Welcome to my guide "Darius, get your Hand off my Noxus". I decided to take another whack at this and use Jhoijhoi's guide to BBCoding along with Panglots Warding helper - More than your eyes can see and Jhoijhoi's Making a Guide

Jhoijhoi again for letting us all use his graphics and guide, and Pangalot for his guide warding helper!

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PROS + Ultimate Noxian Guillotine does true damage. + Apprehend saves lives + damage scales with level very well + can solo red/blue buffs with ease after level 4

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CONS - Tends to get focused early game - Falls behind in damage quickly if zoned even once - usually the focus in team fights due to his Noxian Guillotine - like Shyvana has no chase if on CD

Darius is neither a tank nor a carry he is a mix of both. his Passive Hemorrhage is a stacking Damage of Time, or DoT from now on, skill that, with each application increases his ultimate Noxian Guillotine's damage which in turn deals true damage.

Seeing Darius being built with Armor Penetration items like Black Cleaver or crit items like Infinity Edge seems like a waste for me. and heres why.

• Darius is NOT a carry
• None of his skills can critically hit like Gangplank and Parrrley
• He needs NO armor pen due to Apprehend's passive (5,10,15,20,25)% armor pen.
• Ashe Caitlyn Ezreal and so on... are your carries, your job is to take SOME damage initiate and let them do the damage. then possibly killsteal with Noxian Guillotine
• His skill, Apprehend can be used both to initiate and save teammates, dont be afraid to use it!

Now you might notice there are NO armor penetration Marks, this is because I focus the build around having 35% armor penetration as a PASSIVE from both the offensive tree 10% from Weapon Expertise plus the 25% from Apprehend. and proceed to stack health regeneration from my starting item Regrowth Pendant + Vigor will start you out with great lane stay and lack of needing to "B" without having to get Health Potion's regularly.

• 3/3 Brute Force this gives you extra attack damage which is a great thing to snowball the beginning game.
• 1/1 Summoner's Wrath increases ignites damage, can't go wrong there!
• 3/3 Alacrity increased attack speed, means that your passive Hemorrhage stacks faster to allow for a higher ultimate and more damage.
• 1/1 Weapon Expertise this is your passive 10% armor penetration.
• 3/3 Hardiness Resistance this puts you pretty well on par with tanks at level 1
• 4/4 Durability 3/3 Vigor theses increase your lane stay ability and your overall health/health regen
• 1/1 Veteran's Scars +30 health its great!
• 3/3 Initiator this is bread and butter for the build. the mastery creates the ability to catch champs at the beginning game.
• 3/3 Enlightenment this is great. cooldown reduction is always wonderful to have!
• 1/1 Juggernaut final mastery of the defensive tree. give you a GREAT amount of scaling health along with reduction of disables like Exhaust, Frost Shot, Terrify and so on...

the reason there is just a shallow touch into the OFFENSIVE tree and more points into the DEFENSIVE tree is that Darius works much better as a tankier champion, his Apprehend, Crippling Strike, and Decimate all stack on Hemorrhage. On top of that Crippling Strike which at level 5, does 200% damage and each stack of Hemorrhage reduces the cooldown of Crippling Strike by one second.

Philosopher's stone

I take this item to increase my GP/5. I was finding that my first few games I was really lacking gold AND mana-regen until late game but with this item I can find myself bullying more with less of a loss and more of a gain and scoring those much needed first bloods and killing blows regularly. on top of that it builds into Shurelya's Battlesong.

[phage] is a great tool for champions that like to control movement, I find its usually the FIRST item I build AFTER philosopher's stone. Shyvana is a great example of a champion that needs movement speed controll, she has no way of slowing enemies down or stunning them like scion for example. so she needs a tool to control their movement. Phage applies an on hit effect that allows for movement speed to be slowed, on top of that it builds into Frozen Mallet which is extremely nice combined with Atma's Impaler and Warmog's Armor for a heave + damage increase and some critical hit.

I choose these over [mercury treads] because I'm not aiming Darius at being 100% tank. that comes with his masteries and his runes. Berserker's Greaves allow for a pretty nice attack speed stack combined with Alacrity from masteries it dosnt stack against a full AD carry with Phantom Dancer or other heavy carry items, Darius is more of an offtank than a carry.

this is a great tool to have with ANY health heavy champion in my opinion. it increases damage as your health gets lower. and on top of that if you drop below 30% health you get a 400 damage magic shield that will protect from magic only. This is a great tool when it comes to someone like Mordekaiser and his ultimate Children of the Grave this proc can save you from that easily, even in the form of a just Hexdrinker

This combined with all the health from the DEFENSIVE tree and the health gained from Warmog's Armor you should have about and extra 50-60 damage added without Warmog's Armor being leveled at all. this is a great build item for darius the armor keeps you relatively safe from other damage attacks, where the crit is always nice to see.

this I throw into the build because it compliments Atma's Impaler and also adds a great amount of recovery and survivability. the increased health give you more damage and with more damage you kill more people simple as that!

