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Reasonable Aatrox buffs until his rework @Meddler Also, he is not in that bad of a state

TheDarkinLegend·12/23/2016, 6:25:02 AM·1 votes·964 views

Let me start by saying I disagree with reworking him completely. Riot has reworked many champions and often it doesn't increase their win rate or popularity.

Furthermore, Aatrox is not really in a that bad state. I maintain a 60 percent win rate with him on my other account, and that includes throwing matches due to my tilting.

His armor and AD scaling is better than many fighters. He can generate a lot of damage with his combos, just like other champions. He is capable of 1v1ing many champions who are a level or 2 ahead or up by several kills and a lot of gold.

I often feel quite oppressive with just 1 kills advantage. And often that small lead makes me unstoppable.

So why do people think Aatrox is in a bad state?

1)People build him wrong.Sometimes you should build a item 3812 and item 3046 , sometimes you need build item 3153 and item 3022 and sometimes you need to rush item 3156 A mid game item 3026 can also be much better than a last item purchase.

2)Teammates see him so infrequently they don't trust an Aatrox players judgement. They might hesitate on an obvious engage because Aatrox has low health or is a little behind, and because they don't trust the engage, because they have no metric in their head to gauge what his is capable of with his sustain. So Aatrox gets killed and then they yell at him for engaging despite the fact that the right move was for the rest of the team to also engage. This is a problem with many unpopular champions--we often don't know how to play off of them as well as we do with other champions we see more often. Hence, a champion in a bad state might have an even lower win rate than they otherwise would if many people played that champion. If Aatrox was a popular as Lee Sin, do you think he would be at higher win rate? I think so actually.

3)His Passive. Aatrox passive is his bloodwell, which gives him a revive and bonus attack speed The bonus attack speed is contingent on his bloodwell. When Aatrox uses his revive, he comes back with no bonus attack speed. He is now in a state with no benefit from his passive, other then just coming back to life. but since his kit is based on auto attacks, and attack speed is very important to that, he comes back to life in a very VERY weak state, usually with the enemy standing next to him waiting to finish him. This is in stark contrast to Anvia or Zac which require the enemy to have to actively take action to finish them off, which takes time and focus and can often fail or cause them to get killed trying to kill that egg or zac blobs. Or compared to Voli's passive, Voli gets the benefit of all that healing BUT gets to move around and stay in the fight while his passive is is happening.

4)His W is not the problem. Its a great ability which requires no mechanical skill but VERY MARGINAL JUDGEMENT CALLS, in dynamic situations. People think because Aatrox is mechanically simple to play he is a simple champion. But like many things the masses believe, they are entirely incorrect. Experience can teach you how to bait enemies with you low health into a trade that they will lose, or how you will profit from a team fight where you are definitely going to burn your passive. These are only simple examples.

5)His Q is great if you are really good with it. But even being really good with it, the knock-up window is very small. And, compared to other dashes or blinks, everything interrupts his dive, which is super obnoxious and is on a fairly long cool down. I still like though

6)His E makes him hard to lane against, but I feel falls off in usefulness later in the game. And perhaps that is fine.

So here is what should happen:

--Attack Range increased from 150 to 175. --Base Movement Speed increased from 345 to 350 --Bloodwell Bonus--Diving with a full blood well increases the knock up radius slightly, SLIGHTLY, and applies a 20% slow of .25/.50/.75/1/1.25 second slow on champions just outside of the knock up area. Hitting enemy champions with E with a full blood-well provides vision for 2/2.25/3/3.25/3.5 seconds. --Massacre, his ult. Aatrox thrives off of the thrill of overwhelming odds. So in addition to Attack Speed: 40 / 50 / 60%, also gains additional attack speed of 5/10/15% for every enemy champion nearby beyond 1. So 3 champions nearby when he ults would provide 10% more attack speed at the lowest level or 20% at the 2nd level. Furthermore, Aatrox AOE damage from his ult can effect monsters and minions. Additionally, Aatrox can Inspire while using Massacre. Any champion enemy champion killed by Aatrox during massacre, will inspire teammates with confidence, giving them 15/20/25% Tenacity for 5 seconds. Bonus attack ranged increased from 175 to 200.

