darius is considered OP just because how he's usually in the spotlight (taking quadra and penta kills)
he's like the champ that grabs the most attention just by doing those quadras and pentas..that's why we have those who are "secretly OP" or "sleeper OP", they are really OP but they're just fading from common sight.

now, is he actually OP? I hardly think so, he's a cleanup crew most of the time, just dunking people with 700-900 true damage. seems OP? well, try taking down your enemies down to that 700-900 hp level by your own. you'll notice that if you build damage, you're ****ed and is dead within the duration of 1 polymorph. if you build tanky, your scaling abilities are laughable. his strength is only damage damage damage damage, but yet he needs to get close to do that and so is susceptible to kiting champs like janna, ezreal. other than that, a mediocre single target slow, but a good apprehend is borderline gamechanging if you can drag 3-4 champs and a cleanup ult designed to "kill secure".

Wasn't the consensus already that he wasn't op?:/

Sort of.

Some said he wasn't really OP. Heaps of people whined about him and said he was because "He pressed R and I died quick and stuff!"

At the same time though, I do think his kit is very toxic and really isn't nicely designed. I think it needs to be changed to be more team friendly.

Yes he may not be OP, but his kit needs to be looked at. It has got to be one of ths most poorly though out kits that we've had in a while. Its like pre-rework Kat. So much power is held in the ult, that as soon as one person gets low, its R,R,R,R,R. I would be all for removing some of the power from his ult, and giving his normal skills some hemorrhage bonus.

While this sounds great on paper, as I explained in the OP I just don't see this working. If you transfer power, then he loses what makes Darius... well, Darius. He will have long cooldowns, okay damage, and an ult that is ok as well. He will be a little underwhelming I think. This is the problem with his kit. His numbers can be changed, but he is either going to be far too strong or far too weak

damn thats a good analysis.
red response?

I'd love one.
I would actually love to hear what a red has to say about this and what they agree with and what they don't agree with. I do think Darius needs a kit change, despite his balance being solid.

awful early game? great late game?

in my experience darius will out trade any melee character in the game until mid game, where he shines, darius has a good chance with his high damage early game to score kills even in a 2v1 gank situation... late game he suffers from terrible mobility and an extremely high cooldown on his gap closer

not saying darius is op (just anoying) but how does his passive "scale poorly"? many passives dont get bonus scaling at all and the base dmg of one stack isnt even that bad compared to some other dmg based passives(ori, gp,lulu,lux alistar). might edit some more into this but decent read so far just long

It scales poorly because it goes up to a maximum of 36 damage over 5 seconds. Lets say you have 175 AD. Late game, that means you do 175 x 0.3 + 36 = 88.5 magic damage over 5 seconds (17.7 damage per second). Although that is for one stack.

It doesn't make a huge difference. It can get some last second kills and helps out with your ult, but it isn't the BEST passive. It is a very good passive though. I didn't say it was bad. The poor scaling is made up for the fact that it stacks.