Everyone knows about Aatrox. He’s the first champion in the list every champion select thanks to his name, but for most people that’s all he is. Summoners who started playing even two years ago may have never seen him picked. To them Aatrox is just a meme exemplifying everything wrong with Riot’s balance team. “Aatrox may as well be a minion;” “Why do other champions get buffs but Aatrox is allowed to stay useless for years?” It might not be apparent right away, but Aatrox’s flaws can’t be remedied with simple buffs.

In Preseason 6, I had dropped in MMR by duoing with some much lower ranked friends and losing a bunch of games, so since it was preseason and I didn’t feel like trying to climb, I called top and locked in Aatrox. I ended up playing him 13 times, mostly consecutively, having never played him before selecting him in ranked. I won 11 of the 13 games, but it felt more like I was winning despite picking Aatrox than because of picking him. I could have picked Irelia, Jax, or a number of other top lane fighters and probably had even easier victories. I could tell that a significant factor in my wins was my opponents’ unfamiliarity with the champion; they’d underestimate my burst or my sustain or my ability to engage and die because of their lack of respect.

If a champion is largely successful due to the people playing against it expecting it to be useless, it’s difficult to really call that success. Unfortunately for Aatrox players, it’s pretty much the state that he’s in right now. It’s the state that he’s been in since season 4 was starting, after his passive attack speed from filling his blood well was nerfed and his jungle clear was hamstrung as a result. A cycle of falling in and out of meta is fairly normal in League of Legends, but if a champion is considered overtly weak for an extended period, Riot will usually toss a buff their way unless the champion is considered unbalanceable and left in the dumpster until they get a larger scale rework, a la Poppy, Sion, or more recently Warwick. Unlike those original champions that were relics of basically a different game, Aatrox was released in 2013; around champions with fluid kits that have regularly found their way into a number of different metas like Thresh, Vi, and Lucian. So why not Aatrox? Why is Aatrox left in the dust like a broken artifact when in actuality there are only 20 champions (discounting reworks) that came out more recently than he did?

Aatrox doesn't have much to dance about lately.

It turns out, Aatrox is outdated, but the reasons why are subtler than simply having a kit that doesn’t fit together like old Sion or Gangplank. In my experience playing Aatrox, his animations are smooth, his skills combo effectively, and the overall champion feels fluid. His model looks like it belongs in the game, his voiceover is extensive enough, and in general he looks and feels like a newer champion. The outdated parts of his design instead lie in his play patterns and basic mechanics. The core concepts behind Aatrox are his sustain in lane and dueling potential, and in season 3 when he was released, those were the hallmarks of a strong top laner. This was a meta where the “Renekton Bar” was what defined whether a champion could lane in top: that is, if they could survive against Renekton, they were viable. Sustain and trading were the name of the game, and Aatrox had both in spades. Aatrox can still sustain, and he can still win trades, so why did he fall so far out of relevance?

The metrics of what makes a top laner good have changed. In Season 3, no one took Teleport top lane. Top was all about snowballing lane with ignite into forcing the enemy team to send at least 2 people to fight the player with the insurmountable gold and experience advantage. The meta picks like Renekton, Elise, and Shen were all exceptional duelists with strong all-ins and cc to facilitate ganks that could swing the lane to a state where the other team would not be able to wrest control away. Without the ability to TP back into lane, being able to stay without backing for extended periods was invaluable, so having HP sustain was one of the most sought-after traits. Balance changes were focused around this, such as Riven losing most of her HP/5 and Nasus losing much of his lifesteal, so players were horrified when Aatrox was revealed. Crazy sustain, manaless AND a revive passive? This guy would never have to leave lane, and good luck fighting him 1v1! Aatrox emerged as a meta pick in Europe, and by the end of worlds saw play in both the top lane and the jungle by multiple regions.

As Season 4 began, Teleport became the go-to summoner top and ignite fell out of favor. The meta picks also changed, with the infamous Renekton-Shyvana-Dr. Mundo triumvirate taking over top and Aatrox having no place except for once again in Europe, where Darien and Fredy122 continued to routinely pull him out. By worlds 2014, Aatrox only appeared in the ban list against Fredy’s SK Gaming and since the start of season 5 has not been relevant again.

Fredy122 was the last professional player to make Aatrox somewhat relevant.

All this is not to say that the meta is the only reason Aatrox is weak. The item that he synergises with best, Blade of the Ruined King, was repeatedly nerfed. The items that counter him, Morellonomicon and later Executioner’s Calling/Mortal Reminder, became common. His only form of engage is an easily interruptible knockup with a tiny radius that also serves as his escape. He is easily peeled off of carries and dies quickly if he isn’t constantly attacking something. There’s simply nothing he does right now that other champions don’t do better; he can’t serve as a proper tank, dps, or diver, so he’s left with no place in the game.

Some champions have kits that are inherently unhealthy for the game and are intentionally kept weak until this can be remedied; examples are Urgot, Kalista, and Azir, and perhaps the best example is the now reworked Yorick. Urgot and old Yorick simply have/had toxic playstyles. Laning against these champions feels impossible when they’re strong, and they don’t scale well enough to be able to carry most of the time, so what ends up happening is no one has fun in the game. Their lane opponents are frustrated that they can’t do anything, the players are frustrated that their lead is worthless because they can’t translate it into being strong after lane phase, and the teams are frustrated at both the player picking a useless champion and the other player being useless because of it. Kalista and Azir have kits with such high skillcaps that when they are reasonable or even weak for the majority of players, they are completely oppressive in professional play. For competitive LoL’s sake these champions have to remain gutted and that leaves the people who want to play as them sad, but buffing them is a precarious line that can easily be crossed by something seemingly innocuous.

For a champion no one plays, Aatrox has some slick skins and animations.

I don’t believe Aatrox falls into either of these categories. I think that his kit simply cannot function in modern LoL without being ridiculously overpowered. If he is buffed into relevance, that means that he must be strong enough to overcome the summoner spell meta, item meta, and champion meta and being playable despite having just about everything possible against him is not feasible without being far too overtuned numbers-wise. Riot has reasonably decided to let him stay weak even though he hasn’t been changed much, presumably planning to rework his kit at some point. Depending on how the game changes in the future, we may find other champions in a similar position; weak but impossible to buff into relevance without simply having numbers that are way too high. For now, Aatrox will continue to be the laughingstock of the game, only remembered because his name is first on the list.

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