Should I Join the Aatrox QQ Bandwagon?

WitchQueen Annie·Mar 10, 2017·35 votes·2,263 views

Should I also join the Aatrox Club?

The Club where you make tons of posts complaining about Aatrox.

I think I'm qualified:

I pretty much never play Aatrox, haven't touched him this season
I like farming Votes
I like to seem anti-establishment/anti-Rito
I like to sound like I'm an advanced theory crafter able to draw definite conclusions about a champion's performance mere DAYS after the changes went live

What do you think?

What are the pros and cons of joining this QQ?

Should I?

63 Comments

MarshbouyMar 10, 201721 votes

All you have to do is ignore comments from meddler about how the balance team is looking for ways to buff him in the next couple days and you'll be set.

WitchQueen AnnieMar 10, 20172 votes

{quoted}

All you have to do is ignore comments from meddler about how the balance team is looking for ways to buff him in the next couple days and you'll be set.

right

Ahegao BunnyMar 10, 20177 votes

{quoted}

All you have to do is ignore comments from meddler about how the balance team is looking for ways to buff him in the next couple days and you'll be set.

I don't want him buffed, i want him back like he used to be.

ModAcademy KaynMar 10, 201712 votes

So, weak and unbuffable, but the familiar kind.

Dextix LTMar 10, 20171 votes

Just like he is now because nothing was changed to fix his balance problems?

SzGamer227Mar 10, 20174 votes

The balance problem addressed was that Aatrox was a feast or famine glass-cannon, who was nigh on useless when behind but had an unhealthy draintank playstyle when ahead. Aatrox is now rewarded for building more defensively rather than punished.

You must be new to the Aatrox qq, because the real upvote-farming complaints are the ones about his passive, but don't worry; you fit the qualifications outlined in the main post pretty well, so you should find your place in no time.

Dextix LTMar 10, 20172 votes

Ah of course. Despite having defended Riot in many cases, not caring about upvotes at all and having played aatrox before i am one of "those" people guys like you single out to just silence because they have no proper arguments. Understood.

No problems were adressed. He is STILL a feast or famine glass canon who is STILL useless when behind and STILL unhealthy draintank when ahead. None of that was changed at all. He is weaker even when he is building tank, because now he will have EVEN LESS damage as a tanky build than before, still punishing him for building tanky.

It seems that you are the one who actually knows shit about the champion.

SzGamer227Mar 10, 20173 votes

% max health costs are removed and % max health heal is added, yet you still classify Aatrox as a glass cannon. Even if you aren't on the qq bandwagon to farm upvotes, you're totally missing the direction that Aatrox is being taken, and totally ignoring the fact that Riot has planned to follow up with changes next patch.

To be clear: Problems were addressed. Changes were made with a goal in mind. That's addressing a problem. Just because you don't see the problems fixed doesn't mean the problem wasn't addressed. Hell, you could throw gasoline onto a fire to try to put it out and that's addressing a problem. If you're going to be so anti-Riot as to completely ignore Riot's intentions and promised follow-ups in favor of complaining how bad he is now then you are just another Aatrox qq bandwagoner who complains for the sake of complaining. Your motives are different perhaps, but you're no better.

The goal of the Aatrox mini-rework was to give Aatrox defensive options. Having defensive options means that you have more options than feed or afk. (Just so you understand, all champions are bad when they're behind, but some champions are worse than others; feast-or-famine glass-cannon champs are among the worst, and things like being heavily dependent on sustain and having large health costs on abilities take the "bad" to an all-new low. Having defensive options means Aatrox can join the juggernauts in the class of "down but not quite out" champions when behind, or at the very least "I can at least try to be hard to kill" class that Mundo is.)

Riot intends to keep working on Aatrox until he is satisfying to play and less abysmal when behind, and the only case where Aatrox would be worse when behind now than he was before is if you're building him like he hasn't changed at all.

Dextix LTMar 10, 20172 votes

I am a person who does not care about intent or what someone "wanted". I care about the results. And the results (For now at least) are shit.

I will restate a question i made many times before. Why release aatrox in such a miserable state instead of keeping him for one more patch and buffing him where needed. What was the rush to get him out THIS patch in such a miserable state?

Let us look over the changes ok?

He is now FULLY reliant on his bloodwell to do ANYTHING, its vlad ALL OVER AGAIN, you know, making a champion that is balanced around ONE ability? Furthermore his bloodwell is incredibly slow to even build up, despite it being his MAIN ability. And it falls off so fast, that in this meta it is nearly useless if the enemy has at least 1 dash.

His Q damage is ABYSMAL now because of low bases, and it makes ZERO sense, because they wanted to push a more tanky aatrox but because the only things he has is scalings he needs to build ad to do any damage! Do you not get that this ability and its numbers make no sense if they wanted to push a more tanky aatrox, because now he needs to build MORE damage to be even slightly more effective?

His healing is buffed when he is above 50%, that is correct. So what? You will not even use it above 50% because you need to use the damage proc to get your bloodwell up in the first place, and the damage is even further gutted in both bases and scalings!

His e gets a slight base and scaling damage increase, but it is a total nerf, because now it is AD damage, which makes itemization against him even better than before, making any armored champ even more effective against his ass. The only good thing he got from it is that the slow is higher, and thats it.

So let us check what they want to do with aa, shall we? They want him to be able to build more tanky with options, right, so that he would not fall off? But all of their decisions besides the health cost removal are doing the OPPOSITE.

