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A very detailed complaint about Aatrox

Åron·4/14/2015, 11:02:45 PM·6 votes·1,440 views

WARNING: Long Post

Aatrox is one of my favorite champions, but I feel like his design is very flawed and he is not very viable at the moment at all.

Firstly, he is very susceptible to CC. Most meta champions have some sort of CC that can interrupt Aatrox's only escape with ease, and render him useless. To name a few: Morgana, Blitzcrank, Malzahar, Thresh, Leona, Vayne. And you can argue that his passive can save him, but by the time he is revived, he either is surrounded by enemies so he dies, his escape is on cooldown, so he can't use it and even if he did use it it would still be rendered useless by CC, or his passive revived so little he can be killed before even using his escape. He is really only good in late game, and that is only if you have a good amount of kills, which is quite difficult

Secondly, his purpose is completely missed in his design. He is meant to be a damage/lifesteal tank, right? Well his lifesteal is utterly useless until you actually buy lifesteal and THEN a Spirit Visage, which already leaves little room for actual damage, let alone tankiness against AD champions. He falls off early game as a jungler and a laner because of his super low damage, and limited sustain until you actually buy items, and gets kited sooo easily. Then he falls of mid-game because his design and itemization only allows for him to be a lifesteal tank who does no damage due to his horrible scaling. Then he falls off again late game unless you have items, which you don't because you can't get kills. Aatrox's main damage item can either be a BotRK, a Hydra, or a Bloodthirster, and if you dont buy BotRK you need to waste another item slot on attack speed since Aatrox needs that for the lifesteal to actually be significant. But if you do buy BotRK, then you don't do damage since his damage scaling is utterly horrible and BotRK only gives about 1/4 of the AD given by the other items. And even if you're jungling and buy Devourer which increases attack speed, you need to spend your whole time farming the jungle for your damage to be significant unless you can get kills which you can't because of his weak early game. And you have very little sustain if you don't buy a spirit visage, and if you buy Devourer and the Visage, you do pretty much no damage or lifesteal, until you buy your next item, which you can't do if you're so behind.

Now time for math.

And I gotta bring up his scaling. Pretty much all lifesteal items have AD attached to them. And a core part of Aatrox is lifesteal. However, if you want to build lifesteal and a Visage to increase the lifesteal, the damage you get from your abilities is so low since both of his main damage abilities scale with only 60% of your AD. That means if you buy a Bloodthirster, the item tied with the highest AD in the game, by level 9, you get 162 AD. We'll even give them the benefit of the doubt and add runes, so let's say 172 AD (which you won't get since you need life steal and attack speed runes to even hope to survive in lane let alone the jungle). Your Q and E both get an extra AD of 103.2 AD. And since you need to max W first in order to live, your E probably has only 2 or 3 levels put into it, and your Q has one. That means your main engage (your only) engage does 173.2 AD, without even calculating the armor. If a champion has as little as 30 armor (this is by level 9) your engage has about 24% reduced damage, your only engage does about 133 AD, even with the highest damage item in the game. And keep in mind, this is against a champion that most likely has over 1000 health by now. And you can't even build BT in lane without falling horrible behind with no damage or tankiness, just a bunch of lifesteal with does pretty much nothing without either damage or tankiness. If your main item is BotRK, which it should be, you can get maybe 500 damage off against a 1000 health champion, by using your Q and your E, AND your ult, building an offensive item. And I know he's meant to be a tank, but by level 9 if you can get a Randuins/Visage, you don't have any lifesteal OR damage, making him just a random ball of health that has such an easily avoidable and easily cancelled knockup, and an insignificant slow.

