Gameplay Opinions on Aatrox, Akali, the 44Club Trinity, and Mordekaiser

Aight, so this post is aimed at me voicing my thoughts on quite a few different champions, so bear with me, I got a lot to say here. I'll organize them by champs, so if you want to see my thoughts and suggestions on certain champions, just CTRL + F for their names. Feel free to leave your thoughts on anyone you see me mention. For those of you that don't know, the 44Club Trinity is Azir, Ryze, and Kalista, champions that have been nerfed due to their extremely overbearing presence in pro-play, and their oppressive nature when strong in the hands of mains and high-elo players alike.

**Aatrox ** : Alright, this is a big one. I absolutely LOVE the new Aatrox from a thematic standpoint, and his abilities are absolutely stunning imo. The main issue I have is their execution. On the PBE, Aatrox felt unstoppable, he crushed people, but that's mainly due to the overall low skill-level of players on the PBE, myself included. On live, he's a hot mess. He defied my playability expectations sharply, and he's overall weak. There are a few changes I'd like to see, and none of them are my own idea, except for the ult change.

• Q, The Darkin Blade: Aatrox's Q is really cool, and despite its similarities to Riven's Q (there aren't as many as the memes make out to be), it fills its own category of ability. Overall a really cool ability. Reverse the order Aatrox casts the Qs in. This was suggested by a Redditor on r/LeagueofLegends, and it's probably one of the best solutions to Aatrox's current state I've seen yet. He's a recently freed Ascended turned Darkin Warlord, one of Shurima's best swordsman, known for fighting the void in close quarters, and he's striking from a distance before reaching close quarters in game? He's supposed to be a relentless fighter, chasing people down, and yet, he has to try to hit them from far away to land his close-quarters stuff? Pish-posh. It would make sense for him to strike his foes hard in person with Q1 + W + Passive, and chunk and chase them down with his other Q casts. He'd actually be relentlessly chasing and striking them then. With this, and the ability for him to move at 75% reduced speed during his Q casts would make this ability absolutely perfect.

• W, Infernal Chains: Overall this ability doesn't draw much complaints, as it can be animation canceled, and animation cancels by itself. Either increase it's horizontal cage range by 25-50, or increase the slow by 5-10%. I can't name a single champion who CAN'T leave this box by walking to the side. Even the slowest champs in the game can walk out. It doesn't need much, just a slight size increase, or a slightly more potent slow. Other than that, it's perfect.

• E, Umbral Dash: Revert the Physi-vamp change. Completely unnecessary, he had enough Physi-vamp on the E + DD + Wrath. The dash range increase was nice, it grants Aatrox the ability to dash over most walls in the game now. The auto attack reset seem more logical if the order of the Qs were reversed, like I mentioned earlier. Other than that, the AD steroid is nice, but I feel numbers changes overall are NOT what he needs.

• R, World Ender: Thematically, this ability has the most potential to be the game changing ultimate merited by a tormented, suicidal, freed Warlord Hellbent on being free of his curse, but it just doesn't do that. Massacre, Aatrox's old ultimate filled his Blood Well based on how many enemy champions he hit with it, giving him a strong teamfight presence. What does this ult do? "Well, it spooks minions, makes him fast, gives him %AD, and gives him access to a mobile revive." Granted, that's a lot, but it doesn't speak to the nature of Aatrox that this new lore presents to him. Aatrox, pre-rework, and post-rework drank the blood of the fallen to grown in size, strength, and power according to his lore. World Ender should deal damage to nearby enemies, and add a few conditional effects for doing so. His % AD should be impacted by the amount of people he damaged, and his Blood Well should be filled according to the damage he dealt at the start, continuing to fill over World Ender's duration. If he pops that ultimate to gapclose, he's not gonna get a lot of AD, and he's not gonna revive for a lot if he was low and activated it away from a fight, and revives to a Caitlyn ultimate. But if he's in the thick of a fight and he unleashes World Ender, Aatrox should be rewarded with a larger Blood Well, and more AD, fulfilling the fantasy of a Darkin Warlord.

Akali : Aight, I got some bias here because I absolutely hate this champ with a fiery passion. So Akali is probably one of the most interesting assassins in the game because she has an extremely consistent form of stealth, and mobility that does more than tickle. My main issue, which I hope will be addressed in her rework, is her linear playstyle. She relies on the same things, her Q+R+AA+E to burst most squishies, followed by a W while she waits for these abilities to reset, although a lot of assassins have this issue. She sticks out because she doesn't have much of a way to stall other than her W and her R charges, which I feel doesn't make much sense. Most other assassins have a form of in-combat stalling, or escape that allows them to either trade while their main burst is recharging, or a solid way to escape other than a short blink and a dash. And in a world of short blinks and long dashes, Akali doesn't do either of them justice rn. I'm no Akali expert, so I'm sure someone will correct me here. I have no ability changes to propose here since her rework is coming next, either after a new champion, or before.

Azir : Aight, I have my bias here because I main Azir, and I've been playing him through thick and thin, so there's a lot I'm drawing from. Azir's rework in 7.19 was aimed at increasing strength while increasing counterplay. I'd argue it both succeeded and failed in that regard. Azir definitely grew stronger as a result of the rework, hitting a 54% winrate for the first two patches after his release. For one of the most difficult champions in the game to maintain such a high level of dominance across all elos is evident that he was TOO strong, and the eventual nerfs came. In terms of counterplay, I feel this was a massive failure. Riot attempted to lower Azir's safety by removing the permanent knockback on Emperor's Divide, and reducing the range on his Q, Conquering Sands. By itself, this would've been a massive nerf to his safety, making him an overall less safe champion. What they did to near completely counteract that was give him an ON DEMAND SHIELD for 70% of his AP. Late game, this shield is easily between 550-700 damage negated, which makes bursting him down immensely difficult. I propose one simple change to Azir (no exact numbers because I can't balance at all).