All of his abilities now require him to build MORE DAMAGE to be effective, discouraging him from any tank builds because then he becomes an useless q bot since he has NO DAMAGE.

That was one of the main problems aatrox had! If he built glass canon and was not succesfull, he died in a second, if he built tank, he was useless with only 1 ability in his kit that was left usefull. That problem has been made WORSE now. His glass canon build will still die in a second because if he builds damage he will lsoe even MORE damage than before, making his tank build even MORE USELESS than before.

This entire rework makes as much sense as giving shen a flying sword that magically follows him - Translation - It makes no sense at all.

Their rework made the problems he had worse, that is a shit rework, it is one of the reasons why they need to rework fucking ryze EVERY SEASON, ecause they NEVER fix the problems the fucker has, instead making them worse or ignoring them.

I care about the results, not some half assed reworks that fail at their job.

"THey will fix it later" FUCK OFF - I have heard this SAME BULLSHIT from companies such as WB when talking about Batman games "Oh we will patch it later" - I dont give a flying fuck about later, i care about now, because you made the changes NOW, not later, if you cant make effective changes NOW, dont do them NOW, but do them LATER.

FailogMar 10, 20172 votes

% max health costs are removed and % max health heal is added, yet you still classify Aatrox as a glass cannon"

Anyone can build tank. But Aatrox is still the only top laner with no built in defenses such as shields, blocks, parries and built in resistances. Xin, Olaf, Nasus, Riven, Jax, Garen, Fiora, Irelia etc, OR with no built in true damage, armor pen %health damage or significant magic damage like Darius or Camille.

His old sustain was the reason he could get away with not having any of these, not his sustain. His new passive is crap. He doesn't get rewarded for building tanky. He just becomes a shitty tank that does less damage than the old Aatrox.

If you ever mained Aatrox you would know that his health costs were barely an issue. Keep them, but make them increasing flat damage on his Q and E and give us the damage back.

Read my post

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/EMl48IwP-patch-75-revisiting-aatrox-post-has-20k-views

FailogMar 10, 20171 votes

Not being punished for building tanky is not the same as being rewarded. You lack understanding. Here, read my post on this and be enlightened

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/EMl48IwP-patch-75-revisiting-aatrox-post-has-20k-views

ModAcademy KaynMar 10, 20176 votes

Plenty has been done, but those changes aren't apparent because his numbers are currently bad. You consistently claim they didn't fix anything, yet never say what. Do you expect us to believe you on merit alone?

Aatrox got his %costs, into Flat, which alone hurts him less when building tankier. He got increased healing based on missing health, another buff to the value of health. His damage is shit at the moment, but damage can be buffed. Aatrox can now build defense items with more success, making him less reliant on having to get ahead to stay relevant.

But like said, his numbers are bad. If people gave Riot a few days to try and buff him, and he's still unplayable, I yield. But until then, Aatrox is the first mini-rework to come out as weak as it has, so we're in blind territory, so let's see what happens instead of huddling back in the corner of familiarity.

LuminierMar 10, 20174 votes

Why would Aatrox mains be content with Meddler saying that they'll be looking at Aatrox? Like they already completely ignored any Aatrox mains input about him with this rework. Why should we even be remotely excited about it, if THIS is what they come up with?

FailogMar 10, 20172 votes

Exactly. It was a fucking slap in the face to their customers.

FailogMar 10, 20172 votes

That is not the point.

The point is how in the fuck did they get the numbers so bad? They had feeback on PBE that said he was weak. They had to 2 years of input from Aatrox mains that they completely ignored These changes were made by nerds with egos who had no idea what Aatrox even was, or what his issues were in ranked play.

I don't care if they are going to buff him in a couple of days. I care about my god damn time being wasted because they were sloppy and lazy and incompetent on these changes. Fuck Riot.

53436278DEL1Mar 10, 201712 votes

aatrox main here for the past 3 years, going on 4, i actually played aatrox on the pbe and people refused to believe that what the rework did was gut him completely . so you probably shouldn't join the aatrox club. its reserved for people with common sense to compare stats,pre-rework and now, and people who actually play him . not you

Fondling GemsMar 10, 20173 votes

No, what we argue about isn't the fact that he still needs buffs after his changes, it is that Aatrox is in a healthier and in a state that is easier to balance. I don't play much Aatrox at all but I did get to play him in multiple PBE games. Furthermore as someone with official schooling in game creation I do have a pretty good idea of what is involved in balancing.

I saw an Aatrox main saying that removing his heal AD scaling made him less balanced when that is most of the reason he is never allowed to be strong. We aren't saying that he is in a good spot balance wise, we are saying that he is in a good spot for future balance, two very different things.

dimiondoMar 10, 20174 votes

So putting all his power into a single passive or ability that makes him either extremely weak or extremely strong is a good idea to balance a champ. Genius certainly worked well with vlads q.

XonraMar 10, 20171 votes

Yup, I love the new Vlad, where my entire kit is basically walk in a circle until my Q is off of cooldown, then I can play League of Legends again.

Asayake 5150glowMar 10, 20172 votes

{quoted}

Yup, I love the new Vlad, where my entire kit is basically walk in a circle until my Q is off of cooldown, then I can play League of Legends again.

