Aatrox receives interesting changes in the latest League of Legends patch

In the latest patch of League of Legends we have Riot finally giving Aatrox a little love in the form of some much-needed changes.

The diver hadn’t been a favorite ever since his launch back in 2013. He’s never really been a viable champion in any type of meta. The reason for that is in the core of his former design. He had to use his own health to power his abilities. Aatrox should have been a damage-dealing diver. He had high burst damage on almost every ability, but he couldn’t build damage items, because his health costs would cause him to die too quickly. Zac, who also uses health to power abilities, can build high amounts of health and has a form of reliable sustain. Zac’s tanky build gives him enough health to negate the bad side effects of having to use health to power abilities.

Aatrox, on the other hand, couldn’t even build tanky if he wanted to. His high percent-health costs on abilities and subpar crowd control made sure of that. Building damage to utilize his burst made him die too quickly, yet building tanky to counter his squishiness made half of his kit useless.

Riot introduced him again with his abilities buffed in some way. Most of his percent-health costs were removed. The entire health cost on his Q and W (Blood Price) were removed, and the cost of his E was lowered from five percent of his current health to a flat 30 health. Not only that, but the self-heal on his W (Blood Thirst) was changed to scaling from his missing health instead of just doubling in power when he’s below half health. Along with these minor skill changes, his passive was reworked a bit as well. It now operates on a rage-like system. He uses abilities that fill his Blood Well bar, and when it’s full, he gets bonus attack damage, attack speed, and has the ability to revive on death if the revival is off its cooldown.

These buffs will let Aatrox build damage without having to worry about being blown up quite as easily, and they’ll allow him to be a tank without losing too much of his health when using abilities. He still won’t be as strong of a sustain tank as Warwick, but it at least gives him another viable option.

You can try out Aatrox for yourself when downloading the latest patch for the game, 7.5.