Let's compare this to some other AD Tanks. Let's look at Jarvan IV, another fighter/tank (classified by the Wiki). Right off the bat, his passive makes him more of a damage dealer, regardless of his itemization, by making autoattacks do more damage. And Aatrox's damage buff on his W is so insignificant (see the next paragraph), that it doesn't even matter. But my real issue is when you compare both of their Qs. They are both engages/escapes, they both have a knockup, and they both scale off of AD. Right off the bat, Jarvan's AD scaling for his Q is 120%, which is DOUBLE Aatrox's. They also both have the same base damages (70/115/160/205/250), making Jarvan's Q already a ton better. Jarvan's Q also reduces the enemy's Armor, allowing Jarvan to deal a bunch of damage on the next autoattacks, something which Aatrox fails to do, even if his W is activated. And on Jarvan, this is the skill that you are maxing! So let's calculate. These are 2 similar skills. By level 9, Aatrox builds his BotRK and Jarvan should be building Black Cleaver, but let's just give Aatrox the benefit of the doubt and let's say Jarvan is building the BotRK as well. Aatrox has 82 base damage, and J4 has 79. With the BotRKs, Aatrox has 107 and J4 has 104. And since J4 is actually supposed to build AD runes, he already has a higher base AD than Aatrox. Then the scaling. By this time, Aatrox's Q only has 1 level into it, and it has 60% scaling. So he gets 64 extra damage on his Q, allowing him to do a measly 124 damage, excluding the enemies armor, which would allow him to do a maximum of around 110 damage. Even his E, his main source of damage besides his autoattacks, will do 145+64 damage, which is 190 damage including armor, at rank 3. Jarvan's Q, on the other hand, has 120% AD scaling. So with his BotRK and runes, his base damage can range from 105-145. We'll average it out to 125. So if he has 125 AD, he gets 150 extra AD on his Q, and even at level 1, he gets 70 damage. 70+150 is 220, so his damage including armor goes to about 205. AT RANK 1. If Aatrox's E at rank 3, his main damage dealer, does less damage than Jarvan's Q at rank one, then there's a problem. On top of that, Jarvan gets the extra attack speed from BotRK. Add that with the armor reduction from his Q, Jarvan gets more damage, and more lifesteal than Aatrox's (who is meant to have lifesteal and damage) ability which is 2 ranks higher than Jarvan's. But that is an unrealistic situation. Remember, Q is the skill that Jarvan MAXES. So he should have his Q at ranks 3-5 by level 9. So his Q, which we'll say is rank 4, does 310 damage, (285 with armor), while Aatrox's Q AND E together does 110+190, 300 damage.

That W tho... Aatrox's toggle can be switched between Blood Thirst and Blood Price. Blood Thirst makes it so that every third basic attack heals you for 20/25/30/35/40 + 25% of bonus AD. The heal is tripled when Aatrox is under half health. Blood Price makes it so that every third basic attack does damage (60/95/130/165/200 + 100% of AD) at the cost of health (15/23.75/32.5/41.25/50 + 25% of AD). If you're level 1, and building the Machete/Long Sword/Boots of Speed that you're supposed to build, you have 538 health. Why the healing/recoil on W is flat and not percentage health based really restrains Aatrox into building tanky so that his W gives at least a decent amount of sustain and his Blood Price doesn't murder you slowly. So if you build the recommended starter items, and start W, your heal gives 37 health per basic attack if you build a long sword. Without the long sword, which means you want either mobility or are jungling, every 3 attacks heals 35 health. That is 11 and 2/3 per auto attack, and that is if you follow through with all 3 attacks, allowing for very limited sustain. This is around a 2% heal per autoattack, which a single minion can deal to you in about 3 seconds. The blood price... oh god. At level 1, every 3rd autoattacks will do 120 damage (130 with longsword), and will cost 15 health + the 120/130 multiplied by 0.25, you deal 45 damage to yourself, without the longsword.

Can I bring up something that doesn't make sense? Why Aatrox's ult scales off of AP. He does get 100% AP scaling on his ult, but if you want to build AP, the scaling on your E is exactly the same for both AP & AD (60%), so you get the same measly damage on the E If you want to even come close to buying any tankiness. Add that to the reduced sustain and the reduced damage on your Q and your autoattacks, you become pretty much useless except for your ult which can do pretty good damage, which still doesn't make up for that fact. Even at level 11, with a standard build, your ult at rank 2, can do 300 damage which is almost overshadowed by your normal abilities. Include the fact that most champion ults that do damage, even ults like Volibear's without building AP, do more damage than that. The attack range is not very significant on Aatrox's ult, since he is already close to the enemy in order to use his ult, and the Blood Well doesn't heal for very much unless you have an insane amount of health (late game only), and in that case you don't do damage and only do a moderate amount of life steal unless you have penetration, which completely goes against Aatrox's core itemization.