And Vlad's Q itself is stupid - there's nothing you can do against it except get out of range. So while Vlad is running around waiting for Q, we're hitting him waiting for his Q to come up so we can dissengage. If we played well, fuck you Vlad, you got to do nothing.

XonraMar 13, 20171 votes

The other problem is, as soon as his Q is up, whelp, there goes most of that damage you just did, if the game is like 15 minutes in.

Fondling GemsMar 10, 20173 votes

No, it means making his tankiness be more dependent on building tank rather than it being focused on building damage, making tank only semi viable as building damage on old Aatrox also made you harder to kill causing a heavy feast or famine situation.

By cutting that out he becomes much healthier right there. Furthermore he has clear power spikes and openings, meaning he can be very powerful at certain times and weak at others provide another big balance lever.

You also say like all his power got shifted into his passive but previously Aatrox had a deceptively large amount of power in his passive due to the AS buff it gave him which was the most complained about thing on old Aatrox, how the revive passive didn't feel strong because you lost all your AS because your passive drained. By making the power easier to access but more windowed it adds the balancing lever of not having to balance around it always being up but rather be able to balance around both when it is up and down. This gives two different areas you can balance him around, thereby making him easier to balance. Struggling in general? Buff base. Struggling in all ins? Buff passive.

You complain about all his power being shoved into his passive making him too very weak or very strong. However the way they did it means that both can be used as balancing levers compared to old Aatrox who was either too weak or too strong thanks to his W healing, but rather than being off and on throughout a match he was either strong in the game and unkillable or weak and useless. It is now on or off throughout a match and under the Aatrox player's control rather than being on or off for the entire match based on whether you are ahead or behind/current meta/enemy team.

dimiondoMar 10, 20172 votes

No, it means making his tankiness be more dependent on building tank rather than it being focused on building damage, making tank only semi viable as building damage on old Aatrox also made you harder to kill causing a heavy feast or famine situation.

I'm sorry but what? I honestly don't get what you mean here. I'm going to assume you meant that building pure tank was unviable on old aatrox and you are correct. But it was because he dealt no damage and was basically a q bot. If you mean that he built too much ad and tried to sustain everything you are wrong because his w while strong was counter'd by a number of things such as cc and grievous wounds. Pre update aatrox build a hybrid of both tanky stats and damage and was a bruiser a type of champ that can take a hit and dish out damage if left unchecked. Similar champ is vi. She builds a mixture of damage and resistances to punch a hole in the enemy front line without dying. She does it through damage and cc, Aatrox does it through being hard to kill while dishing out moderate damage.

Your not wrong, but your also misinterpreting his old passive a bit. Bloodwell served two functions, a revive based on how much blood was in the bloodwell and a attack speed boost depending on how much blood was in the bloodwell. The blood was drained when he revived which essentially made him useless soon as he got out of it removing his attack speed. Now this right here is why he is so shit at the moment. Aatrox was useless when he revived because he had no attack speed from his passive. What did riot do. They put all of his attack speed. Into a 4 second timed passive that takes a ton of effort to actually set off. Making him shit when the passive is not up. Hence why i say they put all his power into his passive. The power may have already been in the passive. But they gated both the revive and the attack speed behind this stupid thing. This is why me and many others say the attack speed needs to be independent from the passive. If it isn't no matter what they do except absolutely breaking his passive will make him viable, hence why i said extremely weak or extremely strong on the other post. Nobody ever complained about the attack speed from his old passive. Only the revive, we wanted it gone so he could have actual base stats. However i see what you mean with the balancing gears and you are correct it does give more leavers to balance which is fine however if they don't understand what to tune (Frankly after this rework i highly doubt it) they will still have problems with the new aatrox.

However you are wrong about his w. His W healing was balanced and there was nothing wrong with it how it was. It gave him great healing in fights but could be counter'd by numerous things such as grievous wounds or simply bursting him down when he was low. It wasn't too strong because over 50% hp it wouldn't sustain as much meaning he would be around the 50% hp mark in lane half the time if he took a negative trade. The current version however is worse with everything it does. It promotes simply sustaining and staying away from your opponent as you can no longer trade with them making playing against him boring and uninteresting while making it harder to deal with a fed aatrox because they would consistently sustain back up to 100% hp instead of the 50-70% the old aatrox would. It makes him worse in fights as you can no longer reliably trade with your opponent as the healing is frankly garbage compared to the old one and lastly it also screws up aatrox's build path so bad it isn't funny. The current changes to aatrox create a identity crisis because of a couple of things. Firstly aatrox wants to do damage except he can't without damage items because his w got nerfed. So you need at least 1 ad item. Secondly he needs Hp and tank stats as well because his healing is now based on it and he has bad base stats so he isn't destroyed in 1-2 spells or hits. Thirdly he also needs attack speed because he also has terrible base attack speed without his passive up, and it takes 9 attacks and 2 spells to toggle it. However he cannot build this all at once and he is currently suffering for it. Seriously his highest winrate build is 22%. Previously you could build one damage item and rely on your healing (as it used to stack with ad) to keep you alive till you built some resistances.

