Aatrox Build Guide by The_Darkin

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Introduction

Hi everyone, I'm BoingBoing, and this is my Tank Aatrox Guide. Please provide some feedback to the Guide. Aatrox is a great champion, altough not a lot of people play him, if you know how to play him you can destroy your enemies and gain ranks fast. For reference i climbed from Hardstuck Gold 4 to Plat 2 and climbing further. Without further ado, I present to you, my awesome Aatrox guide. I put a nice amount of time into this guide, while i should have been studying xD, so please rate it and don't hesitate to downvote it, but try to explain why you did.

Pros / Cons

Pros + Good mobility with Dark Flight + Good crowd control with Dark Flight + Extremely Strong if played right + nice slow and poke with Blades of Torment + Good farmer + Massacre lets him be Ranged with melee effects He is a great laner, who can lane against almost everything. Champions that give him Problems are Jayce and Maokai especially because Maokai, because he just can go Ninja Tabi and Bramble Vest and has high base damage and good sustain with passive.

Cons - Melee so problems against some early poke. - Needs items to be useful - Hard to master - Needs to push in order to sustain. - Needs a decent team to be relevant if you play him as a Bruiser/Tank - Dark Flight has a fairly long cooldown. As long as you take care about your cooldowns, you can win lanes easily. Just ban Maokai and Jayce and you should be good. Except if you know Aatrox really well and are in low elo then you don't need to ban them.

Runes

• Grasp of the Undying: This is the best keystone at the moment for Aatrox in my opinion. With the tankiness you get from the build you get quite some damage, and it synergises with Overgrowth and Blood Thirst
  
• Demolish: In Solo queue you still want to take towers as fast as possible, with the hp you get from this build and the other runes you get a lot of damage against towers. The other possibility is Unflinching, which is also great because you have better escape possibilities
  
• Conditioning: This rune is a no brainer, all the other possibilities are inferior so don't even mind them.
  
• Overgrowth: Like already stated, has great synergy with Grasp of the Undying and Demolish so you want to take it. The other option here is Revitalize or Second Wind which are both viable, altough second wind i would only take with Doran's Shield against ranged.
  
• Triumph: Great towerdive potential, and also synergises well with Blood Well in teamfights. While you are resurrecting if your team Kills someone and you get an assist you get 15% missing health back the thjing is, it almost always counts that you have 1%hp because the passive hp only gets counted, when you are revived.
  
• Legend: Alacrity: This is to be taken, to get a bit more attack speed. The other possibility here is Coup de Grace or Last Stand both viable, one if you want to try to burst enemie carries, the other if you want to heal at low hp and still deal damage. I always play with Legend: Alacrity but just try the others and decide for yourself.

Runes against Ranged squishy champions

• Lethal Tempo: Altough it has a dealay, it gives you some more strengths in bursting squishy ranged champs, against which you cant proc grasp that often. You have lower time to kill them so you want to use as much power as possible.
  
• Triumph: Again the diving potential is insane and like said before it is great with hellbent
  
• Legend: Alacrity/ Legend: Tenacity: You can take whichever of those you want, both provide nice stats in this case.
  
• Coup de Grace: With this build you always want coup de grace, so you can kill squishy champions faster. You don't want to be at the point where Last Stand has the highest power, because usually at this point you will die.
  
• Conditioning: Again no brainer you want those resistances later on and also around 10 minutes.
  
• Second Wind: ALWAYS against ranged or ranged poke you take Second Wind with Doran's Shield the sustain it gives is awesome especially with Blood Thirst no other option viable. Just don't take anything else.

Summoner Spells

Flash: You always want to take flash, i tried other Summoners before running Ignite with Teleport or others, everything is inferior to flash don't even think about anything else.

Teleport: Your go to Summoner in Toplane. You get a lot of possibilities with it with botlane ganks, tower saving backdoor tower taking and split pushing. I never take other summoners. Please note to not only use it for getting back to lane. Take your time learn Wave management back timing. Look into SoloRenektonOnly's videos, he teaches great things.

Ignite: If you are not that good with Teleport and only use it to get back to lane, then please take Ignite you are wasting your Teleport.

Skill Description

• Blood Well: This is one of the best passives ingame, you can choose if you want to revive or not. In Laning phase, you always want to have 3 stacks of passive. So if you go all in you can instantly proc hellbent at the same time you get a lot of steroids trough hellbent you get Base AD and Attack speed.
  
