The Problem with Aatrox in his current (and semi buffed?) state

has been out of favor for a long time, essentially forgotten by literally everyone. The only time I see bans or plays of him (Besides me and my Mastery 7 with him) is when people horribly dont understand how his kit works and when to toggle their W on or off.

To describe Aatrox real quickly I will just list a basic synopsis of his abilities. His Passive ability is his Bloodwell. Upon casting an ability or dealing a 3rd auto attack with W ON proc, he gains Bloodwell charge, and when full, causes him to become "Hellbent" and gains bonus auto attack speed capping to 60% at level 16, 25% bonus AD, and if not on cooldown, can revive Aatrox upon taking fatal damage up to 30% his HP over 3 seconds.... (30%? so low....) His Q is a dive that knocks people up in the inner circle and provides 20% Bloodwell. His W is a toggle on or off, OFF is his healing blade that every third auto attack heals him for X + 6.5% HP Missing, while his ON toggle is he deals extra damage based on Y + 70% Bonus AD. Again that fills 20% of his Bloodwell, these are third auto procs on a Melee champion (Will get to this in my detailed discussion later on) His E is a "Cone" shaped skill shot that slows the enemy target and fills 20% of his Bloodwell. The Ulti is called Massacre, which draws in the essence of the nearby enemy champions around him, deals magic damage upon cast, and fills up the Bloodwell 20% for every 1 champion affected by the cast. Upon cast he gains an extra 60% attack speed and an extra 225 auto attack range.

Overall, through a full match, Aatrox isn't that bad. He really isn't.

The main problem with Aatrox is that he is so squishy and suffers from bad base stats and scaling that makes him too reliant on snowballing and items to do anything, and way too reliant on auto attacks to properly sustain himself in lane. Either you take your W level 1 to get sustain, which really never can keep up with constant bullying pressure that can be seen in top lane by the likes of Fiora , Jax , Darius , and etc, due to either empowered auto attacks or just being able to out trade Aatrox in every capacity, or you take E and try to starve out your laners in farm by poking them out or slowing them into missing CS, which isn't really a guaranteed thing. The first two autos don't do enough damage to make any trade between other fighters worth-while while Aatrox heals on the third auto. He will get either A, bursted down too fast to heal back that damage in a timely manner, or B, get out damaged in DPS by other auto attack focused champions. This point will come back up when talking about his Bloodwell later on in this spiel. The scaling on his E and Q are pretty good for damage, and the change to his Q to make the dive portion unstoppable, is a great addition to the identity of Aatrox. He is supposed to dive into a crowd, ult, then auto away to deal massive damage to the back line and pick off stragglers. But he cant do that if hes getting bursted down and out traded by literally everyone else while not being able to either fill his Bloodwell, or get enough auto attacks off in order to sustain himself in a fight.

His starting stats at level 1 leave something to be desired, as he has 24 base armor which is almost identicle to someone like Soraka. A top lane Fighter, has the basic equivalent in armor, to a support heal bot at level 1. That is just sad. His health regen is at 6.59, which really cripples his early game survivability against other fighters who have a much higher HR than him, (Jax having 8.37, Fiora having 8.25, and Darius having 9.25 to list a few,) and his ability to trade effectively even with his W, seeing as Jax and Darius can just W aa him and deal more damage in a much shorter amount of time than it takes for Aatrox to possibly heal with his early game W stats, forcing him to hang back and try to regen health (have fun being useless if you're below 25% hp, have no stacks for Bloodwell, and can't use E to poke down CS and possibly poke down the laner, might as well back and waste CS or DC lmao) If Aatrox can't get ahead in CS, kills, or items, his laning phase can be god awful and can seemingly last forever until you get BORK, or some sort of tank item to be able to survive your lane.

