Why is Aatrox punished for building health and AD?

Health is extremely important for Aatrox, both as a tank and as a hypercarry, because otherwise you'd be oneshot. AD is important to simply deal damage. Aatrox doesn't have enough crowd control to merit being a full tank.

So how is Aatrox punished for building AD?

He has an ability that drains him of health. Surprisingly, the health cost scales on Bonus AD. So the more AD he's got, the more health it costs to use his W proc (set on Blood Price).

Think of it this way. Aatrox has 300 bonus AD with a hypercarry build. He also has at least 1.5 attack speed. Set on damage, to, well, do more damage, he will deal 75 damage to himself roughly every 1.8 seconds, off of that AD alone. And as a hypercarry, damage to yourself is the last thing you want. It's like giving the enemy a free Thornmail!

Then the bigger issue - since most people seem to build Aatrox with only 1~2 offensive items, then full tank.

His Q and E both cost percentage health.

Now, as an offtank leaning towards tank, he'd have at least 3000 to 4000 life. More about 3500 life, considering he has 3 slots for defensive items, and each item usually gives him 500 or so life.

So that Q alone, his only form of hard CC, will cost him a whopping _350 _life. Follow that up with an E - another 157.5 life gone. Thats over 500 damage he just did to himself - and it's not even affected by armor.

Now let's go look at the closest comparison to Aatrox. You guessed it, Zac.

Zac has a more full tank build, usually ending the game with at least 4000 life. 4 defensive items with 500 health each, then Cinderhulk with 400 life and an extra 15% bonus health, adding up to 2760 + his 2230 base, giving him over 5000 life.

So, let's go over Zac's combo.

First, we have the E. Elastic Slingshot. This costs 4% of his current health, which is 200. Then, we have his Q and W. The order doesn't matter. His second ability costs 192, and his third costs 184.32. Now, that's only 576.32 gone.

And Zac has a heal. Both his Q and W drop 1 blob, healing for 200 if he picks it up. His E can spawn 5 blobs if he gets a 5 hit combo - but lets assume he only hits 3. Still, thats another 600 potential heal. And his ult can spawn 4 more, 800 more health back.

Assuming he picks up all of them, that's an 1800 life heal. We'll assume he picks up less than half - 4 - that's still 800 life. Plenty more than how much he used.

But Aatrox has a heal too! It's also more reliable!

Well, let's see how much Aatrox heals for. With 2 offensive items, he has about 200 AD and 1.5 attack speed. This changes if he's jungling, of course. I mean, this changes with your build. But for this, we'll assume a Dev and a Rav (if jungling) or a BoTRK and a Rav.

We'll start with his W. If he's jungling, he heals for 40 + 19 health every second hit. So 59 health every 1.2 seconds. If he's not jungling, the heal is 40 + 25 every third hit. So 65 health every 1.8 seconds.

Then we go to lifesteal. If he's jungling, he has 12% lifesteal, and assuming his Rav hits 2 other targets and middle range, that's another 12% lifesteal for 40% of his AD. So that's 12% on 200 AD, and two 12%'s on 80 AD.

Armor affects this, and he has no armor pen. Let's go with a 50% damage reduction. Which is 21.6 health each hit, approximately every 0.6 seconds.

If he's not jungling, he has 22% lifesteal. He still has the 22% on 40% of his AD from Rav, and he also has 22% of 6% of his target's max health from BoTRK.

Again, 50% damage reduction. Again, that's 22% of 100, which is 22, and two 22% of 40, which is 17.6 more. Then assuming his target has about 2500 life, another 75 from BoTRK, so another 16. Adding up to 55.6 each hit.

Blade's active gives another 250 health.

So, to sum it all up, the jungle build gives 59 health every 1.2 seconds, or every second hit, and 21.6 every 0.6 seconds, or each auto. This takes 9 seconds of constant auto attacking (not hard) to get the 800 health Zac would have.

The laning build gives 65 health every 1.8 seconds, or every third auto, and 55.6 health every 0.6 seconds, or every auto. He also gets another 250 from BoTRK's active. This takes 4 seconds to heal as much as Zac.

To top it all off, Frozen Heart and Randuin's slow his attack speed, reducing his heals. Even worse, they stack.

The jungling is much more popular, however, and there are people who will skip BoTRK. Aatrox's saving grace is the amount of DPS he outputs, but as a tank he is surely much weaker than Zac. He has nowhere near the CC, nowhere near the AoE disruption. His early game is slightly weaker, his Q being less reliable as an engage than Zac's E, with less burst damage to supplement it. With no armor pen, there is simply no way Aatrox will be able to kill a tank without dying first, while Zac has the %health damage and tankiness needed. Especially since there's a fairly good chance that Aatrox will be beating himself to death on a Thornmail, while Zac doesn't have that problem.

So what am I trying to say? Change the %health costs on Aatrox's abilities to flat health, like Mundo. If you want him to be a tank, that's certainly the better choice.

But even with a glass cannon build, using Q costs 190 health.