You do realise you're just opening yourself up to being accused of hiding the rest of the team's composition, the opposing team's composition, the state of the game and so forth, right? Faker might have been building Nashors as a situational item since the other team had people he could stick to. It's not like there was a Viktor or Ashe on the enemy team or anything like that.
If someone tries that I'll laugh at them for being too lazy to check a match that's up on Youtube when I gave them exactly what it was. That was match 2, btw.
It was a very standard Diana lane. Faker was against Viktor. Started flask, as normal. Went into Doran's Ring, then an Amp Tome. By that point there'd been a couple ganks mid and he wasn't ahead, so he switched over and got a Negatron, then finished Abyssal. By that point it was nearing the end of lane phase and he was starting to roam around looking for picks and finishing Nashor's. After that, he got Zhonya's.
The match turned into a stomp and ended pretty soon after that. But yes. That's exactly the three-item core I was talking about back during that argument. No rush for flat AP, no MPRegen item, Zhonya's 3rd against an AP mid, Abyssal/Nashor's in the order dictated by the match.
Maybe it's just that it's 6:30 AM here, but are you sure you didn't mistake "snide" for "clarity", because I have no idea what you're trying to imply and I'm used to parsing your passive-aggressive sniping. 
Jeez, if I'm usually passive-aggressive about this than I can see why people get angry, passive-aggression annoys me, must not be self-aware enough to recognize that other people would recognize it as such (which I guess means that it kind of is but ANYWAY)
anyway, you had to go through a friggin twitch stream and post ludicrously low-quality snippets to show your point instead of using something more reasonable like a replay system (for higher-res snippets) and I almost replied to this:
As I said, fuck the heal and give back that easy combo and reliable harass.
with something dumb like "then play like 25% of the other champions in the game"
Sorry, I was a bit rude about that. But yeah, maybe it's just me, but you do come off that way sometimes (though honestly given that it's pretty much all Riot-oriented I can understand that
).
In regards to Darius, it's specifically because of the niche he filled. He was a solid bruiser and consistently decent, but not really a top-of-the-pile pick that's constantly picked/banned. What he
was excellent as, and what I and others often picked him for, was his capability as an anti-lane bully. His kit gave him high base damage and inbuilt scaling, which meant that even if you died a couple times and built tank, you could come out of lane phase without being useless. More importantly, both his kit and his high early damage made him excellent for dealing with a lot of traditional lane bullies -- I loved picking him against Rivens and Teemos in particular, as I've mentioned before.
You had a very strong level 2 all-in that was practically designed to counter other early all-ins; you started Q and tried to land at least one or two before level 2, which was generally only possible against champions that were also trying to establish early dominance (unless the enemy laner just sucked, ofc.), and then at level 2 you grabbed E and instantly did a Q+E+AA+Ignite combo, which was usually enough to secure a kill. Again, only worked if the enemy laner was looking to trade or all-in on
their powerspike.
E is great, both because of the innate Armor Pen, and also because of how it let you fuck with the positioning and timing of champions like, again, Riven, or with a good flash to grab Jayce and force a melee fight on your terms, while he's still in cannon mode (same with Nidalee, back when she was played top). It also did wonders against Garens, especially when they tried to do their Q-and-run-away harass or decided to E the wave just in front of your tower -- E them in, the tower instantly targets them because their E damaged you.
Q is important both as your primary harass tool and as the opening to your combo. I'm fully in favor of shifting the damage ratios further in favor of "Blade = good, hilt = shit" because bad Darius players could still do good damage with bad Qs. The problem with the delay is twofold:
1. It makes your harass much, much weaker. A little-known fact is that Darius' Q has the same range as Teemo's autoattacks. Before the rework, that meant that any time the bugger tried to walk up, you Q'd and walked away, and you'd always come out ahead. It is also long-ranged enough that you can harass champions like Riven, Garen, &c. while being far enough away that they (Riven in particular is notable for this) had to burn abilities to gapclose if they wanted to trade back. What typically happened with Rivens is that either they a) play aggressive, in which case you can force them to burn E+Q+Q2 just to get to you, or b) scared, and are constantly using E to try to avoid your harass instead of to harass you.
He wasn't as good in a straight bully role, obviously, because without anything beyond his E to force fights, a lot of traditional farming champions could play relatively safe.
This is the core of why I liked him.
2. It breaks your combo. Darius' engage was always oriented around the Q->E, and it's even more so now that the damage has been shifted further onto Q's edge. You had to time it exactly to get the full damage on your Q and still get the grab. Q's instant cast also meant that you could weave it into your rotation without issue, because it wouldn't interrupt AAs.
Basically, it was never difficult to tell when Darius was trying to Q -- it was heavily telegraphed, and even people unfamiliar with that would still keep their distance to avoid Es. You had to position well and mindgame your opponent to get them into position to be hit. Now, the delay means that even if you position correctly, enemies have enough time to just walk out during the wind-up, unless you E first, in which case you're doing heavily reduced damage. It also means that after your initial Q, if you want more damage from your Q, you need to stop AAing and walk a bit away, which is the complete antithesis of how Darius fights, as he has no gapcloser and his hook is on a long cooldown.
Anyone who's played Darius much will probably tell you the same thing -- fuck the heal, you're already fine in lane, and by the time you're teamfighting you'll have lifesteal. Yeah, yeah, it's
nice, but not at this price. Q is one of your most important tools, and the delay absolutely kills it. It's as if Riot decided to rework Poppy but kept her ult, only they decided to not make it work against towers or CC effects.
I know I bitched and moaned when they put the delay on Veigar's E, but that one was honestly justified, and it's balanced. It didn't break his ability to combo, it just made it more difficult. This? This ruins Darius' lane phase and severely weakens his teamfight. The only way you're likely to get off reliable Qs now is if you've got someone with good lockdown to work with -- in lane phase that is especially bad, because it means you're calling for your jungler. One of the big upsides of Darius was that you were strong enough and safe enough that you could tell your jungler to focus on helping other lanes, unless there was an idiot Riven or something who wanted to keep giving over free kills.
Remember that earlier example of Teemo's AA harass vs. Darius' Q? Know what happens now? Teemo walks up, autoattacks, and walks away before your Q finishes casting. Know what happens now with Riven? She walks away without using E, or Es into you and takes minimal damage because the cast didn't finish until she was already past the main damage band.
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Topic: League of Legends - Patch 7.22 - Runes Reforged (Read 1233920 times)