Aatrox. Gameplay, Lore and Fantasy.

I've recently read that a full redesign of Aatrox was planned and that we should see it sometime after the Swain rework. Well the Swain changes are here and I still stand by what I've said in the past, hopefully I can convince some players and/or rioters here, and what I've said I still say is Aatrox does not need a major rework to be competitive or balanced, does not need a major rework to better match his gameplay to his lore and does not need a major rework to deliver on the "fantasy" of a demon/blood-god.

I know this will most likely have no impact or deterrence on future changes to the Champion but I will say it anyway.

The Biography of Aatrox copy-pasted from the Champion/Story.

"Aatrox is a legendary warrior, one of only five that remain of an ancient race known as the Darkin. He wields his massive blade with grace and poise, slicing through legions in a style that is hypnotic to behold. With each foe felled, Aatrox's seemingly living blade drinks in their blood, empowering him and fueling his brutal, elegant campaign of slaughter.

The earliest tale of Aatrox is as old as recorded history. It tells of a war between two great factions remembered only as the Protectorate and the Magelords. Over time, the Magelords won a series of crushing victories, leaving them on the brink of obliterating their sworn enemy forever. On the day of their final confrontation, the Protectorate army found themselves outnumbered, exhausted, and poorly equipped. They braced for inevitable defeat.

Just when all hope seemed lost, Aatrox appeared among the ranks of the Protectorate. With but a few words, he urged the soldiers to fight to the last before throwing himself into battle. His presence inspired the desperate warriors. At first, they could only watch in awe as this unknown hero cleaved through their enemies, his body and blade moving in unison as if one being. Soon, the warriors found themselves imbued with a potent thirst for battle. They followed Aatrox into the fray, each fighting with the furious strength of ten until they had won a most unlikely victory.

Aatrox vanished after that battle, but the Protectorate army's newfound fury did not. Their surprising triumph led to many more until they were able to finally return home victorious. Their countrymen hailed them as heroes, but though they had saved their entire civilization from destruction, darkness lingered in the mind of each warrior. Something within them had changed. Over time, their memories of battle faded, only to be replaced with a grim revelation: their acts of heroism were, in fact, brutal atrocities committed by their own hands.

Tales like these appear among the myths of many cultures. If they are all to be believed, Aatrox's presence has changed the course of some of the most important wars in history. Though these stories remember him as a savior in dark times, Aatrox's true legacy may be a world filled with conflict and strife."

Gameplay: So why is Aatrox bad or feel bad? Aatrox, it seems, was given low base health points as a balancing act for having access to a Guardian Angel Passive from level 1 as well as a great healing 3-hit passive on his W. His Passive also provided attack speed based on how much of his Blood Well(rage bar) was charged, a charge that also was consumed and determined the amount of health you would get from the Guardian Angel effect, or atleast that was old Aatrox, we'll get the the new passive too. So now what did this mean for the gameplay of old Aatrox? One, you really want to use your 3-hit heal to make up for poor stats during fights, and two, you don't want to use Guardian Angel effect unless your teammates could end the fight while you are in stasis. And here we get the difficult part of the old Aatrox kit, your 3-hit heal is best when below 50% health as it doubles the healing (x4 if it lines-up with phantom hit I think, RIP), here's what I mean by difficult, to use this part of your kit, a very strong part of it, you have to take a already low health pool and sacrifice half of it, but then you have to heal through whatever comes at you to not lose the attack speed by having your Guardian Angel go off. Well if your healing at double the rate you might pull this off but there are many effects working against you such as any form of crowd control that can stop, slow, blind or dodge your basic attack rate, strong bursts of damage that can match 50% of your max health so Champions with executes work great here but also something like Cho'gath R, etc. There's also Coup De Grace. There were also some points of confusion in his kit thanks to the % of current health costs on Q(10%) and E(5%). One is, and I'm not joking here I've read comments like this in the past, Aatrox is too squishy and its pointless building health on him because of his health cost, and two, charging his Blood Well is hard or takes too long. Ok so for number one lets make the math easy, say Aatrox has 1000 max HP and uses Q, at full HP Q costs 100HP, now say we buy 1000HP and now his max is 2000, at full HP Q costs 200HP. Yes, the HP used by Q did double but the cost did not it is still 10% of current health. This is also relevant to surviving under 50% HP for your 3-hit heal, 50% of 2000 is still more health than 50% of anything less than 2000, obviously. Now for number two, charging the old Blood Well, I might be forgetting the details here but I think it was whatever amount of HP was paid as a cost of Q, W, or E was added as a charge to the Blood Well, so the HP cost on W was different from Q and E in that it was a flat HP cost so no matter what your current health pool was it would always charge your Blood Well the same amount, not so with Q and E, Q alone could charge just about 50% of your Blood Well when used at full health but when low on health, for example, when your coming out of stasis from your Guardian Angel, that just emptied out your Blood Well, this is what stood out to players and why it was perceived as hard to charge, Blood Well is hardest to charge when you need it the most, that is when your Guardian Angel is gone and your below 50% health, you need the attack speed to start exploiting your 3-hit heal but the only thing that will generate that charge is your 3-hit damage passive.

I wanted to explain old Aatrox first because I don't think he was well understood, which led to the small rework that is currently live. I think many players viewed him as a lifesteal centric champion, a mix of fighter and assassin as stacking AD and lifesteal would give him high burst and dueling potential. the Problem here is CC and team fighting, Aatrox is not very sneaky unlike real assassins and his infamous Q is unreliable for comboing since it can be interrupted and his combo in general is slow and easy to react to, also once he jumps in with Q he has no way out. Aatrox currently is seen as more of a tank/fighter mix because of the change to his 3-hit heal now scaling based on missing HP and not AD but I think this was the case with old Aatrox as well simply because it is easier to survive below 50% HP if you have the max health and armor/magic resist that a tank does.

