Why is Aatrox considered bad?

Astôlfo·Mar 4, 2016·5 votes·10,489 views

I've never played him myself but his kit seems decent and the Aatrox players I see every now and then do alright.

30 Comments

QuephaMar 4, 201613 votes

Mediocre durability with mediocre sustained damage. He doesn't really excel at anything and there are a lot of champions that bring what he does while being better at those things and having additional things.

With his passive he can do pretty decent in duels although the enemy usually just backs off during his respawn animation. Then while his passive is down he just kinda loses.

YumaS2AstralMar 4, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Squishy with mediocre sustained damage. He doesn't really excel at anything and there are a lot of champions that bring what he does while being better at those things and having additional things.

The only thing that he used to excel - by sustaining himself just by auto-attacking - was now made outclassed by another champion XinZhao

QuephaMar 4, 20161 votes

{quoted}

The only thing that he used to excel - by sustaining himself just by auto-attacking - was now made outclassed by another champion

Even before the Xin Zhao buffs, healing from auto attacks was a powerful part of Irelia and Warwick's kits, plus adc champs would build lifesteal and get even more sustain than any of them. And they don't lose a ton of their damage when using their sustain like Aatrox does when he has to turn off Blood Price.

AstôlfoMar 4, 20162 votes

Thank you for the help! Shame though, his in-game model and animations look rather cool in my opinion.

QuephaMar 4, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Thank you for the help! Shame though, his in-game model and animations look rather cool in my opinion.

I hate absolutely everything about him.

Vicarious117Mar 4, 20165 votes

Agreed, he is one of the coolest looking champions with some of the best voice acting and lines in the game.

He does fine atm when building devourer and rageblade in the jungle, mainly because rageblade is one of the most OP items to ever have existed in League history and still hasn't been changed enough to make any sort of difference for some reason.

But he is generally kind of bad just cause his base stats and kit don't line up correctly. His kit has a design akin to that of an engage/sustain tank, but his base stats are reminiscent to that of an ADC. He's far too squishy in general to be able to make proper use of his kit when at the same time his kit kind of prevents him from playing safe enough to get out any meaningful damage.

They either need to rework him so his kit fits more into the carry role, less kitable and some kind of means of being safer when trying to deal damage, or rework him into an engage tank and give him better base stats and slightly altered abilities to actually give him the means of sustaining like a tank should be able to.

Until then he has to rely on rageblade/steraks builds, which will be nerfed eventually and he'll most likely be left in the dust.... again :(

TehNACHOMar 4, 20168 votes

Two parts:

His design is based on stat checking people
His numbers are subpar for stat checking people

If he falls behind, he's kinda very useless.

AstôlfoMar 4, 20162 votes

Sorry, I'm sorta new to League. What do you mean by stat checking people?

Ave MachinaMar 4, 20163 votes

"Stat checking" is where character's ability or kit deals guaranteed damage with no room for technique or counterplay.

The classic example is XinZhao Xin Zhao - he clicks an opponent to dash in and slow them with Audacious Charge, and then uses Three Talon Strike to autoattack them three times, knocking them up at the end. The slow means they have virtually no opportunity to escape before the third hit.

The combo is a "stat check": if you have the HP and resistance to survive it, you live, and if you don't, then Xin Zhao clicks on you and you die. There are no skillshots to land or dodge, the moves have no sweet spots that a skilled player can use to deal extra damage, and there's no real way to outmaneuver the combo once he's in range.

ŁøkıJun 18, 20161 votes

Thank you for the explanation! <3

TehNACHOMar 4, 20163 votes

The short version is that if you're stronger than the enemy, you automatically win. For example, if two ADCs with no abilities started auto attacking each other, the one with the higher stats would obviously win. The winner "stat checked" the loser.

The exact opposite of that is skill based matchups, for example two skillshot Mages fighting each other. Between the attacker maybe missing and the defender being able to dodge, the "stronger" Mage may not necessarily win if the weaker one outplays the other.

ÐelofashtMar 4, 20164 votes

His kit forces some unusual restrictions that are hard for a team to play around while being less good at what he does than many other champs. . . He just isn't the best in a role and not versatile enough to do other things well. His utility is very limited because of the design of his kit and thus gets no game play.

Surely this could be broken down further but really that about sums it up. Also his passive can be really weak, but if he gets buffed he could be entirely too strong so they can't really bring him up much either. He'll probably sit by waiting for a rework for some time.

