Bruisers are having some decent comebacks lately thanks to all the innovative items that are released in Preseason 2021. Darius is also one of them.
At the beginning of Preseason 2021, we had witnessed the dominance of tanky champions. Due to the undeniable power of Sunfire Aegis, it created a shockwave of champions such as Amumu, Malphite, or Dr. Mundo with an insane amount of health and still provided impressive damage output.
After some patches, Riot Games started pushing out adjustments in order to balance the Rift. In Patch 10.25, lots of Bruisers who are half damage/half tanky are becoming more popular on top lane. Some of the highlight faces are Aatrox, Camille, Renekton, and Darius.
At the Korea server, Darius’ pick-rate starts rising higher and higher in the 2 recent patches. Darius reaches 6.24% pick-rate and achieves 51.96% win-rate.
Contents
Build
This build was captured from Europeanbuilds.
Rune
Rune for Darius nearly doesn’t have any change. Conqueror is still the perfect choice for him. This keystone will provide decent healing for Darius in 5v5 team fights. With the help of Nimbus Cloak, Celerity, and Stridebreaker, they will help Darius achieves an insane amount of Movement Speed that he really needs to bring down his opponents.
Items
As you can see, the major differences really come from Stridebreaker. In the past, Darius is a half/half champion. He would usually rush Trinity Force and then later on by snowballing his enemies to finish off his item set with tanky items. Now, with Stridebreaker, he can go all-in in tankiness. This item set provides him tons of tankiness and survivability but still maintains his damage due to almost all of his damage comes from his Passive and Ultimate.
Stridebreaker:
- Unique – Heroic Gait: Dealing physical damage grants you 30 bonus Movement Speed for 2 seconds.
- Mythic Passive: Each Legendary item will provide an additional 3% Movement Speed Bonus.
- Active – Halting Slash: Dash up to 200 units and deal damage.
With Stridebreaker, Darius has everything. It provides a Movement Speed bonus for him while he is attacking, empowers other Legendary items for Movement Speed, and also has a unique active which can help Darius dash in a small distance. This is the item that is made for him, everything he lacks is Movement Speed, and the ability to close the gap.
Playstyle
In the early stage, Darius can easily out-trade any of his opponents with his Passive – Hemorrhage. It is crucial to gain advantages in the early stage in order to start snowballing your enemies. According to some statistics, he is the champion with the highest win-rate when the timer reaches from 20 to 35 minutes mark. This is when he shines with 2 or 3 items. At the matches are starting to be dragged later and later, his efficiency will start dropping where the enemies’ Marksman and Mage can kite him in a safe range.