Suggestion On How To Fix Aatrox [Riot Please Read!]

To start off, I'd like to say that I believe many players are confused because Aatrox's kit didn't change a lot and I believe a lot of people aren't able to understand that he's now a CASTER and not the same attack speed champion that he used to be. As a Riven main, I can tell you just by trying new Aatrox out a few times that he's meant to be built more like Riven using maximum CDR with several damage items however also able to use some defensive items. How does one figure on this?

1. His Passive fills faster and also more safely casting abilities than it does building raw attack speed. Until you have somewhere past 1.5 - 2 attacks per second, CDR actually is faster for filling his Blood Well, and not only that but with CDR wasting your abilities is far less punishing. With a CDR build, you can better stagger your Q + E between farming with W on damage mode in dangerous match-ups as well to ensure you keep your passive on as much as possible. (E -> 3 auto's on creep -> Q -> 3 autos on creep, etc).

2. Building CDR is what enables Aatrox to opt-out of the Attack Speed glass cannon that he used to be. While I am definitely not saying you CAN'T build Attack Speed, if you think reasonably, his Q now scales TOTAL damage. That means if you just rush CDR and stack damage (with one or two defensive items) by late game you will be hitting really hard with just your passive, ultimate, and abilities alone while still being pretty damn tanky (with a revival passive mind you).

3. Aatrox sits in the middle of the champion pool for health regeneration. What does this mean? He's a healing champion with above average health regeneration. In my test with Aatrox I believe I had about 19 health regen per 5 seconds at level 1 using a Doran's Shield. That's a pretty solid amount of health regen that only similar champions who heal will be able to reasonably keep up with (Tryndamere, Garen, Irelia, Maokai etc). Building CDR items like Spirit Visage, Warmog, and Titanic Hydra he's far better off. You think he's losing damage? He doesn't actually lose damage. You survive longer, you have lower cool-downs, you deal probably the same.. if not more damage. You are 100 times more useful when behind too.

There's some information about my thoughts on him (after testing).

Now for Riot.. My suggestion is to increase his passive stacking on all of his abilities to 25%. At maximum CDR his Q + E have roughly a 6 second cool timer, which really isn't that bad. The problem is even with 6 seconds and your W it takes roughly 18 seconds to re-fill Aatrox's passive. No Top laner or even Jungler has that amount of time to be vulnerable. By giving Aatrox that 5% increase, that will take off AT LEAST 6 seconds of that window because he'll be able to proc it in 4 ability casts, which means Q + E --> Q + E. When you are behind you can't afford that luxury of turning off your W's passive sustain so this would help tremendously.