Patch 7.5 - Revisiting Aatrox

Riot·Mar 8, 2017·15 votes·107,520 views

Aatrox is one of our top candidates for whenever we tackle divers in a class update, thanks to some pretty fundamental game health problems. Knowing that, we’ve been holding off on balance tweaks on the Darkin Blade until we’d had a chance to solve some of those issues. To be frank, he’s been left in that state for far longer than we’d intended, and we should have tried a minor pass on his problems long ago. In Patch 7.5, we decided to roll up our sleeves and do what we could to make Aatrox more safely tuneable.

When Aatrox is ahead, he feels like a god of war, dishing out tons of damage and healing through anything short of a full team’s worth of focused punishment. Blood Thirst’s healing gets stronger as Aatrox loses health, meaning getting him low just makes him harder to kill. Even if you do burst through his lifesteal, you have to kill him a second time thanks to Blood Well’s revive effect.

But when he’s behind? To access the strength of Blood Well, Aatrox has to bleed his own health through his abilities, which might just get him killed. And if (when) he does die, he’s even weaker until his passive resurrection returns.

This razor-thin line between winning and losing makes Aatrox one of the clearest cases of the design problem we refer to as “feast or famine”. He needs better ways to pick himself back up from an early disadvantage, and in return, opponents need better ways to play around him when he gets ahead.

The Revised Darkin Blade

With that in mind, here’s what we’re doing.

Passive - Blood Well (click for tooltip)

Aatrox fills his Blood Well through his abilities. When it fills entirely, the Well begins to empty over 4 seconds, giving him a new buff - Blood Rush - for the duration.

While under the effects of this buff, dealing or taking damage versus champions will fully refresh its duration (and fully refill the Blood Well).

Blood Rush - Aatrox gains 25% base attack damage and 20 - 50% attack speed (scaling with level). Upon taking fatal damage, Aatrox will revive and recover 30% of his max health. Aatrox cannot revive more than once every 180 - 120 seconds.

We’re starting by giving Aatrox and his opponents clearer signals about when Aatrox is The Darkin Blade, and when he’s just a bad dude with a blade. Instead of slowly scaling up with Blood Well, Aatrox has a new state - Blood Rush - that activates when the Blood Well’s full, giving Aatrox more clear “regular” vs “overdrive” states.

Basic ability adjustments (click for details)
Health costs reduced significantly or removed. Blood Thirst heal scaling shifted to percentage missing health. Blades of Torment now scales with AD.

Q - Dark Flight
- Now fills 20% of Blood Well upon cast
- Aatrox dashes to the target area after a brief delay, dealing 10/35/60/95/120 (+110% total AD) physical damage to nearby units upon landing and knocking up all units in the epicenter for 1 second
W - Blood Thirst/Blood Price

Passive: Aatrox applies a bonus on-hit effect on every third hit against non-structures

W1 - Blood Thirst
- TOGGLE OFF - Blood Thirst: Aatrox heals himself on-hit for 30/45/60/75/90 (+5% missing health).
W2 - Blood Price
- Fills 20% of the Blood Well when hit effect occurs
- TOGGLE ON - Blood Price: Aatrox deals 30/60/90/120/150 (+75% bonus AD) on hit.
E - Blades of Torment
- COST: 30 health
- Now fills 20% of Blood Well upon cast
- Aatrox unleashes two converging energy waves in the target direction, dealing 70/110/150/150/190/230 (+70% bonus AD) physical damage to all units hit and slowing them by 30/35/40/45/50% for 2 seconds.

When we first designed Aatrox, we thought the “risky drain tank” fantasy would be a cool strategic niche for Aatrox to fill. We no longer think it’s sustainable to double down on the risk Aatrox already takes as an often squishy fighter by adding significant health costs to his abilities. This iteration of Aatrox will no longer bleed himself dry from using his abilities.

When it comes to Blades of Torment, it is often used to mitigate risk, allowing Aatrox to farm or harass from a distance. As such, some cost seems appropriate. However, we’re converting the current health percentage cost on Blades of Torment to a flat one, while also changing Blood Thirst’s heal from AD scaling to a missing health percentage.

