Aatrox is clunky and has no flow

Whether you hate the lore part of his rework or the change in his gameplay from right-click-to-death to Q-to-oblivion, there's one thing that objectively feels wrong about Aatrox's rework and it's that his kit is a clunky Frankenstein's monster of bastardized skills.

So one of the primary comparisons is Aatrox to Riven - sorry, I meant that Aatrox is now Riven. Which in a way, yes and no - untargetted dash that offers some kind of temporary buff of sorts, Q that's a three-combo ability, W that's some sort of immobilizing CC, and an ult that's a self-buff. The pieces are certainly all there, but changed to be different in their respects - Q and W actually require aiming, E is a double dash that instead offers an offensive buff versus a defensive one, and his ult increases his damage versus the range of his abilities and instead of making baddies dead, makes Aatrox not so dead.

Minus the finer details, Aatrox is pretty close to what I would imagine a Riven rework would be like, but would be a complete failure in that department as well for one very clean-cut detail: Aatrox's kit is atrocious to work with while Riven's tends to flow much more nicely.

Some questions may be raised about what I mean by "flow", and it's something that is present in a lot of fighters' kits, not just Riven's - Darius and Camille come to mind as well, so we'll go over all three.

• Riven (as much as I just don't like her) has a very nice flow of abilities that can all lead into one another, this very topic being covered by a dev talk on Riven's design by Riot themselves. If I remember correctly, it was something along the lines of trying to make Riven feel as close to a character in a 2-D plane fighting game as could possibly be implemented into League - a character who could run a number of "combinations" and play-styles in her abilities and allow her to outplay her enemies through skill and dedication (or in most cases, dashing and Q'ing away for-fucking-ever while I can't hope to catch her, the little shit). And this does show - though the animation canceling was labeled as a bug long ago, it was kept in the game to allow the most dedicated sorts of people to chain her moves together even more efficiently, and leads to basically no pausing in Riven's kit once a combo is being put together. It's one ability into the next with no need to wait, and her whole kit plays like that. There's no change in speed from start to finish.

• Darius probably closer to Aatrox than Riven is in all honesty for the reason that Darius needs to find ways to keep close to his enemies while keeping a rather precise distance to maximize his Q damage - but Darius does his job well and has his own combo and synergies to allow him to do this sort of thing. Phase Rush is still probably one of my favorite things to see on a Darius (yes I know Conq's is the better option, I don't care) because it makes Darius feel a lot better about his situation - namely that Darius has zero mobility whatsoever before getting Black Cleaver's 20 point speed-up. So when hit level 3 in lane and you've been mostly holding back until now, that moment when all bets are off feels fantastic - hit the sweet spot with Q, pull them in, auto into W reset, and now you're sprinting through the enemy and body-blocking them until they either flash or die. This one combo feels so nice to land, and winding up Darius' Q has all the fancy animation that just leads you to think "OH SHIT HERE IT COMES" as he pulls back for the swing. It doesn't look as flashy as Aatrox's new animations, but it has more impact just as a product of anticipation. And once the Q goes off, everything else goes pretty fuckin' fast - rather than having a pause in the middle of Darius' combos, Darius has the calm before the inevitable storm, and from there doesn't stop for a break.

• Camille is the opposite of both of these. She has perfect flow to her kit, oh yes, but it's about timing versus one ability after the other. Camille practically pauses on each ability cast, but in such a predictable measurement that it feels natural. It feels closer to a ballroom dance in terms of flow - E two three Qreset two three Wlands two three Qagain two three. You can feel free to mix up her abilities but there's always that momentary pause between using any one of them and when they land with her only potential mix-up being her Q timing, and when you fuck that up you actually feel like you fucked it up once you're in the rhythm. Camille is a good example of how you do abilities with a pause built into them - making sure they all feel natural as you attack.

And then you have Aatrox.

Aatrox's R speeds him up initially, but his Q requires him to remain stationary. Already one of his combos feels awkward and awful. His W is a weirdly placed skillshot in a kit filled with mostly AoE smash-bashing. His dash seems like it should combo into his abilities but honestly doesn't because right after dashing, anything he does (minus an auto-attack) requires him to fucking stop dead in his tracks and do a wind-up, so you always end up using it after the fact. From Aatrox's Q, you would expect his E to be something entirely different than a straight-faced dash. The flow of his kit feels utterly alien with each button press and you can almost see the seams from all the stitchwork that was done to try and bring parts from numerous different fighters together into one. And it all feels awful.

With Aatrox's Q alone, the fact that he is virtually immobilized while using it is a primary concern. It feels fucking awful to use and basically means you have no room to compensate for error - Aatrox feels like he has to be more precise than Camille even, and that seems pretty fuckin' weird all things considered. Trying to judge where an enemy's going to be a second from now with the added difficulty of your strike being practically laser-precise is a flawed art at best. Once you realize that you can literally avoid Aatrox's Q by walking into him, a lot of melee champions already stop feeling threatened. To make it a thousand times worse, if you have to face an inherently mobile champion as Aatrox, you might as well just wait for your nexus to blow up because you aren't going to land a single Q sweet-spot against anyone with at least two functioning brain cells. My grandmother in her final death twitches could avoid getting hit by Aatrox's sweet spot.

Aatrox's E is able to be combo'd with his Q at least to give you some room to work with, but again only compensates so much and is incredibly imprecise for something that requires a lot more precision than it should. Just watching the "playing as Aatrox" video alone should give you an idea of how asinine this rework is to try and play as - it even looks clunky! Just imagine playing that.

And don't even get me started on trying to mentally transition yourself from aiming an AoE sweet-spot stun to remembering your W is a fucking skillshot. You're in the zone and then remember "Oh wait, I'm not trying to fucking compensate with this ability". It's not a hurdle that's inherently difficult to get over, but it fucking feels weird. Two different play-styles - a "mobile" fighter and an immobile one - try to meld together into one sloppy mess of what-the-fuck.

And again. Why does his R buff his movement speed? It legitimately feels completely unused unless you just happen to be late to a fight or you got caught with your pants down and need to run. He comes with a dash that doesn't scale with movement-speed and his Q completely immobilizes him outside of using his E - a movement speed boost feels completely wasted for 80% of it.

His kit just flat out doesn't add up, even by older standards. It changes its flow throughout and his abilities don't even feel like they mesh well together. This is just a subpar rework so far.