius' axe grab is on cooldown, he is vulnerable to harassment attacks.
- Darius' ability to escape from fights is limited. If you have an advantage against him, press your lead.
Tricks
- Ability Usage
- Remember that your ability to pull in opponoments can be used through walls. Use this to ambush unaware opponoments for a quick kill, such as in the jungle against the jungler early or mid game.
- Mastery Usage
- The Fervor of Battle path is better than the Grasp of the Undying path because Fervor of Battle now gives ad and Grasp of the Undying is too underperforming at the moment.
- For the first row you should take Sorcery because Darius relies more on his abilities rather than his auto attacks.
- For the second row you should take Feast because it helps you with laning phase. Expose Weakness could also be a viable option but it's near to useless for laning phase. Fresh Blood could work but Darius is more of an all-in champion rather than a poking champion.
- For the third row you should take Vampirism because it helps you by healing you when you deal damage and Darius doesn't have any ability power scalings so you can't utulize the full effect that Natural Talent gives.
- For the fourth row you should take Battle Trance because it helps Darius in extended fights and that is where he belongs due to his passive Hemorrhage. causes you to take too much extra damage compared to the extra damage you will deal and Bounty Hunter could be a viable option as it becomes better than the full effect from Battle Trance once you get atleast 4 kills.
- For the fifth row you should take Battering Blows because Darius only deals physical damage with his abilities.
- For the sixth row you should take Fervor of Battle because it increases your ad, thus helping Darius alot because 3 of his (4 if you count his passive) have ad scalings. Darius doesn't attack much so Warlord's Bloodlust isn't good enough on him compared to Fervor of Battle. Same goes for Deathfire Touch as Darius doesn't build enough ad to benefit from it more than Fervor of Battle.
- The rest of the 12 mastery points you now have will be spent in the Resolve tree, the reason for this is that it benefits Darius more than spending the points in the Cunning tree.
- For the first row you should take Recovery because the extra health helps Darius with the laning phase and Unyielding doesn't provide enough armor/magic resistance to be useful (5 extra armor per 100 armor/5 extra magic resistance per 100 magic resistance).
- For the second row you should take Explorer because it helps with roaming and chasing if you're constantly running through brushes. Tough Skin doesn't provide enough damage reduction to be useful. Siegemaster provides an extremely small amount of armor and magic resistance to be useful, on top of the requirement to get those benefits
- For the third row you should take Runic Armor because it synergies with Darius' Decimate. Veteran's Scars provides too small amounts of health to be useful compared to Runic Armor.
- For the fourth row you should take Insight because it is possibly the best mastery to use in that row. Fearless could also be used if you want to be a little more tankier at the start of a teamfight or a battle at top. Perseverance simply doesn't provide enough power to be useful over Runic Armor or Fearless.
- Item Usage
- You should buy The Black Cleaver on Darius as it syneries with his passive Hemorrhage making it easy to stack up the armor reduction. After you've bought The Black Cleaver you should try to only build tanky items as you will get enough ad from your passive once you've applied 5 stacks of Hemorrhage or killed someone with Darius' Noxian Guillotine.
- Countering
- Decimate deals reduced damage and does not apply stacks of Hemorrhage if you are hit by the shaft. If you are cornered by him without any form of extra mobility to help you out, get very close to him in order to avoid his blade!
- It's sometimes recommended not pick champions like Nasus or Wukong that has a weak early game if Darius has been picked, who happens to have a strong early game. Picking someone that can poke him well on the other hand such as Gnar or Swain can survive the lane better.
- One of Darius's main weaknesses is his complete lack of mobility without the reliance on items. Once he enters a fight, he will have a hard time to escape.
- Stacking armor is not a good idea against Darius because Noxian Guillotine ALWAYS deals true damage based on the number of Hemorrhage stacks and the passive part of Apprehend has percent armor penetration. It is strongly recommended to stack health against him in order to reduce the damage of his ulti unless he buys The Black Cleaver, Mortal Reminder, Lord Dominik's Regards or Blade of the Ruined King.
- ALWAYS remember at level 16, Noxian Guillotine completely refreshes its cooldown whenever he kills someone with his ult. Don't let Darius reach to that point because he will surely to get a pentakill on your team ESPECIALLY when your team composition are all squishies.
