Aatrox Rework

BugsBunny93·3/14/2018, 4:05:26 AM·1 votes·592 views

So, obviously Riot failed in the highest degree with Aatrox. Anyone with half a brain and a crayon could have come up with a better rework concept. Lets try this

Q - Entire hitbox is a knock up. Not just the tiny center. W - Unchanged E - Better visual and coinciding hitbox R - Automatically brings up passive

Passive - Revert to old bar. None of this bs 5 stacks stuff. Also, when Aatrox comes out of revive, knocks everyone back 1000 range much like the Ascended gamemode. This would make his passive not useless. Please consider

4 Comments

LuaDotExe3/14/2018, 6:00:34 PM2 votes

This fixes about none of his issues. I came up with a list of issues when devising an Aatrox rework, a while back.

Aatrox offers nothing to a team fight. Despite his fantasy as this otherworldly entity who swoops in to turn the tide of battle, he's not very useful in team fights. He offers damage and can tank if you build tank-y, sure, but he has no real reliable form of crowd control, which is pretty big in a team fight, as is AoE damage.
Crowd control ruins Aatrox's day. This is less relevant in a 1v1 situation, but in a team fight, where you can get crowd controlled for a long time, a damage-build Aatrox will get crushed, since he can't restore health via auto attacks after he's been crowd controlled, and whereas tank-y does exist, full-tank is not the bruiser play-style that had been intended, and said full-tank build does not exactly scream "massacre."
Aatrox is prone to getting popped. Whereas burst is his weakness, it gets to the point where anybody with high burst potential eliminates him before he can do anything. He should thrive in longer battles, but he shouldn't be useless in the shorter ones.
Aatrox's Q is abysmally poor in design. Thematically, it's pretty cool; you rise up into the air, and slam down. However, the hit-box, as many discover, is super easy to dodge, and the ability takes so long and is so telegraphed you might as well be screaming "hey hit me with your crowd control." Often-times, I found myself getting CC'd and just having it not happen. Whereas it's an interesting catch tool and engage tool, it's overshadowed in those regards as well. The change to Aatrox's Q, where one half of it cannot be interrupted, however, has helped a lot.
Once again conflicting with his thematic, Aatrox's kit doesn't scream "leading my team into battle." In-game, he is, ironically, a duelist, and thrives in 1v1 situations where he can out-heal their damage.
Aatrox's late game has... a lot to be desired. This ties into most of the other things, too, and particularly the point about team fights. While he can 1v1 late-game, he doesn't offer the team much outside of the ol' run-down-Turrets-top-and-draw-pressure strategy. As of recent, I had found myself having the most success by never leaving top lane, which isn't exactly something that should be encouraged.
Aatrox's ultimate, while good, doesn't feel very good. The damage is negligible (unless you're AP; RIP my fun. AP Aatrox is love, AP Aatrox is life), and the buff you get, while good, doesn't feel wonderful-- after all, it's just that, a self-buff spell.
Aatrox is heavily feast-or-famine. To those unfamiliar with this coined term, it means that when they get ahead, they're incredibly oppressive, but when they're behind, they're abysmally useless. Offering high-damage when ahead and incredible healing abilities, Riot got around this a bit by making his heal scale with missing health instead of attack damage.
Aatrox also doesn't have much to do when not in the midst of a battle. Throwing an E occasionally is fine, but it doesn't have very much range, and is more of something to help you either farm safer or get closer to people via the slow.

If you made his revive knock everybody back 1000 units, he would be even worse; he'd go in and then get popped, and when he came out of it to try and keep fighting, it would disengage everybody, which is the exact opposite of what he wants.

I honestly feel as though the 5-stack passive was the best way to go; it made the passive more reliable than previously, in that he needed more stats to get it off as easily as this; this way, he's less feast-or-famine.

On top of that, the Aatrox rework isn't his actual rework; it's a band-aid fix to make him slightly better, until he can be addressed fully in what Riot recognizes will be their biggest gameplay update ever. That's incoming after the Irelia rework.

JogadorJNC3/14/2018, 5:34:19 AM1 votes

Q- The hitbox isn't the issue, honestly this ability isn't the issue at all.

W- One of the things that needs a rework the most. A generic every 3rd hit passive heal that is identical to udyr's with the only difference being that can be swapped for jax's ultimate's passive.

E- A bit too generic, but is aight enough.

R- The extra range is cool, but it still just feels like an effortless mashup of other abilities, it doesnt inovate in any of it's regards (Burst of dmg scaling with ap that then empowers auto attacks - voli ult, temporary auto attack range buff on a melee champion - kayle e, attack speed buff - too many abilities to count)

Passive- Number 1 thing that needs a rework, it had potential as a way to incentivize to keep fighting beyond what seems reasonable and for making you feel like being in battle gave you fueled you, instead it usually either under-achieves and feels useless or it over-achieves and is cancerous to play against. Is very hard to balance/be fun to both aatrox players and ppl playin vs aatrox (rito chose to not have it be fun for the aatrox mains, since they are few)

Also, for such a recent champion, his passive feels very outdated. And the whole balls to the walls reckless fighting style was much better achieved by other champions such as olaf and kled.

Your idea for the passive changes makes no sense, aatrox wants people close to him, he survives off of attacking, if you knock everyone away after respawning then you just die again after while u try to catch up to the opponents. Not only that, but the 5 passive stacks make him feel much less resource management oriented and gives more room for just focusing on fighting, which is part of the reason he even had a health spent kind of scaling instead of mana, to let you focus more on fighting and going all out and less on whether you are gonna have enough mana to survive a potential gank.

Edit: The rework was a fail because the kit itself was a fail in many aspects. Imo Aatrox almost defines what is a champion that needs a full kit rework (think warwick or urgot)

Asterfix3/14/2018, 4:43:20 PM1 votes

It seems weird that they'd make a champ who's entirely based around auto attacks but make squishy. It's like they made tryndamere but without the Ultimate. My two cents would be to change his numbers a bit and make him a tank who's abilities have +bonus health scaling.