Basically, Aatrox's scaling is pretty bad, his itemization, kit, and scaling don't allow him to fulfill his purpose of being a lifesteal/damage/tank, and he can only do well if you have a lot of items, which is late game. So you can only hope of doing well if you have a 4/0 KDA (in which fighting a 1/3 Riven is still a challenge), and if you can keep the game going past 30 minutes.

6 Comments

JPlayah4/15/2015, 1:48:35 AM2 votes

This is so long but so accurate. Aatrox has problems. There should be a point in his Q animation after which he can't be knocked out of the air.

Brotha4/15/2015, 10:51:24 AM2 votes

I hate Aatrox. I hate everything about him. His appearance, his skins, his lore, and especially his game play. He is completely useless in almost every teamcomp, offers nothing outside of split pushing (which he gets outclassed at) and even as a duelist there are better choices (Fiora, Lee, Trynd). I dread having one on my team in norms, and I dodge if someone locks him in ranked.

With my sentiments included so you understand I have absolutely no bias in favor of this champion, I feel he either needs a small rework or some heavy numerical buffs. Even when he is ahead by 2 kills he still feels subpar, the only point he becomes godly is midgame only if he was hyperfed, and then he proceeds to fall off a cliff. As a sustain tank he should either have an obnoxiously strong early game that falls off (ie: Renekton), or an annoyingly weak early game that transitions into a late game god (ie: Vlad).

Inaphyt4/15/2015, 7:33:48 AM1 votes

Take AD in lane not attack speed healing more every 3rd hit is better than healing less more often. Aatrox does nice damage with blood price and can is a very underrated duelist anything not tanky dies in 2 Q 3rd hit W and E combo's in top lane. In jungle why bother? lol just go top.

Blue Mcsquish8/11/2015, 11:51:47 AM1 votes

Just played a near perfect game with Aatrox as a Jungler, I outplayed the enemy jungler, ganked and got fed, this with a bot lane with 1 veigar AFK and 1 MF who literally did nothing but run into the middle of the lane and feed. So eventually it comes to end game, Vayne is fed, but I can still take her out because I already have a full build, taking advantage of a Sated Devourers bonus to my Blood Thirst/Price meaning I'm on pretty much half crits or mega sustain, and double proc on BotRK which now it lifesteals on bonus damage too means I'm hyper sustaining, Randuin's and Ninja Tabi to help with the Vayne situ, BotRK, Hydra, BT and Devourer on Skirmishers Sabre, so everything meaning my Basic AD's should be obliterating, with extra splash whilst giving me 46.5% Lifesteal with runes and lifesteal on the splash. So at this point I should be an unkillable juggernaut as long as I'm attacking.

I say SHOULD be because even with all that, his sustain may be good but he still does crappy damage, building penetration wasn't an option as to duel Vayne I needed the sustain or more armour. And if I'd gone for the armour route then his damage would have been too meaningless and he'd end up as that random ball of health previous described without being able to actually finish anyone.

So yeah we lost that game, even though it should have been won hands down, if I'd been using Trynd or Yi then I'd have a couple of Pentas and an easy win, but with a confused mess like Aatrox even fully built and lvl 18 he still does too little damage to be any kind of threat in a teamfight. Knock up does more damage to him if you hit someone with armour and have decent health yourself. Naturally Aatrox has true damage, but only to himself, which means that if you build enough Armour against him and stand still he will literally kill himself against you. The end was decided when I dived into their team as they were taking out our tower and inhibitor with Aatrox momentarily forgetting that he was a useless no damage dealing squishy piece of crap and even with landing the knock up and Ulting he still died instantly doing as close to no damage as makes no difference. The same with Trynd would have been a penta, the same with yi would have been a penta, the same with fiora would have been... you get my drift.

Feel free to pick holes in my build if you feel you must, but I built based on what I needed at the time and mostly that was lifesteal and damage

I feel like if he's to be made viable he needs to actually scale off items to he can be the legend described in his Lore, but creating this whole backstory about a blade wielding maniac who carves up everything in his path and then creating a low damage irritating blockage in your path to victory doesn't really go. He's meant to be a teamfighter, read the Lore, he should have some kind of inspiration in teamfights, or fight better with teammates around, I get the whole turning tide thing with his regen but it's not enough to give the feel of a legendary warrior, he's more like a random weirdo who runs up to you and cuts his wrists in front of you, then when you're sure he's about to faint he randomly hits you like a fly and runs away fine. Just doesn't really do anything. Btw I got to Gold on Aatrox alone so I'm not saying I don't like him I do, just he's crap.

