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Thoughts and Constructive Criticism on the Aatrox Rework From a Long Time Player

MAMMOTH GRINDER·3/9/2017, 6:24:28 PM·12 votes·2,169 views

I am not a challenger player, so take my criticism with a grain of salt. I have played Aatrox for a long time, even when he was widely considered as one of the worst champions in the game. I have a few dozen Aatrox games played this season with a 75% winrate up until yesterday where I lost several games with him and it dropped to about 70%. I would like to say I have a good feel for the champions strengths and weaknesses. After playing him a decent amount post-rework and trying out some different builds I have come up with a short list of the things I think Riot missed the mark on, as well as some small quality of life changes that could really help him out without over-tuning him.

Like pretty much everyone else, I am disappointed by the recent changes. I am happy they decided to give Aatrox some love, and I understand what they are trying to do by giving him clear windows of strength via the new bloodwell passive, but there were some changes that came along with this that really hurt Aatrox in other ways.

  • Aatrox no longer passively gains attack speed as he fills his bloodwell.

This hurts so much. While the health costs have been removed/reworked (therefore he stays healthier during lane and trades), he lost a ton of offensive power. It takes forever to proc your W damage now unless you stack attack speed. This makes trading significantly harder and you lose out on damage/health if you decide to build a lot of AS. It just feels awful all around.

Why not give Aatrox something like +5-7% attack speed per stack that doubles once you hit 5 stacks and activate your passive? That will give him +50-70% attack speed during his window of power, while also helping him proc his W, survive trades in lane, and hit 5 stacks when he decides to all in someone.

  • Aatrox revive only activates if you have your passive stacked AND it still has an extremely long cooldown.

It's extremely difficult to manage his passive stacks because they fall off instantly if not continuously fighting a champion. What this boils down to is any form of burst can kill you before you have your passive (and revive) available. And because he lost his attackspeed, its even more difficult to stack your passive. Oh, and lets not forget that it takes 5 stacks to activate it. So that means even if you EQWR into the enemy and land your full combo, that's still not enough to proc your passive. And again, without that attackspeed good luck ever getting another 3 autos off to proc your W and passive before getting killed. Getting ganked? You're dead. Playing against any kind of bursty champion? (Tryndamere, Pantheon, Jax, Illaoi, etc) You're dead.

Either let his passive activate after 4 abilities (+25% of bloodwell per ability instead of +20%) or give us the old attackspeed back. Or both.

  • Aatrox passive falls off even when fighting jungle camps.

This is how you kill Aatrox jungle. It was never a top tier pick in the first place but he had his uses and could snowball hard if you got a couple good ganks off early. His clear speed is painfully slow now that he doesn't get any attack speed If he cant keep his passive up while jungling. This alone was enough to completely remove any viability in the jungle he previously had. Just let us keep the attackspeed passive up while fighting jungle monsters. That's all he needs. He wouldn't even be able to keep the passive up while moving from camp to camp so there's no way to abuse it.

I want Aatrox to be good and I think these small changes I proposed will help him a lot without making him completely overbearing.

6 Comments

Verxint3/9/2017, 6:31:16 PM6 votes

Upvote for making suggestions instead of just crying to undo the changes.

What about some mechanic where the more attacks you got off during the blood well, the longer it went before starting to drain? The idea would be to reward Aatrox when he does manage to get the slapping started, if hes been fighting someone for a while a single disengage won't break his passive.

dimiondo3/9/2017, 8:13:27 PM2 votes

He needs his old w and old attack speed back. Without those two things he is going to remain trash as his stats were literally built around them.

Ravenhale3/9/2017, 9:17:34 PM2 votes

I'm still struggling with Riot labeling Aatrox as a Diver. Does he really function in a similar fashion to Irelia, Xin Zhao, Lee Sin and Vi? A common complaint in Aatrox threads is how he is easily kited. Are there any other Divers that have this issue? This is typically a Juggernaut issue and I don't think Aatrox has the skills in his kit to function as a juggernaut.

Hashtag Trynding3/11/2017, 2:29:14 AM2 votes

Not an Aatrox main or anything of the sort, but here's my two cents for what it's worth... Assuming we're buying into the whole "Aatrox is a Diver champion" idea, I have a few suggestions for how to make that actually true, and just general changes that, while I may not endorse, could start a good discussion around.

