Darius full guide

 Darius and his brother  Draven grew up as orphans in the port city of Basilich. Darius struggled to provide for them both, constantly fighting with gangs of older urchins and anyone else who threatened his little brother—even the city guard. Every day on the streets was a battle for survival, and Darius earned more scars by his twelfth summer than some soldiers do in a lifetime.

After Basilich was seized by the expanding Noxian empire, the victorious commander Cyrus saw the strength in these defiant brothers, and they found a home within the ranks of his warhost. Over the years, they fought in many grueling campaigns of conquest from one end of the known world to the other, as well as crushing a number of rebellions against the throne.

Within the empire, anyone could rise to power, no matter their birth, culture, or background, and none embraced this ideal more fervently than Darius. From humble beginnings, he rose steadily through the ranks, always putting duty before all else, and garnering great respect for his aggression, discipline, and refusal to ever take a backward step. On the bloodsoaked fields of Dalamor Plain, he even beheaded a Noxian general after the coward ordered a retreat. Roaring in defiance and hefting his bloodied  axe overhead, Darius rallied the scattered warbands and won a great and unexpected victory against a far more numerous foe.

He was rewarded with a senior command of his own, attracting many thousands of eager recruits from across the empire. Darius turned the majority away, accepting only the strongest, the most disciplined and iron-willed. Such was his fearsome notoriety, even in the lands beyond Noxus, that it was not uncommon for entire cities to surrender at the first sight of his banners.

After a grinding victory against the cloud-fortresses of the Varju, a proud warrior people who had resisted decades of Noxian aggression, Darius was named the Hand of Noxus by Emperor Boram Darkwill himself. Those who knew Darius best knew he craved neither power nor adulation—he wished merely to see Noxus triumph over all—so Darkwill ordered him and his warhosts far north into the Freljord, to finally bring the barbarian tribes to heel.

The campaign dragged on for years, ending in a bitter, icy stalemate. Darius narrowly survived assassination attempts, ambushes, and even capture by the vicious Winter’s Claw. He was growing weary of endless wars of attrition, and returned to Noxus to demand a reconsolidation of the military.

He marched his veterans into the capital, only to find that the emperor was dead, killed in a coup led by  Jericho Swain. The act had been supported by many allies, including Darius’s own brother, Draven.

This was a difficult position. As Hand, many of the noble houses would expect Darius to avenge Darkwill, but he had known and greatly respected the disgraced general Swain, and had spoken against his discharge after the botched offensive in Ionia some years earlier. The oaths of the Hand were to Noxus, not any particular ruler, and Swain was a man who spoke honestly of his new vision for the empire. Darius realized this was a leader he was prepared to follow... but Swain had other ideas.

With the establishment of the Trifarix, three individuals would rule Noxus together, each embodying one principle of strength: Vision, Might, and Guile. Darius gladly accepted his place on this council, and pledged to raise a new, elite force—the  Trifarian Legion, the most loyal and prestigious warriors the empire could produce—and lead the armies of Noxus into a glorious new age of conquest.

Viable Trees

Precision

The  Precision tree is an excellent one for  Darius as both a primary tree and a secondary tree. The keystones all provide different playstyles and there are very powerful individual runes that offer a lot for  Darius like  Triumph. You should be taking  Precision as a secondary tree always when going for any  Resolve tree primary tree setup, and when going for  Phase Rush into easier matchups. It gives you access to  Triumph, along with one of the Legend runes which is immensely useful.

CONQUEROR  Conqueror is the most versatile keystone as it works against almost everything, can be used in most situations and it gives  Darius quite a bit of healing as it synergises with  Noxian Might. Though Lifesteal sucks on Darius, the healing on the rune is very impactful in earlier fights when you have not tanked up that much. Though it has been changed and nerfed in ways that make it slightly worse for Darius, it is still the best keystone for him in the game. It gives you far more damage than most keystones, it makes you a monster in teamfights or fights that last long and it does not take any playstyle adjustment to use. Overall, this is the keystone you want to run 90% of the time.