So on to new Aatrox, the problems that this rework solve are mainly relieving his poor base health from the oppressive health costs as well as retaining the passive attack speed as well as the new base AD boost from the new Hellbent mode. The problem introduced is this, before, aside from 0% Blood Well you always had some amount of attack speed from your passive and your Guardian Angel was always available, now, aside from 100% Blood Well you no longer have ANY attack speed from your passive as well as no Guardian Angel. And while before Blood Well was situationally hard to charge now it is always hard to charge with the exception of R activation hitting multiple enemy Champions. There are a lot of good things with the new Aatrox but the probelms introduced go to far in a attempt to balance his strengths and I feel that this has always been Riots outlook towards this Champion, overly cautious, better an underwhelming Champion than an overbearing one, and I dont disagree with that but the reason Aatrox is bad or feels bad, to finally answer that question, is becuase this is not the same treatment other Champions get, an easy example of this is the reworked Warwick throwing all caution to the wind, he gets the great base stats, the innate tankiness, the great sustain even tripled under 25%HP, the crowed control, the mobility and the damage but on the bright side no Guardian Angel. It is not that Aatrox is bad it is that the competition is horrendisly overloaded.

So to sum up gameplay, Aatrox does not need a major rework to be competitive or balanced simply tune in him in the same manner you would other popular champions, I hear Ekko is getting 10% bonus attack speed level 1 to improve his jungling...

Lore: So the reason I pasted the Bio of Aatrox here is that anyone who reads this post has a quick way to read for themselves what his Bio actually says. I personally think that when it comes to gameplay matching lore there are limitations based on game balance. Game balance must take priority in a multi-player game. I bring this up because I've read many posts on these boards and on reddit that complain about Aatrox's kit not deliviring on some of the concepts mentioned in the Bio even though some of these comments misinterrpret what the bio actually says.

The main misinterrpretaion has actually now been adopted by Riot in the Champion Kayn and it is this, the demon is not the Darkin the weapon is. If I had to guess this confusion comes from two sources, one is Aatrox's title "The Darkin Blade" the other is this line from the Bio " With each foe felled, Aatrox's seemingly living blade drinks in their blood". With the first example it would be true that weapon is indeed the Darkin if you read it as Aatrox "and" the Darkin Blade, but this is not the case since this is Aatrox's title, Aatrox is the Darkin Blade. Well then, is it not possible that the Blade is named Aatrox? Not according to the very first line in his Bio: "Aatrox is a legendary warrior, one of only five that remain of an ancient race known as the Darkin. He wields his massive blade with grace and poise". This is in direct conflict with Kayn's Bio in which Rhaast, the Darkin, is the Scythe: "He audaciously wields the sentient darkin weapon Rhaast" "Rhaast has long awaited the perfect host in order to join its darkin brethren". Aatrox's Bio is very clear, the Darkin are legendary warriors not legendary weapons. Personally I think the idea mentioned in Aatrox's Bio that still has something to live up to is the line about only 5 Darkin remaining and since there are 5 positions in summoners rift, and I consider Aatrox a jungler, the other 4 Darkin could've been a top, mid and botlane duo, but with the release of Kayn i guess they're all going to be fighters, unless ofcoarse Varus is retroactively one.

The parragraph that many players complain Aatrox's kit does not deliver on is this: "Just when all hope seemed lost, Aatrox appeared among the ranks of the Protectorate. With but a few words, he urged the soldiers to fight to the last before throwing himself into battle. His presence inspired the desperate warriors. At first, they could only watch in awe as this unknown hero cleaved through their enemies, his body and blade moving in unison as if one being. Soon, the warriors found themselves imbued with a potent thirst for battle. They followed Aatrox into the fray, each fighting with the furious strength of ten until they had won a most unlikely victory.", now this is true, his kit does not deliver on this point, on being some sort of bard/chearleader/support. This is where I think balance limits the influence of lore on gameplay, Aatrox is designed as a fighter/tank not as a god/sithlord/tank/fighter/support. Anything short of this would never make these complaints go away. Imagine adding superman to the roster and then complaining because he has a death timer in a world without kryptonite and that master yi can 1v1 him. Now in one way he can raise the moral of the troops(and by troops I mean your fellow teammates) and turn a fight but you dont need this to be on a button. In fact any Champion that can initiate can pull this off. But imagine actually trying to implement elements from this one parragraph, you would end up with a Champion that somehow takes control of other player's Champions to force them into a fight, I'm of the mind set that any control that another allied player has over my Champion is too much control, from something as simple as an Anivia trolling me with wall to Tahm Kench/Kalista abducting me has already gone too far, but with this bit of lore we're talking about a team wide ally tuant... Thanks but no thanks.

Fantasy: The last reason for a major redesign. The idea is this, Aatrox is supposed to deliver on the fantasy of being a demon-like entity on the rift. Why is this problem not purely cosmetic? Does the Demon Vi not deliver this exact thing with just a new skin? To me he seems just fine as a demon in his classic skin but players are not satisfied how about Demon Aatrox skin? I don't think it would be redundant since a Darkin to me seems less like a unique species in Rune Terra that is based on but not equal to a generic demon, which has its own appeal.

I think the problem here is you have a product, a Champion who already has customers, then you have these other customers saying I would like to play something like that Champion but not that Champion can you repackage this for us at the cost of potentially alienating those who already like the original. Lucky for you, you have 3 more Darkin to work with. Leave Aatrox, be whatever was delivered with his current version suits the fantasy of those of us who still play him and given the history of reworks that I dislike I rather not take a chance again. The Demon you know is better than the Demon you don't know.