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My thoughs about Aatrox rework as player with +1k Ranked games (plat-low diamond).

Sgt Karil III·3/9/2017, 9:37:40 AM·3 votes·1,757 views

i played him in jungle for 2 year OTP. lets analyze

first dragon timer, all solo after 3 camps (level 3)

pre-rework: 3:50, 0-1 health potions used, can clear the rest of the jungle effeciently straight after dragon

rework: 4:30, all 3 potions used, has to base and cannot clear jungle after. https://gyazo.com/c88b22ac76bdf3274a5e214d5ab78599

baron soloing:

pre-rework items: Spirit Visage, Jungle AS item, Rage blade. Could do solo NP. If u did good you could get these items by 20 minutes and take it in ~20 seconds

rework: very hard and requires way more gold, not impossible but really hard.

Counterjungling:

pre-rework high early damage W, good heal and mixed damage from magic damaging E made it good to invade enemy jungle on early. Passive attack speed gave you good changes in duels and boosted up your sustain in a way that made you win fights even though the enemy did essentially more damage - if you just lived through their spell cycle. Passive revive made it safer. While reviving you could charge for your Q or instantly flash after should you make a mistake. During revive any allies that joined you had time to finish up the threaths

re-work

W damage lowered significantly, E doing ad which is not as effective against junglers since they usually run low to 0 magic resist in their runes. Cant risk going into enemy jungle since you dont have guaranteed GA and your health / potions are lower than before because of the attack speed nerf that helped you keep your hp up. While getting bloodrush you get close to the strenght as before but NOTICE, even you get the +20 ad that doesnt compensate for the lowered W heal and W damage, and it is very easy for the enemy to just pull off for 4 seconds, wait your bloodlust to end and then come and kill you easily.

and no, you cant stack your passive ready before entering enemy jungle since they fall off insanely fast when out of combat.

Clearing this is simple, before you had permanently 30% atk speed since the first camp (game start you stack Q in base for blood, you reach camp with 98% bloodwell)

now you dont have that atk speed

E deals ad damage(less on monsters): jungle mosters DO have armor, but they had -15 magic resist, which makes it significant nerf in clear speed on that part too.

Building

wether you played in top or jungle you never liked to see rammus or malphite in enemy team while playing Aatrox. Well it WASNT so big of a problem, you could get hybrid items that are good for Aatrox such as Rage Blade (crucial item since it makes W every 2 attacks instead of 3, and makes all those solo barons possible) or gunblade

this way you would have some poke from E that their stacked armor was useless against.

NOW since the AP ratio was removed, building those items waste a significant amount of gold on AP that is only used in your ultimate once in 1.5 minutes, and not in constant E poke/clear. This makes it really impossible to play Aatrox against any tanky toplaner since they can build full armor and expect 0 damage from Aatrox. Before you could even go AP aatrox vs malphite and that worked pretty good.

Also Rage Blade which was, atleast for jungle Aatrox, an essential core item does now have 80 AP which you basically dont get to use effeciently at all.

Now i've listed out most of my arguments against claims that new Aatrox is better in any way, specially in jungle, so I would like to hear your, who think he is better, opinions as to why you think he would be better in jungle or anywhere for that matter.

might aswell add links to accounts I have played Aatrox on: http://www.lolking.net/summoner/euw/19248141/Tiksu#ranked-stats season 6 stats http://www.lolking.net/summoner/euw/21395990/Darth%20Aatrox#ranked-stats season 6 stats http://www.lolking.net/summoner/euw/27427547/CFHIKO#ranked-stats season 6 stats http://www.lolking.net/summoner/euw/22198624/Sgt%20Karil#ranked-stats seaspm 5 stats http://www.lolking.net/summoner/euw/27577512/Sgt%20Karil%20III#ranked-stats season 6 and 7 stats

from LP history you will find out that the 3 first accounts were Diamond, the first one was diamond most of the time but the chart doesnt show that far, I had made a demote from it and then briefly went back before essentially quitting the game for months to come.

in total these make 1028 Aatrox ranked games during seasons 5-7 played between platinum and low diamond

Somehow I just cant see this kind of stuff being able to happen anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3doZ629MI5M&list=PLHLyLwDq53gA24bA031B5nBcvnyoyusfc

notice that im not even fed in this clip, 4 kills and medicore farm. And in the second one im not even really ahead in gold judging by the items of others.

6 Comments

greekvandaL3/9/2017, 10:07:48 AM3 votes

played the new aatrox he actually feels pure garbage. i had hopes up because i recently picked him up again cause the game got so flat for me that i only enjoy playing 3 champs so i was like might aswell try something underplayed. He was actually FUN to play outside of his stupidly bugged Q.Outplaying a bunch of diamonds in flex/solo.duo with sucha weaker champ when they had their stupid meta picks like Heca and Liss or Mao etc was the most fun i had ever since i learned riven combos 2 years ago.Right now tho he is insanely weak.. rito as usual trying to push champs into stupid meat shields ( see new Galio for example ) and it wont work for aatrox. The only way i see him beeing viable in this form is if you reduce the Q cd by a LOT like make it 7 secs lvl 1 or something and up his W dmg. The current healing doesnt work in any way on the standard ad Aatrox since you die before you even get to heal with the new W alas the old one had its max healing around 45% hp if i recall right. I'm by no means an Aatrox main but i sure can balance out champs better than the silvers in the balance team. Let's hope his rework is good and he wont become a second Xin'zhao or something.

The AQUAMIST3/9/2017, 11:11:35 PM2 votes

I totally agree it is possible that Aatrox can do the crazy penta while he's not fed; it's just the player's great mechanical skill and deep understanding about Aatrox. I wonder why people say that old W is OP, after all, it's just the mastery of a champion and every other champion can be as powerful as that as long as their players are good at them.

Rito Staff3/9/2017, 10:57:50 AM1 votes

Pretty much, I made a rage thread after feeling his clunkyness.

However after having played him in a couple of norms, with a "fck it let me try stuff out", I may argue that his W heal is quite better. And there is one upside to having his E deal physical damage.

I get 2 daggers in lane, or pickaxe might be good aswell, and then start building HP/tank.

Since his healing scales now gradually on missing HP, it should ALWAYS be on in teamfights, his Blood Price hardly makes a dent. If you are full tank (always with Guinsoo), healing 150+ right from the start then it can easily sum up to 1k+ healed.

If they have strong frontliners/divers, then you're better off just focusing them meanwhile peeling for your glass cannons. Get BC and Guinsoo in this situation. (And always have heal on, Blood Thirst)

If they are a squishy lethality team then you're better off with Guinsoo and Death Dance.

What is the upside of his E dealing physical damage? It stacks Black Cleaver faster.

His passive is really lackluster still.

Rito Staff3/9/2017, 11:01:56 AM1 votes

Notice how in your clip, some idiot may go "see!1 op heal, how plei against that?"

But Thresh and Malph were just being disrespectful or simply unnaware.

It was not a binary situation, all Thresh had to do was keep peeling with hook and flay.

Sgt Karil III3/9/2017, 2:28:33 PM1 votes

I forgot to include Baron soloing:

OLD aatrox can solo Baron isntantly at 20:00 if he gets AS jungle item, Rage blade and Spirit Visage sided with 1-2 useful elemental dragons. soloing took around 20 seconds and it was a huge pressure that enemy often didnt even know about(send your team mid or bot and once enemy follows 20S and you have baron).

The new one cant really solo it even after +1 item on top of the old items.