PRESS THE ATTACK  Press the Attack is a rune that requires you to play a lot more selfishly, as it is a dueling keystone. It makes your split pushing and early laning a lot stronger, allowing you to beat somewhat problematic matchups that can outdamage you in lane. It also helps your bleed stacks guarantee a kill. The sacrifice you have to make when taking this keystone is that  Press the Attack is very bad in teamfights. As  Darius, you won't be fighting a single target in teamfights. You will almost always get focused down. Which is why  Conqueror would work better as it helps you in fights against multiple targets.

FLEET FOOTWORK  Fleet Footwork is a keystone that should only be taken into the worst matchups. It offers no damage, it does not help too much in teamfights and it makes your all ins weaker. It does give you a bunch of movespeed and healing which lets you survive, or even cheese a kill or two against a laner who you normally wouldn't be able to reach. It also has uses in a split push scenario, as it allows you to heal back up so that you can siege better, AND it gives you a little extra movement speed which can help you escape the enemy team when they decide to collapse on you. I'd recommend you to gather some experience with  Darius before using this Keystone.

LETHAL TEMPO  Lethal Tempo is a very situational rune that is also quite tricky to use. The general idea is to damage someone with a Q and then slow them with W or pull them with an E so that you can actually land your autos on the enemy. It helps to be good at managing your auto attacks with this rune, as if you are not able to cancel AA animations, then this rune will be nigh useless on you. Against most competent players, they will be kiting you which won't allow you to fully utilise the keystone at all. It is also only good in duels, as in teamfights you won't be tanky enough to just stand still and AA someone. If you wish to quickly stack up your passive,  Hail of Blades is the better option.

OVERHEAL  Overheal is not a very good keystone for  Darius. Remember that  Darius' Q heals for PERCENTAGE MISSING health so the shield is going to have to come purely from auto attack lifesteal if you do not have a healer on your team. The extra shield scales with 10% HP which is has its uses for  Darius. I won't recommend you take this rune but if you really wanted it, you could opt for  Legend: Bloodline which, along with a  Doran's Blade, would let you stack it up decently quickly in the midgame. Lifesteal isn't too great of a stat for  Darius though.  Overheal is also, vastly overshadowed by  Triumph which works too well with  Darius to NOT take.

TRIUMPH  Triumph is the cream of the crop when it comes to the  Precision tree. It is undoubtedly the best rune by far.  Darius excels at cleaning up fights which is what  Triumph helps you do. There have been COUNTLESS times where  Triumph has saved my life in an important teamfight. It GREATLY helps you fight battles against multiple opponents, with it helping you in the 2v1 when you are trying to fight off a gank.  Triumph is also AMAZING for when you are diving the enemy under their turret. It allows you to walk away with a SLIVER of health and due to it healing percentage missing health, it almost always saves you from the last turret shot. It is too good. Just take it.

PRESENCE OF MIND  Darius has some mana issues. As a lane bully, you will be using your abilities to harass often and can easily go on auto-pilot and waste all of your mana. If you are bad at managing your mana, you will very quickly run out and be left completely vulnerable in lane. But his mana pool isn't that big of an issue to the point where you need to sacrifice  Triumph. Getting your mana back in a fight is nice but it is not too useful, as with proper mana management, you won't be in a position where you will ever NEED to take this rune. You are not  Kassadin. You don't need it. The extra healing from  Triumph is MUCH better. There is no way to make this rune work so don't even try.

LEGEND: ALACRITY  Legend: Alacrity is the rune you want to take from here whenever you are up against a team with either little to no CC, or CC that you know you are going to be able to avoid. This rune is mandatory for when you are planning on building  Black Cleaver, as you need attack speed on  Darius in some form. Even if you are going for [[Trinity Force], the extra attack speed will make you a splitpushing monster. The rune assists in your snowball so if you are confident, this is the one to take.

