I personally believe a rework was warranted: Aatrox is notorious for having one of the most generic kits in the game, and on top of that, the way his power was implemented made it hard to balance, as he was always overly feast-or-famine and stat-reliant. When he's strong, he feels far too strong, and otherwise he just feels terrible. Because of this, I was looking forward to a gameplay update for him.
However, with that said I don't think this rework was warranted: Aatrox's new kit still looks super-generic, particularly since it has way too many similarities to Riven's, along with a bunch of overlapping steroids and effects we've seen a ton of already, so that goal has been failed. On top of this, the new kit already looks to have clear counterplay problems, as all of it punishes champions low on mobility (who already get punished hard as is), and continues to give unconditional, stat-based power at a time where we've all realized just how problematic that is. What's bothered me as well is that the update took Aatrox's visuals, VO and backstory, all of which were excellent (in fact, players wanted his gameplay to be brought closer to the promise of his awesome lore), and made them all more generic, and generally lower in quality. Aatrox is no longer this calm, eerie bringer of war, he's just another big angry man who smashes people with his big weapon. All of this feels like it'll make Aatrox worse, which is the absolute last thing one would want from a champion update. This VGU also feels rushed, as much of it looks really unpolished (the VO in particular is horrendous, and feels like a layer of quality control is missing), which worries me especially due to how the champion overhaul process was, up until now (or maybe Galio), one of the most reliable ways Riot had of outputting high-quality content.
