If lifesteal item are nerfed, Aatrox will need a buff?

ILoveTiramisu·Jun 20, 2014·2 votes·1,852 views

Title, I think this because Aatrox is lifesteal-item dependent. Also if Bortk (Main item) deals more damage now.

11 Comments

CritkeeperJun 21, 20143 votes

Actually if lifesteal were nerfed so hard and so uniformly that it might as well not even exist, then Aatrox would stand out as one of the handful of champions that have copious amounts of scaling on hit healing intrinsically. He would offer something quite unique.

In other words, nerfs to lifesteal just make picking aatrox for his drain tanking abilities that much more attractive. He might not be able to drain tank quite as well with the loss of the lifesteal, but everyone else also loses the same amount of lifesteal and doesn't have any healing to fall back on unlike aatrox.

Look at it this way: If half of aatrox's healing is from his bloodprice and the other half is from lifesteal, and then all of a sudden RIOT nerfs lifesteal by cutting it in half, then aatrox takes a nerf to his sustain putting him at 75% of his original healing potential. Everyone else would be at 50% of their healing potential however, which just makes aatrox stand out more then than he does now.

RiotPhreakJun 21, 20145 votes

Look at it this way: If half of aatrox's healing is from his bloodprice and the other half is from lifesteal, and then all of a sudden RIOT nerfs lifesteal by cutting it in half, then aatrox takes a nerf to his sustain putting him at 75% of his original healing potential. Everyone else would be at 50% of their healing potential however, which just makes aatrox stand out more then than he does now.

Yep, basically that. Now, if you're fighting a matchup like, say, Aatrox vs. Irelia where you're really trying to stay at 30% life without dying to Hiten Style, the loss of some lifesteal from BotRK might make you fall over (while Irelia doesn't want any anyway). Some matchups do nerf Aatrox, since not everyone buys lifesteal.

But generally speaking, he's still in a pretty good spot, especially since the Unique Passive damage is much higher now on BotRK

hashinshinJun 21, 20144 votes

Phreak you're at least diamond so I don't think it's very nice telling people that Aatrox is still in a "pretty good spot." Remember the competitive motto: The bottom 50% of any tier list aren't viable, the top 25% are what people will use, and the bottom 25% are going to struggle since they go against the top 25%. In LoL this is even more pronounced due to forgotten or overnerfed or just straight left behind champions (Sion, Gangplank, Mordekaiser, etc.)

So no, anybody reading this, Aatrox is not in a good spot please don't play him in ranked.

12talesJun 21, 20141 votes

fredy122 and Darien disagree.

hashinshinJun 21, 20143 votes

The guys who used Aatrox when they could use an exploit then promptly dropped him like a rock once it was fixed? Yeah I'm sure that counts... for something.

12talesJun 21, 20142 votes

Don't be absurd. Aatrox has been picked four times and banned once since 4.7, well after the bug with his W was resolved.

And as an aside, it's actually pretty serious to imply that Gambit was intentionally 'exploiting' a bug when they chose Aatrox vs. SK last split. Unless you have privileged access to their email or comms or somesuch, I'm disinclined to believe that they wouldn't have picked Aatrox had the bug not existed.

hashinshinJun 22, 20141 votes

He had to click W on every single auto attack to get the 2 proc W heal to work. Do you understand what that means?

12talesJun 22, 20141 votes

It means that you don't actually know how the bug worked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=uFT7T3JxFAc#t=604

Here's the vod if you'd like to check for yourself - you can see Aatrox getting the 2 hit proc, and Blood Thirst / Blood Price isn't being toggled. Only green particles to be found.

The bug was caused by putting your first point in W while drinking a health potion, which is what you can see happening here - Darien gets low at level 1, drinks a health pot, and then levels W when he hits level 2. Not really the most suspicious thing an Aatrox player could do.

12talesJun 21, 20141 votes

Oh, and it would appear that Xaxus and sOAZ should be added to the list of dissenters.

12talesJun 22, 20141 votes

Oh, also Kev1n.

In fact, in review, Aatrox was picked 5 games in a row this week of EULCS. Won 4 of them, too.

I dunno, I think he's in a pretty good spot tbh.

Jesus is SaviorJun 21, 20141 votes

Okay, what about Master Yi? Yi doesn't really care about the passive damage on Bork. It was a buff to killing tanks, not squishies. Yi wants to be able to sustain (it's his only sustain item, usually) and nuke squishies to get his resets. The sustain got cut by 1/3, the nuke got cut by 1/3, AND the sustain FROM the nuke got cut by 1/3. For Yi, Bork was nerfed hard, and he doesn't really have any room in his build to buy a bloodthirster or hydra if he actually wants to do damage and have critical strikes.

EDIT: and why not buff lifesteal on melees, and nerf it on ranged? That would fix all of this. Lifesteal was nerfed because of bottom lane. All the changes were made with bottom lane in mind. Bottom lane is ranged. Everyone else who uses these items is not