I Need to Talk About Aatrox

Hey, I'm Ross. I first opened league to the Lissandra splash screen, but only actually sat down to play it at the Aatrox one. I instantly attached to him because of lifesteal, and continued playing him on and off for a few years. That was until the mini-rework that gave him Hellbent, where I started playing him much more. Aatrox is my only mastery 7, and I was planning to keep it that way.

And then there was the big rework. It wasn't at all what I'd hoped for.

I recently watched the new Riot Pls video, posted by New001, and he said something that inspired me to finally add yet another of the many Aatrox plea discussions: "Our goal is not to change the game for change's sake, and if it feels that way to you, chances are it means we haven't done a good enough job with the changes themselves, how we released them, or how we communicated about them". This led me to laugh silently and instantly think about Aatrox's complete rework. I hadn't written anything about this until now, mainly because as far as I know Riot has no intention of reverting Aatrox or reworking him again. Here is my wall of text.

Since I've had time to sit down and look at many of the rants and cries in the discussions a few things have stood out as odd. Most people who approve of the rework were not regularly playing Aatrox before the big changes, and some discussions have said that Riot won't accept criticism if a comparison of old and new Aatrox is present (I have no idea if this is actually true but let's assume it is because of popularity). Why can't we talk about 'before the rework'? Wasn't the rework supposed to be for the mains and fans? The main idea I take from this is that this new champion is supposed to overwrite the old's identity, and he has: Aatrox is no longer a neutral force who promotes war, he's the evil vengeance who is the violence.

The new toning and the dialogue are both big factors for this - the new voice itself doesn't bother me. Aatrox was inspiring others in combat, and his skins fit the old voice well. But how does the Justicar skin fit at all with the change in character? I don't see a problem with the new default skin, but when the evil Aatrox has a divine skin and he's just as malicious as ususal, it doesn't make sense.

All these things are pretty subjective, but then comes the gameplay rework, the part I was really disappointed with. Everything in his kit changed except for the only ability I saw the other Aatrox mains agree was out of place, the ultimate. There's even more reason to be upset by this because it's actually worse than the original for two reasons: the amount of healing you get for reviving starts with the ultimate and not the passive resource, and the benefits of the ultimate end once the revive starts. Basically there is no way to hit ult at the last minute to barely receive Hellbent and revive. There is also no way to pick back up if you revive in a bad spot. The other abilities aren't as bad. The problem is that they're completely different from the old ones, for example, the new Q makes Aatrox an ability user rather than an autoattacker. His W merges the old abilities' CCs into one ability but in turn makes it so that it's not as instant, and his E attempts to make up for the loss of mobility of losing flight and gaining a stationary attack instead. There's also the meager lifesteal built-in that in no way makes up for the percent healing he used to have in the Hellbent age. All this makes him less and less appealing to us who wanted an update in the first place.

Some people might argue that there were other champions that underwent big changes in their behaviors and playstyle, but the Urgot update didn't change his personality, the Yorick update tried to keep the minion and summoning aspects that he was played for, and Galio? He kept the same sort of dialogue and stayed an MR tank. Irelia has floating blades and the iconic dash ability, Evelynn is still the creepy shadow lady with invisibility at level 6. Aatrox still has his ultimate kind of, and he's still... red, I guess. With horns.

In short, I have completely given up on the champion as of now. I'm upset that this rework seems to push away the mains and long-term players. I'm also really upset that Riot did not release a poll or survey, or at least talk to some of the players before launching into this rework. I hope something will change in the near future, but in the meantime I'm going to start ironically saying: "Who's Aatrox?"

Thanks for reading, -superross3