In Depth: Why is Aatrox so bad?

Hey fellow league community, I was hoping to shed some light on the issue of Aatrox and hopefully grasp the attention of a lost RIOTer to enlighten us on possible plans. If you plan on reading this, I would grab some reading reading glasses and make a cup of tea. I began playing league when this champion came out and he's been my go-to character throughout the seasons. I recently achieved platinum through use of this champion in the top lane, around 400 ranked games on him this season with 100 the previous one. He's received a bit of help throughout the time of his existence but his presence from the rift is almost nonexistant with about a 1% pick rate throughtout the recent patches. His popularity jumped with the jungle items update a long while ago but has died down ever since. It is true that he has a 52% win rate which is decent considering his lack of play, but upon recent view of some Q&A that players had with the RIOTers, I'm led to believe that win rate doesn't normally apply into update decision making.
Continuing on, I believe that I have some experience on this champion and offer up some more insight than the average player. I've even had the "pleasure" of laning against BoxBox's smurf where he humbly linked us to a stream of him and his Riven laying waste to my Aatrox. (Also, shoutout to laning against Gnarsies lol). Regardless, I've seen throughout the levels of league play that I've encountered (Bronze 5-Plat 5 96 LP), that he is a weak champion. I'll briefly explain the abilites for players who don't understand Aatrox's abilities. Aatrox possesses a bloodwell which serves as a free guardian's angel as well as an attack speed buff (up to 50%). Whenever Aatrox uses an ablility that consumes his own health, he is given some blood in the well which decays when he is not being active (using an ability or AAing). The larger the amount of blood in his well, the more life he’ll gain back if he dies and the more ATS he receives). Aatrox’s Q, dark flight, is an ability that takes 10% of his health and has him leap onto target location knocking up enemies at the source. (16-12 second CD) There is a windup time between cast and jump animation. The next ability is his w passive, blood thirst/blood price. Every 3rd attack, aatrox can either heal himself or deal extra damage on his basic at the cost of his own health. His E, blades of torment, is a 40% skillshot slow over 1.75 to 2.75 seconds that costs 5% health. (12-8 second CD). Finally, his ultimate R, Bloody Massacre, is an active that when cast, deals a static damage at first to enemies in his vicinity as well as adding 20% of his max blood well capacity for each enemy hit with it. Then, Aatrox receives an Attack range and speed buff for the duration (12 seconds). There are several issues that I have seen here through the years of my play. I will first tackle him in the top lane and then the jungle. For starts, Aatrox is required to lose health just to use his ablilities, and thus to use bloodwell. I understand that this is to compensate for his w passive’s heal, which sounds great logically but not so much on the rift. In the competitive meta, “only last hitting” is the key to not push up lane and manage creep score properly. For some quick reference, the W heals for 20-40 health with 25% AD scaling. Let’s assume the situation at 700 HP with 100 AD. If you CS how “rules of the lane phase” would require you to do so, you will accumulate 6 farm with 6 hits. In aatrox’s situation, you would gain 90 health that wave from that W passive. (Also, the decay from your passive bloodwell will turn any ATS that you gained right back into nothing) Assume you got hit with 2 or 3 autos in between exchanges as well as an ability. We’ll approximate the ability will deal around 100 damage and the auto’s around 60 (when including armor and assuming vs another bruiser top). Aatrox will take around 220-280 damage that wave. Then factor in the cost of Aatrox’s abilities. If Aatrox decided to Q during that wave, he lost 70 health. If Aatrox decided to E during the wave he lost 35 health, and if aatrox used his alternate W passive he lost some more health. The costs of his abilities cost him over 100 health at that point, when using 1 of each and 2 of them are skill shots. If Aatrox would miss the abilities then he would have suffered anywhere from 200-300 damage that way if not more, and he has to wait 16 seconds for another Q (his only mistake) and 12 seconds for another E(his best form of ranged poke). He gains a tiny bit of blood in his well, which allows him to attack faster, but assuming that you are CSing correctly, that has no affect on minions and smart opponents will avoid getting poked down too much by a melee bruiser. To summarize, Aatrox will have to land his abilities to have any shot at winning trades, as he is using his own health to cast them. This makes the skill cap of an Aatrox’s laning phase high in my opinion, especially given the windup time of his abilities, giving his enemies time to respond. I’m sure one would then inquire, “You just need to pop that W passive more often then to sustain more or buy potions to sustain early.” Using it on minions will cause the lane to push, making a kill off a gank pretty much guaranteed with only one escape in his skill set. Using it on champions is ideal, but with bullies in the top lane meta, getting too close definitely spells out death. As for the “you get to live twice” claim, I’d like to negate that statement as well. Once you die, the enemy has time to react and get into a position to finish you. Also, fighting at that stage would be idiotic as well, seeing that you have no excess attack speed. The well doesn’t even provide enough health for a fighting chance. RIOT has attempted to fix this change in the past, by making the CD on the guardian’s angel shorter at later levels, but this only helps him if he’s killed, and barely at that.The next matter that I’d like to cover as for laning phase, would be the Q, dark