Riot, let's talk about Aatrox

From the moment I first played Aatrox, I fell in love with his thematic, his visuals, his playstyle, etc. But after about 4 to 5 games with him, I started realizing his flaws. As I've played him more and more to the point of accumulating almost 40k mastery on him, his flaws have only become clearer.

He has only one gear: go. As hard and as fast as he can, whenever he can, or he's useless. He has to be in melee range to be functional, and, unlike champions like Master Yi, Jax, Irelia, and Jarvan, he has no real way to stay in melee range outside of running at people.

The damages on his skills are extremely weak, even if you build full AD. He literally has to auto attack people to death, and most of his kit doesn't work with this in mind. Building full AD is a death sentence, as you just get blown up immediately before you can do any damage. As a full tank he contributes literally nothing to the team with pitiful base damages, long cooldowns, and no inherent tankiness. Building bruiser is the most optimal, but you still feel like you do too little damage and are not nearly tanky enough.

His Q is interruptable and extremely delayed, meaning pretty much anyone with CC and a brain can stop his engage, or disengage- it's extremely frustrating to get hooked out of your Dark Flight. His E has a decent slow attached to it, but is fairly hard to aim, as its shape is rather awkward, and Aatrox must stop moving to cast it, which just has always seemed counter intuitive to me. His R is just very lackluster for an ultimate; he gains some attack speed, deals a little bit of damage, and gets a small amount of range. It doesn't make you feel stronger. His passive revive is interesting, but in most cases, it only really serves to let you say your final prayers before you get immediately murdered again.

His W, though, is the skill I have the most problems with. It's a toggleable ability, which generally is indicative of giving some bonus for a cost. However, until Aatrox has about 20% life steal, it's pretty much never worth it to toggle it on in a fight, as he just dies faster. And leaving it toggled off is its own struggle, as he has to get 3 hits in to even get its heal. It also gives Aatrox this split identity: Is he supposed to burst people, or is he supposed to duke it out in sustained fights? Blood Thirst lends itself to sustained fights, while Blood Price leans towards burst. Except, Aatrox doesn't even really have burst. Why give him a skill that doesn't synergize with the rest of his kit?

On top of the problems with his W in general, it really screws Aatrox over in the power budgeting department. Giving a champion free lifesteal can't happen without taking power out of other parts of their kit (except with Irelia for some reason, who in my opinion is a lot like Aatrox, just better in every way). Aatrox is meant to dive in and deal sustained damage while not dying, but his kit is weak at all of this, He can't effectively dive in as a primary engage as he'll just get CC'd and be useless and probably die. He is okay at dealing sustained damage, except for the part where he gets kited and can't stick on people. And as for not dying, he has his passive and he has his W, but as I already mentioned his passive just makes him a sitting duck and his W is a nonfactor if he gets CC'd before he can get a 3rd hit in.

There are a few positive with Aatrox though, so let me talk about these for a moment, albeit a brief one. The part of his passive that gives him bonus attack speed is really novel and unique concept, and ties in with his thematic perfectly. The more he fights, the stronger he gets, and really like that. His Q is a pretty cool skill, and rewards precision with a knockup. It also gets him in range to start autoing people to death, even if it is sometimes a death sentence. His E is pretty unique too, not many champions have a skillshot slow. Other than his skills, I love his thematic and his visuals, when you look at him you feel like you should be powerful, like a god.

As for my overall thoughts, I think Aatrox's problems stem from him not having an identity. He's an initiator/drain tank/assassin/fighter/melee carry/hyper-sustain...thing. He literally does everything that you would want in a melee damage focused champion, except he's pretty garbage at all of it. He's extremely inconsistent and snowball reliant for being such a generalist, and even if he gets ahead, there's no guarantee that he'll transition well into the lategame. In fact, his winrate plummets as game length goes on, which is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect for a champion that scales so hard with items.

Aatrox is my favorite champion, and it saddens me whenever I play a game with him and realize that I could have killed that escaping ADC with Yi or survived the fight with Jax. He just...does everything worse than every other fighter type champion. His initiation is weak, his damage lategame is weak, his survivablity even with his W and his passive is weak. I know Rioters have previously talked about Aatrox and how they see him as balanced because of his roughly 50% winrate...but that's not the point. The point is that his kit is by it's nature unbalanced, so to make it balanced his numbers were gutted to the point that unless he gets ahead nothing in his kit will be effective. And even if he does get ahead, the only reason he wins is because he can just outduel people...that's all Aatrox really is right now. A duelist. Like Tryndamere, his kit's problems are covered up by his ability to 1v1 anybody in the game, but that doesn't mean the problems don't exist. Unlike Tryndamere, however, I feel like Aatrox has the potential to be a strong teamfighter over a duelist. His whole kit just screams "get me in the fight!" but once he gets there, all he can do is auto attack people.

In conclusion, I feel that Aatrox just needs an identity. Whether he becomes an assassin, a tank, a true fighter, or an AP caster, I don't really care as long as I can pick something and be good at it, rather than having to try to fit 2 or 3 different champions into one body. I really don't know where to take Aatrox, and I'm definitely not the best person to ask. I'm not an Aatrox main, nor do I really play him anymore, but I do know that his thematic as a fighter who gets stronger as the battle progresses and becomes nigh unkillable should be preserved. If he has to lose his healing for this, I'm sure most Aatrox players would be happy with it. His W is what's holding him back from being unique, and I'd rather have him lose a limb than have his whole body consumed with disease. These are just my thoughts, but I'm sure many others feel the same way as I do about our beloved Darkin.