Aatrox's passive
(I don't know if there is a rule against this but i wanted to take a short essay i wrote in another thread and make a discussion about the state of Aatrox's passive and it's effect on his kit and play-style as a whole)
Hi i'm an Aatrox main who wants to give his extended opinion on his current state. Personally while i believe with the rework Riot did try to make his passive for the better, in the long run it has only been a hindrance on his ability to function as a champion.
Currently, Aatrox has to stack 5/5 bars of his passive to gain any benifit from it. This means that until he can fill it he gets no revive, no attackspeed, and no bonus ad. His old Passive didn't give bonus ad, but it actually had benefit as you stacked it. It filled up to 100% and gave a certain amount of attackspeed for each % of the bar he filled. He also always had his revive up though he only got health for the percentage that it was filled. With the new revive giving him 30% of his max hp i don't think that an understacked passive would be too much of a problem if this was the effect on his old passive.
The next issue with his new passive is duration. as you're stacking your passive, you have 5 seconds to stay in combat with any source or the stacks start to rapidly decay. When you do manage to fill your passive bar you have 5 seconds to stay in combat with only champions and monsters to keep it up. Old Aatrox's passive decayed by 2% when out of combat so from 100% you had 50 seconds until your passive bar was empty. This meant that if he was gone for too long he would lose his passive but at the same time it wasn't too troublesome when he couldn't stay in combat as he wouldn't immediately lose all the progress in his passive bar. When i'm zoned off of minions on new Aatrox then I am completely at the mercy of my lane opponent. If they fight me at low stacks (or even if i run into anyone randomly when i'm at no stacks) then i have to fill all 5 stacks of my passive and even if i used every ability perfectly in a 1v1 i would still be only at 4/5 stacks. Other auto based champions like jax and tryndamere get benefits from their passives as they stack them but Aatrox doesn't.
Many times in these situations I have lost my revive immediately after activating my passive with new Aatrox due to the fact that i'm stuck having to finish stacking my passive with the only ability i'll have left to use (my w) rather than use it for healing myself. If i use it to heal then i still don't have my passive and if I cant get another heal in time due to my lack of full attackspeed then i'll now just die instead of even getting my revive. Another major problem with the duration is kiting. If my laning opponent can stay away from me for just 5 seconds then i'm left with nothing and once again at their mercy. This has also led to my death many times because for the time being they are essentially fighting a passive based champ with no passive at all.
Aatrox's passive needs to be rewarding as you stack it again and along with that it needs to have a manageable duration so that he's not left with purely nothing if he cannot stay in combat. If his new passive gave him 20% of his full passives attackspeed per 1/5 of his stacks, then he would at least benefit from part of his passive without having to activate Hellbent. Even if this change went through due the fraction based stacking of his passive and it's duration, there would still be situations where he is zoned off from stacking his passive at all since he only has 5 seconds to attack or be attacked again. If to solve this his passive was brought back to what it was pre rework as a 0% - 100% based passive and his w base damages compensated for the loss off the bonus base ad he could still have all the extra buffs and hot fixes that he was given and therefore still have most of his problems solved but now with a way more functional passive.
I hope this is a good view point for discussion on his kit.