flight. It consumes 10% of health which is a huge number and has a long winding time. If landed, considering all conditions are in your favor, it can indeed truly turn the tide. But the chances of that happening in the meta are so poor right now that it’s an ability to get laughed at. Predicting and reacting to it are simple to do, and disrupting the ability can spell out death, as a large chunk of heath is missing from the cost and then you have no gap closer or way to escape damage. I’m sure that the Q is indeed deadly, as I have probably played over 700 games of Aatrox in my life and have seen first hand that it is, but the outplay potential of your opponent is so huge that it doesn’t make a difference at high elos. Plus, the 16-12 second cooldown is another matter. Moving onto the W passive, I understand that this ability is of a ton of controversy. When examining posts that RIOTers have made about Aatrox, they say that buffing him even in the slightest is a guaranteed Xin release repeat, as the heal will make him untouchable. Once more, logically, this makes a lot of sense. However, in game: both laning phase and later on, he is reliant on AAing for it which sounds silly but is actually severely important. Both his R and his Passive give Aatrox attack speed buffs to get the procs off more often. Anti tanks will shoot down Aatrox faster than America will to Donald Trump come election day (lmao). Reducing his attack speed is eliminating a large chunk of his passive, his W passive, and his ultimate. He will be left with just using his Q and E which deal little damage as well as reducing his own health. Aatrox’s abilities are a lot like a full AD team. In order to beat a full AD team, all you need to do is build armor. In order to beat Aatrox, all you have to do is reduce his attack speed, and he’s rendered useless. This is why all AD teams always try to win quickly before the armor can be stacked, and why on Aatrox, you need to play lane aggressively to the point that you get ahead enough that they can’t slow you down. This is why the summoners (flash, ignite) on Aatrox offer a 59% win rate across all queues and ranks, while (flash, TP) only offers a 51% win rate. You need to win lane and snowball like any other fighter if you want to win that game. Aatrox has the highest win rate when games don’t go on for long which is more proof of the only successful style of Aatrox play out there. A possible argument there would be “you don’t need to only play as a fighter, his second category of champion is tank”. To that, I must professionally say “Tank Shmank”. None of his abilities help with that. Aatrox’s best defense in his ablility set is his W heal which is stronger with attack speed. (best defense is offense) Apart from that, he’s a useless walking target with some weak, dodgeable Crowd Control. The stats on other champions that aren’t tanks are exceptionally better than Aatrox’s as well as their ability set. (just look at reksai for example). To summarize his W, Aatrox requires a lot of AA procs for it which can be used to the advantage to any opponent with half a brain. Now moving onto Aatrox’s twin blades, to put it bluntly, they also suck. A lot of players go the “max E route” as I normally do in most matchups myself. When you max E, you are utilizing his range to try to win trades while taking 5% health each time, and waiting till you get a kill condition, to commit with Aatrox’s Q and try to gain a kill. When maxing E, you have a better chance of winning lane if you land the skill shots. Maxing W would just give you the best chance of surviving lane phase, which is generally not the approach you want towards a game. It offers a slow for 40% for up to 2.75 seconds. This isn’t terrible, as it gives you time to approach the enemy, but I want to approach other options that are in the meta. Talon and Darius, for example, have slows on their point and click abilities for massive amounts. (Note, I realize that Darius’ was recently lowered to 40% from 90% but I am just using them as reference for thought). The ability goes through minions, meaning, that although you are given a better chance at hitting the enemy laner, you are taking away half the wave every cast just to trade a bit of damage. Pushing lane=ganks. I’ve had most of my success on Aatrox by throwing my skill shot angled to the sides to avoid hitting too many minions, but still hitting the enemy laner. (It’s also a good note to have that I’ve been climbing ranked with Aatrox due to the cheese of pushing lane hard to get a lot of W damage and W heal procs which would never work in high elos) Next up, is Aatrox’s ultimate. Recent changes to it allowed Aatrox to gain bloodwell when he strikes an enemy with it, but I would like to argue that this change was hardly beneficial. You want to engage with Aatrox when you have a lot of ATS which is gained with bloodwell. Thus, when you ult as Aatrox you likely already have a full blood well. Also, when you die as aatrox, all of that blood is turned into health so you lose a lot of attack speed. So, in a fight/skirmish, the right choice would be to ult only after you have died and revived yourself. The logic there is simply flawed. Banking on dying to use an ultimate is a bad idea, and using it when you first engage will make RIOT’s “help” useless. Now to talk about what the ultimate actually does. Extra attack range and attack speed as well as initial damage. The point of an ultimate, in my opinion, is to turn the tide of a fight. Aatrox is rendered useless if you take away his ATS (attack speed) so just attempting to pile on more is suicide. The extra attack range is simply candy but is kind of useless as its only purpose is in the logistics that: once Aatrox Ults, he gives the enemy time to move away (Aatrox stops movement when he ults) so that he can keep hitting them. The extra damage of the ult is kind of useless late game, when 300 damage just doesn’t mean anything. Overall, his ultimate is really poor, compared to that of a lot of other champions.
