Reforging the Darkin Blade.

WALL OF TEXT WARNING

I'd like to add before I describe what I find wrong with Aatrox at the moment and what can be done to make him healthy for the game, competitive, and unique, the original concept of this rework was made by OuterRaven. You can find his post here

At the moment, Aatrox is definitely in a tough spot. He can't put out enough damage when built as a bruiser, he can't really tank for long as a tank, and as a melee carry he simply explodes (though you rarely see a full damage Aatrox unless ridiculously fed). One of his problems lie in that he's your typical fighter champion. Gap Closer, CC, Steroid abilities, and AA modifiers. What can he do that something like Irelia or Nasus can't do any better? Additionally when he is strong (or ahead in a game) he is usually problematic because of his obscene sustain that requires little to no interaction, making it very difficult to kill him. Much like Vladimir he becomes nearly impossible to kill in this scenario.

Other issues lie in his current play patterns. This usually involves maxing his E, using it to poke his lane opponent and waveclear. At the same time, he tops his health off by farming with Blood Thirst active. Once he is ready to all in he bursts an opponent with E -> W -> R. Aside from dodging most of his E's, there is little in the way of counter-play. On the other hand, If an opponent can either poke Aatrox hard (Jayce, Vladimir, Lissandra) or hard engage on him early (Wukong, Renekton, Irelia, Hecarim) there is little Aatrox can do. Lastly, there are some champions that simply out-scale Aatrox, making it pointless to even pick Aatrox in these types of match-ups (Jax, Nasus, Sion, Maokai).

Come teamfights, unless Aatrox is massively ahead he becomes much less useful. He can dive in but if the enemy team has proper peel he just kind of dies. Aatrox is ideally a sustained damage fighter. He just can't last long enough to put out the DPS he needs to do. His sustain in fights is tied to his damage, so when he gets CC'd he usually is not tanky enough to survive.

So to sum it up, at the moment he's just bland and unused because other fighter champions are better numerically. What he needs to become viable and not outclassed? Probably better numbers and stats(obviously), but if you just buff him numerically as his kit is right now he'll just end up being obnoxious to play against and then nerfed back down. The proper way to fix Aatrox would be reworking him, taking what currently fits his character and thematic while trying to further emphasize a niche he should fill. Thus, I came up with this change-list:

Base HP increased to 570.8 Base Attack Speed increased to .679

Passive: Blood Well - All self inflicted damage is stored into the Blood Well. Upon taking fatal damage, Aatrox enters a stasis and begins draining his Blood Well, healing himself over the next 3 seconds. The amount of health restored is equal to 35% of the Blood Well's content limit, plus its amount of stored health upon activation.

• Attack Speed Steroid removed from Blood Well

Q: Dark Flight - Aatrox takes flight and slams down at the target area after a brief delay, dealing physical damage to nearby enemies upon landing and knocking up enemies based on their proximity to where Aatrox landed, for up to 1 second. Cost: 10% Current HP Cooldown: 14/13/12/11/10 Seconds Range: 650 Units

• Cooldown reduced by 2 seconds at all ranks.
• Knock-Up works like Rek'Sai's W now.
• Faster Animation

W: Blood Thirst - Whenever Aatrox deals physical damage to an enemy champion they gain a stack of Cursed Blood for 4 seconds. An enemy can have up to 5 stacks of Cursed Blood on them at once. Upon activation Aatrox draws in the blood of nearby enemies afflicted with Cursed Blood, dealing magic damage, healing Aatrox, and stealing movement speed from champions for 2.5 seconds. Healing from minions is reduced by 50%. Each stack of Cursed Blood on a target increases the magic damage they recieve and the heal you recieve from them. Cooldown: 14/13/12/11/10 Seconds Range: 800 Units

• Completely reworked.

E: Blood Price/Impalement - Passive: Blood Price - Every third basic attack Aatrox deals bonus physical damage.

Active: Impalement - Aatrox's next basic attack grants bonus attack speed for 4 seconds and pierces through the primary target, dealing physical damage to the target and opponents behind it in a line. This attack can apply Blood Price's bonus physical damage to all enemies struck.
Cost: 5% Current HP Cooldown: 8 Seconds Range: 600 Units

• Blood Price moved here, no longer as an HP cost on hit.
• Attack Speed Steroid also moved onto his E.

R: Massacre - Aatrox inspires bloodlust in his allies, causing Aatrox and nearby allied champions to heal for a percentage of damage dealt from any source to enemy champions. Additionally, Aatrox gains 175 bonus attack range and his basic attacks deal 66% of their physical damage to enemies surrounding his target.

• No longer deals AOE magic damage, instead creates a healing aura centered around Aatrox for his team.
• Still increases AA Range, also makes AA's deal AOE physical damage.

CONTEXT BEHIND CHANGES

Base Stats: Aatrox's base HP is on the low end and with his permanent sustain that required no interaction, his HP can be higher early (his HP Growth is 85, same as Wukong and Jax's which would make sense). Additionally, now that he has only one attack speed steroid, a higher base attack speed would allow him to get more out of it.

Passive: It felt odd having your attack speed tied to your passive. Also made him very weak after exiting his revive. Would feel better to just move it elsewhere.

Dark Flight: Changes to Dark Flight: His knock-up works like Rek'Sai's, where it will knock up regardless of where the enemy was when they were hit, but the knock up lasts longer if they are near the center. This makes Dark Flight more reliable in it's use. Speeding up the animation would also help to reduce the window in which you can knock him out of his dash.

Blood Thirst: So this spell was completely reworked. This spell has changed from the toggle of stances to Aatrox's sustain and sticking power. It is also his only major form of burst damage. With this spell, he can sustain his health costs but it requires either interaction with his lane opponent, or a large minion wave. He applies stacks to any enemy and does so with any source of physical damage (including the splash damage on his Ult, his E's line damage, his Q's AOE damage, autoattacks, and Tiamat/Hydra). With the built in movement speed steal, Aatrox would hopefully have enough bonus movement speed (and the minor slow on opponents) to stick to targets and apply his damage.

Blood Price/Impalement: This ability was also reworked completely. Aatrox's Blood Price moves here and no longer costs HP when procced (due to the fact he cannot permanently sustain by toggling anymore). It is a big source of his sustained damage. For the active, I thought he should still have access to a form of poke. It is more limited than the current Blades of Torment but that's not to say it still can't act as powerful harass (keep in mind if he hits the enemy champion, he can W after to deal more damage). His attack speed steroid moves here since having it attached to a spell instead of his passive just felt better (also allows for it to be stronger, and provide a window in which Aatrox's DPS is weaker).

Massacre: Finally, his Ultimate. I deliberately redesigned Massacre to discourage Aatrox as a burst damage champion, and it also gives him a huge sustained AOE damage presence in teamfights. The %HP Restoration based on damage dealt to champions is inspired from his lore, in which he inspired blood lust in the soldiers and they won a battle that would have been a crushing defeat otherwise. This could prove Aatrox to work fantastic in combination with at least one other heavy AOE damage champion (stuff like Annie, Orianna, Graves, or Wukong would be fantastic with him).

Assuming that his numbers are set correctly on all of his abilities (concerning damage, healing, the movement speed steal on his W, and the attack speed steroid on his E) what would you think of this concept of a rework? Do you feel it fits him thematically? Do you think it destroys him?