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Why Aatrox cannot be a support

dimiondo·12/1/2016, 11:57:18 PM·4 votes·853 views
http://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_AU/story/champion/aatrox

I know people throw this concept out a lot. And as a person who currently likes the champ how it is this scares me as it sounds like mordekaiser 2.0 (Albeit Aatrox is weak right now). After the recent thread about this I decided to create a thread to counter argue this idea and explain why it cannot happen effectively and why it does not fit Aatrox's lore.

Firstly let’s talk lore. Aatrox lore describes him as a god of war flying into a middle of a fight and turning the tides through his strength inspiring warriors to unparalleled bloodshed which continues on for years afterwards. He revels in twisting people towards atrocities to the point where he calls Tryndamere his greatest creation. Now lets’ tie this to his gameplay. Thematically it fits, Aatrox is a champ that dives into the enemy team and turns the tides allowing an opportunity for his team to fight. Furthermore he feels like a God of war going into a fight 1v5 and surviving events that no other champ can fight. Lastly does a god of war stand behind his teammates and buff them? NO. Why would Aatrox even think of doing such a thing? Those mortals are underneath him only there for his amusement. He only wants them to fight, making them realise years later that their victories were merely atrocities committed by their own hands…

Secondly I am going to give reasons why Aatrox as a support would not work. Firstly the boards consistently wants him to have auras that buff his allies. This will not work when you consider the nature of the support role. Typically there are 3 types of supports. Disengage/engage supports, supports that rely on cc to help their ad carry in the lane by allowing opportunities to engage or when their adc is threatened cc to disengage (Examples are Nautalis and Leona). The second type is the damage dealers, the champions that offer so much damage early game that they can deny the enemy farm and potentially gain a number of kills of the enemy bot laners (Examples are brand and Zyra). The last group however is the smallest and they are the healers/shield champions which protect their adc by either healing them when they get low or placing a shield on them which offers temporary hp for trades (Examples are Janna and Soraka.) Now all these champs offer some utility or cc to allow their adc to survive. Aatrox as an aura champ would have none of these common traits that assist the adc through the early game which is essential for a support.

This would mean 1 of 2 things. The first would be that he would have to be more oriented towards the support role which means that he would have to loose damage to increase his utility which overall goes against his whole theme and furthermore would drastically change the way he is played which ultimately hurts the people who already like the champ. However this would lead to another problem. A support that had these attributes that people want support Aatrox to have already existed. The pre reworked Taric. You may not remember him well, but Taric was a champion that buffed his allies with increased armour using his w and increased their attack damage significantly in an aoe. Riot ultimately had to gut this champ and rework it because it gave a ton of hidden power to the team while offering a bunch of cc just like Aatrox would if he was turned into the support role. Which would result in Aatrox being gutted after maybe one or 2 months of playtime.

The second option would be to make him a hybrid top/support. This however would force him into one role or another due to a few simple things. Losing his offensive and sustain to allocate the needed buffs to his allies to make him relevant as a support would mean his solo lane would suffer and judging by his laning isn't that good at the moment even with his current offensive abilities and large amounts of sustain. Hence it would kill his top lane potential. However if his offensive abilities were buffed and his supportive ability was weak he would never be played in the bot lane as there would be better supports to choose from. So by reworking him into a semi support you doom him once again to never be played as there will always be better champs for that particular role. After all league is a game of min and max.

My last and final point is that Aatrox is the biggest lie in the history in league of legends. He was gutted before he was even released. He was never Olaf’d on the live servers due to balance reasons. Ironically he has only received one nerf since he was released and has remained relatively stable since then. This is a champion that can be balanced as it currently is with minor changes to his kit such as the removal of its passive revive (not the attack speed) to allow for better base stats. While it may have been overbearing back in season 3, with the addition of mobility and damage creep Aatrox can no longer effectively out sustain the burst that champions can put out anymore. This is furthered by the addition of Executioner’s calling and Mortal Reminder which cuts down his sustain drastically. This means that Aatrox could potentially be balanced if tuned correctly and could survive with moderate changes to his current kit while keeping his unique sustain and damage just like the newly released juggernauts.

In summary: The champ cannot be turned into an aura support due to balance concerns which caused other such supports such as Sona and Taric to be reworked and has the potential to be balanced effectively due to the addition of damage creep and executioners calling.

Thank you for reading and sorry for any grammar or formatting mistakes this is my first post on the boards.

10 Comments

oSEXYPLATYPUSo12/1/2016, 11:58:55 PM4 votes

lol well 1st problem he has to be a champion ... once they figure that out maybe they figure out a role for him

ValyrianBlade12/2/2016, 12:27:52 AM2 votes

Malicious Metal has such a huge boards following that they'll upvote anything he suggests - even something as absurd as making Aatrox in to a support.

He even opens by saying he may sound like a Hypocrite. He is entirely. Let's look at the easiest thing: when Mordekaiser was reworked, Metal's sole response was that the idea of what he became was fine, but why rework a champion people liked in to a different role instead of just making it an entirely new champion?

Then he goes and makes the same outlandish suggestion. Why not suggest a new champion instead of reworking Aatrox? Aatrox isn't a problem. Not all champions need to be viable in every situation. You can't tell me there is never a time that Aatrox is a decent pick. Now, I was hoping for a bigger sample size (his games played are awfully low) but lo' and behold Aatrox rocks an 86% win rate against Mordekaiser of all people. Now of course that's bogus since there's only 7 games played for that stat, but nonetheless Aatrox will have counter matchups (and if Mordekaiser happens to be one of them... well seriously I was already lacking respect but the last of it is oozing away...).

I hope Riot doesn't take stuff like this seriously. I think they realize they know better than a random player who has developed a following. This is a game with well over 100 champions. It's perfectly reasonable for up to like 30 of them to barely see play, to be situational champions that are good with specific comps or in specific matchups and otherwise aren't very useful. These are the champions that the great players will use to separate themselves from the good players. I don't play this game all that much. I've played <150 ranked games over seasons 5 and 6 combined, just enough to get to gold each time (and never played ranked before that). I have a decent chunk of normal games, but nonetheless, I don't play all that much. As a result, I play something like 4 champions at a high level, and another 6 or so that I've played enough to be comfortable pulling them out in ranked. And in actuality, there are a few oddball picks in that group of 10 - but what I'm trying to establish is that your "good" players will have a small champion pool and do well on those champions (but not be able to make optimal picks for each circumstance) while the "great" players will be able to utilize niche picks to gain advantages. (Then your bronzies will play the entire selection but suck on 90% of them, so even if they're good on a few they'll have low win rates because they keep trying to play niche picks in bad situations with bad game knowledge).

Mecha MaIphite12/2/2016, 12:16:17 AM1 votes

I don't think anyone really wants Aatrox to be a "conventional" support; more like just a fighter who happens to be able to buff his allies.

Think like Warwick W

Karn Bishop12/2/2016, 12:45:03 AM1 votes

Nice try aatrox mains but were going to stop you before you get the chance to argue him into rengar the second coming.

On a serious note he does make more sense as an aggressive support given his lore and story, he would also be the first true AD support meant for the role.