LEGEND: TENACITY  Legend: Tenacity is a god send.  Darius HATES being CCed and locked down. CC not only allows for your enemies to kite you out, but it also leads to you getting focused down and oneshot because you are not able to properly retaliate. Legend: Tenacity works very well into CC heavy teams and it scales the best into the lategame, as being stunlocked in a teamfight is a death sentence. Sometimes, the appearance of single champions make taking this rune a necessity.  Sejuani,  Braum,  Morgana,  Lux,  Neeko are all examples of champions that force you to take tenacity. This rune is also very useful in certain lanes like  Ryze,  Kennen and even  Renekton due to their stuns being able to stop you from either catching up to them or retaliating.

LEGEND: BLOODLINE Lifesteal is not a great stat for Darius. It helps when trying to sustain and for when you are trying to take jungle camps but it does not help you at all in fights. Life steal/spell vamp on  Darius is not too good on general but if you really wanted it, you'd be better off picking up a  Death's Dance or using  Conqueror. The rune is also designed to scale to late game, as it starts off with no lifesteal. And  Darius is not the best character lategame. You could maybe use this rune together with  Overheal to get the shield without having to build lifesteal ingame but I wouldn't recommend it.

COUP DE GRACE  Coup de Grace used to be a good option to pick up as opposed to  Last Stand before. But now it no longer gives you the additional AD that it used to give which synergised with Triumph so well and together could help turn lost fights around. It is great for early on fights where you need the bleed to secure a kill so you should be only taking it against easy lanes where you want to snowball harder. But overall, it is inferior to  Last Stand. It also does not increase the damage of your ultimate so I'd only take it if I knew I'd be in a position where I can't easily use my ultimate.

CUT DOWN  Cut Down does not work with  Darius at all. You are going to be building health. And even if you build full damage,  Darius has so much base hp that it does not even work. Never take this rune.

LAST STAND  Last Stand is the best rune in this tree. It gives more damage than  Coup de Grace and it is active more often because as Darius, you are immobile which means you will be taking a lot of damage which is what Last Stand helps with. It helps against tougher lanes and it helps in teamfights. You mostly want to take this rune if you are taking a  Precision keystone.

Sorcery

 Darius cannot properly utilise many of the runes in this tree. His immobility however, allows him to make good use of the extra movement speed provided. You mostly will be taking  Nimbus Cloak and  Celerity/ Transcendence along with a Conqueror page for the most part though because Nimbus synergises very well with him. You may also take a  Phase Rush page into specific matchups.

SUMMON AERY  Summon Aery is not a very good keystone for  Darius. The tree itself is not too great but the keystone itself is even worse. It helps in poking but  Darius is not the kind of champion who would get any use out of this.  Summon Aery may proc twice due to bleed but that tiny synergy is nothing impressive. Do not take this.

ARCANE COMET  Arcane Comet is the worst rune in the game for  Darius. Do not use it.

PHASE RUSH  Phase Rush is an immensely good keystone for  Darius that makes certain matchups that were impossible before, entirely doable. Though you lose the potential damage of  Conqueror, you get a massive amount of sticking power. This keystone is going to help against teams who have lots of slows where the movement speed and the slow resist are going to help you exist in teamfights as opposed to being slowed down to a crawl and not being able to do anything. It is great in dealing with kiting champions and, combined with  Ghost, it lets you run very quickly in and out of fights.  Phase Rush is also commonly taken with  Teleport as it compensates with ghost in a way. But there are many situations where  Ghost is irreplaceable. When combined with  Unflinching, it essentially makes you immune to slows.

NULLIFYING ORB Although  Nimbus Cloak is a great rune for  Darius,  Nullifying Orb is a great pick up into certain AP matchups like  Cassiopeia or  Ryze that give you a hard time. It scales with AD which means that once you have your passive activated, you will get a much bigger shield. If  Nimbus Cloak wasn't as broken as it is, this rune might be worth it to take. But at the moment, if you are going Sorcery and NOT taking Nimbus, you are making a mistake.

MANAFLOW BAND  Manaflow Band is a decent pickup on  Darius because his mana pool is not that great. If you are looking to spam your abilities in a lane to poke an opponent, then  Manaflow Band might be a viable option. I'd only recommend it if you are going  Black Cleaver, because  Sheen solves all of your mana problems.