Now most champions either dominate or get dominated when behind but aatrox's 'domination' was frankly not as strong as others. Don't get me wrong he could 1v2 when ahead but so can champs like illaoi and darius. It doesn't make it broken. When people where complaining about that, they were talking about how hard it was to build on aatrox when he was behind. You needed resistances yet you were useless without them and if you built damage you would die in 2 seconds. That's why he was feast or famine. He HAD to be ahead to be successful. If he was even or behind he would more than likely be destroyed by the champion that only had to focus on a simple yet effective build. The changes they made especially to his w only increase this problem making him have to have certain items to do well yet leaving him completely vulnerable in the early game so he has no hope of getting the items before the enemy starts outscaling you.

http://champion.gg/champion/Aatrox/Top (the item build stats, between masteries and damage composition.)

Now i don't think the rework is complete garbage (at the moment it is but the idea behind it isn't that bad) the passive and w is the problem. If they revert his attack speed so its independent to the revive and attack damage and revert the w changes I believe that aatrox will be in a good spot. I may be wrong and he may need additional balance changes from there and maybe nerfs, but i reckon that would be a good place to start.

Honestly though thanks for the reply, you brought up some really good points, especially how the levers work. However i have to completely disagree with the w changes, they were not the source of the problem and shouldn't of been touched in this rework at all.
Sorry if there are any grammar mistakes its a bit long.

Fondling GemsMar 10, 20174 votes

His W was always the reason he got out of hand in the past like just about any draintank. It meant that as he built damage he still gained survivability. The reasons he was completely overbearing in the past certainly weren't because his Q was strong or his E is OP. In fact all his abilities are pretty straightforward and aren't issues. A small heavily delayed knockup wasn't the issue. A mid ranged low damage skillshot wasn't the problem. His ult is a decent nuke early game but when he was strong it was his ability to consistently fight enemies so he wasn't ult dependent. His passive was never what made him overbearing in the past for the same reason as his ult. Rather it was his W's ability to heal him. Unlike many other heals though it scaled with AS and AD while also being the main strength of his kit. This turned him into a feast or famine champion.

Of course recently he fell out of favour due to item changes. Everything he liked building got nerfed into the ground and the meta grew to hate on AS champions. Top lane became a game of all ins rather than the short trades that he could heal up between before. This is why his W was not recently overbearing despite it being the reason he was overbearing in the past. If you look at the history of Aatrox he has never received a nerf. Rather it was the items he built that were nerfed and as such he fell out of use.

All the facts point towards it. AD is more available than before but the AS on items he liked all got nerfed. He has exactly one ability that scaled with AS and it was the ability he maxed. Everything points towards his W as being his balance issue considering nerfs/buffs to items effecting it is what has flung him in and out of play.

Now as for him not being able to effectively build tank I apologize that I didn't fully explain it. It was (and is) getting late which is why I probably wont post again until tomorrow. Aatrox gets just as tanky as any other champion when building tank. However he did not get any damage for it. On the other hand building damage increases his survivability, making him effectively tankier. It meant that in terms of efficiency Damage was more useful than Defensive stats because it buffed both stats rather than just one. While Aatrox would build a bit of tank it is like how any lifestealer will build some tank. He built it to survive burst/cc so he could heal back up again. He couldn't rush tank items though because as you mentioned he became nothing more than a Q bot.

It meant that while behind he couldn't effectively build tank without falling further behind. Currently however he doesn't suffer anywhere near as much because building health actually increases his healing. This doesn't mean he wont suffer if he ends up having to rush it, but it means getting behind leaves him with a fallback path that doesn't just turn him into a Q bot, and I think we can all agree that Aatrox Q is not an ability you want to have to rely on.

dimiondoMar 10, 20172 votes

I don't get how you say he was overbearing when as you stated it he received almost zero nerfs? Its a common trend that for some reason plagues aatrox. He hasn't actually done anything wrong over the years yet people assume that because riot refuses to acknowledge him there was some terrible time when aatrox was some monster of a champ like ap yi, xin or eve. Simple fact he wasn't. In fact to prevent this riot nerfed him on the pbe. Fun fact do you know Aatrox's ult used to give him health the more people he hit. Not many people do because it was before he was actually released. He saw some competitive use just after release but it was mainly because anything that could survive renekton at that point was used top lane and he had good sustain. He was then nerfed, riot tied his attack speed to the bloodwell (he used to get it seperately) and nerfed his blade of torment base damage (this is the reason he fell out of meta). He was still played for a bit but fell out of meta as stronger champions took his place. He has had 2 buffs since then, one to his ult which gives him bloodwell equal to the enemies hit and the other being a reduction per level in his revive time.

Now to the real reason aatrox was considered toxic to riot. It was his e blades of torment. You see you don't actually max your w with aatrox and this is where your argument is flawed. This was due to the fact that it had absolutely terrible base scaling. It's heal literally increased by 5 for every level. What you really maxed was your e. This is because it allowed you to consistently harass down the opponent from range while staying safe. It allows aatrox to bully from range for free without actually putting himself in danger and made laning against him extremely hard. Hence why aatrox used to be able to survive renekton and have a competitive spot in the top lane. However when this was reduced he lost a lot of his power top lane and hence was the actual reason that he fell out of the meta. He has not been seen in competitive since, he never fell in and out of meta. He fell out then disappeared.

His W was not unhealthy. It has not changed until since he was released because it was not op in any way shape or form. It has weaknesses to burst and the enemy forking 800 gold out of their pocket and buying grievous wounds. It was a unique element to the game only used in one champ, and even though that champ was weak it was one of the most interesting mechanics in the game and led to interactive play from both sides. Aatrox trying to manage his hp to get the best of both sides of his w. And the enemy trying to work out the best way to burst him down to prevent him from sustaining.

