VGU Concept: Aatrox, The Darkin Blade

So I've had this bouncing around in my head as a thought experiment since Riot said they were looking at making more aggressive, playmaking supports; and today I got on and saw that the Aatrox VGU had been revealed pretty much invalidating my whole idea. So I figured I would just post what I had come up with so far and see what people thought. I am apologizing beforehand for the missing numbers and any grievous balance errors as I have put little to no thought into the actual numbers. You should probably consider this more of a VGU First Draft than a VGU Concept.

#Summary & Goals The main idea I was trying to capture in this VGU was the section in Aatrox's old lore where he showed up in an army on the losing side of a war and inspired them to take to the fray and won against a large force before he vanished after the battle. The way I came up with to best showcase this in-game is to turn him into the worst thing since Bard, a roaming support who not only allows allies to weather the onslaught of a larger force but also encourages them to dive into the thick of the fighting and come out on top.

#Abilities

##Passive: Blood Well Static Cooldown: 180/160/140/120 Aatrox fills his Blood Well by doing damage to champions, depleting by 20% of its maximum per second while out of combat. When the Blood Well is completely filled Aatrox becomes Hellbent for 4 seconds. While Hellbent dealing damage to champions will completely fill the Blood Well and refresh the Hellbent's duration. HELLBENT: Aatrox gains 25% increased base AD and 30%/40%/50%/60% bonus attack speed. Upon taking fatal damage Aatrox will revive over 3 seconds, recovering 30% maximum health over the duration. Upon reviving, Aatrox instantly recovers 100% of Blood Well. Aatrox's revive is then put on a cooldown.

Thoughts: I know this is pretty much a carbon copy of the old Aatrox passive, but to me that was one of the most iconic parts of his kit and it was one of the three things I salvaged from the old Aatrox. Generally the idea here is to encourage Aatrox to dive into a fight and stay in it, while occasionally handing out a safety net to allow some truly ballsy engages.

##Q: Blood Thirst/Blood Price Static Cooldown: 0.5 PASSIVE: Aatrox applies a bonus on-hit effect on every third hit against non-structures. Toggle Off - Aatrox heals himself for 30/45/60/75/90(+6.5% missing health) on hit. Toggle On - Aatrox deals 50/85/120/155/190 (+75% bonus AD) bonus physical damage on hit to the target and X physical damage to himself. Care not from whence the blood flows: Self inflicted damage counts as damage to champions for the purposes of Blood Well. Only that its not from me: Aatrox can not die to self-inflicted damage.

Thoughts: This was the next part of old Aatrox that I salvaged. Once again mostly the same as old Aatrox I just added back the self damage to blood price and let it count towards the Blood Well to allow the option of either sustaining back up or more damage and a faster Blood Well proc. In keeping of Riots goal of having similar abilities on the same keys, I moved this from W to Q as the most similar skill I could think of was Jinx's Switcheroo!

##W: To The Fray Cooldown: 100/90/80/70/60 Range: X Aatrox inspires an allied champion to fight for 25/30/35/40/45 seconds, granting them bonus adaptive damage and healing on all damage dealt depending on how many more enemy champions than allies champions there are in X range around them. <=0 enemy champions: 10 AD or 16 AP, adaptive. 1 Enemy Champion: 30 AD or 49 AP, adaptive, and X% healing on all damage dealt. 2 Enemy Champions: 50 AD or 82 AP, adaptive, and X+% healing on all damage dealt. 3 Enemy Champions: 63 AD or 104 AP, adaptive and X++% healing on all damage dealt. 4 Enemy Champions: 72 AD or 120 AP, adaptive and X+++% healing on all damage dealt. 5 Enemy Champions: 78 AD or 130 AP, adaptive and X++++% healing on all damage dealt. Battle Fury: For 5/7/9/11/13 seconds after casting, Aatrox does not count towards the number of allied champions.

Thoughts: This is it. The ability that lets him act as a roaming support. Bard has his shrines he lays down the the carry and Aatrox has his buffs to drop before he leaves so he doesn't have to worry about them immediately dying the moment he is out of lane. However this ability isn't tied to a certain location like Bard's. Are you and your carry doing fine but your mid is being camped? Well then go roam mid and try to get them back into the game, and leave the buff with him when you leave so when the Lee Sin inevitably comes back for their 5 gank in 20 minutes they will have a better chance. Also, the Battle Fury part is there so that this ability is actually useful in early 2v2 fights down in bot lane but you won't be getting a lot out of it if you just sit next to your carry and cast it every time it comes off cooldown as the lowest tier is purposefully bad to encourage fighting opponents with superior numbers.

##E: Hamstring Cooldown: 12/11/10/9/8 Aatrox dashes forward a short distance before sweeping his sword in a cone in front of him, dealing 150/175/200/225/250(+70% Bonus AD) physical damage to enemies passed through and in the cone and slowing enemy champions hit by 40/45/50/55/60%.

Thoughts: I wanted to keep this ability simple as I felt that having to manage Blood Well, Q, and whether your W is strong enough to take this fight along with everything else you have to keep watch for in League might be a bit much. This is Aatrox's primary engage tool, giving him some mobility and soft CC to allow the rest of your team to catch up and take part in the fight. However its on a decently long cooldown, meaning that if Aatrox uses it going in, he will have to fully commit to the battle and keep fighting until someone is dead.

##R: Turn The Tide Cooldown: 100/85/70 Aatrox revel's in the fighting, releasing a burst of power dealing X/Y/Z true damage to enemy champions around him and grounding them for 3/4/5 seconds. Additionally Aatrox gains 30/40/50% bonus attack speed and bonus attack range. No Survivors: Activating this refreshes Battle Fury's timer and resets To The Fray's cooldown if the buff has expired.

Thoughts: This was the last part of old Aatrox that I salvaged, turning his old ultimate into this to still fulfill the fantasy of following this god-like being into a losing battle. I ended up shifting the power around somewhat, making it somewhat more engage focused and forcing the enemy team to stand and fight back. For the damage, I decided that I wanted some specific benchmarks that I will go over later, so I went with flat true damage that only scales with ability level. My idea for how much was that it should be low-ish but I wanted to encourage engaging large numbers of enemies with it, so I thought that it could be set up that hitting a certain number of enemy champions could instantly give a full Blood Well. At rank 1 you would need to hit 4 champions to get the full charge, but you not likely to encounter that many champions early meaning that he would still do some work to get his safety net. As this ability ranks up the number of champions you need to hit goes down to 2 enemy champions at rank 3, as diving larger numbers of enemies is more and more likely to be a death sentence as the game goes on, encouraging Aatrox to keep going in as his safety net is easier to reach. No Survivors is there is to ensure that To The Fray is somewhat useful in late game 5v5 teamfights so you don't get the useless ability problem like in the 2v2 lave fights while making sure when Aatrox dives in to inspire his team to follow them, he actually has his inspiring ability up.

Well that's that. I know that his rework is pretty much set in stone, so I suppose this is more to just see what people think about this style of champion. I would just like to repeat that I have put almost no thought into balancing this and am apologizing beforehand for any grievous balance problems. Oh, and to the Aatrox mains out there(all 3 of you) who are probably fuming that I turned your favorite champion into a support, I am sorry for that as well.