I was thinking about Aatrox at the current point in time.

I love Aatrox. Aatrox is one of my favorite champions, I love his kit, and I love how he plays. I found him mid-late last season and binge played him in the jungle and top. Almost exclusively.

When I found out Aatrox was going to be reworked, I was confused. "Why is my favorite champion going to be reworked?" But then I realized his problems as I got him to rank 5. Aatrox excels at split pushing, and his team fighting is lack luster.

And he doesn't fit his main theme. Aatrox is an atrocity, a terror to behold upon the battlefield. Seeing him on your side inspires you to continue fighting, your life means little when Aatrox is your ally. He will kill what you cannot finish off. For Example: Aatrox's Blood Well is thematically meant to make him a bigger threat in a large war. If enough of his foes harm him, he simply comes back. His Dark Flight and Blades of Torment are meant to be able to stop enemies from escaping his grasp. While Massacre stops people who CAN get away, stopping them due to his increased range, as well as being able to deal a large amount of damage to all around him.

Aatrox theme in lane works, but within team fighting, Aatrox becomes completely different than his theme; designed to stop people from escaping him and being hard to kill. He does most of this, but has many problems with it. A large portion of his usefulness is either killing someone before they can get out of his range, or slaughtering someone who is in his mid to backline. Aatrox is in the mid line of a team, either helping the back line or killing the enemies in the front line. Aatrox, however, does not have all of the tools to do so.

He builds as a bruiser, being hard to kill, but still dealing damage. His kit provides a sustained form of tankiness, and two different ways to sustain, as well as an in kit increase in damage, while also having 3 ways to keep someone in his range for both tankiness and damage. But his team fighting fails when his Q has missed or been stopped, when his Blood Well has been taken out, and when his ultimate is on cooldown.

If two of these three fail, then he simply has stopped being as useful as most champions in the game, as all he can now do is some dps every third hit and a slow. Although his Q is on a low enough cooldown, his ultimate and Blood Well's cooldown isn't moderate until late game. And Blood Well's cooldown SHOULD stay where it is.

So I propose a few ideas. Some of them stronger than others. -- Aatrox's Blood Well, when up, increases the effectiveness of Blood Price. Just Blood Price. while down, it increases his maximum health ( but not health regained by Blood Well) for the duration of the cooldown of his Blood Well by the amount of health he regains upon revive. Also Removes the Blood Price buff. This would allow Aatrox to have a bonus to his complete damage overall, and rewards him for playing carefully, but also gives him a small amount of wiggle room when it is down, due to the tankiness.

-- Aatrox's Blood Price now scales with a percentage of max health, but increased at an (optional) increased cost of his health per Blood Price autos. This gives him more build paths, where being able to be more tanky will be a good thing for him, but still allow him to do damage, whereas a mostly damage build of Aatrox, will most likely get more damage on his Blood Price from items, it would still be useful when he needs to become a Tank.

-- Aatrox's Massacre now scales with a percentage of max health (see a pattern?). Again, more tankiness. But I should mention, that if you take his Massacre damage and add a percentage of max health, building tank gives him more burst, but giving the scaling to his increased auto attack speed increases his tankiness overall and his dps.

-- Aatrox's Dark Flight's leap range is increased, or the width in which the knock up is activated is increased, possibly to the full circle. Or both circles are given increased width.

I really don't expect any of these to become part of Aatrox anytime soon, or even at all. But as an Aatrox fan, I feel like his biggest fun is being in a team fight with his kit. He provides a large amount of damage when he can actually focus his kit and resources on to a few targets, but once 3/5 (over half) of his kit has been used, he doesn't do much else but a moderate amount of sustained damage. And remember, I'm not counting his kit with items, by itself he doesn't have many resources or nuances in his kit to continue a teamfight. This why I recommended he either gain more base tankiness, or increased damage by building tankiness, allowing him to fully sement his style of a high damage bruiser, such as Pantheon.

I just hope that at least something like this makes it through, and that Aatrox doesn't receive a full scale rework of his kit. Oh, and maybe if he had SOME base stat increases, such as a SMALL auto attack range increase, or a small increase to base damage, or possibly base attack speed.

Please post your thoughts on these ideas, and post your own.

(Disclaimer, I am not a balancing wizard. I do not know how to balance the game in its current state. I am simply, as a fan, thinking of ways to improve how one of, if not my favorite of, my favorite champions)