Now about his build path. To be fair it hasn't really changed much over the years. He didn't actually need that much attack speed to the point where people would skip it to the 3rd or 4th item. His build path was kind of fluid and he could build whatever he thought he needed. It wasn't perfect and it had its problems one being you had to snowball to beat the enemy. However its worse now. You need attack speed because your passive is so unreliable. You need damage because building tank is useless. You need tank because if you don't get it you die instantly (worse because no revive without passive). Its a mess and honestly he needs his old w back because of this.

Fondling GemsMar 10, 20173 votes

I don't get how you say he was overbearing when as you stated it he received almost zero nerfs? Its a common trend that for some reason plagues aatrox. He hasn't actually done anything wrong over the years yet people assume that because riot refuses to acknowledge him there was some terrible time when aatrox was some monster of a champ like ap yi, xin or eve. Simple fact he wasn't. In fact to prevent this riot nerfed him on the pbe. Fun fact do you know Aatrox's ult used to give him health the more people he hit. Not many people do because it was before he was actually released. He saw some competitive use just after release but it was mainly because anything that could survive renekton at that point was used top lane and he had good sustain. He was then nerfed, riot tied his attack speed to the bloodwell (he used to get it seperately) and nerfed his blade of torment base damage (this is the reason he fell out of meta). He was still played for a bit but fell out of meta as stronger champions took his place. He has had 2 buffs since then, one to his ult which gives him bloodwell equal to the enemies hit and the other being a reduction per level in his revive time.

He was actually quite strong shortly after his release and he wasn't healthy for the game because he would either do nothing or outheal enemies while building damage. I also mentioned multiple times that the reason he became weak was due to meta shifts and item changes. He was reliant on AS items and when all the items he liked got nerfed such as BotRK Aatrox fell off too.

Now to the real reason aatrox was considered toxic to riot. It was his e blades of torment. You see you don't actually max your w with aatrox and this is where your argument is flawed. This was due to the fact that it had absolutely terrible base scaling. It's heal literally increased by 5 for every level. What you really maxed was your e. This is because it allowed you to consistently harass down the opponent from range while staying safe. It allows aatrox to bully from range for free without actually putting himself in danger and made laning against him extremely hard. Hence why aatrox used to be able to survive renekton and have a competitive spot in the top lane. However when this was reduced he lost a lot of his power top lane and hence was the actual reason that he fell out of the meta. He has not been seen in competitive since, he never fell in and out of meta. He fell out then disappeared.

Except this makes no sense. There are a ton of champions that can harass from range. It doesn't mean they have to be nerfed. Aatrox's E is pretty low range meaning that it left enemies the ability to engage on them. There are plenty of other champions that could harass from further range more frequently. His strength lay in his healing because you either beat him out or you didn't.

His W was not unhealthy. It has not changed until since he was released because it was not op in any way shape or form. It has weaknesses to burst and the enemy forking 800 gold out of their pocket and buying grievous wounds. It was a unique element to the game only used in one champ, and even though that champ was weak it was one of the most interesting mechanics in the game and led to interactive play from both sides. Aatrox trying to manage his hp to get the best of both sides of his w. And the enemy trying to work out the best way to burst him down to prevent him from sustaining.

The healing was not completely unhealthy, what was unhealthy was that it had such a strong AD scaling. It meant buying defensive items was not as statistically efficient as buying damage items. Defensive items were only bought to survive burst so that he could continue to draintank.

Now about his build path. To be fair it hasn't really changed much over the years. He didn't actually need that much attack speed to the point where people would skip it to the 3rd or 4th item. His build path was kind of fluid and he could build whatever he thought he needed. It wasn't perfect and it had its problems one being you had to snowball to beat the enemy. However its worse now. You need attack speed because your passive is so unreliable. You need damage because building tank is useless. You need tank because if you don't get it you die instantly (worse because no revive without passive). Its a mess and honestly he needs his old w back because of this.

You say that like he didn't need AS and Damage before. Tank is more useful on him than before because he actually scales with it and that gives him the ability to fall back on tankier items when behind.

dimiondoMar 11, 20172 votes

He was actually quite strong shortly after his release and he wasn't healthy for the game because he would either do nothing or outheal enemies while building damage. I also mentioned multiple times that the reason he became weak was due to meta shifts and item changes. He was reliant on AS items and when all the items he liked got nerfed such as BotRK Aatrox fell off too.

Yes you are right he was strong for a patch, what i mean is that he wasn't a terror like some previous release champs such as xin. However he didn't fall off because of item changes that one nerf killed him, because it targeted his main power in lane.

How is it unhealthy to have a strong ad scaling? It didn't make building tank obsolete, it had a 25% bonus ad ratio meaning if you built 200 damage. You would only heal 50 extra for each proc. 150 extra under 50%. How does that reduce the statistical efficiency of tanky items at all. You could buy any tank item and get 100% efficiency from that item because there is nothing actually reducing it. And whats wrong with 1-2 defensive items being built to survive burst? How is that unhealthy? Riots trying to push him to become a tankier draintank. How is that any more healthy then a semi tanky draintank?

But he does now. They removed his attack speed. They removed his ad scaling on w. They increased his need to build tank. He simply needs to much. Previously your passive attack speed and sustain allowed you to build a damage item to build into other stuff. This is no longer the case. Tank is more useful on him yes, but by being more useful it makes the champion worse. He frankly cannot afford to build tank first, his stats and current stats do nothing to help this.

