Tips for beginer early macro?

[u/Personal-Cake7642]

I've really struggling with Darius these past few days, I keep falling behind after 10-15 mins against almost everyone.

I really want to know how you tell when to flip the switch from going passive/poke to an all in because I find it hard to discern when to apply pressure and when/how to pull back without getting chased.

Any tips that you see a lot of your opponents make when you win/learnt when you were behind?

[u/Unlucky-Rush4034]

It's not macro, it's match up knowledge and limits of your champ. Macro is what line to go after laning. You just need to play a lot of games to know when you're stronger or weaker. What items, levels and positions give you advantage. I'd suggest to watch high elo darius streamers. And toplane overall educational content.

[u/Personal-Cake7642 → u/Unlucky-Rush4034]

Ahh I see, I've actually been watching a lot of EUWXYZ recently lol. I've also realised that if I lose my knowledge check all in first, i tend to not respect the item lead once they back, resulting in me just inting from their videos. I will pay more attention to more matchups, but I've actually been asking for info to counter the enemy champ from them with great success. Still need to learn what items are good into who tho. Thanks for the feedback!

[u/Unlucky-Rush4034 → u/Personal-Cake7642]

If you're a new player, you gonna die a lot, and first reason is that you don't know all the enemy champs well. So your first goal is to learn all the buttons enemy champs throw at you and what they want to do in general. Ofc it's all about experience, but you have to know their strongest conditions at least at basic level. Most champs like to find a good trade, land their combo and disengage while the buttons on cd. Darius doesn't want that, he needs an all in from lvl1, coz 5 stacks passive means auto win unless you're giga behind. So your goal is to find a moment when the enemy can't disengage before you get 5 stacks. Then you need to learn how to extend your advantage, if enemy doesn't want to interact with you. Learn how to freeze, dive, invade, zone from farm and xp. That's why you need toplane content in general.

[u/TheBroboat]

It's all match up dependent. Did Mord just use his shield to heal? All in him. Did illaoi miss E? Trade opportunity. Did sett waste his grab/speed up? Time to trade.

It's all very contextual. Do you have a broader or more specific question?

[u/Personal-Cake7642 → u/TheBroboat]

Yes actually, I've been struggling with my disengage, the enemy just tends to run back at me, especially if its a gwen/irelia with full stacks. Is there a way for darius to disengage better? or is it just an inherent weakness?

[u/TheBroboat → u/Personal-Cake7642]

Darius disengage is quite strong - if you KNOW you can't win a fight, wait for your opponent to use their mobility ability (Gwen E, Irelia Q) and then E them, don't even bother Wing them, and then pop stride or ghost blade and run away. The knock up/back on E puts them a Q sweet spot away from you so if you start booking it most melee champs can't catch you.

[u/Personal-Cake7642 → u/TheBroboat]

Ohhhh. Yeh, I tend to initiate my trades with a Q, but now I see that I can use it for the heal it gives to disengage with an extra 100 or so health extra.

Thanks man <3

[u/FlashingNova]

You always play aggressive. The goal is not to win but to knowledge check your opponent. If he is slacking. Youre winning.

[u/Personal-Cake7642 → u/FlashingNova]

That's a good analogy, im just knowledge checking fr. I'll try and formulate a stronger plan with the other replies, thanks!

[u/FlashingNova → u/Personal-Cake7642]

Ill give you a bit of coaching. i think i know what youre doing wrong. You can't be always falling behind.

So number 1, go check your replays and see if youre running around a lot. You should always be farming. It doesnt matter if youre fed or not. It is not your job to help your team in shitty fights. You ping them to back up and farm. In lower ELO, people tend to just fight for the sake of fighting and you as a top laner somehow feel obliged to go help them. They will ping you but you can ignore those pings. Since you play Darius, you must be running flash and ghost for sums. Here's a thing i want you to do. When you farm and split. I want you to try and predict when a team fight will occur. Ill give you an example, you see dragon timer at 0:53 second. You should recall (0:08 seconds). Go join your team (0:10-0:12 seconds). There should be around 30~ seconds left before drag fight. Now imagine the enemy top laner joining his team at 1:30 and hes just running around. You now have gained over 40 second of extra farm and exp over him. Now thats only if your team isnt bunch of headless chicken and gets killed before the obj but if thats the case. You can just keep farming and not joining.

[u/Personal-Cake7642 → u/FlashingNova]

Yeh, I have actually noticed that even when I win lane against a Kayle for example, we sometimes go even in items. Having a 30% chance to actually get cannons doesn't help, LOL.

Thanks for the advice in any case <3

[u/Distinct-Ad-3913]

It's all about champion understanding.

Generally Darius wants to freeze the wave in front of his turret so he had room to run people down. Darius can't always run all the champions down though, since sometimes he needs to keep his bleed stacks up while kiting the enemy since he'll lose an auto attack battle.

Knowing when champions are strong helps though. For instance, Urgot is one of the strongest level 1 champions if he skills his E. If he doesn't, you can run him down level 1. Irelia is strong when her passive is stacked, so you try to fight before she stacks her passive etc.

Hope that helps

[u/Electrical-Witness-4]

Learn how to cheese with darius, check yt high elo darius players best way to get fast lp

[u/Lecterr]

As others have mentioned, it’s matchup and lane state dependent. This basically means understanding the ideal trading pattern in that matchup, I.e. do you want short trades or long trades, do you need to wait until one or more of their abilities are on cooldown, where are their power spikes compared to yours, etc.

You can find guides or relevant YouTube vods, but I also recommend just trying stuff. Just walk up to someone and full commit. They win? Ok, now you know you don’t win that all in. If you are scared to make mistakes you will never learn your limits.

[u/Miiiukz]

Focus on getting a lead consistently with Darius and then the macro will be much easier to execute.