We hope that this gives tanky fighter items - and perhaps the occasional pure defensive item - a better home in Aatrox’s inventory, by making it less counterintuitive to build health. With more opportunities to supplement his sturdiness, Aatrox can leap into scrappy fights and have enough time to slash people up in Blood Rush without immediately collapsing.

While this round of changes doesn’t get Aatrox where he should be in the long-term (it’ll probably take a more long-term project to accomplish that), we hope we’ve made enough strides here for him to be buff-and-nerf-able state until that update comes.

603 Comments

FailogMar 8, 2017447 votes

"While this round of changes doesn’t get Aatrox where he should be in the long-term"

These are awful changes. You gutted him, and gutted him hard. There was 2 years of input from Aatrox mains on the boards, and you decided to ignore all of it.

He needs 5 stacks to get Blood Rush right? Okay, but all of his abilities are on a long cool down, and using Blood Price for the stacks means you aren't healing. The only buff his healing got was is it is higher now over 50 percent then previously. So basically in order to benefit from the healing you have not be using your now nerfed bonus damage, and also won't be getting stacks.

Furthermore, the blood well drains faster than it used to. It drains immediately, and quickly. It drains WAY to fast. And because his Blood Well takes so long to fill up, if it ever drains to zero, you have no revive and its hard to quickly stack back up.

He does less damage now too, and receives less bonus Attack Speed. Even with his Blood Rush passive, that extra 29 damage at level 18 doesn't mean nearly as much as 100 percent bonus AD on top of a 200 bonus damage from his old Blood Price.

If you are going to move his damage output to his passive, it needs to be stronger. A flat 25% base damage is not enough. Put it in his W and E were it belongs. Gut the damage on his Q and lower the cool down and widen the knock up area.

This is a colossal screw up. Its not fun and its annoying.

Solution? Well if we must stick with this new set up, instead of his abilities filling up 20% they should fill 25%, and the stacks should simply remain stay even out of combat or at least remain for so he can strategically stack and plan a dive. The Blood Well drains way too fast. First of all it now drains IMMEDIATELY after you stop attacking or being attacked. There should be a several second window where it doesn't drain, and then it should drain over 10 seconds. He needs a window out of combat where his passive is available.

Don't kid yourselves--this was a total nerf. Either it was intentional, or it was gross incompetence, and neither one is acceptable. Riot has yet to respond to any post about Aatrox, even when it was in PBE.

I just can't believe after 2 years this was the best they could come up with. A multi-billion dollar company. Very sad.

CaliburnKingMar 8, 2017103 votes

it's not a rework. it's literally just a stop gap measure until they can give him the attention he deserves.

FailogMar 8, 2017115 votes

It only made him worse. They should have just let him alone until the rework.

midnight oil24Mar 8, 201719 votes

Yet if they had left him alone, you people would be screaming for aatrox changes.

FailogMar 8, 201774 votes

Actually no. Many mains including myself have always stated that Aatrox was in nearly an okay state, and quite OP in many ways. We mained him because we liked him and we were good with him. I wanted some changes, but very little. In fact I posted many time about this because I was scared they would do something like this.

midnight oil24Mar 8, 20177 votes

Actually, many of the aatrox mains are the few sane people on the boards. I'm talking about the large number of people who just spout about aatrox even though they don't really know how to play him (I'll admit I don't really know how to play him either, but I don't make posts on why he's bad) yet now turn on him.

FailogMar 9, 201732 votes

Who posts about a champion they don't main???

I don't post my opinion on any champion or changes that I don't play on a regular basis.

KogekiMar 9, 201755 votes

Aatrox main here as well(Pickel Lang if you want to search me up), I would've prefered having him like he was before than now. At least before I could fend for myself and it actually pushed me to become better considering aatrox is god awful this season. (I was forced to learn basically every nook and cranny about Aatrox, his match ups etc.) Now for the screw up...

First off if you're not going to spend a lot of time in a champion then why even bother changing his kit? I mean why is Aatrox the odd ball?

1.) His damage is significantly lower, it's one of the first things I noticed.