A previous build on aatrox would be something like this: item 3074 item 3047 item 3143 item 3153 item 3065 item 3071

Now i don't know what the fuck you would build. Because there is no good starting item on him.

P.S new buffs aren't going to do much i bet.

I also love the one asshole going and downvoting everything because they don't know shit and hate aatrox.

Fondling GemsMar 11, 20171 votes

The unhealthiness of an AD scaling on a heal is that it gives survivability based on how much damage you do. While there are similar abilities that function well like this (Take Riven's dash with an AD scaling for example) their healing isn't permanent. Healing is stronger than shielding and by building a healer who scales with damage it means that as they build damage and AS they heal for more and more often while also doing more damage.

Many people think this is fine because lifesteal does this too. However there is a core difference here. Grievous wounds. Grievous Wounds cuts healing. For lifesteal this is OK. This is because building lifesteal is a way to amplify a kit, an optional survivability based build path. For a champion this causes issues however because you are negating a kit with an item. Aatrox is heavily balanced around being able to heal himself by dealing damage. Grievous wounds means that he has to be balanced around healing enough with grievous wounds to still be an effective champion without being overwhelming vs enemies without grievous wounds.

It is a delicate balance that most items and champions toe. Aatrox however has to add in the fact that he does significantly more damage while following this line, and it scales throughout the game as he gets AS and AD. It changes the two part system into a trifecta of balancing terror. It becomes a feast or famine state of heal or be crushed.

As for how this reduces the effectiveness of tank items lets look at it this way. You have option A, it makes you harder to kill. You have option B, it makes you deal significantly more damage and slightly harder to kill.

You also have to keep in mind that his heal didn't just scale with AD. It also scaled with AS. AS provides far more effectiveness to how often he can heal than CDR does for other ability based heals because the cap is much higher.

By changing his AD ratio to a health based one it still increases how much he heals as he levels while being able to shift dependency off of his drain tank nature. In other words Riot is trying to not make him a drain tank, or at least not a primary drain tank. The health ratio isn't intended to make him build tank, but rather to give him something he can fall back on if he is getting completely wrecked. Having a health ratio on his heal means that instead of building damage and being just as weak against burst he can build a more defensive item and actually be effective with it. It isn't intended to be a primary build path but rather a fallback if he gets too far behind so that he can still be useful. The purpose is to make him less feast or famine which hasn't been reached because he is very weak not because the change is bad.

You can't really say he is less feast and more famine as evidence yet because he isn't balanced yet. He still needs tuning so we have to wait for that. The point was that when he is tuned he can be more easily balanced around both due to having scalings on both ends. Is he still struggling too much when behind? Buff health scalings. Not able to get ahead? Buff AD scalings.

If you payed attention to old Aatrox's scalings you can see that he had nothing to fall back on when behind. This meant that to buff behind Aatrox you had to increase his base stats. When you do that he becomes even stronger when ahead meaning you have to nerf his scalings. Suddenly he starts building tank because his base values are strong enough to let him do it.

That is why Aatrox changes weren't forthcoming for a long time. It is a viscous cycle that leads to the world of tank. The solution is to put a weak defensive scaling in. This gives some fallback in a tank build but you still remain fairly weak unless you add in some damage too. This prevents the issue of a tank that does too much damage or a monster that kills everything before backing. He retains the ability to scale up but has a fallback that doesn't leave him useless. In fact by making it the heal you give Aatrox the ability to build some health than heal quite a lot when behind, enhancing his ability to stay in lane and farm.

As for builds on him now I would say that Black Cleaver or BotRK are still good choices. Black Cleaver is even better than before because the E does physical damage. I think we need to give him a bit of time to settle and get buffs before we see a build solidify.

Taric is a pretty similar champion in terms of items that he likes when compared to previously but it still took a good two months after his rework before his build finally settled in a good place. As someone on the Taric Main Discord I can say that we still have almost daily conversations about what keystone Taric should use. You would think that something like that would be hashed out pretty quickly but the debates between CotC, Bond, Grasp, and Windspeakers still rage rampant. The new Bond or whatever they called it just reignited the discussion. I mention this because even changes that don't change what a champion wants to build much can still send the whole community into confusion about what to build for months.

Also we got a Rioter mentioning that there would likely be followup Aatrox buffs after the hotfix too. They are just waiting to gather some more data and see where the current buffs leave him.

PS: I know right? Ima just run back through and upvote all your posts to negate the damage.

dimiondoMar 11, 20171 votes

Yeah i get what you mean now by building ad to be tankier. However I severely disagree about changing the w to be a fallback. Health is only good if you can do something with it. A yas with a shit ton of health would be bad if he had no damage as he has no way to use that health. That's the problem with aatrox. If he builds pure defensively he sustains more every 3 attacks. So what? He is a q bot. He is useless in every other way. (Holy shit i just realised why riot buffed his q. Fuck them.) He doesn't even heal that well because of his reduced attack speed.

Better yet the new aatrox will be even worse with that regard when people just buy grievous wounds first item. He won't be able to sustain in lane and he gimps himself further when building tank to increase the heal.

However the idea of giving him a fall back was a good one they just went by it the wrong way while removing too much else from his kit.

