Just Aatrox, No Additives - How I'd Do The Rework

Hi. I've been playing Aatrox for a few weeks now and I love him! My dream has always been to lifesteal tank people, and with Aatrox, I sometimes get a glimpse of this reality. I have no idea what Riot plans to do with him, but I've come up with a rework of what I'd like to see him become. To summarise my rework, it moves his main CC to his E, makes his Q faster, and gives him a couple of swift auto attacks when he activates ult, for greater W synergy. Anything not mentioned in the dot points is still a part of the ability.

Passive - Blood Well

• Added effect: While Hellbent is active, it turns Blood Thirst / Blood Price into a heal or damage over time effect over 2.5 seconds, and makes them 25% stronger.

The negatives of healing over time can be mitigated by the instant heal Aatrox's ult will provide.

Q - Dark Flight

• Cooldown reduced to 8 seconds at max rank from 11

• No longer knocks up champions on impact

• Aatrox gains 20% movement speed for 1 second after landing

• Animation speed increased by 15%

It always felt a little slow. And the speed boost will open up so many more opportunities for Aatrox, especially in helping him get in range to E, since it's a slow animation in itself.

W - Blood Thirst / Blood Price

• Heal is 80 at max rank instead of 90

• Damage is 165 at max rank instead of 190

Gotta nerf something with all of these extra attacks Aatrox will be doing. Remember Hellbent will increase these by 25%

E - Blades of Torment

• For reference, the cooldown is 8 seconds at max rank and is going unchanged

• Damage reduced at max level from 240 to 200

• Animation scales with attack speed

• Marks enemy champions it passes through for 5 seconds. If Aatrox attacks a marked champion, he attacks them twice, dealing 40% reduced damage for each attack and applying on-hit effects with each attack. These attacks can crit.

• After Blades of Torment has been travelling for 500 units, it will no longer slow enemy champions when hit but will stun them instead for 0.75 (the range is currently 1000, so for the second half of the ability)

Versatile ability allowing you get more W procs off or chase people down. It will have to be saved to finish an enemy off so you don't waste it and then they get away with their gap closer. Cannot stun while in melee range because that would be overpowered. Also Aatrox has less poke in lane. Man up Aatrox!

R - Massacre

• Base damage removed (400 magic damage) but AP ratio remains. Added a 0.3 AD ratio.

• Attack speed reduced by 20% at all ranks making it 40% at rank 3

• Added effect: Aatrox swiftly attacks each nearby enemy champion twice, each attack dealing 55% reduced damage and applying on-hit effects. These attacks can also crit separately. (since Aatrox is only attacking each champion twice and not three times, his W won't proc on each enemy champion, but his W will prioritise the lowest health enemy champions first if it is on Blood Price at the time. With Guinsoo's Rageblade fully stacked, he can get his Blood Thirst / Blood Price to proc once on everybody)

• If activating Massacre heals Aatrox in excess of his maximum health, give him that health as a shield

• Massacre can only hit up to 3 enemy champions (just like Kat ult)

R now procs W and BotRK and any other on-hit effects you have, as well as lifesteal. The 3 champion limit is to prevent him from healing or damaging way too much from a single ulti

So there's my rework. Aatrox has a less reliable but more fun to use CC, is more mobile, has smoother animations, and has a really versatile ult! He can now auto attack more consistently without worrying about his ability animations getting in the way.

The goal of this rework was to smooth out Aatrox's gameplay so that he could be auto attacking as much as possible, or at least feel like using his abilities didn't prevent him from using his W to heal or deal damage. The knockup was always a tough ability to use, forcing Aatrox to choose between healing more with W in a duel, or the chance to disable the enemy champion. Often, Aatrox will die while in mid-air as he tries to get a clutch knockup during a duel, and the player will be left wondering if auto attacking to continue healing would have allowed them to win the fight.

His R animation is another thing that causes Aatrox players to think, "Should I be using this right now? I'm on really low health and I don't know if I can afford the time it takes to cast this animation when I could be proccing W instead." So now Aatrox can proc his W with his ultimate if he already has one stack of it. He can choose to do extra damage or extra healing when he activates it, and this makes it a whole lot more fun to use. With a lot of enemy champions around, Aatrox can get a big heal, or he can even get even more stacks of Bloodwell by activating Blood Price (damage W), which gives stacks when procced. But I think the icing on the cake - the cherry on top - is that once you get a Guinsoo's Rageblade on Aatrox, and you get it fully stacked, your ultimate will proc your W for each enemy champion hit (and let's not forget the extra procs of Hydra too!).

One of the benefits of this rework is that Aatrox has a backup ability with his ultimate if he is not able to stack his Bloodwell or his Guinsoo's fast enough. He can use it on 3 champions to heal himself and allow him to more safely get to full stacks to start whacking people. Because we all know that Aatrox can easily be blown up at the beginning of a team fight, and this helps prevent that a little.

The E change just makes Aatrox more fun to play. I really enjoy using his E, but when it's also a stun from range and it gives you a double strike on your next auto attack, it just feels that much better. And the Q changes making Aatrox more mobile will open up some great opportunities too. The healing over time from Hellbent is also so that Aatrox can still benefit from his healing if he is at full health already and he is damaged after he procs Blood Thirst.

Overall, I expect this to give Aatrox more healing and more damage, due to him being able to auto attack more often, with his E and his R counting as attacks, and him not needing to use his knockup during a fight. It is definitely a buff to his on-hit build, and would not hinder crit Aatrox either. The only downside is that it is more difficult to pull off his crowd control, and since the damage is a DoT, it would be harder to one combo people with full crit or lethality Aatrox. So it's a sustained damage buff. Please let me know if you have any feedback or if you would like to see any of this in the new Aatrox. I made this for fun and whatever the rework is, I hope it is really fun to play!

Also, a full damage build I might use with this rework is: Guinsoo's, Titanic Hydra, Phantom Dancer, Death's Dance, Black Cleaver, Infinity Edge. I can also see people going Trinity and Black Cleaver for the cooldown reduction to bring down Dark Flight (Q) and Blades of Torment (E) to a cooldown of 4.8 seconds.