Why aatrox

Ironic, as most of Aatrox' playerbase wishes the consistent passive or burst Heal on W back. This isn't just about Aatrox. It is about Riot's balancing team overall and all of the numerous issues that ensue out of their designing philosophy and current behavior.

The first aspect of this "E-Sport-Game-Balance"-Tragicomedy is the nearly foolproofed obviousness of Aatrox In-Game problems when it comes to viability: It is easier to spot any kind of "okay" part in this champions kit that couldn't be easily improved by number tweaks or quality-of-life-buffs.

Dark Flight is the possibly worst hard crowd control dashing ability in the entire game, with a previously high cooldown, bad damage scaling and foregoingly the unreal and frustrating inconsistency of the ability itself, consisting of the mindblowing unit Epicenter "Knock-Up" radius of the ability with no "Consolation price" for not hitting it, like a slow around the outer part of the epicenter radius together with an entirely visible targeting indicator during the abnoxiously long cast time which can be interupted and negated entirely with any kind of displacement ability, returning not even partly reduced cooldown or health cost to Aatrox whatsoever.

Massacre, sadly being one of the coolest abilities from an effect and "in-game usage" point-of-view, is outstanding in the fact that, compared to 's Riot rise of "pioneering cool abilities", like Thresh Lanterns or Zac Blobs for instance it is outstanding in not a single factor whatsoever. Most of his problems however resulted from the combination of his overall bad base stats and his identity as being a champion that is supposed to thrive in the midst of battle, taking on armys of enemies without falling in the middle of the fight.

Furtheron, the unfitting mix of exessive health costs on every ability but insufficient health regaining through his abilities made him establish himself as the fabeled "Paper-Man", maintaining his squishyness throughout most of the game without ever appearing durable through lifestealing or reviveing in an efficient fashion. Possible forms of changes seemed obvious to nearly every single mentionable member of League's community.

Quality of Life Buffs on Q, a more reliable sustain against multiple enemies within teamfights, less punishment on the passive's revive or an overall retune on his E ability seemed reasonable and perceivable to everyone.

The Community of the Champion itself proposed numerous attempts to work together with Riot's designing team in order to adress this entombed and "iceboxed to staleness" issue of a champion. As always, a certain self-confident Balancing Team made an "Ask Riot"-Post about a possible rework for the champion as a whole and then strictly ignored every single answer on the post itself and on the forums as well as subreddits.

This is the first and biggest issue outside of Aatrox' case, the mindset of firmly ignoring PBE test results and player feedback as well as serious advises against the viability of PBE Changes on live servers. This was a calculated, aggressive and almost reckless set of players, and we wanted to speak to the state that they were in when they were playing Aatrox before and after. Players loved his revive and his lifesteal-tank identity, but no individual ability truly stuck out.

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Riot Games. Where do we even begin? Most notably, the revive on his ultimate is much less reliable, freeing up a lot of room to give him buffs which make up the majority of the other changes here.

Overall, this patch pushes Aatrox toward a more bruisery, drain-tanky playstyle and his list of strengths will include more than one, all-in dive combo, accentuating his thematic as a life-draining war machine.

W - Infernal Chains. Passive no longer cancels when reviving. Aatrox no longer heals off damage to non-champions. E no longer stores charges but cools down faster than it previously charged. Where last patch focused on dropping Aatrox's raw power, this patch focuses on exposing more weaknesses for the Darkin Blade.

We're trading his ability to sustain off minions for higher baseline regen so he can't fall back as effectively on passive farming to recover from enemy aggression. Removing Umbral Dash's second charge makes Aatrox's skill check for landing all three Q hits steeper and means if enemies can bait his dash, he won't have a second one to use as an escape. E recharge time increased.

True to his nature as an unkillable ancient terror, Aatrox survived the nerfs we threw at him during preseason and is still savaging both pro and regular play. This patch, we're dropping his damage across the board higher E cooldown means less reliability on Q but are especially focusing on his early game. Patch 8. This mechanic was originally added to let players explore the possibility of jungle Aatrox, which never really took off.

Mid Aatrox is now using it in tandem with Smite to create a lead his opponents have no real way to punish, so we're removing it as an unintended lane strength. Aatrox won't have as long to wreak havoc with the promise of revival during World Ender, but he'll max out the revive heal sooner. A few clarity improvements will help enemies make the best choice when deciding when and if to kill him the first time or wait out the clock to deny the revive. R bonus attack damage increased at later ranks.

Our last set of Aatrox changes brought his lane bullying under control, giving us room to improve his scaling into later phases of the game. Charges granted on learning E decreased. R cooldown increased at early ranks. We've mostly gotten Aatrox's power level to a good place, but we still need to trim a bit of his laning strength to prevent him from being so much of a bully. Q base damage decreased. E recharge rate decreased early, increased later.

R bonus attack damage increased. Q timer freezes while reviving. Now that Aatrox players have gotten some games under their belt and mastered his pretty unique spells, it turns out he's pretty strong, especially in lane. We're pulling some of his early game power in exchange for some more late-game consistency.

Mid-Patch 8. Base health increased. Q damage increased. E healing increased. E distance increased. E now resets attack timer.

R cooldown decreased at early ranks. Aatrox has released weaker than we'd like, so we're adding power into his baseline damage and durability and making some quality of life changes to his E. Aatrox, the Darkin Blade will bring ruin upon us this patch! Prepare for obliteration with these links:.

Q - Dark Flight. E - Blades of Torment. W - Blood Price. R bonus attack range increased. Aatrox is struggling to impose himself in teamfights these days. R - Massacre. The Darkin Blade benefitted from his on-hit bonuses proccing on wards: Thirst is a heal and Price stacks the Blood Well. We discussed special-casing Aatrox to let W continue proccing on wards, but came up against another issue. W missing health heal up. Despite some love in patch 7.

Passive - Blood Well. W - Blood Thirst. Blood Well now gives a large buff when filled. Tackling a project that large is something more appropriate for a full VGU or a champion class update, but that focus has led us to neglect Aatrox for far too long. As it stands, Aatrox is always perched on a fine line between smashing everything and not having any options at all.

His abilities cost health, which makes fighting from behind even harder. That means making it more rewarding for him to invest some gold in durability, as well as making it less punishing for him to use his abilities.

Darkin Lore. A fallen god-warrior who once threatened to destroy Runeterra, Aatrox and his kin were bound to ancient weapons and imprisoned for centuries. Now, with stolen flesh warped in brutal approximation of his previous form, the Darkin Blade seeks an apocalyptic and long overdue vengeance:.

Aatrox is an infernal warlord who cleaves earth and bone to massacre entire armies.