I agree with most of what you wrote, i just don't want the w to become the fallback tool because i would argue its always been his most offensive tool in the past. I just really hate the direction they are forcing him in and don't want to see one of my favourite champions die because riot wants everyone to be a fken tank. He shouldn't be a tank. He should be a high sustained bruiser like he was before with adjustments to his e and q to make him more reliable when behind and he would of been fine.

Taric was a rework done right, they updated his kit, made him more rewarding to play and did it in a way most of the userbase would like by keeping his inherent tankyness, armour scaling and spell spam while giving him a very powerful ult and refining his abilities. They did the complete opposite with this. They made him less rewarding, left his kit virtually the same but worse and pushed him in a direction most of the userbase hates by trying to force him into a tank.

Sorry if this isn't coherent at the moment i'm tired lol.

Fondling GemsMar 11, 20171 votes

I don't think his W actually punishes him that much or is solely a fallback tool. As you yourself noted earlier building damage only gave a small increase to healing before anyways. I haven't done the math but as he levels up his healing based on raw health should stay mostly in line with that.

Since he also likes items like Black Cleaver and Spirit Visage anyways I don't think the healing is actually taking much of a hit when building damage. Rather if he is in a bad situation he can build one of his defensive items sooner and stay healthier in lane where he can farm until he catches up. Since a lot of his power got shifted from early game into mid-late game this is actually a viable strat on him now.

So it shouldn't actually be punishing Aatrox unless you go 4-5 damage items now. So long as you have one to two items that give health which is quite normal his healing should be on fairly equal footing scaling wise. It just allows him to build a tank item first if he is struggling in lane.

dimiondoMar 11, 20171 votes

His new w 100% punishes you for building around it. You literally have to ignore it and build to survive because its virtually useless in a proper fight now.

Oh boy it is taking a MASSIVE nerf to the overall healing of it. Basically his old w tripled under half hp. So a max level w would heal for 120+ 60% of ad under half health. while only 40+20% over it. to put it in comparison, it would take a aatrox missing 3000 hp to even be comparable to a aatrox with 150 extra damage under half hp.

The only benefit is that you can stay at full health in lane but because you heal so slow not it never happens anyway so the healing is absolutely terrible now.

Fondling GemsMar 11, 20171 votes

Yeah, they clearly changed the focus to be on using the active toggle in combat and the other toggle out of combat.

On the other hand it makes sense for the heal to get nerfed after taking out all the costs on his abilities. Plus again, the whole trying to move him away from draintank status since no champion has ever been a successful drain tank in LoL. Perhaps in his rework Riot will finally get draintanking down and he can fulfill the role he was designed for.

dimiondoMar 11, 20171 votes

Nah there is at least one that works. Swain. He isn't too overpowerd and isn't too underpowerd at the moment.

I'm at the point where i have pretty much given up trying to make him work anyway. They will either revert him or they won't if they don't me and many other people who play this champ will just stop because fk playing this load of garbage.

Anyway thanks a ton for the rational conversation about him lol, you brought up a ton of good points and made me realise a bit more about the underlying idea of the rework lol. It has good intentions, i just don't think its been done right.

FailogMar 10, 20172 votes

Its amazing how ill informed you are for one peddling credentials.

"No, it means making his tankiness be more dependent on building tank rather than it being focused on building damage, making tank only semi viable as building damage on old Aatrox also made you harder to kill causing a heavy feast or famine situation. "

No. It makes you easier to get killed. Lets for get the fact that now the enemy can get the most of out their CC by hitting him during his Blood Rush.

What does he benefit from building tanky? He could be missing 3000 hp and still barely compare to the healing old Aatrox could do with 2 offensive items and the rest tank. By that time he will be easily bursted down. a

Self damage was never a huge issue for mains. You should try climbing in ranked with a champion before you come on here and try to act smarter than the rest of us.

Also in case you haven't fucking realized the whole god damn game is now feast or famine, with matches ending in 30 minutes often.

Later in another post you go on to say his drain tankiness was why he got out of hand later in the game. Look. He has no defenses. His sustain was his defense. Jax, Irelia, Fiora, Pantheon, Garen, Nasus, Signed, Xin, Olaf. Nearly every top laner has built in blocks, parries, shields or built in resistances to reduce incoming damage while still being alive to move and do damage. Aatrox passive doesnt qualify in that category. And now he has no defenses... so why pick him to build tanky when you can pick olaf and built tanky and enjoy passive resistances for free plus the ability to do true damage. Aatrox is also one of the few champions to do neither true damage, percent of health damage and now, no significant magic damage. He is as bare bones as champions comes. His only uniqueness was really from his sustain, and that was always easily shut down by hard CC or items or abilities that reduce attack speed.

Nothing in his kit rewards him for building tanky. Not being punished is not the same as being rewarded.

Ya know what, its people like you who probably work at Riot which is why they are always such a cluster fuck. People who think they are smart, and are totally oblivious to how not smart they really are.

Fondling GemsMar 10, 20172 votes

I am amazed by how much you alter someone else's argument to fit your view of what they are trying to say.

I did not say he should be building tank. I said that before Aatrox did not get as much out of building tank items as other champions. True because damage gave him more sustain while also letting him end fights faster. He mostly bought defensive items to prevent burst.

I said that now he actually has a health scaling. This lets him rush a defensive item in a bad matchup while still being able to function in lane. It helps him when he is behind.

You also have a number of flawed arguments. Just because the game is snowbally does not mean it is ok to make a champion completely feast or famine. That increases the issue, it doesn't excuse it.