Passive: I like the idea of having it give small bumps in attack speed per stack. This seems good, and I think it should be that way. 70% seems like a hell of a lot, though, so maybe something like this... 5 stacks, each stack gives 3-5% attack speed based on level and is doubled upon reaching the 5th stack when he reached Blood Rush (I like the concept, so I'm keeping it for the sake of this hypothetical passive). This maintains both his ability to gain incremental boosts to attack speed that, while good, still aren't fully realized until the final stack, emphasizing the whole "windows of opportunity" idea they're going for. You addressed that the 5 stack passive does not allow you to reach your maximum potential even with a full combo. Personally, I think that is fine, assuming you started at 0 stacks. However, your concerns about being extremely vulnerable at zero stacks is valid. The solution? Treat it like Rengar's old Ferocity resource. Just make it not fall off at all outside of combat. That way, if you're being pressured in lane, or going from camp to camp in the jungle, you keep any extra stacks you don't use pre-5 stacks. This gives you added safety in lane by just playing back with 4 stacks, so if they try to all-in you or dive you, you just need to use your E or Q or something and try to maintain the passive until they leave or kill you (in which case you revive and are safe for a while). I could go on, but that's a starting point.

Q: Okay, so they keep saying he's a Diver, but aside from his Q being an initiation tool, it does little else, and it has issues in that it is easily cancelled or interrupted, which completely fucks him over if he's going an all-in. My suggestion comes in two parts. First, make him untargetable while he's airborne. This makes it impossible to cancel, meaning so long as you aim properly, the ability will land and do its damage. This also succeeds in fulfilling his role fantasy in that, if you decide to engage someone under a turret without using Q to initiate, you can use it to lose tower aggro. Another possible way to make Q more dive-friendly is, on top of that, give it a reset condition. Say "if a target dies within X seconds of being damaged by your Q" or even just "within X seconds of being damaged by you", so you can use it as an out once you've done the deed. This makes you a MUCH scarier diver in that you can jump on someone under tower, burst them, then Q out and lose turret aggro (and possibly avoid a fatal turret shot a la Fizz E). Plus, just looking at the animation of Q, why aren't you untargetable? You fly 2-3 champion lengths into the air, for Christ's sake. You should be. >.<

W: Just give it AD scaling on the heal. Hell, maybe make the 3rd hit on Blood Price give you a mini Phage passive so you can stick to people, but only make it work when you have 5 stacks of your passive (to avoid the "I can't stay on my target long enough to utilize my passive" issue you mentioned previously). Other than that, the damage on it is fine, just the heal got nerfed, and enough to be a major problem.

E: Honestly, this ability is boring. The fact that it's ranged and is a slow is good for hit kit, but that's all it does. Maybe make it like Heimerdinger's W where they only converge if you make them converge, and you can make them converge point-blank if you want. As-is, it's worthless in melee range because one or the other blade misses the target. That, or just completely scrap it for something else.

R: Functionally, I think it's fine as it is, with two exceptions: Remove the random AP scaling, and maybe make it heal you for a small amount of the initial damage. As it is, though, I think that being able to circumvent having your passive stacked up prior to a fight by getting a multi-man ult is a decent mechanic. Plus the attack speed/range steriod is good for sticking to people.

That's all I got for right now. I personally really like this champion and want him to be viable, but this recent change does not make me very hopeful. Maybe some of the ideas discussed in this thread will find their way into a future iteration, but we'll see. Discussion is better than bitching at the end of the day, though.

YoungSirJ0ey3/9/2017, 9:31:28 PM1 votes

I was thinking of similar stuff, actually. Only difference is I don't actually play Aatrox, and got the ideas by reading people's complaints.

My first idea was to make it so he gains attack speed the way he did before, up to 25-50% attack speed when your well is full, which would also be how much he got from Blood Rush.

My second idea was making your Blood Well not start to decay for 8 seconds. The complaint I have heard the most through reading these threads was that managing your Blood Well is nigh-impossible, so making that easier seemed like a good plan.

My third idea was to change Blood Rush around a bit. Instead of it initially lasting 4 seconds, and hits against champions refreshing the duration, make it so during Blood Rush, 10% of your Blood Well is drained per second (this wouldn't affect the bonus attack speed you got), and damage against enemy champions and epic monsters fill your Blood Well up to half. In other words, it would initially last 10 seconds, but hits against enemy champions would bring the remaining duration up to 5 seconds, if it was lower. People said Blood Rush doesn't last long enough, and that your lane opponent could just walk away, which this would in theory fix, as if your opponent just walked away, you could punish them by pushing the wave into their tower, forcing them to miss CS and damaging their tower.

Also, thank you a shit ton for not complaining.