• Give him a Yasuo-styled interaction between his E and his Q. The Shurima Shuffle, and it's defensive counterpart, the E+Q Drift, are two of the biggest reasons why Azir is difficult to balance. He's got strong engage, disengage, poke, dps, range, late-game carry potential, and safety that's top tier in the marksman class. Giving his Q a condition that states (if cast while dashing, Conquering Sands (his Q) has [insert changed effects here]). Literally anything in relation to his Q, E, or even W can be placed here. You can cause the E+Q Drift to only move the soldier you're dashing to, you can cut the damage on Q by half, you can reduce shield value, dash speed, literally ANYTHING here. You can effectively introduce a nerf here without touching his numbers, and in doing so, open up the rest of his kit to number changes, or other QoL changes.

Kalista : Alright, Kalista has a few main issues that Riot seem to pinpoint that make her hard to balance here. The first is her ability to be near unstoppable when her team is coordinated, similarly to Azir and Ryze. There's also the issue of her having had too high damage while being too mobile, thus her damage being cut down so much. I am not as good on Kalista as I am on Azir or Ryze (because I'm not much of an ADC main), but I have a few criticisms of her kit that could be reviewed.

• Kalista's W: Let's be real, what's the REAL purpose of this ability? It's a vision tool that passively grants bonus AD while near your oathsworn, bonus magic damage, and executes minions if both Kalista and the Oathsworn attack it below a health threshold. This does literally nothing to interact with her theme of being a vengeful spear-it, and has always been a useless ability imo. Whenever Riot revists her, I have one suggestion. GET RID OF IT, and replace it with something that ties into her theme better.

• Kalista's R: Alright, Riot knows full well that this is one of their biggest pain points on this champion. A powerful engage tool that doubles as a way to save your allies. Again, as a vengeful spear-it, how exactly does this tie into her theme? It doesn't, but that's less of my issue here. The main problem with this ability is that it's more reliant on coordination than her W is. If your support doesn't have the slightest inkling of what to do, your ally may very well be slain, or Kalista might die alongside them. It's an ability that I feel doesn't make much sense on a marksman, on a support, maybe, but not a marksman.

Ryze : Ryze rework when? Memes aside, Ryze is the most reworked champ in the game, and with all of that being said, RIot still hasn't gotten that fantasy of a machine-gun, rapid-spellslinging mage down yet. When he's strong, he's unstoppable, and pick/ban, just like Azir and Kalista, but when he's weak (he's never weak if you're good at him), he doesn't do poorly either. I only have one thing to say about Ryze, because his other abilities are fine to me.

• Get rid of that ultimate. I get it, Ryze is the planeswalker of Runeterra, being able to quickly travel around in search of the World Runes, and as such, he needs a magical way of getting around quickly, but that's not something that NEEDED to be an ability. Realm Warp, strong in pro-play, as you can make disgusting plays with it, mediocre elsewhere because you can't expect to coordinate 4 other players around an ability with a ridiculously long CD, especially in the solo-queue environment. If his ultimate MUST be a powerful repositioning tool, make it so that it's less team reliant, more skill and single-player reliant, since that's partly what limits Riot's ability to balance him well. Even if it's a single target teleport that transports the target anywhere in a limited range, that's better than trying to expect 5 people to work effectively together with one cohesive gameplan in a wild environment with a potentially devastating ability. There's plenty to do here, and I personally would like to see an ultimate that plays around with the World Runes. Give an enemy a World Rune, and have Ryze overload it, doing massive damage, and stealing away the World Rune, giving him some sort of permanent bonus if the Ultimate kills someone. It'd tie in A LOT better with the rest of his kit than some random team teleport, especially since in the lore, RYZE LIKES TO WORK ALONE. He even says so in game.

Mordekaiser : Mordekaiser was the first melee champion I played, and as such, holds a special place in my heart. The Master of Metal was Riot's attempt at bringing Melee champs back to the botlane (something they finally succeeded in recently). The buffs to Fleet Footwork, plus changes to items like Steraks (which he normally doesn't build, but some people like the AD, HP and survivability on him more than the AP) make him pretty good right now. He's got good sustain, and he's a raidboss once he has Liandry's + Rylai's and a Dragon Ghost. But that's about it. He's kitable, and for a Juggernaut, he has some really low base stats and growth. But his main issue is his bugs. There's no point in resolving all** 500+** bugs on him, and it's easier to just remake him from scratch with a better execution on his theme. Another player introduced a lovely rework idea, and while the numbers are quite overtuned, the idea is exceptional, and is definitely a good starting point to work with. I love Morde, but he HAS GOT TO GO in his current state. If they somehow remake this Morde without all his bugs, he'd probably be ridiculously strong, so there's a fine line to work with here.

Tl;Dr: Read through it, too much to condense here.

Alright, that's about all of my ideas, feel free to comment on my thoughts! As for changes on the 44Club Trinity, those are changes I've been sitting on since they announced they were going to shelve them for the time being. Hopefully I didn't suggest any ideas that were too stupid or unreasonable.

Thanks for your time!

Edit: Tidied up the Aatrox section of my post for readability purposes.