If
Aatrox is really that bad then you'd think Riot would be buffing him in their next patch. As far as I know they aren't. I think
Aatrox is a case of players just not understanding how to properly play him or build him and just being like "okay this champion sucks". The fact that
Aatrox can easily 1v1 champions like
Tryndamere,
Darius, and
Yasuo without having to do much to outplay at all tells me that he is a strong champion. And purpose of this thread is so I can better understand how he works not so people can diss the champion. I realize he has his issues, but he also has his strengths. If
Aatrox was too trash to play there wouldn't be a Master elo 1-trick pony
Aatrox main.








No,
Aatrox is legitimately bad. He used to be good but he was nerfed into unviability because he's too binary, the same reason WW was nerfed into his current state and they've both been ignored until their eventual reworks (
Warwick's being much sooner than
Aatrox's probably).
There are Master
Aatrox 1 trick ponies but there are 1 trick ponies of tons of different bad champions at high Elo, since a champion being bad doesn't negate someone being better than most of their competition even while playing at a handicap. But someone that's Master as an
Aatrox OTP would be even higher ranked if they were equally good at a meta champion. Just like an ADC main getting to Master tier while never building
Lord Dominik's Regards would be even higher Elo if they did build it.
He's still worth playing if you find him fun and personally find success with him (why I play
Lucian and
Tristana), but even if he's a little underrated it's hard to argue that the champion's actually good.



There are Master



He's still worth playing if you find him fun and personally find success with him (why I play



Lasoor wrote:
If
Aatrox is really that bad then you'd think Riot would be buffing him in their next patch.




The rest of your first comment are even more anecdotical cases where you think

Lasoor wrote:

He's just a cluster**** of a champion. He has a bunch of CC tools, a bunch of damage tools and a bunch of lifesteal tools. Not enough CC nor base damage to be a good tank, not enough damage to be an assassin and not enough lifesteal to be a "drain tank" like







Actually **** Huap, a youtuber who tends to hate on
Aatrox, made a video recently saying how he is actually pretty good as a jungle champion currently. Which is the role I play him in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bir4VGivXR4&t=4s
Aatrox has a lot of issues and I won't deny that, but he has a lot of strengths too that rely on how you play him. He is a really strong duelist and a really strong early ganker. He can also 1v1 dragon at level 5 easily, probably even level 4 but I always do it after my first back. He has a fast jungle clear, will be stronger than most junglers early game, and late game is great at following up his team's tank to make the fight a win. He can also 1v1 Rift Herald if his team won't help him at around level 10 using his ult if he has life steal.
In the video **** Huap compares
Aatrox to
Xin Zhao, minus the issues Xin has. As a mastery 5
Aatrox and
Xin Zhao player I do believe he is right.
Also the game play in the video is of a Master tier player fighting other, I'd assume, Master tier or Diamond tier players. Yet the strategies he is using are so easy to do and I've already found immense success using them in my elo. My first game I got 16 kills and I believe 3 deaths. Second game was 16 kills and 1 death. Third game was 16 kills and I think 6 deaths. I remember it because they all had 16 kills which I found cool.
Aatrox is also insanely good at split pushing because it is really difficult to stop him and he has very high attack speed that lets him destroy turrets quickly. If you try to 1v1 him he will likely win, he even counters split pushers like
Tryndamere because he wins the 1v1. If you try to group up to kill him he can Q away and E to slow you or sometimes even win a 1v2 or 1v3 depending on how much CC his enemies have.
And yes I know every champion is going to have high elo 1-trick ponies, but if you watch this guy's replays he isn't doing anything spectacular. Most of what he is doing a high Silver or Gold player could also do on
Aatrox. It doesn't take a lot of skill to use him. Just takes familiarity with his abilities and his limits as well as game knowledge, map awareness, and all that other stuff that isn't entirely specific to champions.
And ya I play
Warwick which is why I tested items
Warwick gets on
Aatrox. But I also play full life steal
Xin Zhao and
Nocturne so it's not like builds like that are foreign to me.
I will say that I could be wrong, just like any of you could be wrong. Doesn't really matter to me though because I am mostly just playing
Aatrox for Mastery 7 so I can say I got Mastery 7 on
Aatrox :)
I'm still curious about the reasoning behind doing full life steal on him because I want a better understanding of the champion.


In the video **** Huap compares




Also the game play in the video is of a Master tier player fighting other, I'd assume, Master tier or Diamond tier players. Yet the strategies he is using are so easy to do and I've already found immense success using them in my elo. My first game I got 16 kills and I believe 3 deaths. Second game was 16 kills and 1 death. Third game was 16 kills and I think 6 deaths. I remember it because they all had 16 kills which I found cool.


And yes I know every champion is going to have high elo 1-trick ponies, but if you watch this guy's replays he isn't doing anything spectacular. Most of what he is doing a high Silver or Gold player could also do on

And ya I play





I will say that I could be wrong, just like any of you could be wrong. Doesn't really matter to me though because I am mostly just playing