MasterSomethingMar 4, 20162 votes

It's his reliance on auto attacks, making him quite easy to counter. Same with Jax, Yi, Xin... You know, I don't get these boards in the slightest...

clleshMar 4, 20162 votes

because sarcasm requires facial twitches and voice inflections to come across well, especially between strangers... so it is vry hard to communicate properly between people on the boards....

=^D

RookPusherMar 4, 20161 votes

What about as a jungler?

LilxPaprikaMar 4, 20161 votes

shouldnt he be good in competitive then? we don't see him there much. but you would think with communication you could coordinate and play to his strength more.

Guyy FieriMar 4, 20161 votes

Fiora, Nautilus and Jax all split push better than Aatrox and have significantly better team fighting, that's why they are the priority split push champs and not Aatrox

Only Play DariusMar 4, 20161 votes

Idk he does well every game I see him but I'm Bronze.

He needs a rework his current kit is too frustrating and annoying to play against

AstôlfoMar 4, 20161 votes

I mean, people probably just don't know how to deal with him at low elo? Because his winrate is really low on Champion.GG, so I was just wondering.

Only Play DariusMar 4, 20162 votes

Riot intentionally keeps him weak because he is frustrating to deal with, he's like melee Vlad he sustains off everything and just split pushes brainlessly for the entire game and when he is strong you need half the team to stop him.

Universal BoopMar 4, 20161 votes

His passive and ult are kinda bleh getting attack speed from two sources just seems like bad design to me anyways. but that being said getting attack speed from his passive really helps him dueling pre 6

Guyy FieriMar 4, 20161 votes

He is really susceptible to burst damage (which is very prevalent in the meta right now), he is easily kitable and he takes a decent amount of time to ramp up, making him either very weak early game in top lane or almost non-existent out of the jungle (as he wants to just farm his devourer until 20 minutes).

DesolationKaizerMar 4, 20161 votes

Yeah, uh he's just pretty much outclassed in anything he tries to do. Whether it's his gapcloser (which is easy to stop), his sustain, his damage, so on and so forth. Even Bloodwell doesn't really contribute much outside of laning phase, since it just basically gives you a few seconds before you get blown up again.

TheImpLordMar 4, 20161 votes

He is like yi jax and udyr an as based champion but unlike the others he requires fine micro ing of his w to do damage and heal while all the others just face roll their keyboard and right click to do better then him.

Left Hook LarryMar 4, 20161 votes

He's not

Chaos Milk TeaMar 4, 20161 votes

It's like he wants to do a lot of things, but he's not doing any of them well so he just has to split push and duel.

He's also simultaneously a super sustain champion and an auto attack overloaded champion, two of the most "breaks randomly from one change" kind of champs out there.

FantasySniperMar 5, 20161 votes

Terrible base stats and kit. You don't expect to use Blood Price while fighting champions. He needs his passive up to even be capable of contributing in a teamfight.

Before the pre-season, I actually enjoyed playing him. Now he can't really do shit.

Solidair3Mar 5, 20161 votes

people confuse low playrate with being bad sometimes.

He does admittedly rely on getting fed early, but over all he's a pretty strong champion when played well.

La BarbotteMar 5, 20161 votes

because sadly for my man aatrox he doesnt exel at anything, ,

you need constant dps ? MasterYi sustain tank ? DrMundo Volibear initiator ? XinZhao MonkeyKing split pusher ? Tryndamere Jax

and so on, but that doesnt mean he's bad, hes simply never the best option, unless you actually want to play him, in that case join the club buddy, cause he hurts, slowly but it wont stop, and if the enemy has no CC, your lategame is nasty as F

CaptainAntiHerozSep 5, 20171 votes

He's not good, but he's not terrible either I played one game with him so far but really he has no specific place, if he doesn't have full attack speed runes he has to build some to take advantage of his w, but if he is up against Jax or Shen he becomes nearly useless. Teemo destroys him too once he hits level two and gets his q. But that's just his top lane issues. In the jungle he can solo pretty well but only if he isn't interrupted, if someone else arrives you'll take too much damage to sustain yourself. Tank aatrox doesn't really offer anything except a longer annoyance in team fights. Once he's got full blood well he has a free ga, he can still get a actual ga, and if they have a zilean you'll have to kill him three times before he actually dies. But since tanks don't do as much damage he'll really only be stalling for the team or tanking skill shots. Ap Aatrox can ONLY do team fights or he's just not going to do enough to be beneficial to his team. His ult is the only Ap ability in his kit and even though it has 100% scaling it won't fill your blood well fast enough if you don't hit a lot of people And dps aatrox gets deleted super easily if he gets two v one'd