Mid game, Aatrox is alright. Focusing on picking out people and trying to split push where possible, he can get ahead quickly if he makes some good moves, good picks, and help the team get objectives, but if he gets caught out, or bursted down, he can get to as good as useless through the game. Even with his Bloodwell passive and being able to get revived during an engage or in a fight, he can easily get bursted down by almost anyone due to only having restored 30% of his HP*. His passive does a poor job of letting Aatrox play aggressively in team fights when he can pop BW, get back up, and then instantly die. Literally a waste of a cooldown for nothing even if he has a proc up for his healing attack. The only real time Aatrox can effectively help his team, is if he acts like a second minion during this phase of the game and out CS's everyone else to get items, or gets multiple objectives by himself or with his team. Then he can be a force to be reckoned with. (*Sure you can build HP, but that won't help his resistances to the damage that his actually doing anything. HP tanks get shredded easily while resistance tanks just dominate, Maokai and Malphite being great examples of the tanks who just dominate when they stop literally 30% of any incoming damage from resistances because of their itemization)

Even late game, Aatrox cannot really keep up with the snowball potential of other champions who just do everything that he can do, way better. You can get away with playing super safe and split pushing like a god, making godly picks, or correctly shotcalling objectives in order to get ahead, but if you can't get Aatrox fed early, he cant really be a force late game. Aatrox can melt Barons, Dragons, and almost any champ if hes super fed and way ahead. Granted almost anyone can, cough Kha'Zix, Tryndabitch, Yi cough, but if hes not ahead or hes not fed in any regard, he can be picked off quickly in team fights, relying too much on his Bloodwell to get filled to really do any damage/sustain any damage during a team fight due to the increased auto attack speed and damage output from being "Hellbent", along with his auto attack speed buff from using his ult.

Overall Aatrox is great for picking people off and split pushing right now. But there are way better champions who can do that more effectively than he can. Unless you wait for everyone on the enemy team to waste all their CD's on your team and dive in, you're most likely going to die in team fights by not being able to get the Bloodwell filled up to do anything of note. His base stats and his per level gains are absolute garbage for a fighter, having stats on PAR to that of a support who builds tanky/magic items to heal their team.

I'm not saying make him OP as all sin, but make him more viable as a pick to help him be able to trade more effectively in the early game by giving him a higher base stat increase and lower his scaling per level so he feels more balanced in the later game when he starts to get items. Like a reverse scaling per level FOR EXAMPLE start at a base Armor of 32, then give him 3 armor per level, then at level 6 drop it to like 2.5, then at 11 drop it to 2 per level until hes maxed at 18. Or another example, give Aatrox a base Health regen of 8 (Seems solid enough to help his early game out) and scale it conservatively up to somewhere around 19-20 at level 18. That way he can keep some variation for other builds and able to let him experiment a little while not being neutered by the enemies. Something like that would help Aatrox live through the early game pressure of the enemy laners while giving him some wiggle room to lost out on trades and CS while being able to come back in a more timely manner. Also another thing that would help is make his Bloodwell when he pops it t revive, go from 30% at levels 1-5, 40% from 6-11, and 50% hp back from levels 11-18 upon death. That way he can come back and have some room to actually do something and not get instantly bursted or squashed by a few autos, causing him to waste a cooldown. Either that, or make him invincible for 1, or 1.5 seconds after coming back up so he has a fighting chance to get back into the fight or get away from people.

After having played Aatrox solidly for over a month now and really getting to know what I personally would like to see for Aatrox, I feel these would be more balanced changes to make for him. He doesn't need a rework, he doesn't need new abilities. His abilities work together greatly and provide him enough of variation to make solid plays and make daring escapes, and clutch Hellbent activation to help him deal with ganks/rough lanes, he just needs a few tweaks to his scalings and his base stats and I feel he will be in a more favorable position for people on League.

Next up, for the Crystal Scars very own, The Crystal Vanguard, Skarner . Keep posted for that one.

Thank you all for reading this guys and I would love to hear what you have to think about these possible changes or ideas about the greatest Darkin to bless the League (Yes that's right, I said it, Aatrox is better than Rhaast). I hope you all have a great day and I'll see you all on the rift! :D

~Andraxx