Getting a gold generator can help out the long run if your having a hard time getting kills, but not necessary. Depending on your role you may want potions and/or wards (what kind depending on if the enemy has decent stealth capacity), and starting with boots since darius is a bit slow and a melee only champ (ex: blitzcrank is a hybrid having some ranged abilities but biased towards melee).

Depending on which damage dealer is the strongest of the enemy team determines whether you get chain vest or negation cloak first, but both would be a good idea to get early being the tank or offtank. Mercury treads and phage are the next purchases to bump up your survivability and threaten potential. Frozen heart and force of nature are your primary defensive items, mobility is key against ranged champions (such as ashe or teemo) and the aura helps your team against those spamming attack speed items.

Next build the frozen mallet and sunfire cape, the mallet allows you keep your slower teammates in range while giving you what every tank needs (damage and health), we're not building a wall here (we would go with warmogs and thornmail instead). Sunfire cape will help clear waves of minions and add constant damage on top of your actions.



The 6th item is up to personal preference and situation, after words grabbing an Oracle's Extract to keep an eye out for any incoming traps:

Wit's End makes you more of a hybrid damage dealer, giving the enemy a hard time to counter while boosting your resistance against casters.

Madred's Bloodrazor is your antitank weapon, but the extra armor can help against a dps team, not to useful if they haven't built hp items though.

The Infinity Edge is a favorite if you want to punish them for not building against physical damage, it'll shred what the Bloodrazor won't. But having both will make you a serious threat, however you need to sacrifice defense to do that.

Maw of Malmortius is an interesting choice, a splice making you more powerful the more punishment you take, with a clutch shield on top of damage and magic resist bonuses.

Banshee's Veil is only useful (practically) against a mage with only 1 crowd control ability, in team fights it won't be much help as you'll be the closest to the enemy.

Warmog's Armor is handy if they have a lot of burst, it'll drastically increase your survive-ability, but you probably won't be able to solo a few specific champs since you wouldn't have many damage items.

Aegis of the Legion is more of a support item, not a bad one with it's combination of stats as an aura.

Ionic spark is more of a shock and awe item, allowing you to clear waves of minions in seconds while granting more bonus damage if chasing. Having the second highest attack speed boost is nice for being an attack damage carry.

Phantom Dancer gives the biggest attack speed and movement bonuses. Making it a great choice to stick to opponents and cut them down quickly.

Executioner's Calling grants nearly 20% life steal by itself, rather impressive but its passive is more for utility. While it's only 4 damage per second for 8 seconds (only +32 bonus damage), it does prevent your victim from recalling, giving you more time to find them if they break line of sight.

Bloodthirster is a snowballing item (working on minions too) that is favored by many attack damage carries, giving 100 attack damage and 20% life steal at full power, but looses power with death.

Eleisa's Miracle is an alternate choice if you want to go with boots of swiftness or mobility instead, while granting resistance to crowd control effects.

Wriggle's Lantern is obviously the choice to go with early if your jungling, but you might want to keep your gold generator longer.

Guardian Angel is a nice combo of defense, and useful if you need to buy your allies time or to annoy the opposing team.

Tiamat like the Ionic spark is more for clearing minions out quickly. But increases your attack damage instead of attack speed, but has decent regeneration properties.

Note that Last Whisper and Youmuu's Ghostblade don't function efficiently since the armor penetration doesn't stack (LW) or degrades you passive (YG). Though the damage and cooldown reduction are handy, don't bother with these, they're not very effective.