2.)His attack speed is so low even with the buff it's disgusting. Like seriously before I could get multiple autos off with botrk alone, but now I have to rely on a buff that seems awfully like darius'(Hit 5 stacks get ad and attack speed, except darius' is actually VERY useful to his kit)

3.)While the buff is ALRIGHT it could be better, and it certainly doesn't match his old one. It's too hard to stack considering his cooldowns and it shouldn't decay either as quick or at all if they're going to keep his CDs the same.

4.)His overall kit is kinda ruined. His w + atk speed was his strong point, the new heal is good don't get me wrong but his blood price does nearly nothing. Q also needs to have a non interrupt, like for real it's annoying and should be a thing already(It's basically malphite ult but not as strong? In a way)

Now for the changes that I would like to see since they most likely won't revert him.

1.)His passive...it needs a lot of work. Why would you make his revive conditional? Like really, its the only reason Aatrox is actually played somewhat and it also makes him slightly viable.(You really can't tell me otherwise because all you really need is a good team or champion. Take fiora for example, that lane is HORRENDOUS for Aatrox.)Anyways moving on...something I noticed while discussing with a few friends is that, his new passive stack and buff is awfully similar to Darius'. This would be great if he totally didn't rely on it to actually do something. Like DarkRaygnar already said, it's WAY too difficult to stack and it decays in an instant. Either buff the passive to have it scale by HP or per level or reduce the number of stacks to 3-4(1 Q, 1-2 Blood price, 1 E).

2.)Passive attack speed either scales with the bars or you bump his actual attack speed stat up. (Even with atk speed runes and masteries I get 0.91 at lvl 2, before I could easily hit 1.16 or higher depending on my setup).The reason why his attack speed is so important is because it allows him to proc W more, and guess what? Its also his sustain.

3.)I honestly have no clue how to fix new blood price cause it's all types of bad lmao, but I guess you could bump up the flat ad #'s.

Last but not least...either revert E to magic or change ult to physical as well. I don't understand the logic behind changing one but not the other... Also E actually did a lot of damage early on in the game considering it was magic

It seems like you guys are trying to make Aatrox a tank of some sort, kind of like darius?

Honestly, I was pretty disappointed to see my old main get changed but for the worse. There's a lot of work needed to make him great again. Also please please please, there's no one better to ask for a champions changes then the community themselves, better yet ask someone who MAINS the champion. Most people will complain about this and that but don't actually understand how to counter that particular champion

LichKing234Mar 9, 201715 votes

also fellow aatrox main i havent gotten a chance to play aatrox well this version yet im glad i didnt cause i would have been disappointed, ty fellow aatrox mains [slayer-jinx-wink]

KogekiMar 9, 20176 votes

Yeah no kidding. The only reason I found out about the change was from a friend, I wish he had never told me. RIP fellow aatrox mains![zombie-nunu-tears]

Un111KnoWnMar 9, 201712 votes

Aatrox jungle is trash. His passive is so hard to stack. If u try to stack it then u cant heal. + u only get buffed at 5 stacks so at 1-4 stacks ur useless. His w heal is horrendous too. Aatrox jungle wasn't useless before the rework. Now he is useless in the jungle.

Dark RugerMar 9, 201710 votes

Rip Aatrox... You guys nerf Aatrox 5 times when he was released in 2013 and now this rework has completely destroyed him. I been playing this game for over 5 years now and cant take this shitt anymore!!!

THEnightKING187Mar 10, 20175 votes

I just played agaist a fiora and god I was shredded I couldn't do nothing I would get him to 4 stacks but that would be all before she raped me in lane (excuse the language) but you are right I feel like I need to find a new top laner miss the old aatrox

FosdjfljksdMar 9, 201741 votes

If Aatrox didn't get the attention he deserved after, like the poster above so eloquently put it - 2 YEARS of input from the community, he's not going to be fixed.

I'm a long time Aatrox main and the simplest fixes were the ones most ignore. His Q is STILL interruptible, for example.

No more "stop gap measures." This is annoying. Listen to what the community is saying or stop pretending like you do. Simple as that really.