NIMBUS CLOAK  Nimbus Cloak is probably the best rune in this tree. You essentially want  Nimbus Cloak if you are ever going to take  Ignite, as it gives you SOME movespeed to work with. Even without  Ignite,  Nimbus Cloak is great in certain situations, especially for when making plays with  Flash.  Darius' relevancy in game is directly related to whether he has his summs up or not and Nimbus makes your Flash or Ghost plays even more powerful.

TRANSCENDENCE  Transcendence gives you extra Ability haste at level 5, 8 and a new passive at level 11. This is why I like using it more than  Celerity. It reduces the cooldown of your abilities by 20% per takedown which is great.

CELERITY  Celerity gives you a tiny bit of early movement speed which is nice and it amplifies the ridiculous amount of movement speed given by this tree anyway. You can take it if you enjoy the extra movement speed but it is not always necessary.

ABSOLUTE FOCUS  Absolute Focus allows you to do a bit more damage when you are at higher HP and allows you to win earlier trades. But you are playing a character that likes to face tank a lot of damage so you won't be getting much use of this rune. You're better off going for Transcendence or Celerity.

SCORCH  Scorch gives you a decent bit of poke in lane and a bit of early game power. It has a 10 second cooldown so you can use it often if you fight a lot in lane. It is the go to in this section if you are not looking to roam often.

WATERWALKING  Waterwalking is a decent rune if you are looking to roam through the river often. It helps a lot in early river fights and skirmishes, with it also helping in fights around  Rift Herald /  Baron .

GATHERING STORM  Gathering Storm is not a very good rune for  Darius. The AD comes to you later on in the game in a point where it has no impact on anything at all. It is a lategame rune and  Darius is not a lategame champion.

Resolve

This tree is very good for  Darius as it allows for you to pick up a variety of defensive runes that help with most playstyles and matchups where you might struggle.  Second Wind makes some nightmare matchups more doable and  Demolish’ turret destroying power allows you to snowball very hard by taking plates in seconds. It also makes you a very dangerous split pusher, as it, combined with  Trinity Force, leads to you melting turrets.

GRASP OF THE UNDYING  Grasp of the Undying is a good Keystone that  Darius can take. Though there are runes that provide more damage and more utility,  Grasp of the Undying lets you do very well in short trades. This is why it is optimally taken into matchups where the enemy champion will be looking to go in for quick trades and back out like  Renekton or  Riven, or taken into matchups where the enemy champion cannot retaliate properly after you AA them for the stack. This Keystone can also give you a very nice bit of health to work with.

AFTERSHOCK  Aftershock is one of the best runes for  Darius in the game.  Aftershock, much like  Conqueror, both synergises with  Darius’ kit AND is in a great tree which makes it a very good choice. I’d suggest taking it only after you are used to hitting your hooks but with enough experience, that should not be too difficult.  Aftershock makes certain difficult lanes very easy ( Riven,  Akali), allows for you to tank much more damage in teamfights, AND it encourages  Flash+E engages, as without it, you usually get focused down and oneshot.

GUARDIAN You should, under no circumstances, be thinking of taking this rune in a solo lane. Even if you are autofilled and are playing  Darius support, you’d be better off with  Aftershock. You do not have a gap closer like  Braum or  Rakan that lets you quickly get to your ADC to use this rune and as a Bruiser, you will be fighting solo/diving the enemy backline alone a lot. Even if you could use it properly, which  Darius cannot, the shield wouldn’t even be worth it. It is nice to be friendly and work with your team but understand that  Darius is a selfish champion.

DEMOLISH  Demolish is an incredible rune in this group and is probably the one you will be taking every time.  Darius has a lot of lane pressure and can easily take enemy plates. Not a lot of people know that  Darius’ E armor penetration works on turrets which makes it even more effective. This rune helps you split push harder later on in the game and it accelerates your snowballing. It is sort of the  Triumph of the  Resolve tree. Trust me when I tell you that once you start playing with  Demolish, it is very difficult to go back.

