Top lane :
Best masteries for Aatrox are 18/0/12 with Battle of Fervor. Synergizes very well with his auto-attack based kit.
If you are against a squishy, but hard lane (Graves/Lissandra,etc.), you can go Thunderlord and trade dmg with them, while healing back on minions after every trade. This should discourage them on playing aggressive with you.
Aatrox is best when he is the bully. If you are being cornered (you can't even hit minions to HEAL with every 3rd W) you are pretty much worthless for the whole game.
Build path ?
Right now, the best 1st item for him is Ravenous Hydra (Tiamat early = for AA reset / burst). Believe me, when you have that as soon as you hit lvl 6, you can kill very fast every champion out there in 3 seconds(Blood Price W > Q > AA > E > R > AA > Blood Price W = dead).
If you get ahead (btw, if you can't get ahead in lane with Aatrox, don't play him), next items i recommend you are Phantom Dancer (it's pretty cheap) and Boots of Swiftness. I can guarantee you should 1v2 most champions if they are not as fed as you. From here, it's againt very situational. If you feel very strong, you can go build Death's Dance. But, trust me, if you have RH+PD+DD+Swiftness boots around min 20, there is no need to recommend 5th item because the game is already finishing.
When playing vs. lots of CC & tankiness i recommend you 1st item BotrK into tank items (Spirit Visage/ Randuin's Omen / Guardian Angel are the only worth to take defensive items on him, if you ask me).
So, here are my GENERALLY builds :
1).When you are very ahead :
Ravenous Hydra / Swiftness Boots / Phantom Dancer/ Death's Dance / Spirit Visage / Sterak's Gage
2).When you are ahead vs hard CC :
Ravenous Hydra / Mercury Boots / Phantom Dancer / Spirit Visage / Randuin's Omen / Maw of Malmortius or Sterak's Gage
3).When you are even :
Ravenous Hydra/ Swiftness Boots (or Mercury if they have some CC) / Spirit Visage or Randuin (depending on who is fed (ap or ad) / Maw of Malmortius / Sterak's Gage
4). If you wanna be the tank, against a 3tank comp with lots of CC :
Just build Botrk 1st into Randuin/SV/Mercury's Treads. Without them, considering they have 3 tanks and lot of CC, you will get 100-0 early game by their APC or ADC, because you can't get to them to heal yourself.
5,6,7,8,9...100. you will find them out yourself if you are going to play 300+ games on him.
I remind you : full AS/Lifesteal is ultra-useless when you get CC'ed/kited to death.
Jungle :
Either Battle of Fervor or Strength of Ages for that 300+ hp late game.
300hp for Aatrox is A LOT of health, considering his shit base health pool.
Unlike top lane, Jungle Aatrox is less versatile as it will only depend on one factor : How fast can you get sated ?
First three items are in most cases Devourer + Botrk + Boots.
My question is : Are you ready to get blown in 1 sec after you have those 3 items, because of your 1.3k HP @ LVL 12 ? That's why i recommend SoTA +300 HP with Aatrox jungle.
Next items are, again situational.
My recommendations for jungle :
Spirit Visage (very good with Sated Devourer ), Randuin, Sterak's Gage / Maw of Malmortius / Death's Dance.
I don't recommend Ravenous Hydra for jungler Aatrox
You can check my op.gg if you wanna see more builds, i have lots of games on Aatrox you could choose from.