There, that's it. We haven't changed his passive. We haven't changed his AD stats or life-steal, beyond giving him, potentially, a little more attack speed in team fights. We have given him more utility, potentially, with his dive and poke, and provided him some additional wave clear or potential to steal a dragon or baron with his ult. The extra attack speed in a team fight may help him do well with builds that skip attack speed and focus more on AD and tank items. Inspire helps him live up to his lore, and rewards a skilled Aatrox for taking quickly taking out a carry in a team fight.

Obviously my numbers are just examples. Riot could easily fine tune them I'm sure. But you get the idea. Reward him for keeping his bloodwell full with extra utility (not damage), reward him for using his ult in the right spot at the right time, and reward him for doing his job of diving the backline and getting a kill in a a team fight.

10 Comments

Bradley Dragon12/23/2016, 7:31:52 AM1 votes

he feels like a dominant unstoppable force in lane... then falls flat on his face afterwords. he has no way to really do anything mid game other then die in 2 hits to the mid laner

Abandon12/23/2016, 9:45:50 AM1 votes

Aatrox is in a bad state, stop joking yourself in believing he's fine. He's barely played because he brings nothing new to the table and as a Rioter pointed will not "feel good" because he's always "in the middle of the pack". He's not inherently broken by any means but his kit is out-dated and doesn't follow the philosophy of the current league of legends. He NEEDS a rework, there are no two ways about this. I think they said his rework would be on a poppy level? Your level of fixing doesn't fix his inherent problems of being a squishy, melee stat checker with an incohesive kit that doesn't tie in with his theme and doesn't deliver in gameplay feel. It's also too much to be pushing in 1 buff cycle or rotation, there's no need to break him now and cause unnecessary problems later. Small buffs are fine though.

On your 2nd point: "2)Teammates see him so infrequently they don't trust an Aatrox players judgement. They might hesitate on an obvious engage because Aatrox has low health or is a little behind, and because they don't trust the engage, because they have no metric in their head to gauge what his is capable of with his sustain. So Aatrox gets killed and then they yell at him for engaging despite the fact that the right move was for the rest of the team to also engage. This is a problem with many unpopular champions--we often don't know how to play off of them as well as we do with other champions we see more often. Hence, a champion in a bad state might have an even lower win rate than they otherwise would if many people played that champion. If Aatrox was a popular as Lee Sin, do you think he would be at higher win rate? I think so actually."

This sounds like a personal problem and not an actual problem that Aatrox has.

On point 4: It's not that hard to fully understand and utilise his W. It takes only a few games of actually playtesting with Aatrox and giving him a fair amount of time to learn - just like any mechanic on a champion.

On point 5 & 6: I feel there are way better skills that could be conjured up to deliver the same effect but not only feel better to use but don't fall flat on its face in lategame.

Also, I'm sorry but you I don't think you should be giving tips and boast about your win-rate when you yourself have not shown prowess with the champion you main. On the three accounts I know you own, you were silver (I know rank doesn't mean everything but still, if you were playing that much it does show you were at least trying to climb but couldn't) in all three accounts in S6 and currently, are bronze on your two active accounts this season. One of your accounts has 51% winrate with over 200 games in the low silver/bronze level and your other is 59% with much fewer games in the same elo.

I didn't intend for this entire post to be shitting on you but in my other posts/comments where I gave you personal advice on how to improve your play as Aatrox, you barely listened at all. It took you forever to catch onto phantom dancer and from your own videos, I'm seeing that you still haven't fully grasped the idea of orb walking/attack moving which if you learnt, you wouldn't need a frozen mallet or black cleaver to catch up to your targets.

I know no one's advice is the be it or end all but seriously, if you're gonna give any advice about the champion at least become good enough to actually be a good representation for its community.