Changes needed are: His Ult! Having no scaling, I dived Ulted and did a lot less than 1 basic attack, but at least to everyone, this also gave me a full blood well, which was usefull for all of half a second. Ult needs to scale off of AD, significantly. And seriously the blood well needs to be a more significant buff, AS is all great if you aren't already having to build things like BotRK which you have to, or BotRK and Devourer so great 100% AS plus the rest with no damage, further increasing his stupidly high sustain whilst attacking but doing FA damage. Unless your enemy has 5000 health and no Armour... cos that's gonna happen. I actually saw someone build multiple warmogs once it was hilarious, had to point out to them they were only making it easier for me. So ok that can happen, but it shouldn't.

His AD scaling in general needs to change, 60% is FAR too low, for anyone that isn't a straight up tank and we've covered that point I think. Q and E should both be doubled for Scaling, that way there would be a point to using items, too often I've run around with nothing saving up 5k in gold only to spend it and find out I'm not that much better off. Oh and seeing as he actually hurts himself every single time he performs either a Q, E or W active, quite significantly I might add if he has full health I don't really see that as even being a fair buff as you pointed out Jarvan has 120% AD scaling, but doesn't injure himself on attack, and shreds armour, however we'll take it gladly he needs all the help he can get.

He damages himself.... would be the stupidest idea ever if they hadn't made up for his self hurt with mega damage to your opponent with your knockup or poke, oh wait... they haven't. So either get rid of the self damage or make it meaningful, like you use up life but do tons of damage with your Skillshots, SKILLSHOTS so if you miss, you are damaging yourself and doing absolutely nothing to your opponent, and if you hit sometimes you hurt yourself more... WTF!!! I cannot stress enough how much this needs to be relevant and not just some random thought that never really got properly discussed.

His W does need a revamp too, Blood thirst is all great, don't get me wrong I love me that sustain, but it could be better, doesn't really go up much per level, so almost pointless maxing it first but you still have to cos without it you die. Base increase should be more than 5 per lvl, however I get that the empowered heal is epic so maybe no change needed to the passive, the active though... does definitely need a change the bonus damage is nice, but not as nice as crit, it's only every 1/3 attack does 1/4 of the damage to you and if they have enough armour this could actually even out to =damage which is just rubbish, again if it's going to cost life to use it should be better, also you don't get lifesteal from the extra damage, whereas with crit you do, so it's almost more sensible to never use and build just crit on him, which goes totally against his core seeing as crit can't interact with his W. So in theory it's an amazing ability and in practice it falls flat on its face. It's something he can't live without, but doesn't really help him be awesome. Not even useful for farming as he hurts himself too much and becomes a target.

Base stats... as a life using champ he should have some kind of base stat that makes this possible to do without killing yourself and making your opponent scratch their head. Higher base HP would be a start to that end, or perhaps really high innate Arm and MR, if you're hurting yourself you should take less of a beating from the enemy, or hurt yourself less, but as he is it's too easy to be a feeding machine. AD base should be up, obviously scaling needed but base AD wouldn't hurt either. Something to make him less of a pansy. That giant sword should actually hurt, it's like he's just a mirage and really it's a skinny teenager with a spoon hitting you.

Ok so with all that obviously I'm not saying all of these should be implemented, even though that would just make him the equal of most champs. I'm aware that with his blood well revive (which personally I find to be a very good passive) he's got an innate advantage at times, like when they tower dive you and kill themselves... silly fools. But he falls short on almost every aspect of his design and it's really disappointing for what could have been awesome. Sorry for everyone who read this I'm aware it's rather long but it's just so pointless having a champ who starts out squishy, doesn't scale and is only good as a tank but with shitty CC, his Q is crap. No matter how hard you work at it he stays rubbish, and starting out so bad he should turn into a lategame god.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! Do something about him Riot, because as much as I like his design and playstyle he just isn't worth the effort, make him more mobile, or more tanky, or more of a fighter or more viable in any way just more. Just not more self harm... he's like a mundo, but just less good.