GD Reaper1Mar 9, 20177 votes

You do know they have had two years of OTHER THINGS TO DO and now they are actually starting to give some attention to the outdated champions they've had on the backburner for two years. They will give Aatrox his turn just as they are giving Yorick, Galio, Evelynn, and Urgot their turns. They've had other things to do and making a full Aatrox VGU is something they haven't had time for without putting off major high priority projects. Do YOU want to finally get an Aatrox full rework that was more of a side project? This is them actually giving him attention. He's on their radar now. They'll probably be watching to see if he needs any other quick adjustments over the next few weeks and if they see a tweak they can make to improve him without negatively impacting game health or devoting a large portion of their resource to it, they probably will do it. Like it or not, this is going to take time if we want any decent product to come from an Aatrox full rework.

StatcheckyMar 9, 201716 votes

I don't think the Aatrox mains want a full rework. IMO that is not what he needed. Those of us who mained Aatrox already liked the play style, we liked what we had but there were some issues with certain details and also all the recently released and poorly balanced/designed champions are honestly part of the problem.

These changes are awful. Please revert and leave this champion be what he was.

FailogMar 9, 201711 votes

"OTHER THINGS TO DO" You mean other things more important hat balancing their game and keeping champions viable. Its nearly literally their only fucking job.

PaladinAngelMar 8, 201736 votes

[deleted]

The DeluxeMar 8, 201782 votes

nah dude it's instantly downvoted because it's an emotional knee-jerk that reads like a livestock squeal more than a cogent piece of "valuable criticism". i'm an enthusiastic aatrox player who has been sad to see him be totally unplayable recently, and i'm excited to try these changes out in toplane.

FailogMar 8, 201730 votes

Who me? My post is an emotional knee-jerk? Really. So on what grounds do you disagree with my assessment and criticism of the changes?

The DeluxeMar 8, 201781 votes

i disagree on the grounds that you're being intentionally dense! at your elo, i can understand the confusion -- you're probably either pubstomping kids who don't understand aatrox's kit, or one (1) person on the other team builds heal reduction and you're out of the game. the issue is that at anything higher than bronze three, the latter is a constant, and it (among a litany of other modern-meta woes) leaves aatrox in a functionally unworkable place for anything approaching competitive.

to boot: anything would be better than where he is right now, including this (admitted) stop-gap measure. i like the fact that new-aatrox is being rewarded for building tankier, and i understand that this comes at a direct damage cost. this isn't being billed as a complete aatrox rework, and i would find your dissatisfaction more understandable (although still perplexing in scope) if it were billed as such. but it's not! it's a stop-gap; they're experimenting with new levers to push and pull on; they'll only get more data through experimentation.

for future reference, my man, people will respond better to posts if you, like, take a deep breath first. remove the emotional ("very sad"; "awful"; "gross incompetence"; etc) language from your "valuable criticism" if you want it to be read as such. mwah! [slayer-jinx-catface]

NephetsMar 8, 20179 votes

lol, go ahead and try them. You will wish you were literally any other champion.

vMTLeMar 8, 201745 votes

Trust him he's a Bronze 3 Aatrox main.

IHonkForYordlesMar 9, 201744 votes

Bronze is part of League too. So are people who don't even play Ranked for whatever reason. So are people who exclusively play ARAM or even bots. Everyone should have at least some voice if they're playing Aatrox or playing against Aatrox. To marginalize someone entirely because they're not Gold+, or Diamond+, is a flawed position. Every player is a human being. And sometimes you will find strategic players who are, e.g. crippled by lack of mechanical execution due to manual dexterity or response time which can leave them with a low winrate in spite of a good understanding of mechanics relevant to out-of-game discussion. Many game developers are not terribly "good" at the very games they make.

draherasemanMar 8, 201733 votes

Can't say I agree with all of this but the new passive is a joke. just give us back our old one that drained over time. This is just a crummy item 3026 in combat against 2 to 5 other champs until late when he can spam abilities/ has decent attack speed. as for how he plays he feels clunkier than the juggernauts and has no power early. Not sure if anybody else feels this way but it seems like they had an intern crank this out 2 hours before it was due to go live.

CahKeyzMar 8, 201734 votes

taking Aatrox double healing under 50% hp really hurt his jg clears and his dueling potential,please revert.

ParafexMar 8, 20179 votes

Oh and instead of saying (+5% missing health) on his heal, can you just PUT the number that he is going to heal for based on his missing health?