I'm still curious about the reasoning behind doing full life steal on him because I want a better understanding of the champion.
His problem is not that he's bad (well, he is sorta bad but clearly not unplayable) but more so that there is always another champion doing the job better.
Aatrox has a lot of issues and I won't deny that, but he has a lot of strengths too that rely on how you play him. He is a really strong duelist and a really strong early ganker. He can also 1v1 dragon at level 5 easily, probably even level 4 but I always do it after my first back. He has a fast jungle clear, will be stronger than most junglers early game, and late game is great at following up his team's tank to make the fight a win. He can also 1v1 Rift Herald if his team won't help him at around level 10 using his ult if he has life steal.
i.e. like
Shyvana, but worse.
Mastery level means nothing. I'm a level 7 mastery
Fizz with over 70k mastery points on him and I suck right now because I played him tank top or jungle. Even worse, mastery 5 is literally only a testament of having played around 30 games with a champion. Around 40 or more if you lost many games. And the comparison with
Xin Zhao means nothing in the face of the comparison with
Shyvana. Comparing
Aatrox, a ****py champion, with
Xin Zhao, who fell out of meta, is like comparing two turds and calling the less smelly "a nice perfume".
On a slightly tangential note, I do like ****'s videos but I haven't seen one in a couple of months. Might look that one later.
Great players are great when you don't know what they're doing that you're not doing. He might have great rotations, skillshot/cooldown awareness or just plainly good knowledge of
Aatrox's limits. Then again, that doesn't mean the champ is good. The player could be good in spite of his shortcomings instead of because of his strenghts. He could have Challenger level mechanics. You're just assuming the option that better suits you and that makes for an awful argument.
A single displacement with no cast time easily counters his short range Q. Also, his Q is a short range jump with a long cast time. It's not a great mobility tool. In fact I would call it a ****py mobility tool.
Agreed.
I wouldn't call it a "full lifesteal" build. His W and a
Blade of the Ruined King should provide enough lifesteal if you have enough resistances. Maybe you could try a risky
Bloodthirster instead of the
Frozen Mallet if you're fed or the game drags on for too long and your team lacks damage, but I doubt it would be what we call a "standard" build on him (it would be more of a "cheese" build).
Lasoor wrote:


Lasoor wrote:





On a slightly tangential note, I do like ****'s videos but I haven't seen one in a couple of months. Might look that one later.
Lasoor wrote:
Also the game play in the video is of a Master tier player fighting other, I'd assume, Master tier or Diamond tier players. Yet the strategies he is using are so easy to do and I've already found immense success using them in my elo. My first game I got 16 kills and I believe 3 deaths. Second game was 16 kills and 1 death. Third game was 16 kills and I think 6 deaths. I remember it because they all had 16 kills which I found cool.
[...]
And yes I know every champion is going to have high elo 1-trick ponies, but if you watch this guy's replays he isn't doing anything spectacular. Most of what he is doing a high Silver or Gold player could also do on
Aatrox. It doesn't take a lot of skill to use him. Just takes familiarity with his abilities and his limits as well as game knowledge, map awareness, and all that other stuff that isn't entirely specific to champions.
[...]
And yes I know every champion is going to have high elo 1-trick ponies, but if you watch this guy's replays he isn't doing anything spectacular. Most of what he is doing a high Silver or Gold player could also do on


Lasoor wrote:
If you try to group up to kill him he can Q away and E to slow you or sometimes even win a 1v2 or 1v3 depending on how much CC his enemies have.
Lasoor wrote:
And ya I play
Warwick which is why I tested items
Warwick gets on
Aatrox. But I also play full life steal
Xin Zhao and
Nocturne so it's not like builds like that are foreign to me.
I will say that I could be wrong, just like any of you could be wrong. Doesn't really matter to me though because I am mostly just playing
Aatrox for Mastery 7 so I can say I got Mastery 7 on
Aatrox :)





I will say that I could be wrong, just like any of you could be wrong. Doesn't really matter to me though because I am mostly just playing


Lasoor wrote:
I'm still curious about the reasoning behind doing full life steal on him because I want a better understanding of the champion.




Quoted:
The player could be good in spite of his shortcomings instead of because of his strenghts. He could have Challenger level mechanics. You're just assuming the option that better suits you and that makes for an awful argument.
Except that I clearly pointed out I'm not when I said:
Quoted:
Just takes familiarity with his abilities and his limits as well as game knowledge, map awareness, and all that other stuff that isn't entirely specific to champions.
Quoted:
Mastery level means nothing. I'm a level 7 mastery Fizz with over 70k mastery points on him and I suck right now because I played him tank top or jungle. Even worse, mastery 5 is literally only a testament of having played around 30 games with a champion.
Mastery level 5 means I have familiarity with the champions and therefore can agree on a comparison between the two. Also worth pointing out that I get S or S+ on almost every game with


Quoted:
A single displacement with no cast time easily counters his short range Q. Also, his Q is a short range jump with a long cast time. It's not a great mobility tool. In fact I would call it a ****py mobility tool.
His "short range Q" is used to follow up tanks in a team fight, not to start the engage. Meaning the enemy won't be using what they have on you because they won't know when you plan to go in. The cooldown isn't that long when you build CDR and the jump ability goes great with the long distance slow skill shot that is pretty easy to land on multiple people. The cast time on it is so fast that people don't even have time to react. I've never seen anyone come close to dodging it and only got knocked out of it twice in around 30 games. Only time I miss it is when it is my fault.
Quoted:
I wouldn't call it a "full lifesteal" build. His W and a Blade of the Ruined King should provide enough lifesteal if you have enough resistances.
Generally that just isn't true in a team fight because he is still weak to burst and CC forcing him to constantly rotate out and preventing him from healing off of enemies. All the resistances do is keep him from dying instantly so that he can keep using his abilities to help his team. Generally he is best when the focus isn't on him and when he uses his ultimate during that time. That is when you can see an

And most people do go full lifesteal on

Another use I found for

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The build I usually do is this:
Okay so my thought process with this item build is I will have attack speed needed for sustain with my
Most people focus on life steal for
I get
Runes = 9 AD marks, 9 Armor Seals, 9 MR Glyphs, 3 AS Quints