The Clash between Aatrox's ultimate and the rest of his kit, and a possible simple solution.

Aatrox's rework, despite the large amount of controversy, has mostly been a success. With a dedicated fanbase already established, his gameplay may differ greatly but the spirit of Aatrox (a hyper aggressive drain tank who can revive even if killed) has been preserved. However, there is one aspect of his kit that still feels underwhelming, and is the primary complaint I see in my discussions with various other Aatrox players: His ultimate.

I don't think this is necessarily because of the specific effect it gives. The AD Boost is very noticeable, and when you revive with your maximum bloodwell it is incredibly satisfying. The issue is that the specifics of how his ultimate's duration works directly clashes with his kit. Allow me to elaborate.

During Aatrox's ultimate, his bloodwell slowly fills up. This is to encourage players to cast their ultimate at the beginning of a fight, and to try to survive long enough in a fight to get it fully stacked before they die, allowing them to revive themselves with the most health possible. This idea is not only very thematic, but synergises very well with the rest of Aatrox's kit. Aatrox's base kit consists of tools to reward him for landing short range abilities on multiple targets with large damage output and survivability. The issue is that the flat duration of this ability changes Aatrox's goal. Gaining stasis with the ability to reposition for 3.5 seconds whilst healing 50% of your hp is incredibly strong, and should thus always be your aim in a teamfight. But this aim clashes with Aatrox's primary goal (to stay alive as long as possible using your passive healing in order to deal as much damage as possible) because even in combat, your ultimate will end after 12 seconds. This changes Aatrox's teamfighting decision making from: How can I deal as much damage and live as long as possible? To: How can I deal as much damage and live as long as possible for the first 10 or so seconds of a fight and ensure that I am killed within that last two second window?

Needless to say, being punished and missing out on a significant chunk of your ultimate's power for using the rest of the tools in your kit too well is one of the worst feelings in the game. I realise the following is anecdotal evidence, but gathering data for gamefeel discussions is quite difficult, and I feel this is the best way to further explain my point. Many times as Aatrox, I have been playing well in the middle of a teamfight, and towards the end of my ultimate's duration, whilst low on health I would land a 3rd Q on multiple targets, dealing a huge chunk of damage and healing myself for a sizeable amount too. I would then have my ultimate run out, and simply be bursted without my remaining cooldowns instantly. Here the better choice was to not go for the multi-champion 3rd Q (despite how difficult it is to setup) but to guess whether my opponents will burst me down before my ultimate ends, or whether they will wait, and just sit still or attempt to disengage the fight as appropriate. This goes against his playstyle and core theme of hyper-aggression and in addition, having to rely on enemy ignorance to get the most out of your ultimate is painful. I would be hard pressed to think of another champion whose biggest moment clashes with the rest of their kit and theming in such a harsh way. This is the equivalent of if casting Akali's second ultimate dissipated her shroud, or if hitting the last vital of Fiora's ultimate created a self-damage field instead of a team-healing field. What is supposed to be the most thematically resonant and satisfying moment of Aatrox's gameplay instead encourages players to do the exact opposite encouraged by the playstyle and theme, and run away or actively stop fighting.

My apologies, that got quite passionate, but hopefully I got the concept across. The next few points are somewhat less subjective.

Aatrox's ultimate duration is also an issue early game. While 12 seconds is quite short for a late game tanky teamfighter (shown by how often it tends to run out mid-team fight), it is a very long amount of time early game. The average dive lasts 10 seconds or so at most, which is more than enough time to dive a helpless enemy top lane with your jungler. This is partly why he was so dominant in pro-play, as his exceptional (and relatively low cooldown) zero-risk diving, combined with his huge early game pressure made him far too oppressive. Whilst a lot of his early game pressure has been nerfed away, and I agree with the direction of the current buffs in place to help out his early game, I feel as though he could still be very oppressive as an early diver, and the changes I am about to suggest for his ultimate (I believe) achieve both the goal of lowering abuse cases for Aatrox, whilst giving him more power if played well in late-game teamfights and making his general gameplay far more satisfying.

Aatrox: World Ender: Duration: 12 -> 8 seconds. New Effect: If World Ender has less than 4 seconds of duration left, damaging an enemy champion refreshes the duration to 4 seconds.

(Note: Numbers are purely speculative, the important part is the effect paradigm. In Addition, the Blood Well would still fill at the same rate, requiring Aatrox to damage an enemy champion after 6 seconds of his ultimate cast in order to get it fully stacked before the ultimate ends.)

This ensures Aatrox players are free to truly fight as hard as they possibly can in teamfights. It also sharpens the counterplay to Aatrox's ultimate, as proper kiting can end the ult far earlier than usual (and Aatrox's kit is designed to be quite easy to kite). Rewarding the Aatrox player for staying in the fight by guaranteeing him his revive, while punishing defensive ultimate use harder with a far smaller window. It also has the previously mentioned knock-on effect of reducing his early diving power, as well as his general early game power.

Naturally, everything posted here is simply my opinion. I feel as though Aatrox currently has room for this kind of change, considering his 48% early game winrate, and 46% post 30 minutes winrate (numbers acquired from OP.GG plat+ ranked games) especially as this is quite a power neutral change in most cases, and mostly removes painful gameplay points and some abuse cases.

I would love to hear thoughts on this from others here, both from those playing Aatrox, and those playing against him.

(I'm sorry if this is rambly, I may go back and edit later in order to clean up the structure. It is currently very late where I am and this was written in a hurry.)