FONT OF LIFE  Font of Life is a very terrible rune. As I explained in the explanation of the  Guardian keystone,  Darius is a selfish champion who needs to be great at working alone first, and with his team second. Even if you are playing  Darius support, you don’t have a great way of mass applying this rune. Not to mention how the heal is just pathetic.

SHIELD BASH This rune is unusable.  Darius has no way of generating a shield for himself. You might combine it with  Overheal and  Legend: Bloodline so that you can make shields and make use of this keystone but it is just not worth it. The tiny amount of damage you get from this rune pales in comparison to the sheer power of  Demolish.

BONE PLATING  Bone Plating is a great rune for Bruisers and Fighters in toplane. And  Darius is no exception. You will be wanting to take  Bone Plating into characters like  Irelia or  Kled who will be hitting you multiple times per trade. Taking  Bone Plating into a champion who can easily poke you OR a champion who can attack you and disengage with ease is not optimal though, as this will mean that if your lane opponent is smart, you will be getting no use out of  Bone Plating.

SECOND WIND  Second Wind is the most general rune out of this group and you will be combining it with  Doran's Shield very often to combat lanes with oppressive poke.  Second Wind is great into ALL ranged matchups and even some melee matchups that can either poke often ( Aatrox) or ones that can easily disengage from you. You will be taking this most of the time.

CONDITIONING  Conditioning is the black sheep of this group.  Second Wind and  Bone Plating both make your laning easier whereas  Conditioning does not really do anything until after 10 minutes. However, the buffs to your Armour and Magic Resist that  Conditioning gives is nothing to scoff at. You can take it if you are up against a high damage team, if the team has a lot of big damage dealers and if they have a mix of both physical and magic damage that is difficult to itemise against. The key thing to keep in mind is that you have to make sure that you are laning vs a character where you can easily beat them( Sion) and don’t need extra help in lane from the other two runes.

UNFLINCHING  Unflinching is a situational rune. But it is very effective in such situations.  Unflinching gives you  Tenacity and, more importantly, Slow Resist that can do wonders vs certain matchups and certain compositions.  Unflinching is essentially MANDATORY when the enemy team is populated by champions with lots of slows ( Ashe). You can combine  Unflinching with  Phase Rush to be practically immune to slows or even take it with  Legend: Tenacity to cut the duration of all CC in half. If you are up against a team where Tenacity is not that useful, then this rune is not what you should be taking.

REVITALIZE  Revitalize seems good in theory.  Spirit Visage essentially does the exact same thing but better so when stacked up with it,  Revitalize sounds like a great choice. But you have to remember that it only comes into play when you are at low HP. Not to mention how the healing is honestly negligible at times. Explaining how this rune is bad is hard so you will just have to take my word for it. The Tenacity and Slow resist from  Unflinching and the extra HP from  Overgrowth are things that you WILL be missing when you take  Revitalize. HOWEVER, if your team has a champion like  Soraka,  Janna or  Yuumi who will be healing and shielding you often,  Revitalize would be a very good choice.

OVERGROWTH  Overgrowth is a simple but good rune. If the other two situational runes in this group are not applicable, you can go ahead and just take  Overgrowth. This rune gives you a decent chunk of health. If you like the extra HP from  Black Cleaver but want to go  Trinity Force, then this rune will make up for the lacking health. The best part about this rune is that it works really well into difficult lanes where you won’t be able to farm too much.

Situational/Difficult to use Trees

Domination

The Keystones and the runes in this tree range from completely useless to situational for  Darius. Simply put, the  Domination tree is not good for  Darius in anyway. You might be thinking that the extra healing from  Taste of Blood and  Ravenous Hunter are great but you would only partially be right. Lifesteal on  Darius is NOT a good stat. Spell Vamp/Lifesteal from abilities is BARELY a good stat. Though it helps you heal up and take jungle camps, the healing you get is not going to make a difference 9/10 fights you take. Not to mention how it becomes nigh-worthless in the lategame. I would recommend you to stay away from this tree. You may experiment with it here and there or even take it for fun but overall, the tree is difficult to properly use. It is home to both  Predator and  Hail of Blades which are awkward to use but they both have their purposes.

