Aatrox kit suggestion

Hello everyone, first of all: sorry if my english is bad and/or if I posted in the wrong board. Hope you will like my idea and that my explanation isn't too long (sorry if it is, I spent really a lot thinking about this, that may be the cause). That said I'll start with the topic.

I was looking at the champions lately, thinking about the ones I usually play and the ones I would like to play but maybe didn't buy yet. While thinking I remembered about our "beloved" Darkin. I thought about how I wanted to play him, but then before I actually did the error of starting a game, I remembered: Aatrox is almost unplayable and unfun... you can play him, but he's really no good, on paper his numbers are pretty good, not op, but neither weak, but we all know from previous experiences (a lot of champs have ok numbers on paper, but turn out impossible to play with/against) that usually theory never translates well in practice. So I was thinking about what could be done with him and started looking at him, mainly his kit (and how it works) and his lore (that should give a feeling of who the champ is, how to play him, what he can do, etc). Then I decided to play some bot games with him, to see how the ne items affected him and I remembered perfectly why I stopped playing him: His kit has a lot of problems and I'm not even talking about numbers, what I mean is cds, animations, wrong strenghts that make him either OP or useless. For example, his Passive: It's clearly stated in the lore that he draws strenght from the blood of his ENEMIES, but then in-game, he become stronger by losing HIS health?... That's a neat contraddiction and a weakness that's too easily exploited. And contraddictions aren't even the worst of the problems... let's talk about his Q: Dark Flight. Cool ability, I mean, he plunges in the enemy team with such force that he knocks them in the air and then proceeds to kill them. That's the theory, now in game: Utterly useless jump. It's cool to look at, but it's utility is 0 thanks to the uselessly small range of the CC and the clunkyness of the animation. The jump is so slow at starting that the enemy has too much time to get out of not only the cc range, but even the damage range and also get in position to punish you for trying to use the skill correctly. And that's not all... I could talk about how his w theoretically fits the lore, but the actual mechanic doesn't, or how his ult is just plain useless unless, for some reason, you want to play full ap Aatrox (he's not bad, but come on, Aatrox isn't a damn mage!) and even then other than the ok damage it's useless.

I don't want anyone to misunderstand: Aatrox is one of my favourite champions, I love his lore and how it's shroud in mystery, but really, Aatrox now actually feels more like "That guy everyone hates 'cause he won't die, but actually isn't really that strong and he becomes real useless real fast". He doesn't feel like the strong God of war, that becomes stronger by spilling the blood of his enemies.

That's why I tried to come up with some changes that would make him (at least imho) feel a bit more viable.

First of all the Passive: I think, instead of using his own blood to fill the well, he should use the blood of his enemies, that means, fill the blood literally by lifestealing. I know it may sound op, he won't be able to fill his passive when he's not fighting, making it actually a bit weaker but instead of giving it more power than you can use, it would give him exactly the amount of power he can use, by filling the well when Aatrox steals life through his W or any lifesteal item/mastery/whatever by the amount of health he stole (Maybe 40% on minions and 100% on champions?). His passive should also scale with level and bonus health, because Aatrox's play stile is that of a dive fighter, but he doesn't get anything by building more tanky other than the simple stats. This wouldn't be just a buff, it would actually be a nerf too since you will get less health back early in the game. And if you want to play as an assassin you will actually trade something significant for the extra damage instead of just losing some hp and maybe some AR/MR. I mean if you're tanky an return back to life, you will have the possibility to at least escape or execute a low health enemy this way, thing you won't be able to do right now since, unless you have the q off cd, the enemy has all the time he needs to position himself, wait for his cd and kill you again because the passive is slow and usually doesn't give enough health back unless you are already really ahead.

Q - Dark Flight: The skill fits incredibly well with the lore and it can be incredibly strong... if only it weren't so slow that it's incredibly easy to dodge and that the cc range is so small that even when hitting an enemy 90% of the time he won't get knocked up. Also the animation feels a bit clunky and for a cc so hard to land, it doesn't give anything if you miss it by just a bit other than the damage, I would suggest a slow of maybe 30% for 1 second on the outer circle.

W - Blood Thirst/Blood Price: The skill is as cool as it is simple. But The problem with this skill imho, is that it gives too much power/sustain every third hit. Imho it should give you more sustained potential by healing/hurting more the more health you/your target lack. I mean:

• Blood Thirst: you heal every hit, by healing more the more health you have lost, maybe a ratio of 1% missing health = 1,5% empowered lifesteal (and not just self-healing) at level 5 (starting at 0,3% scaling with skill level).

• Blood Price: you hit for extra damage every hit, dealing more damage the more health the enemy is missing at a ratio of 1% missing healt = 1,5% extra damage (0,3% per skill level) obviously the numbers have to be tweaked and the flat healing/damage should be lower making so that at 40% (or maybe even lower) health the effect is more or less the same as now and making it stronger after that mark.

