You obviously haven't been a part of an Enemy Darius PentaKill.

The main issue why people hate Darius is two-fold:

1. Darius' kit is actually quite mediocre and doesn't bring much to the table EXCEPT for his ult.
2. People seem to not understand that Darius cannot carry games because of this. If your team has a Darius, then you'd better have an AD carry who AFK farms REALLY WELL, because if that Darius ganks lanes your carry will almost never get kills.

Because Darius can clean up so well (entire enemy team is low - Darius penta-kills them with his ult refresh), he leaves little room for the AD carry to actually get fed. This wouldn't be an issue except that Darius himself needs to build defense items to stay relevant, and so late-game all the kills that he takes from the AD carry mean that the enemy AD carry will be able to wreck your own, and Darius can't do a **** thing about it (his ult isn't strong enough to 1-hit KO, and the rest of his kit doesn't pump enough burst for him to act as a carry, since the rest of the enemy team can simply protect their AD carry after Darius burns his ult).

Basically, Darius APPEARS OP because he can mop up so well. However, without a good AD carry who can get enemies low enough for Darius to mop up (requiring the AD carry himself to be fed, which means Darius must give up some kills), Darius is not a very big threat as long as your team has some health items.

Darius is like the noob stack items you buy.

He has as strong early game.
He steals all his teams kills, get's incredibly fed and then....
Has a horrible late game and his team loses because the enemy team plows through them.

So he's like those items because he looks good at first, does good, but really sucks when it comes down to it.

I enjoy the general logic found in people claiming he isn't op. If you play better than him, have better people than him on your team, have everybody work together really hard, you can beat him. While he is just chillin by himself, not trying. Sounds op.

That's where you're wrong. Darius cannot own enemy teams "by himself". In fact, by himself he's not a real threat if you don't attempt to soak damage (you actually dodge his skills and you play decent). The issue is that Darius is the perfect mop.

After you quadra-kill the enemy team - and, more importantly, you're low on health - Darius becomes dangerous because his ult refresh lets him destroy your whole team in seconds.

While, at a glance, that appears OP, Darius really depends on his team to do well. If his team isn't fit to team-fight properly, Darius will be unable to perform his duty as team mop.

Those who claim Darius is OP because he can destroy enemy teams are half-right. He is capable of destroying enemy teams only when his own team is competent enough to do well without him. In essence, Darius is, as Pet Katherine so aptly put it, a stack item. He's good in-theory, and he's good for pub-stomping matches when you KNOW you don't need to clutch carry your team because they're good. But in competitive line-ups, he's rather mediocre as a solo top since he:

1. Does not scale well damage-wise into the late-game. Compare him with someone like Jax or Olaf and you'll see they have INFINITELY more burst than Darius. Darius' kit is designed around his ult. Without it, he can't do more than mediocre burst (and his sustained damage is hurt by the fact that, as a bruiser, he needs to build defensively to survive) and since his ult is usually burned when team-fights are OVER, he doesn't over much in the way of damage potential during fights.

2. Sucks kills away from his own carry. Unless his AD carry is being played by someone who AFK farms the whole game and NEVER leaves lane to get kills, sooner or later his team will realize that the AFK carry is gold-starved since he's been getting the equivalent of support-level gold from ganks, and has been wasting time ganking out-of-lane when he could be farming, only to have Darius sweep up all his kill gold and leave him meager assist gold.

You know, based on how Darius seems to be essentially focused on just early-game dominance with a fairly mediocre kit outside his ult (which, as honorablegeneral mentioned, can become a liability to the team), i'm surprised that there aren't more Darius players asking for a rework of his 'anti-fun' role in a team.

It's like he's a one-trick pony, but that trick also incites rage in teammates if they lose. Hm.

Darius may be a one-trick pony, but it's hard to see that when the sheer magnitude and awe of his trick blinds people to anything else.

In competitive environments, Darius is a situational pick, mainly against tanky tops who can't really be taken down except with true damage. Even then, he's not a top-tier pick since his kit, again, emphasizes cleaning up and early-game dominance over late-game team-damage.

In pub-stomper environments, Darius is king. Similar to how many Twitch players were pacified by the fact that Twitch could pub-stomp well (despite being easily countered in high-elo environments), Darius players don't really see his problems because they're too busy gloating about getting their first penta-kills ever (he's the easiest champion to achieve a penta with - even Karthus is harder because Karthus requires low magic-resist-geared enemies).

AP Noob Decision:
Do I pick Mejai's or...

AD Noob Decision:
Do I pick Darius or...

I agree with you and all, but something I don't understand about these forums... How OP = Unbeatable? They don't exactly mean the same thing, but hey, maybe it's just me. Anyway, yeah, good topic. Also I haven't really seen many people posting about Darius recently, I think he's fine.

Fighting a Darius... meh , ill just use jayce

Fight with a Darius... KS town