ELECTROCUTE  Electrocute is not a very good Keystone for  Darius. Now on its own, having the ability to get a bit of burst in short trades sounds great and I agree. But you have to understand that the tiny buff in short trades is not nearly enough to compensate for the TERRIBLE set of runes that the  Domination tree has. Not to mention how  Electrocute won’t synergise with your passive as it procs early into the fight, not later on in the fight which is when you will have your passive activated. Lastly, in Mid-Late game teamfights, you are going to have to kill people VERY quickly. Most of the time, you will only have the time to land a single W or a Q before ulting which won’t even proc Electrocute. So overall, I wouldn’t recommend this Keystone.

PREDATOR There are a few  Darius players in the world that make use of this rune.  Predator  Darius is a very roam heavy  Darius build. It is very unusual, difficult to use, situational and at times, just useless which is why I would not recommend this Keystone at all. Worst of all, it does not really offer much strength in lane which means it is only useful against lanes you dumpster anyway. If you are a player that likes roaming quite a bit, then  Predator might be an okay Keystone. But I’d highly recommend better Keystones if you do not have experience playing  Darius.

DARK HARVEST  Dark Harvest is a very fun Keystone to use, despite not being a very good one. Try it out in a normal game a few times, because once you get ahead and start killing people,  Dark Harvest adds like 300 extra damage to your ultimate which guarantees the execute most of the time. In theory, the synergy might seem very good but not so much in practice. You have to keep in mind that  Darius, once ahead, does enough damage with his Ultimate to people to the point where he can oneshot them from half health.  Dark Harvest is ONLY good when massively ahead but it does not always work with your ultimate. If winning the game is your intention, I wouldn’t recommend  Dark Harvest.

HAIL OF BLADES  Hail of Blades is the only Meta Keystone in this tree. It is very cheesy, tricky to use, easy to counter play when against better players and forces you to use the horrendous  Domination tree. If you do not utilise your slows properly, landing all of the autos might sometimes be difficult. You have to be good at cancelling your AA animations too. With all that said,  Hail of Blades DOES give you a very quick way to stack up your ultimate and allows for you to be VERY DOMINANT in the early laning phase. I’d recommend it against immobile characters who cannot disengage very well, as that way you can just wail on them and get your 5 stacks up very quickly. But you have to understand that  Hail of Blades falls off VERY quickly. The thing in most teamfights is that most of the time, you will be killing people with your ultimate before reaching 5 stacks and getting your passive with the R execute instead of stacking it up fully. Despite that,  Hail of Blades works when the fight begins instead of other Keystones that come into effect only later on in the fight which can be good in certain circumstances. Try it out for yourself.

SUDDEN IMPACT  Sudden Impact has no synergy with  Darius whatsoever. It ONLY activates when you  Flash. And  Flash has a 5 minute cooldown. Utterly unusable. Not to mention how  Darius has Percentage Armour Pen built in already, making the flat Armour Pen nigh useless.

TASTE OF BLOOD  Taste of Bloodis usable but its not very good. The healing it gives in lane is not very high and the cooldown means you can’t proc it often. This rune is better on ranged champions that poke as it gives them access to easy sustain at the expense of their lane opponent.  Darius cannot as easily make use of this rune as he has very low range. As bad as it is, if you ever go Domination you will probably take it as the rest of the runes are horrendously bad.

CHEAP SHOT  Cheap Shot might sound like an okay choice as it has a low cooldown and  Darius has more than 1 movement impairing ability but you have to remember that we use E along with W in a single combo. And also, the amount of damage this rune offers is quite pathetic. It being true damage means nothing. If you have  Hail of Blades and can properly space out your E and W, then maybe you can get more than one use out of this rune. It's either this or  Taste of Blood and honestly,  Taste of Blood is a bit better.

EYEBALL COLLECTION  Eyeball Collection is what you should be taking in this group if you are bad at warding. It is SOMEWHAT useful if you are snowballing and switching to sweeper to get the extra AD from wards but it is a very terrible rune as the extra AD is negligible at best.

