Aatrox thoughts and ideas
So, we all know Aatrox is extremely weak in general, not even considering the meta either, which only makes his position worse, and he barely has any identity in the game right now. Like his abilities are designed for engaging, his base stats are designed for an ADC, and he ends up being a good duelist cause of his life stealing. But he can't do all those things at once, and NO MATTER which one of them he chooses to focus on in a match there will always be another champion who does the exact same thing but far better on top of being able to do one of the other options at the same time, unlike Aatrox.
To make things worse for him, because he has access to all these different in game paths, if he were to be buffed even slightly, he could just go out of control and become extremely OP. So I personally think he has to be redesigned, similar to the juggernauts, where their abilities are slightly altered but generally kept the same.
As for Aatrox, he just needs some sort of identity, anything! And due to his abilities being engage heavy focused I think it only makes the most sense for his identity to be shifted to that of an initiation bruiser/tank. Would be the easiest alteration for Riot as well as easiest to balance. A true carry, like Trynd or Yi, with as much life steal as Aatrox, is just asking for problems.
So anyway these are my thoughts on a potential alteration, if anyone has any ideas on how to make them better or something completely of their own ideas then go ahead and share them.
Q: His Q should stay the same animation and function, but the health costs could be slightly lowered and when he lands he leaves a pool of blood (or energy or something, based on which skin you're using), and when he stands in this pool it heals him over time. This makes initiating with him ideal, but punishes him if he tries to jump a target who can just kite him, to help avoid him jumping backlines and just being unkillable. The damage would also have to be increased.
W: Change this one and put in his attack speed steroid here. It will no longer be a toggle where you have to choose to use your own life to deal bonus damage or heal yourself on every third attack. Instead it increases his attack speed for a short time as well as granting him life steal on auto attacks, which would still have the effect of improving in effectiveness as his health drops below a certain threshold. This would also of course still be healing on every third attack, since a general buff every few seconds to heal as much as Aatrox does on every attack would just be ridiculous. This would provide some more counterplay against him, since he'd have to hit a target multiple times to get the healing effect, but it grants attack speed on use as well so he won't have to dump money into attack speed items since he'll be more focused on building tank items.
E: Again this one's animations and effect would remain the same, but it would cost more health to cast and it would spell vamp (or change it to physical damage and make it life steal) a percent of the damage done to champions. This means in teamfights he can self heal a lot while also applying a slow for catches or peels, but he can't spam it in lane for free harass and/or sustain. If he wants to hard push a lane he'd have to use his Q and/or W as well to heal up the damage he's doing to himself since he's only hitting minions, meaning he can't freely splitpush without any threat. Of course he'd still be a viable splitpusher, it just wouldn't be ridiculous, like Trynd before his E was nerfed. The damage would also have to be increased.
R: Redo this one completely, the current one is so boring, but it could still use the same animation, just altered a bit. Anyway, essentially he'd create a vacuum of sorts around himself as he rises into the air, pulling in all enemy champions around him (imagine Galio ult, but instead of just an AoE taunt it drags everyone in). Enemy champions caught in this can still use abilities and can cast them freely, but Aatrox's channel cannot be stopped, so they have to kill him to escape the pull. Also, while he's pulling them in, he heals himself based on the damage done to enemies caught in his ulti, because he can't attack or use abilities himself in this state. It'll be a fairly low heal for just a single champion, so they still have a chance of escaping, but when he catches multiple opponents he can heal quite a bit since he can take far more damage. This ult is setup so if you build carry on him intending to just life steal everything while imploding enemy carries, then you'll most likely always die for using this ult. It also encourages strong teamfighting engages and peeling, limiting it's use in 1v1 situations. The damage would be moderate during the mid game and fairly low in the late game, just enough to keep Aatrox standing while dragging in multiple targets but not enough that it would straight up kill any squishies caught in it. The catch here is that enemies caught in it can still attack Aatrox's teammates as well, they're just being dragged away from their targets in most cases, so this ulti can't completely deny enemies from securing kills.
Passive: His Blood Well passive bar fills up based on the amount of health he heals back from his abilities, so it'll fill up quickly if he ults multiple targets as well as fill up much slower from just using his W to hit people. It would also not grant any attack speed as it grows, allowing his attack speed base stat to be increased to a more average number. The Blood Well's function then would just be for the revival effect upon it's depletion. Also, upon revival he'd make a very small knock back when he stands back up, so if he gets dropped too quickly this gives him a chance to escape or back off, otherwise you'd just get the guardian angel effect when used on tanks, as in they typically die later if not last in teamfights so when the guardian angel brings them back up the enemy team just uses all the cc they got while just standing immediately on top of them, making it kind of useless. The small knock back for Aatrox would prevent melee chain cc'ing, but still allow for ranged cc like an Ahri charm for example, so it still has room for counterplay. This will also synergies very well with his ulti since he's really putting himself out there to pull in the enemy team without access to his abilities, he will often "die," but with a knock back effect he can get back into the fight without being instantly and automatically cc'd to death. Also, due to the focus now being more so on him dying upon initiation, the removal of the attack speed buff means he won't be punished for doing this as well.
What do you guys think? Obviously I'm no developer so I can't make up any numbers or percents and hope to actually know if they'd be balanced or not, but is the concept at least decent? I know a lot of Aatrox players might not like the idea of him becoming an engage fighter/tank, seeing as now anyone who plays him does so with the intent of dueling and playing as a melee carry, but he is one of my mains as well and honestly more times then not that just doesn't work out for him. He's too weak and he doesn't synergies with his abilities all that well, plus this fits his lore a lot better, especially the ulti.
But yeah, if this whole thing sucks just say so, it looks good to me but again I'm no professional lol And as I said earlier any other ideas on how to make him better are welcome, whether they're also to make him a tank or a flat out melee carry, I'm all ears, and hopefully everyone else reading this will be as well.
