Aatrox: The Only Champion “Removed” From League of Legends

Aatrox’s journey is a tale about a promising but a failed release that got neglected by the developers for way too long. And after he finally got the attention he deserved and became popular, they reworked him into a completely different champion. That champion would then go on to dominate the competitive scene and undergo countless removals of his mechanics until we got the Aatrox we know today.

Problems with on-release Aatrox

When he was released on June 13, 2013, Aatrox was a very exciting champion with a cool story, and the first of his kind, a darkin. The issues he faced were his clunky spells, not interacting with each other, and bad gameplay design. He was designed as a melee champion that mostly auto-attacks and wins by out-healing the damage he takes. This encouraged riskier gameplay, while having his passive revive as a backup, similar to Tryndamere in many ways. That meant that if he was ahead, you could never win because he could revive. But if he wasn’t strong, he would just die two times, causing toxic and frustrating gameplay.

His main issue was that he relied on items way too much, like most auto-attacking champions(ADC’s). Meanwhile, the rest of the bruisers and tanks in the top lane had good base damage and utility in their spells. Another problem was his Ultimate spell, the most powerful asset of most champions. His Ultimate did magic damage and scaled of ability power on a champion that built attack damage and life steal items.

Neglected by developers for way too long

In the two years after his release, Aatrox would only get three small buffs to his base armor, E-spell, and Ultimate. But in the following two years, he wouldn’t show up in the patch notes once. No buffs, no bug fixes, and definitely no nerfs to one of the statistically weakest champions in the game. It’s ridiculous to think that in the 1400 days after his release, up until patch 7.5, Aatrox received just three changes. Meanwhile, Azir was receiving double the amount of that every week in the form of bug fixes and adjustments.

On patch 7.5 Riot finally decided to help Aatrox, giving him a mini-rework. They gave him proper scalings on his spells, removed the health costs to cast them, and made his passive and Ultimate more interactive. With the introduction of Conqueror, which was the perfect rune for bruisers that liked extended fights, Aatrox quickly became overpowered. With the Rageblade and Titanic Hydra builds, Aatrox would have the best two-item power spike in the game. He started showing up in pro play more often due to his revival and his side laning potential. He was so powerful that a Korean Aatrox OTP named “DontRemakeAatrox” reached rank five on the most competitive server, even though he wasn’t that good. 

The second rework and the issues it caused

But one month after this mini-rework, Riot released their champion roadmap. The roadmap is a feature that details the plans the company has for the foreseeable future. In it, they announced that Aatrox would be receiving a full visual and gameplay update. But unlike other VGUs, Riot never mentioned anything about preserving Aatrox’s playstyle. This caused a lot of backlash from the Aatrox community, which was right to be upset. Their beloved champion was left untouched and weak for so long, and now that he was finally good, they would completely change him.

But that day finally came, on patch 9.9, the new Aatrox was introduced.

They completely changed all of his spells and the only thing that he had left was the revive. But now even that is gone, along with a dozen other features reworked Aatrox had. The reason for this was his dominance in pro play. You couldn’t gank him because he had a revive and you had to kill him two times. Every dive was successful, because your Aatrox would tank the tower and then revive. Aatrox’s E-ability used to give him up to 35% omnivamp, which was nerfed down to 15%. Then it only applied to champions and was later removed and placed on his passive. His E also gave him bonus attack damage and had two charges on his dash, but those features were also removed. The passive could reduce enemy healing and shielding, but it also got removed and now only gives omnivamp and more damage based on enemy HP. Most notably, his Ultimate underwent several changes such as his revive only happening if he got one takedown after using Ultimate. But that was also problematic, so they removed it completely and gave him increased healing while ulting. That introduced an interaction which made the Aatrox Soraka combo unkillable, so they had to change it to just self-healing.

The community’s reactions

Meanwhile, the Aatrox mains were furious because their beloved champion became a spell caster, with a triple cast Q like Riven and not an auto-attacker. With his revival also gone, nothing was left of the old Aatrox. