Season 14 Darius Build Guide

Welcome to my Darius Building fundamentals guide. You will be able to buy items like a Challenger player after reading it. I will break down my thought process for every core and situational item, explain what runes to take and have full build examples.

Over the years Darius has been pretty consistent with the items he buys since the champion doesn't really get changed and pretty much does the same thing every game. He likes to buy AD, HP, Movement Speed and resistances. He is a staple stat checker.

I won't make a section for Summoner Spells since you should ALWAYS take Flash and Ghost.

At the bottom of the guide there will be a video where I play Darius from unranked to Master MMR so you can also see in-game examples.

In this section I will show 3 examples of games I played and explain the thought process I had.

As an exercise, try to think why I bought each item while looking at the image before reading so you can test your knowledge after reading my explanations for each possible item.

First thing you should ask yourself is why I have Doran's Blade instead of shield. Reason being enemy Illaoi took Unsealed Spellbook with Flash & Ghost. My goal here was to just win my lane at level 1 meaning this was the better choice.

You can see I'm trying to get my boots as fast as possible. Looking at the enemy comp Plated Steelcaps is the obvious choice since they are all Physical Damage dealers.

They're almost full melee champions as well meaning I will get a lot more value from Trinity Force opposed to Stridebreaker. Second item needs no explanation as it should be Sterak's Gage like 90% of the time, if not more.

By third item I could see that enemy Twitch was building Ability Power, but even then they have 3 other melee physical damage dealers so armor is a big priority. Dead Man's Plate being the only item giving us both Armor and Movement speed.

The only reason I opt into buying Magic Resistance is the enemy ADC buying AP because now I can actually benefit from purchasing Force of Nature. Reason being that they have enough Magic Damage on top of Immobilizing effects that I can easily reach the 8 stacks of its passive.

And as final item Jak'Sho is a great purchase considering they have both hybrid damage and fights will last more than 5 seconds.

Frozen Heart definitely seems like a good purchase here, but given their ADC can easily stay at more than 700 range of me means that it would only really debuff the Yasuo. With that in mind I benefit a lot more from having an item that gives HP since that is really helpful against all enemy champions; also a stat such as Movement Speed is very important considering all the slows and displacements they have. This then leads you to its counterpart Randuin's Omen, but similarly only one enemy champion deals Critical Strikes and they weren't really investing into that stat either so it's just as if not less useful than Frozen Heart.

One might also think Anathema's Chains is good here with Twitch being the only Magic Damage dealer of the enemy team, but that means he deals a decent chunk of True Damage (can't be reduced) while also not being fed at all, also making that item very subpar.

Showing this one as a good example of a game where Stridebreaker is better than Trinity Force.

Let's quickly explain the easy parts. Doran's Shield because enemy laner is a ranged character and Plated Steelcaps because they are again almost full AD. You might also notice this time I went for the Refillable Potion, this is also because the enemy Top Laner was a ranged character so this allows me to make even or slightly losing trades into positive ones.

The reason we build Stridebreaker is them having 3 ranged characters but also ALL of them have some form of Hard CC. They can either stop me completely or displace me. It's extremely difficult for Darius to stick to any of them in melee range so the passive of this item is incredibly valuable.

I actually bought Dead Man's Plate before Sterak's Gage for this very reason, what I need is to be able to reach them so Movement Speed will benefit me more than Attack Damage, meaning I have to get it earlier and not instead of the other.

You might also notice I bought a Negatron Cloak and just sat on it. One might think Azir is their only damage dealer since Twisted Fate was building AD, but his spells still deal Magic Damage. This is useful when you know you are going to turn the component into a completed item but you don't really need that full item just yet, just whatever stat they give.

After Sterak's Gage I would've purchased Jak'Sho so it's much harder to burst me down in their CC chain. Last item there's definitely a few options since you can stack Force of Nature easily, but might not benefit much from the Movement speed; Ezreal already has Frozen Heart so you run the risk of just "wasting" the passive; Randuin's Omen sounds good but no one in the enemy team bought Infinity Edge, TF just stacked Attack Speed and Jhin built Lethality. Azir wasn't dealing nearly enough damage to warrant you using Anathema's Chains on him, also their hybrid damage makes buying MR actually efficient.

I wasn't facing a weak top laner so I start Doran's Shield. Also rush Plated Steelcaps since pretty much all of Yone's damage comes from Basic Attacks and their jungler also deals Physical damage.

Their entire enemy team is quite mobile and squishy making the extra damage of Trinity Force more valuable than Stridebreaker's active, mainly because hitting multiple targets with it is very unlikely. It's best to all-in a single target and burst them as fast as possible here.

Lots of burst damage and almost 0 CC so we are getting that Sterak's Gage as second item.

Next we need Movement Speed, Armor and HP: Dead Man's Plate suits us perfectly. Their damage is at least 70% physical and are very mobile.

I was definitely ahead but I needed an even bigger gold lead to make up for my team's lack of damage. This is why I bought a Long Sword along my Sterak's Gage. Baron was spawning within a minute of me walking out of base so I was definitely going to fight before I had another chance to base. I couldn't afford to buy defensive components since I needed to look for a fight there.

The extra damage helped me get a shutdown and bot Tier 2 Side turrets, cashing in a total of 2000 gold. Selling it helped me complete Frozen Heart since now I no longer needed that extra damage.

As for the Frozen Heart purchase, I needed Armor to defend against their biggest damage sources, being Kayn and Yone. Of the passives my Armor item options give, this was the most optimal, they have 2 champions with high Attack Speed.

They definitely have a slight amount of Magic Damage outside of Aurelion Sol but not enough to make any of the Magic Resist items a good purchase, so I opt for Anathema's Chains because of that and it's cost. We were in a losing position so if I aimed for a more expensive item chances are I would just lose before I get a chance to complete it, which makes the cheaper option more suitable.