Aatrox Rework Suggestion/Concept/Discussion (SN) (Text-Heavy)

Hello, I'm SewardNinja, a simple silver ranked player, and as a silver player that probably means my ideas may not be seen as valid as a higher ranked player. With that said, any commentary or suggestion is actually appreciated as it helps me get a better understanding as to what I may need to fix and do better.

Okay, so it is no secret that Riot is planning to rework Aatrox. The size of the rework may vary, and the rework I am conceptualizing is actually very small in the terms of changing what he does, kind of. The biggest change I am suggesting is the passive, since his current passive is just an attack speed stat with a Guardian Angel-like passive, and his ultimate. I am keeping the ability kind of the same because I actually really like Aatrox’s kit. Although every part of his kit has a key role, a change may be necessary to vary up his playstyle. This is an attempt to keep a similar kit and feel while making the abilities and passive more interactive and distributing his strengths.

My Aatrox Rework Suggestion/Rework:

Passive: Whenever Aatrox consumes health, it is stored into Blood Well. Additionally, abilities mark enemy champions and large monsters, where an autoattack consumes the mark, filling up 15% of his maximum Blood Well. Blood Well’s capacity is equal to 35% of Aatrox’s maximum health. Once Blood Well is full, Aatrox gains 30/40/50% bonus attack speed (lvl 1/7/13) and autoattacks deal 12-46 (10 +2/lvl) (+0.2 bonus AD) (+0.02 bonus health) bonus physical damage while Blood Well depletes 15% of its maximum every second, losing this buff once it is empty. Blood Well decays when out of combat for 5 seconds by 5% every second.

Q: Aatrox dashes to target area after a brief delay, dealing 30/60/90/120/150 (+0.6/0.65/0.7/0.75/0.8 bonus AD) (+5% maximum health) physical damage to nearby units upon landing and knocking up all units in the epicenter for 0.8/0.9/1/1.1/1.2 seconds. Range: 650. Radius: 250. Epicenter Radius: 125. Consumption: 10% current health. Cooldown: 16/14.5/13/11.5/10 seconds.

W: Aatrox applies a bonus on-hit effect on every third hit against non-structures. (Passive) Toggle off – Blood Thirst: Aatrox heals himself 14/23/32/41/50 (+0.3 bonus AD) on-hit. While Aatrox is below 60% maximum health, heal is doubled. While Aatrox is below 30% maximum health, heal is instead tripled. Toggle on – Blood Price: Aatrox consumes 10/20/30/40/50 (0.3 bonus AD) ( health to deal quadruple the amount [40/80/120/160/200 (+1.2 bonus AD)] as bonus on-hit physical damage.

E: Aatrox unleashes two converging energy waves in the target direction, dealing 40/75/110/145/180 (+0.6 bonus AD) (+0.6 AP) (+2.5% maximum health) magic damage to all units hit and slowing them by 60% for 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 seconds. Range: 600. Consumption: 5% current health. Cooldown: 12/11/10/9/8 seconds.

R: Aatrox draws in the blood of his foes, dealing 150/225/300 (+1.0 bonus AD) (+1.2 AP) magic damage to nearby enemy champions and filling his Blood Well by 20% of its maximum value for each enemy champion hit. Additionally, Aatrox gains 50% bonus attack speed and 175/225/275 attack range for 12 seconds, as well as cursing the ground under him for 8 seconds, decreasing enemy units’ movement speed by 20/30/40% and increasing allied units’ attack speed by 30/40/50%. If Aatrox takes fatal damage while he is on the cursed ground, he enters stasis for 3 seconds, healing 20/30/40% (+10% per 100 bonus AD) of his maximum health and filling his Blood Well to full. Range (Damage): 500. Radius (cursed ground): 1000. Cooldown: 150/120/90 seconds.

Base Stats Change Suggestion:

• Range: 175 (from 150)
• Base Health Regen.: 8 - 21.6 hp5 (from 6.59 - 15.1)
• Base Attack Speed: 0.664 (from 0.651)
• Bonus Attack Speed: 0 - 21.25%

Of course all numbers are just a suggestion and probably are a bit to strong due to my personal biases, but I will be discussing them.

Lets address the changes I put up:

The passive - This change gets rid of the Guardian Angel and lowers his consistent damage output while adding a window where he is noticeably stronger. Although the window is only shown as about 7 seconds, it can actually last longer as he can still build it up while it depletes, so he can actually make it last about 11 - 15 seconds through use of his abilities and autoattacks. This makes Aatrox scary to duel while in lane because he does a good amount of control over it, so enemy laner either wants to bait it out or only engage in short trades as autoattack trades will be disadvantageous. It will also give Aatrox a sense of domination, but it is very predictable and can definitely lead to over-aggression that is easily dealt with help from the jungle.