• Dark Flight (Q): This is your Escape and Engage tool, it has a farily long cooldown so mind how you use it. In Early Game you want to go for a level 2 cheese and all in, trust me no one expects the damage you can dish out with Dark Flight hellbent and Blood Price. In Lategame you want to engage with it and atleast knock 2 Enemies or the AD Carry up Cast Massacre to proc passive and burst them down.
  
• / Blood Thirst/Blood Price (W): Your core ability, this is how you deal damage and how you heal. Always try to have it if you go for an all in or trade and engage with your Dark Flight
  
• Blades of Torment (E): This is your only poke ability, and at the same time a nice slow. You always want to Max it first because you get the most damage out of it especially in early game.
  
• Massacre (R): A great ultimate, it helps you stack your passive in a teamfight, you get a stack for every person hit. It gives you a lot of attack speed. And the most important and best thing, you become ranged with it. With it you have around 500 Range, so actually no melee can deal with you especially if slowed by Blades of Torment or Frozen Mallet.

Ability Skill order

ABILITY SEQUENCE

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You want to always max out Blades of Torment simply because you get the most damage out of it and it is your only poking tool and to some point waveclear tool. After you get Tiamat it doesn't matter anymore but until that point you need it. Blood Thirst / Blood Price The scaling on those is good, and the heal is % missing HP so you want to only max it second. And last but not least Dark Flight there is no need to max this until the end. The base damage is negliable and you have great scaling on it.

Items

-OR-

Ninja Tabi > DAMAGE MITIGATION You want those boots against heavy ad teams, or teams where the CC is not that hard, but they have strong auto attacks. Mercury's Treads > TENACITY Those boots, are what you buy most of the time. They give you great tenacity and magic resist, sometimes even enough in early, so you don't need other MR items till later in the game.

This is your core item, it gives everything you want. Some tankiness some damage and an auto attack reset, so you can proc your Blood Price faster and burst carries.

Now that it got buffed, it is a great item overall. You get Health Armor and some Magic damage, so tanks have to take MR against you, which helps your other damage sources.

Your second core item, altough you can buy it at a later point. It gives you Movement speed on attack, so enemies have a harder time to kite you especially with the slow from Blades of Torment or Frozen Mallet. It also gives you armor shred on physical damage, which helps you against Tanks.

Great item against AD carries, especially crit ADC's. It also has a nice AOE slow, which again helps against kiting.

It gives you survivabilty against ap carries and makes your heals 30% stronger at the same time. So even against heavy ad teams, you want to buy it.

This is one of the last item possiblities, gives you 700HP, which makes your Titanic On Hit proc stronger, gives you more tankiness and at the same time some ad and a great slow. Impossible to kite with this especially with range from Massacre.

Summary

ABILITY SEQUENCE

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Early game trades and all ins

In early game you want to take Blood Price and get your passive to 3 Stacks. Afterwards you switch to Blood Thirst and push the lane you want to kill minions as fast as possible and gain lvl 2 first. As you get lvl 2 you instantly level up Dark Flight and all in. Almost every game you want to do this. The only exception is, if the enemy is stronger against you, which let's be real is almost never at lvl 2. For trades you want to stack up Grasp of the Undying and go in with Dark Flight and your blood price stack if the enemy is low enough from your Blades of Torment poke, you want to all in him and if he is not low you have to evaluate, can he fight back, what are his cooldowns how much damage does he do. After evaluating you either go out or stay in and get him low so he has to back. Remember Blood Thirst and you are almost full again.

Team fights.

In teamfights you either want your Massacre to be up, so you can stack your hellbent fast or you only go in if you have atleast 2 or 3 stacks. Never engage in a teamfight where you cant stack your passive fast enough. You will have less damage and also won't survive. The second thing to remember is NEVER engage in a fight where your Blood Well is on colldown. There are some exceptions, but as long as you did not master Aatrox, you don't want to do this. If you have mastered Aatrox you will know if you can go in or not. I won't tell you in this guide when this possibilities are because i don't want to be the reason you do stupid things. What you want to do in a teamfight, is either disrupt their fronline with Dark Flight and knock as much people up as possible, or you want to Dark Flight on their Backline and burst the enemy carries down.

Farming

The problem with Aatrox's farming is that you have to push in order to stack your Grasp of the Undying and your Blood Thirst/ Blood Price. But you still have to be able to know what to do at the right time. Watch some wave management videos on this topic please.

Conclusion

Aatrox Aatrox is a great champion even if he is not on the very strong side especially with the new runes. I will update this guide every patch, so it is always up to date and you guys can learn from it. I will also add some example videos when i record them so don't hesitate to come back.