I encourage everyone to branch out and try new items. these are not set in stone and are just what work for me and my playstyle the best. I do stress that items like Infinity Edge and Phantom Dancer be stayed away from they are carry items.

The items you want to try to avoid are as follows:

• - Boots of Swiftness - these are not very usefull they add no beneficial effects and your increased speed comes from Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed
• - Infinity Edge - your not a carry, none of your spells benefit from crit - thought your autoattacks do but your skills do a lot more damage than if you were an autoattack machine like Graves or Caitlyn
• - Phantom Dancer - same reason as above.
• - Black Cleaver - you have 25% passive armor pen if you need more your team is going to lose anyway DONT FOCUS THE TANK FIRST!.

Plausible items:

• - the bloodthurster - adds a good amount of damage and lifesteal though it only procs off of your auto attacks.
• - Mercury's Treads - adds more tankyness to Darius - though he dosnt scale like a tank does per level with armor and magic resist.
• - Randuin's Omen this item is great when there are AD carries on the opposing team.

Flash and Ignite are two skills that are great for Darius. Knowing how much damage your current stacks of Hemorrhage can do as far as bars of health on a champion (one bar of a green health is equal to 100 health) its great to know that you can stack up 3 Hemorrhage and use Ignite then run away and even a Health Potion wont save them. be careful though because Hemorrhage says it deals the orange (+11) damage but it actually converts that damage to Magic damage. so be aware of the enemy resistance stacking when using those two in combination.

Flash has to be a great summoner spell its widely accepted as both and escape tool and catch tool. this has lead me to many great Flash in to a turret and then Ignite and run for a kill, moments.

try to steer clear of the summoner spells like:

• Heal - this summoner spell isnt usefull unless your a support toon or someone who runs off health like Vladimir or Mordekaiser
• Clairvoyance - your toon is not support
• Promote - kind of useless beacuse of Darius's damage output even when solo laneing
• Clarity - you dont have enough mana to justify this spell
• Surge - kind of useless unless your a carry even then its not to great
• Revive - oh god why...

these are some of the acceptable summoner spells:

• Ghost - this can be a great escape tool for someone like Gangplank
• Exhaust - thought I personally dont use it because of Crippling Strike I have toyed with it and it is very viable.
• Teleport - use if your solo laning it can help in downtime to B

If you get the change to duo lane with someone such as Singed with Fling or Volibear with his Thundering Smash these can be some devastating combinations. using your Apprehend and having them use their throwback and then Crippling Strike combined with Sky Splitter or Mega Adhesive you can keep people pretty well contained and controlled.

When plaing with or laning with a champion such as Veigar make sure you dont use your Apprehend when his Event Horizon + Dark Matter combo as you will pull enemy champs aways from his Dark Matter and really piss the little guy off.

There are a few things to keep in mind when paying Darius. you want to make sure the timing between his Apprehend and Crippling Strike is correct. When playing his "W" skill ( Crippling Strike) is an attack reset. meaning if you time it correctly, you can get a double attack faster than Master Yis passive Double Strike if you have 5 Hemorrhage stacks the cooldown is roughly 3 seconds with this build.

the sequence your looking for would then be Apprehend -> melee attack -> followed by an immediate Crippling Strike. this will maximize your damage output.

Also a good range to know/remember is the zoning of your skills. By zoning I mean where they can and cant hit. like most summoner skills Apprehend actually reaches a little bit further than the actual skill highlight shows, same goes for Decimate.

for Decimate there's a special zone it has inside its zone. just like Nidalee's Javelin Toss, Decimate has an outer ring where the further they are from you the more damage you do to them, 50% plus the 100% in fact. here are some pictures where the RED ARROW is, is where this outer area is. notice that anyone standing in your name is hit by this area that's a good marker to remember. check bushes with this skill. You'll notice a blood-trail follow your axe if someones in the bush and gets hit by it.







Decimate

Simple as this. look at panglot's guide here and learn about warding it helps the game so much, you can keep others from dieing and keep yourself more. AND BEST OF ALL ITS ONLY 75G!

5/28/12 - added items to avoid and plausible alternative items.
5/28/12 - fixed some bbcoding errors.
5/29/12 - tried a few games with lucidity boots - swapped in place of Berserker's Greaves