Did riot improve playing from behind? or is aatrox broken now?

last night i logged in to play a game on the rift for the first time (minus urf) in a few months. I was in a wierd mood and wanted to play the aatrox mini rework as support. i expected teamates to flame, to have a hard time adjusting, i expected a whole load of shit to be piled on me, but i didnt care.

when we get into the game, our graves jungle was afk. he remained so all game. we struggled early but didnt feed too much. we were all a bit disappointed in what was going on but didnt tilt. I didnt play a perfect game by any means. I hadnt even figured out how to manage bloodwell properly till midgame.

but once laning phase ended we slowly but surely took the upper-hand and stomped the shit out of em 4v5... it felt like a fresh experience... for the last year or so with snowballing mechanics i had just assumed we would lose no matter what, so i didnt care all game...

soooooo did i miss a patch note in the last few months that woulda made me come back sooner? whats goin on