I was with you for a second thinking this was well thought, But after actually reading it I realize that you are misunderstanding many of things talked about. Starting with +5% missing health, Put the number that he is going to heal for based on his health?

He is going to heal for +5% missing health, You understand this game has stats right? I mean come on man, You gain more health from levels, Items, Runes, Masteries. You want them to be your math teacher and put an example of what +5% of his missing health is for every possible amount of missing health?

As with every other ability that is based on a % of a current champions X stat. In game, if you scroll over your ability you will see how much +5% of your current missing health is(Usually, On all champs I that come to my mind at least.)

As for:

you are going to move his damage output to his passive, it needs to be stronger. A flat 25% base damage is not enough. Put it in his W and E were it belongs. Gut the damage on his Q and lower the cool down and widen the knock up area. This is a colossal screw up. Its not fun and its annoying. Solution? Well if we must stick with this new set up, instead of his abilities filling up 20% they should fill 25%, and the stacks should simply remain stay even out of combat or at least remain for so he can strategically stack and plan a dive. The Blood Well drains way too fast. First of all it now drains IMMEDIATELY after you stop attacking or being attacked. There should be a several second window where it doesn't drain, and then it should drain over 10 seconds. He needs a window out of combat where his passive is available. Don't kid yourselves--this was a total nerf. Either it was intentional, or it was gross incompetence, and neither one is acceptable. Riot has yet to respond to any post about Aatrox, even when it was in PBE.

Think of Lee sin, One of if not the most exemplary jungles in the game based on popularity, Pro play, Win rate, Win rate by game played, Win rate in various elos.

Lee sin's abilities cost energy, So say you come in for a gank throw the Q and miss, Well you just fu*cked up your gank and need to walk your bronze 5 ass back to jungle to farm or gank a different lane.

Now lets say you walk to lane for a gank you W with a ward or to a minion/team mate to get in E range for the enemy you then E, Slowing him allowing you to get auto attacks for damage+energy setting up for your Q allowing you to also be faster than him because of slow so either Q for kill or q walk in front R him back towards team mate then q again for kill/massive damage.

Think of attrox E as the Lee sin E, Walk in for a gank try and use your Q first and get juked on/flashed away/straight up miss and then walk your bronze 5 ass back to jungle OR you go in for a gank throw your E land it best case slowing them allowing you to gain more auto attacks and also land Q far easier and now you are on top of him because of slow to then allow you to lose get off Q and by then E might be ready again or maybe team mate ability ready again.

Sorry but the changes with Aatrox are exactly what is needed, And is going in the right direction.

Sardonic SpoonMar 8, 201735 votes

I dont want to be that guy, but this Aatrox cannot jungle. He was able to sustain only because of his tripled healing on W. The flat 40% attack speed from his passive didn't hurt either. Now he heals less and deals less damage on his W as it doesn't scale as hard.

This is a buff to TankTrox. Nerf to AAtrox.

SH AzykanMar 9, 20178 votes

it is a nerf to tanktrox too, because tanktrox doesnt build much AS, and since you get so much less AS speed in your kit now you are never getting your passive fully stacked before you die anymore.

PyraXadonMar 8, 201725 votes

When I looked at the changes on the PBE, I thought "hey, maybe he'll actually get the attention that he deserves" because on paper, the changes sounded good in my head. But after reading your post and looking at the changes, I realized that...they really didn't do anything but adjust how damage is outputted. His Q knockup range is still garbage, E is still just average poke, and they didn't even touch the ult, so that's...still that ability. I think if they actually did something to better his utility, then maybe he'd be in a better state. But as it stands, his Blood Well is just a worse version of the Fury system, his CC is still trash, and his abilities largely still do the same thing, but are just generally worse.