To summarize that large last paragraph, in respect to the laning phase, Aatrox relies on attack speed to succeed to proc his W which just isn’t as dandy as it seems when in an actual game. His abilities hurt more than they help, giving him a bit of a skill cap. His stats just aren’t there for fear that RIOT stated was to keep from getting him to become broken like the old Xin. His kit is extremely easy to outplay and he just doesn’t seem to fit any meta. Moving onto the jungle, I’d like to say that I have a decent amount of experience with him there to understand the problems although these are nothing compared to my experience with him top lane. Let’s jump right in. Aatrox’s passive bloodwell flow decays over time when not being active. This means, that when going from camp to camp, you are losing a lot of attack speed. To put it shortly, it isn’t very efficient. Other junglers either have more efficient sustain or offer more for a team making them more viable. (Note, aatrox was viable briefly in the wake of Sated Devourer). Aatrox offers decent gank potential with a gap closer knockup and a slow, but it isn’t worth the levels you must sacrifice for the slow jungle clear. Early dragons are indeed a possibility but then again, there are always other champions who are better options that can also do early dragons. Also, Aatrox still needs to get ahead early to win games so taking the kills from lane ganks are almost completely necessary to getting ahead. And everyone knows that a 1 threat team that can easily be shut down isn’t very effective. Especially given that Aatrox isn’t an assassin like a rengar might be so he can’t take out the carries very effectively. I realize that the scenarios I mentioned don’t go into thought when considering champ design, but If you think about it, RIOT gains so much information on release week of a champion because there is just so much information coming at them. They are little things too like windup animations or weird interactions between champions or abilities. This is why champions so often get updates the weeks after they come out. RIOT must not expect a lot of things that they prepared for and it’s made obvious the first week. Stats aren’t the only things that should come into consideration when considering champions. Especially, when it’s the tiny things that make the difference at high ELOs. Also, top lane is such a win/lose type lane that is hard to come back from that some champions are just played over and over becaues a won lane is almost guaranteed (looking at Darius). I know that RIOT has shown concerns with making Aatrox broken by buffing some of him, but honestly, who can say that the meta is overly fair right now. So many champions with bad kits aren’t played that the “meta” is only around 20% of the overall champ pool. So why not make him OP for a little while and then fix it up next patch if need be. Darius experienced a 90+% ban rate in a recent patch. Also, a lot of top laners have been experimented and changed recently to fit the meta and I believe that Aatrox deserves a turn soon. If not by buffing him, then by making his kit not so AA reliant. I would suggest adding a fear to his ultimate to allow a bit more CC and perhaps a W proc, turning his Q into a dash or play with the windup time so it’s not made useless, make the abilities health cost go down early levels as laning phase is extremely difficult at the current point. Most importantly, I would like to put some attack speed in his base ATS rather than his bloodwell since that is easily abused. I would change that bloodwell to dealing extra damage instead of giving extra ATS because it gives players more of a reason to use their own lifeforce to attack the enemy. Finally, I would lower the cool downs a tiny bit just so that he isn’t just auto attacking. We don’t need another master yi, jax, or tryndamere here. To conclude, I hope that some RIOT member will shed some light on their opinions on Aatrox and that someone will take the time to see Aatrox as he is from the eyes of someone who’s seen a lot over Aatrox’s creation up till now. If anyone liked reading this, then feel free to gift me Justicar Aatrox as it is the only Aatrox skin I don’t own. :D thanks, and good luck on the rift.