What kind of annie is that? I'm not a great player, but even at my level of play, no one would be scared of that annie. They'd just turn on her and kick her a**. At best she'd get one person, maybe even 2. There are still other factors in play here.

And annie doesn't do that much damage and would not be able to do that because of cd's and that everyone has mr, at least a 20% reduction in damage minimum.

And annie would have been squisher. . .

With less sustain.

And doesn't have a gap closer so they could have all escaped. . .

Annie's a burst AP mage. Once she blows her cooldowns she's done. So she'd get a triple then have mostly used up her burst.

Darius just locks onto someone, bursts them down, changes targets, and can do the exact same thing again as long as his mana holds out.

Annies Q is on a 4 second CD(Same as Darius Q) her Flamethrower is an 8 second CD(about the same of a non stacked Darius W), She has armor/MR with her E, and her ult does damage over time+Physical damage.

.And with that low life, bursting down 3 and then taking care of a graves with no CC seems pretty easy.

This is an issue that is of paramount importance to us -- all of our champions are assessed from playing against and playing with as well as playing as. Darius is more "selfish" than many -- we knew that even from the earlist iteration -- but we ultimately concluded that he is not the blight on his team some are painting him as. I freely admit, however, that if I were starting from scratch on Darius, this is probably one of the aspects of Darius as a champ on which I would try to improve.

Further, there seems to be a real tension between the two points of view expressed in this thread, one arguing that Darius is wildly op due to his scaling and the other arguing that he absorbs all his team's gold but fails to offer any value to the team. I think the truth lies somewhere in between -- he is certainly not the optimal repository of a team's gold (that title will always go to ranged AD carries), but he is more than capable of putting gold to good use in helping his team win.

I'm off to bed for the night. It's been great talking -- I am back in the office Wednesday and am happy to continue these conversations then.

I don't know what game you're playing. Just today I saw an Ashe yell at his Soraka for not healing him when it was on cooldown. Almost every game the losing team will find someone to blame and gang up on them. Darius not doing all the damage in the team fight is the reason the ult is the problem. He annoys his team by hording all the gold. How about we have the game award gold based on damage dealt rather than killing blows.

Thank you for your time, but it again just sounds like "We understood there was a huge problem and we ignored it because how bad could it possibly be". I don't think it's hyperbole to say that's something akin to an engineer saying "I COULD check my math on this bridge to make sure the weight limit I submitted is correct... BUT my math couldn't be too terribly off because I have a degree in it". It just comes off as someone making a bad decision because they thought they knew what they were doing- all this being said I couldn't do your job I simply don't have the technical knowhow but consider it this way: if laymen like myself and other are able to see a CRITICAL game mechanic flaw with an element of said game, then maybe it's not just us- maybe there is some merit to our claims.

Bottom line, I honestly don't think Darius needed to be shipped as is. Everything about him baring his ultimate is fine- I'm kind of wondering how difficult it could have been to create a different ultimate that utilized his passive WITHOUT creating a detrimental playstyle.

And as for "He's still able to utilize the gold efficiently if he's super fed" this statement is out and out false. There's a point where getting more kills does nothing more for you and all you can do is buy elixers. NEXT is the fact that it is FAR easier to carry a game with two fed champions than one and to say any differently is to imply that it is easier to counter two fed champions at once than just the one.

Darius is a detriment to the game and is simply not fun to play alongside. I'm sure playing AS him is a blast- but when 4 out of 5 people aren't going to be able to be in a position of importance with him on the team- it ceases being a team: It becomes "Darius and his Cheerleaders"

Again though, I'm not saying "Everything you did is wrong and you should feel bad"- that's silly and just wrong. Like I love his passive- it's really powerful and feels like an impactful passive (as opposed to, say, Fiora's which is kind of it's polar opposite except just bad). The idea of the aoe axe swing where the head deals more damage than the shaft was a really cool addition and his attack that has a shorter cooldown depending on the stacks of his passive was also a really nice touch to make a great duelist and a powerful contender in top lane. It's really just his ultimate that's a problem.

Awesome thread thanks!

This is Darius in a nutshell right here.

Cider is like 500 elo wtf

I'd say that this point entirely depends on what item build becomes standard on Darius. If he uses the gold from early kills to grab aura items, oracles, phage and other boons then your team is probably going to be in good shape. If the Darius player builds brutalizer or BT then the games outcome can swing very hard in or against the direction of your team.

A Darius built to do the most damage possible will either continue to snowball on the enemy champions, taking away any fun they would of had because now they have to deal with a snowball that has rolled into an unstoppable avalanche. The other scenario is that Darius builds these items and then gets shutdown repeatedly in fights, which swings the game against your team since your other champions are behind in their builds and must be forced to fight 4v5s without the Darius they were depending on to carry the game.

I think one point that is not often examined is that Darius will get kills early, you can't stop him from getting kills. This is probably due to how he gets armor pen on his E for free and true damage from executioner. The only way to counter true damage is to build health, which means you aren't buying armor for his main source of damage. If you buy armor then you lack the base health to survive his ult.