Greetings. When Aatrox was reworked, I was excited to try him out because I was in love with the aesthetics. After trying out a couple of builds as well as watching streams of him being played, I can't seem to find one that would work for him. In fact, right now he's not really well received either and this is reflected in the overall low win rate. However, after doing some experimentation of my own, I managed to create a disgusting creature that dominates the lane most of the time. As this is my first guide on this site, I hope you don't mind the lack of fancy formatting.

Pros
- Dominates lanes especially against tanks
- Good against lifesteal-based champions
- Strong early game
- High mobility in terms of passing over terrains
- Clean trade with burst damage
- Able to dive with World Ender

Cons
- The Darkin Blade requires some mechanical skill
- Tends to overpush early on due to hitting everything when bullying enemy
- Mediocre mid and late game
- World Ender isn't as useful as it sounds like

The crux of this build is Grasp of the Undying and Nimbus Cloak. Aatrox's passive, Deathbringer Stance would stack with Grasp of the Undying to produce a whole lot of damage. Even at level one, a full combo can reduce the toughest tanks like Darius or Garen to half health while yours is still full at 100%.

You're gonna need Bone Plating too for extra survivability. Demolish is fine and all but you're supposed to stay in the lane and fight as long as realistic possible to gain the benefits of Overgrowth and Grasp of the Undying.

I went for Chrysalis for the HP. Depending on what you're more comfortable with, I don't see any problems with Conditioning or Second Wind.

Overgrowth for more HP, no questions.

Nimbus Cloak on the other hand would give mobility for Aatrox when you activate World Ender. In fact, you can even take the enemy by surprise because you're usually slow in using using your skills and the sudden boost from Nimbus Cloak would make you very scary. It's useful to run away from ganks, diving enemy towers or chasing the enemy carry. Once you have Frozen Mallet and the help of this rune, it's hard for most of your enemies to escape.

I personally like Transcendence because with the extra 10% Cooldown reduction, it helps with executing skills faster and in turn activating the Deathbringer Stance faster which is your main source of damage. I don't really see any real alternative to this besides Celerity and Absolute Focus. However, that rune and Gathering Storm aren't really conductive to this build as you don't really need more damage, as you're getting your source mainly from HP. Scorch? Maybe.

Most other guides said to go Conqueror. Some say Arcane Comet. Maybe even Electrocute. I've personally tried all those and the results were at best mediocre and at worse 4 consecutive demotions. What these guides fail to address is the fact that Aatrox right now is surprisingly squishy. Very squishy, in fact, for a champion that is supposedly designed to dive towers.

Say you invest in non-HP items such as Blade of the Ruined King and went with Conqueror, you can't deal much damage in time because you'll be dead. Even with World Ender, you're still going to die as it doesn't actually heal back a lot of health as the old Aatrox's Blood Well. Going for other Runes as of right now is not an option to me. My logic is that, if I want my Aatrox to have big damage potential, Grasp of the Undying can do that for me.

In summary, here's how it is for me. You can have either an Aatrox that deals a lot of damage and die as quickly, or an Aatrox that deals a lot of damage... and not die. The option is clear here. This fact might change in the future patches which allow Aatroxs runes to diversify but this is just the way it is at this moment.

The goal of this build is to build as much HP as possible in order to feed the Grasp of the Undying. This can be achieved in many ways but you get the idea.

From my experience, rushing Black Cleaver first doesn't produce desirable results. Frozen Mallet on the other hand would allow you to retain domination over your lane. The idea here is that one gives you speed while the other slows your enemy. Fundamentally it may seem like the same idea but it's actually different.

Having an enemy slower means it's easier to land hits with The Darkin Blade. Besides that, it means better chance for Infernal Chains to tie them down. Having more speed on the other hand does not necessarily guarantee this. Besides that, with this build, most of your damage comes from having a lot of HP. It makes little to no difference whether you have Black Cleaver first or Frozen Mallet first in terms of stats, but a world of difference in terms of practicality.

You'd think the new Aatrox is like Riven, but not really. If anything, he's closer to Illaoi in the sense of a slow, imposing juggernaut. As such, some people might find it hard to use The Darkin Blade as it does not have the fluidity and mobility of Riven's Broken Wings.

In order to properly land a hit, you need to study the pattern of your enemy's movement. One thing I'd like to do is to use the first The Darkin Blade right in front of the enemy. Naturally, they would back away and hit the edge of the blade. If not, there's the second The Darkin Blade. By this point, most would have backed away but together with Umbral Dash, a second The Darkin Blade would hit around the edge. Followed by a third The Darkin Blade and a stab of Deathbringer Stance combined with Grasp of the Undying would put the victim in a hospital.

One advantage Deathbringer Stance bring is it's anti-healing mechanic. When you meet another tank with Grasp of the Undying and hit each other, you'll gain more health back from the trade out of this because of the passive.

While Infernal Chains is usually used for catching enemy champions, it's also useful in last hitting some out of reach creeps and harassing the enemy while they're under tower.

I hope this guide of mine will be useful for you if you'd like to try out the new Aatrox. I'll add in more to this guide later on and clean it up with better formatting. If you have any questions or would like to know anything more in-depth, feel free to comment and I'll include your inquiries in future amendments.