Health scaling abilities - This buffs tank Aatrox and feels kind of necessary to compensate for the large chunks of health his abilities cost as the bonus health won't just be eaten up by his abilities and rather add the fact that it also helps his abilities deal a bit of damage. With health scaling, a cut into the abilities base damages had to be done, though.

Number changes on Q - First, the knock duration goes to scaling rather than flat, being weaker early but stronger late. I felt only 1 second of hard crowd-control for a champion that was mostly built to be tankier than most was underwhelming. It also rewards leveling Q as it is nerfed in earlier values, decreasing the window it provides early, and with this, it will possibly open up different play styles / ability leveling order early in the game. Next, small range buffs increase his range of engage, sort of. This to compensate the E range nerfs to make Q his form of primary engage while E is used as follow-up. Cooldown was also decreased just to increase his chase potential as the game goes while early levels it will still have a lengthy cooldown making it more important when you use it.

Number changes on W - Massive nerf to healing level 1 - 3 and possibly longer along with a nerf to healing from 50 - 30% health compensated with a small buff to the window of enhanced healing. This will make Aatrox much more susceptible to poke in early levels, possibly encouraging a dive on him pre-level 6, and this really is the time to prevent Aatrox from scaling, because he does now. This is the curb Aatrox's strength early to make his power-spikes through items and levels more potent. The changed enhanced healing windows also aren't as large as they seem late game because both his base and scaling healing have been buffed once it is leveled up. The damage from W has also been nerf early with a small buff later, but this is kind of unnoticeable with only a 20 damage nerf at rank one.

Number changes on E - Most importantly, the range has been nerf by 400 units. This gives it less poke/engage potential, causing it to really be a follow-up ability to Q, but it also has wave-clearing capabilities. I really wanted to change the dynamic of this ability because it felt like too much of priority to level due to it having the largest increase in scaling from levels along with its many utilities (with it having a long slow, poke, wave-clear, spam-ability). I kind of wanted to change it to: E(alternative): Aatrox slashes, unleashing an energy wave in the target direction, dealing 70/110/150/190/230 (+1.0 bonus AD) (+0.8 AP) (+2.5% maximum health) to 35/55/75/95/115 (+0.5 bonus AD) (+0.4 AP) (+2.5% maximum health) magic damage to all units hit and slowing them by 60% for 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 seconds. Damage is based on how far the wave has traveled, dealing 70/110/150/190/230 (+1.0 bonus AD) (+0.8 AP) (+2.5% maximum health) magic damage to enemy units hit within the 0-200 range, decreasing over 400 units to deal 35/55/75/95/115 (+0.5 bonus AD) (+0.8 AP) (+2.5% maximum health) magic damage to enemy units hit within the 600-800 range. Range: 800. Consumption: 5% current health. Cooldown: 16/14/12/10/8 seconds. However, this would induce it being use to the same effect, follow-up to Q as well as providing some wave clear.

Utilities added to R - It has the same effect with a damage nerf, but I added a new component: cursed ground. This, in a sense, carries Aatrox's old passive, bringing back a part of his ability to survive, but rather than taking away his damage in exchange, he actually comes out ready for combat. He will still be easy to pin down by crowd control afterwards, but if you don't target him with that, he can be a menace to anyone he targets. Additionally, the cursed ground buffs his allies' attack speed while slow enemy units, causing him to maybe turn the tides of a team fight. Something about the cursed ground also gave me the idea that maybe all units (enemy and ally) take damage equal to a percentage of their current health, but this seemed kind of too destructive for me to implement in the original idea.

Base stats suggestion - I just like having more range, so really this is not a necessary change. With abilities probably being more necessary to fill Blood Well, I feel the use of health should be compensated with some health regeneration buffs, especially with this more catering towards Aatrox being built a tank. With Aatrox being more so a tank, I also felt that less free damage should be given, so the nerf to bonus attack speed scaling decreases that while the base attack speed increase rewards building attack speed.

Overall, Aatrox becomes a team-fighting menace that can conquer his enemies, but need some planning to a large part of his damage coming from being in combat due to his Blood Well's high rate of decay. His early game is where he can be taken advantage of due to no longer having a Guardian Angel passive until level 6 and heavily nerfed early healing. He is still autoattack reliant, but he gets more benefits chaining his abilities with autoattacks to unlock his passive's damage. The abilities each give their own benefit when leveling, almost making the player want to level each of them equally (but not really).

What do you think? Is his new passive giving too much damage for too long of duration? Does he scale in too many ways with E and R? Are the numbers ridiculously high is some areas? Is the damage on the cursed ground actually a good idea? Please, any feedback is valid, helpful and appreciated.

Thank you, SewardNinja (SN)