Why I think Irelia was reworked the way she was.

I wanted to share my thoughts on the Irelia rework coming from the perspective of a long time Aatrox player.

I think Irelia was reworked to get her out of the niche the Aatrox rework intends to place him in. Pre-rework Irelia was 1v1 orientated semi-split-pusher who was okay in team fights. What is Aatrox supposed to be?A 1v1 split-pusher who has a decent team fight. Now Irelia is a passsive laner who wants to scale into later into the game but her team fight aspect has been improved majorly. Aatrox is now perhaps the only champ that holds the previously mentioned niche.Well unless you want to play top lane Jax but he’ll always be balanced around the jungle. So this leaves Aatrox as the only auto-attack based bruiser top. So if they changed him from his niche that playstyle would be effectively removed and I doubt they would want to do that. Which led me to the idea that his rework would keep his playstyle and game plan the relatively the same. I think they did this so that Aatrox wouldn’t be under Irelia’s metaphorical shadow if they held the same niche. Similar to how in nature no two animals can hold the exact same niche ,or one too similar,without one out competing the other.