E - Blades of Torment: This skill, like the Q is pretty good imho... what's wrong with this skill is actually it's strenght, like the W it is strong, but not in the right way. Imho this skill should focus more on the "Cripple the enemy " than "poke the enemy from a distance and the engage when he's low or else lose a ton of hp for spamming it and not hitting" this means, lower base damage, lower range, but a new, double, more consistent cc: MS slow and AS slow. Aatrox is a master of the sword, and he's no poke champion, he has to hit his enemy close and personal to bathe in his blood and become stronger, so giving him a 50% MS slow (or maybe more?) and a 30% AS slow (same as before) on a shorter cd (10 / 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 might be good) and a shorter range (maybe 700 just enough to follow with Q after you hit the enemy and still hit him) and duration (2 sec at level 5 maybe?) would actually fit the champ more imho. With this change he would also counter aa dependant champions while letting ad casters do their job.

R - Massacre: A skill called massacre that other than being cool to look at is useless, imho is the most contraddicting thing ever... like a fish drowning, really. The skill is cool, but the stats and range it gives are a bit useless in this state. I know for certain that in 99% of the situations, if you can't win a fight without it, the skill won't save you, and if you can actually win without it, it's just an extra useless skill that you throw to end the fight faster. or maybe you use it for the new blood filling effect, but that's still too weak for a so called Ultimate, Final or Supreme skill (or however we want to call it). What can be doen with it? There are a lot of cool thing you can do with it, but I mainly thought about two: Fighter-utility oriented ult OR Tank-utility oriented ult.

• The Fighter-utility would give him a range buff (like the actual one) double the passive's AS buff, give him AD based on the number of enemy hit when activated and give nearby allies half of his AS and AD (well number should be tweaked). The ult will drain from his blood well (but he won't lose the AS buff while in ult) and will last as long as there is blood in the blood well, meaning it will last more in a sustained fight.

• The Tank-utility ult woul give him range, tenacity and BT-like shield (you can recharge the shield while the ult is active) based on your max health and how many enemies you hit with the activation (example: the shield gains 300 hp per enemy hit, you hit 3, so 900 max shield, even if you manage to recharge 1000 hp the shield won't go over the 900 cap, if you hit 4, the cap will be 1200, but you still won't be able to make it reach 1500 without hitting all 5 of them) and give the team half of this tenacity. (This change would probably need a name change, since it doesn't really fit the name massacre but oh well... names aren't what we're talking about)

This might seem broken at first, but let's analyze it: Fighter ult: You will dive in 1 vs 5 with q, so you will most likely die before the team can help you if you're not perfect on timing and positioning. That makes it extremely hard to actually use it and survive... and let's not forget: if you die, that's over, no more ult, no more blood well, nothing. So I guess it's pretty balanced counting the risks, High risk - High Reward. The bonus to the team: it's simple, Aatrox simply inspires his allies like he did during the war. It might sound a bit far fetched, but it's not, he actually does have a reason for that, because if we think about that, Aatrox actually used the blood his enemies spilled to make his allies more powerful and bloodthirsty, since they actually go berserk if we take our time and look at what's written in the lore, after the battle, they start to remember how they just brutalized the enemies with their newfound power making horrible things without a second thought, and this pretty much means they've gone berserk on the field after Aatrox "inspired" them with his power.

Tanky ult: Like before, you will go 1 vs 5, the shield will help you survive that first dive, you get some range and a shield that can cover up for as much as 50% of your hp and, if things go wrong, you can always use your W (and maybe some LS) to charge the shield. Like before, the bonus tenacity to allies comes from the blood he stole and used to empower them. In both cases the range on the aura should be the same of the frozen heart or maybe a bit smaller.

I do know that these changes would feel almost like simply buffing him, but with the right numbers, they are just what Aatrox needs to be less about numbers and more about actually doing his work either as a tank, assassin or fighter. I know the ult change would probably "force" him in a playstile rather than the other, but that would still be better than: whatever, you don't fit anything so whatever you build will be wrong. Even with the more tanky ult, he will still be able do duel an enemy as a fighter thanks to the W, the more usefull e and probably thanks to the slight buff on the q. And he would still be able to build tanky withouth the tank version of the ult, since his blood well will still scale off his hp somewhat. Like I said, these changes, on the paper, should make his early game far weaker since the only actual early buff would be the slight buffed q and he would get a nerfed W and E during lane, since E will have less range and W won't be a straight-up burst of damage, but a more easily countered sustained damage, we won't find any more Aatrox who do 2 aa on a nearby minion with Blood Thirst, then W + flash into you and kill you while you're not even that low, but you won't even have those Aatrox who just die 'cause the 3rd hit was about to land but didn't land for 0.01sec... but trying to fight an Aatrox straight up-front, even with a jax, tryndamere, xin, ww, olaf etc. wouldn't be too smart since he can just bring you low enough to activate Blood Price and get a nice 20% extra damage. I think he will be stronger late game, due to his AoE buff and his E, which could just destroy an adc/fighter by lowering their dps by something like 30% if it lands, so he won't be anymore "that guy who jumps in only to die a returns back just to die again" but he will have some team fighting potential and become "that guy who just forced a fight on us, gave his whole team a buff and gutted our adc into oblivion". It might sound strong, but with the right numbers he will actually still be heavily item dependant, making him either scale to infinity or become a second support. Like I said these changes will not make him totally balanceable this is obviously just my opinion on a champion I love and I'd really like to play again if he should ever become viable that is, since in his current state, he's straight up frustrating to play, unless you get a lucky match-up and screw the enemy team withouth any chance for them to win (also called: playing against bots).