A couple things to help aatrox

So to start here's are pros and cons of aatrox as a top laner

Pros He's fun to play Diver based so you feel like you're always doing something when things go your way Good splitpush with his e Hilarious when your opponent doesn't kill with an all in and you heal back to full hp Decent damage when passive is ramped up

Cons His only forms of cc are in q and e Q is a short ranged skill shot knockup with a small hitbox. Easily dodged because of the long startup. Long startup leaves you vulnerable to cc (which players can easily react to most of the time) E is a thin, slow moving, slow that deals tons of damage but easy to dodge and miss. Doesn't deal damage until his passive is ramped up which takes a long time to do. Doesn't have either of his passives until it is fully stacked and still only lasts 4 seconds unless you're in combat. And with the aforementioned single, long cdr, engage tool it's a short window to make plays unless you constantly stay in combat at 4 stacks, which requires you to constantly push the wave and leaves you vulnerable to ganks and engages from the enemy laner as you're always in the wave. Because you only get the revive if you passive is fully stacked you can and will die often to all-ins once you've lost hellbent. The enemy will most commonly let you stack your passive, wait for it to deplete (remember its only 4 seconds) and engage once your passive runs out. If you do manage to get the revive passive to work properly, you're still most likely dead as you revive with only 30% hp. W is a passive that only effects every 3rd auto. Meaning you only get to use one of his skills a 3rd of the time.

Aatroxs options during laning a) Sit on your passive at 4 stacks, and push the wave to hold onto them. Forcing him to overextend. And become vulnerable to ganks/roams/ etc b) Attempt to max stack his passive and engage. Downside to playing aggressive is you're still pushing pushing early, becoming vulnerable to ganks, but your only gap close is the long startup, short ranged, Q. You're heavily telegraphing what you're trying to do when you want to engage with this skill so the opponent can just play back and wait for you to push the wave, which you have to do to maintain stacks on your passive. c) Play it out for late game or mid game where most other top laners will either out scale you, build and gut your kit, or kill your before you can get to mid to late game because your kit is weak without stacking passive early.

So the weakest thing about him is that without pushing wave early he has no kill or dueling potential. That's no problem. There are a few champion that already have this drawback and they're some of the best in the game. are 2 examples.

What the real problem is, is that his kit is very lackluster in general. With any other champion with this kind of red bar mechanic once they reach full rage or fury they become a major threat in lane as long as they have the red bar up. But aatorx has a 4 second window once it's up and after it's gone you're back where you started.

Aatrox with full red bar should be a much greater threat early. Not in the sense he should get more damage or attack speed necessarily, but there should be a longer duration where he is a threat after it is fully stacked considering how long it takes to become stacked.

Possible changes to Aatrox

1. Make it easier to stack: My personal favorite change as no other red bar champion takes as long as aatrox to stack bloodwell. all stack their passive faster and more consistently than Aatrox. The best way to solve his inconsistency when stacking his passive is to change his W a little. W is a 3 hit passive that makes using it a little clunky. There are 3 ways to fix it imo. Ordered from most favorable to lest favorable: Make it a constant passive, make every 3rd auto stack more bloodwell than it does now, or make it a nerfed 2 hit passive. As a constant passive you could switch between stacking bloodwell every auto or healing every auto. The healing and stacking would be significantly less, of course, but it would allow aatrox to have more consistent dps or sustain. Making it stack bloodwell more than it does now would be a straight up buff, which is why i put it second because direct buffs can be shady. But having his 3 hit passive feel like you're accomplishing something when you're getting poked the entire time while you're doing it feels like rap atm. But having to auto the wave so many times just to have ANY dueling potential is a less than optimal design. Making it a 2 hit passive is odd and pretty stupid, i know. But it makes his dps and sustain more consistent overall and would be about 2/3 of what it currently does. Essentially your options here are deciding whether to make w passive proc on every hit, every other hit, or every third hit.

2. Make his q less transparent. The cost vs the benefit of aatroxs Q is a pretty poor ratio. The most annoying thing is that he is vulnerable to cc during the startup of the dive. flip, pushback, knockup, etc will all cancel the ability completely. The problem is that it has long startup, small hitbox, and small cast range for the amount of startup it has. Really the only way to fix Q is to buff one aspect of it. It can have a small hitbox/range and be vulnerable to cc as long as the cast time isn't that long. It can have a long cast time and small range/radius as long as he isn't vulnerable to cc during startup. You can mix and match which part of it you want to fix as long as you only fix one or two parts of it. Personally I'd like to see the changes to it being that he is immune to cc (not un-target-able, he should still take damage just not be affected by cc) and the startup is reduced. This way the amount of time he is immune to cc is minimized while also making it a better engagement tool. It would also add another level of depth to his play. It increases the skill cap of aatrox as to be good with him you'd have to make sure that cc gets canceled by portion where he is immune to cc.

3. Increase the speed/range/size of the hitbox on his E. Not much to say about this. Decrease the damage so it doesn't become broken but make it a more reliable skill to use.

4. The last but quite possibly the most unique buff given to any champion in league of legends, make aatrox partially immune to grievous wounds depending on his level, the level of his ultimate, or the level of his w. Half of his playstyle revolves around being able to sustain himself constantly, and buying an or a makes him probably one of the most underwhelming champions in the game, and executioners calling is only 800 gold. That is easily expected of any top laner on their first back. 800g and all of a sudden the one gimmick that makes aatrox unique is gimped. In the lore, aatrox is this insane monstrosity that can turn the tables on any fight. This might be a bit overkill so if it would be implemented then the best thing to do would make grievous wounds less effective depending on his ultimates level. An example with putting this on his ultimate would be: "Grievous wounds are 75/50/25%" making it so there is still a period of time where executioners calling would take full effect pre 6, but aatrox still retains his ability to stay in fights. If they were to do this however, they should probably seriously nerf the healing from his w along side one of the changes to it. (Making him resistant to grievous wounds would probably be a bad idea anyways, but it would make him match the lore a lot more i think)

Personally I would like to see aatrox look a little more like his lore. His backstory, "Just when all hope seemed lost, Aatrox appeared among the ranks of the Protectorate. With but a few words, he urged the soldiers to fight to the last before throwing himself into battle. His presence inspired the desperate warriors. At first, they could only watch in awe as this unknown hero cleaved through their enemies, his body and blade moving in unison as if one being. Soon, the warriors found themselves imbued with a potent thirst for battle. They followed Aatrox into the fray, each fighting with the furious strength of ten until they had won a most unlikely victory." Aatrox inspired the entire army of Protectorate into completely obliterating the enemy. And to be frank, having an aatrox on your team kind of has the opposite effect.