GHOST PORO  Ghost Poro is useful if you are going to be warding often, as knowledge of an upcoming gank is very vital. But the better you get, the less you will get out of this rune as you will eventually learn how to track enemy junglers. Overall, I’d recommend this rune as it is more forgiving of wasting stealth wards.

ZOMBIE WARD  Zombie Ward is like  Ghost Poro but you need to be taking sweeper or buying a ton of control wards. Overall, if you are looking to have vision control just take  Ghost Poro.  Zombie Ward might only work if you are trolling as Support  Darius.

ULTIMATE HUNTER The Hunter runes do not work on  Darius. You are not known for ganking other lanes. You will be getting two stacks at most which makes these runes very ineffective for you. Not to mention how  Darius does not even need his ultimate to be on a lower cooldown, as it is low enough as it is. The benefit given by it is miniscule.

RELENTLESS HUNTER As mentioned with the previous Hunter rune, you can’t stack it properly. But out of combat movespeed is SOMEWHAT useful as it lets you get to skirmishes faster, get to midlane for the once in a blue moon  Darius gank and it lets you get back to lane a bit faster. Its not good, but its SOMETHING.

INGENIOUS HUNTER  Darius only builds items with actives in certain games. He can’t even utilise this rune properly. It may be an okay pick if you are running  Predator but honestly, just go  Relentless Hunter instead.

RAVENOUS HUNTER A fully stacked RavenousHunter actually gives you quite a bit of healing with your Ultimate which CAN be useful. But more often than not, it WON’T be. Still, when going for a rune in this group, it is either going to be this or  Relentless Hunter.

Inspiration

 Inspiration is probably the trickiest to use tree with  Darius. You need to be VERY good with him to use these runes and Keystones properly but once you do, you can actually craft great playstyles for yourself. You have to be creative with this tree.  Inspiration is also the go to secondary tree as you need  Time Warp Tonic if you are going to start with  Corrupting Potion.  Magical Footwear synergises with this combo well, as the potion gives you movement speed when you need it which lets you delay your early boots to get an extra 10 movement speed later.

GLACIAL AUGMENT  Glacial Augment is a tricky keystone to use to its full extent. But it can be done. The slow form the autoattack allows you to set up an enemy for a Q without needing to use your W or your E. It also allows you to and encourages you to build  Turbo Chemtank and  Randuin's Omen, as the actives of both items will be great in teamfights. A  Glacial Augment build is a tanky, full teamfight oriented build where you will be looking to engage the enemy and mass apply slows to everyone. I’d say go for  Black Cleaver and skip  Sterak's Gage as you are going full tank. Remember to pick up a  Gargoyle Stoneplate as it will let you engage and then survive your own engage as the enemy team focuses you down. This build doesn’t let you duel or splitpush too well though.

UNSEALED SPELLBOOK  Unsealed Spellbook used to be a very nice choice for  Darius. After trying it out for a while, I regret to inform that it is no longer as good as it used to be. It isn't bad by any means, but it is far too difficult to use properly. It kinda lets you have  Teleport which lets you splitpush without having to worry about your team on the other side of the map but I dunno. This Keystone is the most difficult one to use properly but when done right it can pay off greatly. It is still WAYY TOO MUCH EFFORT for very little gain in my opinion. However, do not let that deter you from trying it out and forging your own playstyle as it is doable.

PROTOTYPE: OMNISTONE This Keystone is like  Unsealed Spellbook but for keystones. You might think that it is also another high skill high reward keystone like  Unsealed Spellbook but you would be very wrong. The rune picks a keystone at random and honestly, you can only take it into easy matchups where getting the wrong keystone wouldn’t screw you over. Imagine getting ready to all in a  Riven level 6 and then getting something stupid like  Fleet Footwork where just picking  Aftershock would’ve been a lot better. You have to know how to use every rune to make it work but again, “smart” or otherwise, it is still RNG. You may try your luck but I wouldn’t recommend it with this specific keystone.