Now I just think that this 'update' is just the balance team's way of saying "Don't worry, we remember this character. We didn't forget him" without making any meaningful progress to make him actually viable. Back on the bench with Kalista, Kindred, and Azir, I guess. I feel bad for them. :(

CoreRavenMar 8, 201724 votes

So the sad part about all the rants from these changes is simply that no one seems to understand what was said."we hope we’ve made enough strides here for him to be buff-and-nerf-able state until that update comes." that statement there is what they were going for. Not making changes to him as he was before made him untouchable for buff/nerf as far as riot was concerned. Another words it was always going to be a lose/lose situation should they have tried to do buffs/nerfs in the condition prior to these changes. That is literally what riot has said about these changes."In Patch 7.5, we decided to roll up our sleeves and do what we could to make Aatrox more safely tuneable. ". So the changes were intended to allow riot to watch in competitive game modes to see how these changes can be adjusted to make him a better champion with the existence of the new/reworked champions. Does this make him playable? Yes, though not the way he used to be played. Aatrox mains will unfortunately have to relearn how to engage and farm with him, but honestly with the abilities of new/reworked champions he was gradually being left in an uplayable position, or at the very least not in a position that riot could touch up with updates. Everyone needs to realize that balancing a champion takes a lot of effort and TIME. The effort has been done with these changes now all it needs is time so that the balancing can take effect. His passive drain? That is something that can be addressed in a later patch depending on what needs to be adjusted. Simply stating it needs to be "X" solves nothing. Playtime in competitive settings will allow players and riot to see how adjustments could sway one way or the other vs the 100+ champions vs items. Remember very clearly. This was a change only to make him able to be adjusted. Nothing more. It is not intended to be a buff/nerf in any way shape or form. It was simply meant to make him capable of being buff/nerfed in the new format that has always been constantly changing with the existence of new items/champion abilities.

BenlautenMar 9, 201717 votes

you sure said it. I used to enjoy aatrox but now I don't even want to play him.

DahbixMar 8, 201746 votes

Mastery 7 Aatrox main. You really, really messed this up. He is quite worse than before, and even if he's fulfilling a different style in your eyes now, he still is in a position where he sucks badly. Way to go.

LuminierMar 9, 201717 votes

Legit, I don't know why they decided to make him "tankier". What good does that even do? Why would you pick Aatrox as a tank when ANYONE else does his job but better? This "mini rework" actually solved nothing.

Dark RugerMar 8, 201739 votes

[deleted]

TSM LuigiTheBossMar 8, 20177 votes

lol that ending doe

The JigSAWMar 9, 201710 votes

Amen to that!!!

TSM LuigiTheBossMar 8, 201730 votes

I was a Aatrox main for a while on my main account and tbh he wasn't that bad the way he was it really showed the difference of players who played him a few times and who knew when to take trades and how to properly, it literally was a champ you just had to learn how to fight your opponent in top lane with. He takes a lot of games to be able to take him into anything in the top lane even in normals and do well consistently. That being said I see why the argument is when behind he is difficult to get back into the game with cause he builds straight damage and when behind anyone that you have to build damage with while trying to get back into the game with is difficult but that's with just about anyone who's a melee squishy champ tbh just cause its that easier to kill you when your losing. So finally,(lol) I believe taking his life stealing aspect of his abilities and changing his old passive was a very unnecessarily big change to change him again later, SMH RIOT.

barbazuMar 8, 20177 votes

That's what I'm thinking why spend time making a temporary change for him when they are gonna change him again, I was also confused when they did a rework on Ryze to rework him again later. Maybe its because because I'm incompetent but I don't understand why they tend to make changes that will slightly change the champion to where they want him later instead of just putting it where they want his numbers to be.

TSM LuigiTheBossMar 8, 20179 votes

yeah and the change made no sense dude instead of fixing what was wrong with the current kit oh here's lets take away how it originally worked and here's a whole new main mechanic of his kit with a set of problems to find and like i'm just like... bruuuuuuuh why????

BUCKSKEETMar 8, 201726 votes

 This update is absolute garbage. I was just trying it out and whoever came up with his whole blood well and passive rework should not be allowed to rework a champ ever again. So basically to get your blood rush activated you need to e, q and then auto attack **9 TIMES** with blood price on. I could maybe see this working in lane where you can stack your blood price autos off minions and then engage but as a jungler the stacks drop off before you can get to a lane. So when ganking you literally have to q and e and then auto attack 9 times while not healing to get your passive up especially since his abiliteis cooldowns are so long, unless you have your ult but then you still have to auto 6 times. Plus they fall of so quick that a a champ like lb or ekko lets say could dash away and let them fall off and then jump back in pop you and your passive is junk. This literally makes no sense to me.

x Royal Solo xMar 8, 201724 votes

Im a level 7 Aatrox jungle, I can't play jungle anymore. All I can do is play top. Play top as a tank.