We also directly agreed earlier on that this update isn't balanced yet. It is a gameplay update, not a balance one. It puts him in a state where he can better be balanced rather than putting him in a balanced state. We both acknowledged this. Despite that you seem intent on bringing his current power level into this.

I also never mentioned self damage.

Ya know what, its people like you who probably don't actually listen to what Riot is saying which is why you think they are always such a cluster fuck. People who think they are smart, and are totally oblivious to how not smart they really are.

Woo look! I can be insulting too. Funny thing is that I didn't even have to change much and it perfectly applies. That is the funny thing about general insults. They easily fit almost any situation. Shame they are meaningless. If you are going to insult me at least have the courtesy to come up with an insult rather than spewing generic garbage at me. If anything the unoriginality of your insult is what I find most insulting.

Grow up and discuss things reasonably rather than throwing a temper tantrum because you decided to interpret people's writing rather than read people's writing.

FailogMar 10, 20171 votes

Here is the hotfix

Aatrox hotfix

All going according to plan we should be putting out a balance hotfix for Aatrox today. We concluded he was definitely in too poor a state to leave until the next regular patch and wasn't likely to recover enough just based off relearning. Changes include increased starting health (580, was 537 and had been kept low historically because of the impact of the previous revive in lane), Q CD down (13-11, was 16-12) and W damage up (45-185, was 30-150). Suspect it's likely we'll also make Aatrox changes in 7.6, though we'll need to see where these put him first of course.

Total shit. Because their thought process, just like yours, on Aatrox is fundementally flawed. Long winded responses won't change that. You are wrong. Period.

RangoTangoGankoMar 10, 20171 votes

I said this on the PBE also, Aatrox main for 2nd year now, and I see that this new Aatrox is far from being as good as he once was, this got rid of all his kit's good points and replaced them with bad things, and then left his laning troubles still with him and added more problems for himself.

53436278DEL1Mar 11, 20172 votes

exactly.........like damn atleast leave blood price the way it was .

RangoTangoGankoMar 11, 20171 votes

Yeah, It's still not that good with these hot fixes, I feel like less of a god of war like really. He lost his previous feel. more direct fighter for lane now, and just split push.

XonraMar 10, 20173 votes

Not sure what I'm more tired of:

The people qq'ing constantly

The people who think you need 300 games on a champ to have an opinion

Both are morons and both should stop posting. Instead we get tons of qq threads, and threads like this thinking they are funny, even though like 20 people have posted this same kind of thread this week, so it isn't even original for just THIS week.

SzGamer227Mar 10, 20171 votes

You don't need to have 300 games, but god damn, you need longer than a day to get a feel for a champion. There's a huge difference between saying "you need extensive experience with the changes before you are allowed to have an opinion" and saying "do you seriously expect us to trust your judgement when the changes have been out for less than 12 hours".

LeetriMar 10, 20171 votes

You should've at least played Aatrox before the changes so you know what you're comparing to. Sure, you can say if he feels good to play or not without previous experience, but you can't compare to how he was before and if he feels better.

five oh tree Mar 10, 20172 votes

nah my friend, you're not whiny/bitchy enough to gain entrance to that elite group. Condolences.

Dextix LTMar 10, 20172 votes

You don't need to be a main to see a champion, how he works, and if he is being gutted or not, that is without saying that people smurf too.
SO just because you get upvoted for having an opinion, it is wrong? Good logic there buddy.
This is not anti-Rito, this is Anti-Shitty decisions, because threads that are positive of Riot when they do ACTUALLY GOOD, are also upvoted.
You dont need a month to see when something is gutted or overpowered. How do youthink quick fixes happen? Because sometimes its clear in a day or so what is wrong. Everyone who saw PBE knew this was going to be a gutting of an already bad champion.

Nah, don't join the discussion, better "farm upvotes" by making fun of gameplay boards because it seems that it is popular these days.

New Tool AlbumMar 10, 20171 votes

anybody who likes the theme of the champion or have played him before have waited YEARSSSSSSSSSSS for them to shift him in a right direction

Boop Daddy Mar 10, 20171 votes

The question is - if they plan on doing a total rehaul, why stick with a mini-rework that's an obvious failure? His previous iteration wasn't particularly strong, but it also wasn't spectacularly weak either. The only way this is justified is if they plan on pudging his current numbers between now and his rework.

RangoTangoGankoMar 10, 20171 votes

mastery 7 Aatrox here and I loved the old Aatrox over this new design. Riot please revert these changes and change Aatrox properly none of this half ass we think we fixed him stuff, you didn't he would lose in a 1v1 against the old Aatrox I feel.

PaffWasTakenMar 10, 20171 votes

pros: you can say you mastery 7 aatrox even if it's false ..

cons: everyone knows you are an idiot, but they'll never tell you because they don't want to break your childish heart

RevaliMar 11, 20171 votes

The way I see the aatrox rework is that it's a foundation to what they can do with a vgu, sort of a bandage change until they actually get around to healing his wound.

WitchQueen AnnieMar 11, 20171 votes

{quoted}

The way I see the aatrox rework is that it's a foundation to what they can do with a vgu, sort of a bandage change until they actually get around to healing his wound.

that is likely the intention

but unfortunately in doing so, they've generated a gigantic storm and now this board is paying the price in the quality of threads (if we had any to begin with)