Let me preface this by saying: The majority of people I play against (at least 1 every game) in normals are 1800+ elo, I dont know if there is a separate unseen matchmaking system or if I'm just extremely unlucky.

I feel like Darius deserves his own topic and question because not only is he a bruiser, hes basically a god at lvl 6 on TT. The new strategy I see being used lately seems to rush teamfight on altar at lvl 6 with darius, for the rest of the game he bush camps to insta kill anyone on your team with true damage. So you get no altar or you get aced until hes strong enough to ace you under turrets with unstoppable ult. It's out of control he does absurd true damage to the whole team and naturally very tanky. To build against him you need high damage (his natural high health), cc (to get as much damage off before he can press q+r and kill you), High health (to survive his true damage ultimate), Magic resist (his passive is insane magic damage). It just takes too much to counter this one champion hes insane absurd and out of control, I feel like this is getting no attention and being severely abused.

TL;DR: Darius literally can solo ace teams with very little skill and almost impossible to kill before he kills all 3 of your team. RIOT STAYS SILENT WHILE I PLAY WITH/AGAINST DARIUS EVERYGAME.

P.S. if you try to out play a darius and say zhonya hourglass his ult during animation it will not take the cooldown on his ult and he can just use after hourglass is over. If you try to dash away during his ult animation and successfully land 20+ft away his ult will trigger the damage and do 35%+ of your hp in true damage. There is no escaping the ult it is unstoppable and can be used 3 times a fight even if he only gets the assist (aka q+r you at 100% his teamate finshes u he does that to your partners).

yes I'm mad. This is unbelievable how impossible he is. Yes cho gath. Yes even high hp armor builds dont stop his insane dot magic damage. Yes my god riot do something.

We're going to be trying a few tweaks to altar mechanics (and maybe also speed shrines) to try to knock bruisers down a notch or two.

The Zhonya's thing is pretty interesting though. I'll ask around about that particular interaction.

Thank you for responding, good to know at least you have acknowledged the arguement.

In addition, yes try the zhonya's thing, also try flashing at the very beginning of his ult animation. One would naturally expect if you flash or dash or somehow get 10+ feet away from him before the ult hits you, the MELEE attack will not go off. This is wrong. From the moment he jumps in the air to ult the damage is unstoppable so if you try to skillfully flash it and escape the teamfight say goodbye to your 5min cd because even though you landed across the altar/5ft away etc you will still take that damage.

I think it works with Fizz's troll pole and things of that nature as well. It also still has a grace period where it resets when it shouldn't sometimes.

I know I shouldn't respond to this but it's people like you that ruin this game.

On this account (that I play with friends on I'm gold on 4 teams platinum on 1), on my main account I'm diamond in 3s and gold solo q. I know how to play and btw darius is insane.

-and i just looked you up to see 1200 elo -.-

IMO, if they did what they did to Skarner ult they should do it to all melee range casts. This would improve counterplay without being too frustrating because if it doesn't cast it doesn't go on cooldown either.

Eh the Zhonya's thing is expected. It works the same way as Vlad's pool, Elise's jump, or Fizz's hop. Darius rises into the air, but never connects with it, so the cd never gets checked if the hero died or not. It works the same way as Skarner's ult does, there is a windup before the move actually connects, and if you disjoint Skarner's ult it doesn't go on CD either. It seems inconsistent with other spells in the game (i.e. Taric's dazzle or Sion's stun which do go on CD right after cast, not on connection), but those tend to be ranged skills rather than a bit closer like Skarner and Darius. I believe Singed's flip works the same way, the displacement must occur for the CD to start (it has an extremely short windup).

Although I do notice that if you cc Darius during his wind up, it still follows through, akin to Ezreal's and Lux's ult. Not sure if intended or not, although Riot has mentioned that Ez/Lux's ults were meant to function like that.

In regards to the altars, it's not just Darius that is a problem, it's all bruisers. Altars require a champion to be on it for it to be contested, so squishy champions simply cannot do anything about it other than poke away and sadly watch the altar be locked for 90 seconds. Maybe a dominion style counter would be prudent. Champions that stay on the altar start capturing it, damage source stops them for countering for a very short period. This allows ranged champions to actually have some influence over captures and leads to more dynamic altar engages, rather than simply take the beating and scram afterwards.

I also found it confusing that in a map with no wards, a speed shrine was also placed. Yes this makes ganks fast and furious, but it leads to scared play, where you don't venture too far from your tower in fear of being ganked. I agree that wards should be removed in such a small map (requires almost no gold investment to be safe from ganks for both lanes), but a speed shrine tips it over a little. Maybe have the shrine ramp up speed as you stand on it and decrease when you leave it? Or simply have a decaying speed buff when you move off it.

Overall TT feels much better in that jungle isn't reduced to essentially Nunu, Lee, and Shyv (although they are still godly), ganks are easier to come by, and pushing isn't punished by turtling. It's just frustrating that bruisers control most of the action (although being balanced around 5v5 does make it a problem for 3v3s i.e. Olaf only having to deal with 3 sources of incoming damage rather than 5), and altars don't help this issue.

Thanks Nome for your time, I was a fan of Nome's Wisdom back in HoN haha.