PERFECT TIMING  Perfect Timing is a useful rune. It is situational though.  Stopwatch is an overpowered item and the active can be used very well on  Darius and virtually any other champion in the game. You can save it to survive a dive, to turn around a fight by using it to avoid your opponent’s crucial damage source or even save it for a lategame engage. It also builds into a  Gargoyle Stoneplate or a  Guardian Angel which are both decent pick ups for  Darius.

HEXTECH FLASHTRAPTION This rune is only good for bush cheeses and in very NICHE cases where you have to cross a wall. It may be used to cheese a ranged opponent once but after that one instance, they probably are not going to fall for it again. I would not really recommend this rune at all.

MAGICAL FOOTWEAR  Magical Footwear is a viable rune to run, and it is what you are going to be taking if you are going to go for the  Time Warp Tonic +  Corrupting Potion combo. It synergises with them, as they give you the early movement speed you need in certain fights and give you a kill’s worth of gold along with 10 extra movement speed. But I personally cannot live without an early  Boots buy. You only get the movement speed when drinking the potion which means that all the other times in the lane when you have to dodge skillshots, when roaming and when running back to lane, you are stuck with the default, 340 movement speed until 10-12 minutes into the game. Not to mention how  Ninja Tabi and  Mercury's Treads are sometimes vital early purchases in some matchups and taking this rune does not allow that.

FUTURE’S MARKET  Future's Market is a great rune to take. Often times with  Darius, you are 100-200 gold off your main purchases.  Future's Market allows you to circumvent that. It works really well into difficult lanes where you cannot farm too well as it gives you that little bit of extra gold to build those defensive items that might help you kill your opponent and snowball the lane. Though it is unnecessary into easier lanes, it still helps in certain scenarios.

MINION DEMATERIALIZER  Minion Dematerializer is a tricky to use rune which has a purpose that you won’t be needing if you are going to build any damage. However, if you are going for any full tank build with  Black Cleaver, then you need this rune to be able to actually waveclear properly.

BISCUIT DELIVERY  Biscuit Delivery is a great option to go for if you are running the  Corrupting Potion +  Time Warp Tonic combo but do not want to take  Magical Footwear. The Biscuits give you very nice sustain early against tough matchups. They also allow you to make mistakes. If you take a bad trade that leaves you low enough to be all inned and killed, you can simply take a Biscuit and heal back up some of the damage you took. They also give you a bit more mana to play around with.

TIME WARP TONIC You want to be taking this rune exclusively with  Corrupting Potion. This rune allows for you to have more movespeed early on before you get your first boots,  Corrupting Potion gives you a bit more damage that works very well with  Darius’ bleed AND it lets you survive DOTs like  Teemo Poison or even  Ignite in some cases as it gives you half of the health and mana from all potions instantaneously. It is not my cup of tea but it might be yours.

APPROACH VELOCITY  Approach Velocity does not work with  Darius. You can only apply your CC once you have already reached your target. The only situation where it might work is when you are running in to help out a low HP ally but that is not common enough to take this rune I’m afraid.

COSMIC INSIGHT If you like the Inspiration tree but dislike the  Time Warp Tonic +  Corrupting Potion combo, then you can opt for this rune. This rune gives you AH for EVERYTHING which is very nice. The AH it gives for your summoner spells is what  Darius really loves though.  Flash and  Ghost allow for  Darius to actually be a threat to the enemy backline and having them on a lower cooldown is great to have.

    

Bonus Stats

The stats you take into your specific games are unfortunately, very match specific which makes copying them off the internet suboptimal. It is not too difficult to decide which one to take however so do not worry. You may take double armour into a difficult AD matchup, double AP into a tough AP matchup or Attack Speed+AD into an easy lane opponent that you can kill. Are you good at CSing to the point where you don’t need the extra AD early on? Would the stacking health be better for you as the lane is easy enough early on? Ask yourself these questions and adapt to the enemy. One thing that I CAN tell you to take is Attack speed. You almost ALWAYS have to take early attack speed.  Darius' attack speed scales terribly by level and he doesn’t start out with much which will make duels in lane difficult without compensating for it by using your runes, especially if you go for  Black Cleaver.