hi guys, this is Bartcore and welcome to my first guide. While reading this guide you can play a nice song on youtube like: sporty-o - let me hit it(audiostalkers remix). or something. When i saw Dariusjoining league of legends he immediately caught my attention. i've watched a few matches and builds about him and then he became F2P and i played him a couple of times. Using a guide i saw i did pretty good even while i am only an average player, and it was the first time i actually felt excited making a guide about this character and trying to find the best items for him. I hope you enjoy this guide and give me some reviews. By the way i wanna tell you that im not lvl 30 yet and so i don't have personal experience with solotop and junglers because that doesn't happen in normal games. I do think i have a good view of how things are supposed to go in ranked games so ill try to make this a good guide.
Enjoy!

P.S.
this guide is far from completion, but i wanted to publish it already to show it to friends and maybe for some first impressions from readers.

Pros Very strong one of the best ults very good passive ok survivability (with this guide) Fun to play good at farming and clearing minion waves

SPACE

Cons Darius's controller can be either very good or very bad(explanation in next chapter) a bit squishy early game focused a lot

I think there is a big difference between good Darius players and the not so good ones. First of all, as you read in most guides, dont get all the kills. you have read enough about this probably so ill keep it short. you want your team to win so your team needs kills too or they wont do damage, and 1v5 is not gonna work. Another thing that ihas to be understood is that you should not always last hit with his Noxian Guillotine. Yes his ult is very attractive to spam again and again, but sometimes you wil die before you can land it. At these times you have to ult before killing your enemy. most enemies will run after the true damage of your ult and they die becuz of your Apprehend and Decimate, but when you first got those 5 stacks from Hemorrhage and Decimate him 1 or 2 times, he cc's you and deals a killing blow to you. Also dont stop when someone is healing and you cant get the kills with your ult, cuz after your ult damage your enemy will die because of q and passive. However when you have the chance to, always get 5 stacks of your passive before landing that ult, since it will increase your damage output significantly.

this will be the worst chapter. As i told you im not lvl 30 yet and that's why i also don't have more than 5 runes. Those were bought for fun. I looked at the stats of the runes and i picked the greater mark of desolation, for armor pen. which seemed good to me since you deal a lot of damage and don't want to deal less damage when they build armor.
For seals i picked the Greater Seal of Attack Speed, since you deal a lot of ad even with youre auto attack you want to atttack more often. These seals are gonna help you with that. And ofcourse it stack very good with your passive, Hemorrhage.
For glyphs i picked Greater Glyph of Armor. You are probably gonna get focused by the enemy team since you are doing a good amount of damage, or at least you should be doing. This little armor boost may help you survive.
And finally for the Quintessences the Greater Quintessence of Desolation. You actually get an extra 10 armor pen. from this, which is pretty much.

With Darius i would go for a 21/9/0 mastery tree. He is supposed to deal a lot of damage and your masteries are gonna make sure you will kill anyone under 40% health and you will survive that damage from them thanks to these 9 points in defense. enough said.

I usually start with a Regrowth Pendant and a Health Potion. I don't get low on mana early game so i don't need a Mana Potion, if you do, choose a mana pot instead of health pot. i start with Regrowth Pendant cuz im not walking towards or chasing enemies yet and dont really need that speed from Boots.
then i go ASAP for a philosopher's stone for the extra regen to survive a little longer in lane, and for the extra gold which i really like. You can also choose a Heart of Gold, but i prefer philosophers.
then you do need some speed for that one fleeing champion or after that burst damage when you got cc'ed. after boots i go for Zeal instead of finishing boots. Zeal gives a good amount of movement speed and helps you do much more damage with your auto-attack and passive. then go for the full Phantom Dancer for even more damage and speed.(yes i got this from another build. i tried it and i thought it was really good, so i put it into my own build.)
Then i would complete my Mercury's Treads so no one will escape you anymore, but most of all so you can reduce that cc that is cast on you all the time.
after that you have to look at the opposite team, when they deal a lot of attack damage, go for Phage. Do they deal more ap damage? take that Hexdrinker first! as the opposite team will have both sources of damage finish these items to Maw of Malmortius and Frozen Mallet.
after these items you should survive a lot of damage and you want to slain those enemies somewhat quicker, so you can kill one before the rest of the team shows up to cc you till death. so take a Bloodthirster for 100 extra attack damage after you have slain 40 minions. And now you can stay in team fights where you got hurt a lot by killing some jungle and recovering health.
now you have already 6 items, but remember that philosopher's stone for the gold? It will be a pain to sell because that item helped you a lot, but you want to dominate the rest of the game with your team(!) so sell your philosophers stone and go for a Black Cleaver to slain your enemy faster and let their armor items be worthless.

Are you dealing a lot of damage but do you get killed before you can get the kills? You can take a Guardian Angel instead of Black Cleaver, since you are focussed and they will focus others after killing you, but they are already low on health thanks to the damage from you and your team(!) so they dont see you reviving and then ult them 'till death and happily walk away after.

Guardian Angel way too expensive? keep that philosopher's stone and build it into a Shurelya's Battlesong. you wil get extra health and health regen, get some cooldown to spam Decimate more or use Crippling Strike more to slow the enemy. And you can activate, don't forget to activate items!!, this item to chase that fleeing enemy and Apprehend him, or get away with your team.

Start with Decimate. no other option possible. you are probably solo top, so pulling your enemy so you can auto-attack him once or twice is not gonna help you. with this pretty vulnerable darius you dont want to get that close to land Crippling Strike, so just pick q for that awesome damage and harrasing. also good to clear minions somewhat faster if needed, but don't push your lane that early. ''now pick q again for even more damage right?'' No, when your jungler decides to help you or you harrased the enemy enough to get that kill with maybe an exhaust, you want some kind of cc. with your Crippling Strike you deal ok damage and slow your target, so thats a good choice. But with Apprehend you pull the enemy right into your jungler or into your q, which is a very good option too. Let your feelings decide what skill to pick at lvl 2. at lvl 3 you want to have q, w, and e available for easier kills, so make sure you have all 3 skills available. first max q for maximum damage output, then w for nice slows and last but not leat e, for some extra armor pen. and, ofcourse, upgrade your Noxian Guillotine whenever possible, cuz you want to maximize that true damage.

for the first summoner spell i picked Ghost. Before darius i always used Flash, i think you have experienced that awesome flash over walls and stuff yourself... but for Darius im picking Ghost, because darius has no good skills to escape. With Flash you can go over that wall, but most enemies will have another flash and jump after you, and flash is only helpfull close to walls. for other situations i think ghost is more helpfull, because you can run faster then your enemies and with a slow from w that enemy flashing to you is in a disadvantage. its helpfull for chasing too.

the second summoner spell i choose is Heal, just for that extra survivability.
this summoner spell is very personal, since i think a lot of people will prefer ignite or exhaust. i used these too, but in my games they were not very helpfull to me so i prefered some more survivability.

Cleanse is not bad at all as second summoner spell too.

i wouldn't choose any other summoner spells because i think they are not as good as the ones above.