Reduced attack speed, harder to get a passive re-spawn, less life steal.

All that needed to be done was increase his stats a little, make his Q uninterruptible and boom a good champion emerges.

He is not fun to play for me anymore, I'd rather he be reverted and I take my chances.

Getouttheway7Mar 8, 201718 votes

Awful changes. I understand this is essentially a band-aide to fixing the overall issues with Aatrox, but for the time being you have neutered this champion beyond belief. I used to absolutely love him, and would concede to the fact that what you described about getting out ahead and becoming a god through insane lifesteal could at times be broken. This was the solution though? Why throw a half-assed attempt at a temporary solution. You would have been better off deactivating him while you worked on his issues as compared to this... I believe that's exactly what was done with GP, but I could be remembering wrong. Just because its a stop gap doesn't mean you don't have to put any thought or attention into it.

InAllTheLandMar 8, 201713 votes

OMG! Atrox was fun to play cause of his revive, he is already incredibly weak....in a 30 min game I revived once...so ya fix it riot....ya fix it now cause ima be thinking Ill live in a 1v1...NOPE YOU DIE...his abilties took away all of my meter....why have a meter bro?

Small TiddiesMar 8, 201711 votes

Riot you need to re-revisit him. Please hotfix revert Aatrox. Please kog'maw him. He was better the way he is, left alone.

ÎnsidiouŠMar 8, 201711 votes

DarkRaynger is right, but too kind. Who in the hell thought this would help? What were they smoking? His blood well only stays full a few seconds. So now his passive is useless. Its a pasiive-less passive. So how ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO GET BACK IN A GAME WITHOUT YOUR DMG WORKING or your passive? How are you supposed to gank and roam when your well goes dry in a few seconds or if you use your slow in combat? What he needed was early game survivability so he could use lane pressure against more matchups. If your well does not stay full how are you ever supposed to play against the burst of Xerath, or Syndra's/Lux 1 R and u dead? Why would you nerf a champ that is NEVER played in high level play? Why would you make him useless for climbing in rank? He needs that burst dmg even to lane when he gets a chance due to someone backup. Now he has no chance to catchup farm or reset a lane. He is an assassin not a tank. Who the heck tested any of this? one bot game is enough to tell you that you totally screwed this. Everyone associated with approving and designing this change needs to be walked out of the building forever. And BS he never healed through "anything but a whole teams focused dmg." CC killed him, it's the latest thing from Q branch in case you design morons never heard of it. Your design team needs to stop mimicking your worst on the planet support team.

EndzacMar 8, 201710 votes

Um, yea that "you guys remove anti-heal items" would be a mistake. Some games the only way to stop a few players are those Anti-heal items as you mentioned, Executioner was missed when it was gone and Morellonomicon doea not seem to be enough but it helps. I disagree completely. Some some champs are built for x(rapid lifesteal), and you have to build in response to it not stick to the same script. Not all champs take ignite, but it seems to be making its way back. If you don't want to build it get the support to build it, but you better hope they don't get exploded first.

ItsbeghdevMar 8, 20175 votes

And it's not like anti-heal items are strictly necessary against drain-tank champions, or that they completely nullify them. If Aatrox is massacring your team faster than you can even target him anti-heal items aren't going to fix that, but if he's able to survive prolonged dives without melting you all that fast, then anti-heal items are going to help. If Swain is walking through a fight with impunity, you can certainly make him a lot more vulnerable when he does that if you cut his sustain, but that won't stop him from landing his basic abilities at range, or outputting his ult damage from safety. Self-healing is never the only strength of a champ, nor is cutting it their only weakness.

KairoptraMar 8, 20175 votes

Nearly all the rants here have negative votes, so since I've personally never played Aatrox and have been around since after the Poppy rework, could someone break down the entire situation for me without isong general terms and telling me the specifics of what's happened in a cordial and polite manner without personal? Thanks in advance!