Lets talk about Aatrox and how Riot totally ruined him.

When the changes were first made, they were awful, he was unplayable. They buffed him 3 times after that and he got to a better spot. And when I'm playing nearly perfect, I feel like he is strong. If I get lucky with an early kills, snowballing is easy. There are some REALLY strong things about his kit. But as a whole it is riddled with weaknesses.

More so than any other champion, if I am not playing my best or even slightly under my usual performance, I see his deficiencies quite clearly and they are quite severe. This tilts me easily because I start to get pissed at Riot for allowing him to even be in this spot.

Aatrox main thing is lifesteal. Lets look at that: It scales off missing HP, every 3rd hit. In order to actually lifesteal well from his kit, you would need to build a lot of attack speed and a lot of health. But even if you did, you would have very little damage. Even if you build its still baby damage compared to having and you will feel your weakness when trying to kill champions, especially high HP or champions with armor. Meanwhile his damage comes from AD. High AD means that when you dive someone and hit them with a few Blood Price hits and his E, you will do significant damage..but, you will not be getting the most out his lifesteal from his kit, and are likely easily bursted down.

Furthermore, every ADC now seems so fast with items and abilities to give them escapes, its not easy to chase down squishy champions, and Aatrox has no way in his kit to increase movement speed, nor are items such as really that good on him.

Beyond that, compared to other champions who also cant increase their movement speed such as , Aatrox knock up is telegraphed and unreliable. You never see miss a dive or get knocked out o the air. Its point and click 100% for sure hes going to pounce you. Hence its more reliable in fights .

And even beyond that, Aatrox is one of the few champions that has no innate resistances, shields blocks or parries. He cant mitigate damage coming in in combat. He can only restore what is lost, and that is contingent on him being able to auto attack quickly with the right items, unlike say who enjoys a very high win ate and who's blocks and their performance are dependent on nothing.

Aatrox is a champion who's kit is quite bare bones.

Its nearly unheard of for a champion to be missing all of these I am about to list, where as most have some of them:

1)no way to reduce incoming damage or built in resistances or even tenacity 2)No way to increase movement speed or high spammable movement abilities 3)No mixed damage. No % of health damage, no magic damage of significance, no true damage, no built in armor pen ability.

I challenge anyone to find me someone who is also lacking ALL of the above mentioned. If you try to justify it because of his revive and sustain you are wrong because:

A)his revive often doesn't go off due to it being based on having stacks, which is hard to get if you are hugging turret low on health.

B)his revive doesn't allow him to stay in the fight. Its not like Voli's health regen, or Zac where the enemy has to actively do more to end him. Aatrox just sits there, can't keep fighting, can't run, revives to usually just die. Functionally, his revive is very weak and nearly useless.

C) Arguing his sustain is his defense is silly because other champions have ways to heal too, often VERY well, even compared to Aatrox, and they often aren't dependent on being in combat for prolonged amount of time, which makes you vulnerable to enemy help. Furthermore, champions with kits that do well with high damage builds such as Yi with can easily out heal you in a duel even if you are nearly at the same level and gold.

In order to justify such a lacking kit, Aatrox would have to do more of what Aatrox does but better. That poke needs to move faster and go a lit longer and wider, his dive needs to have a way to make him immune to CC such as during Massacre or something. He should get some healing scaling off of AD. He needs some form of magic, true damage or % health damage to be in the same league as other champions. OR some kind of armor penetration,

Otherwise, he needs a complete rework from the ground up. And I will fucking have a God damn stroke if Rickles, that idiot, has anything to do with it, as he was the one who delivered this piece of shit mini-rework in the first place.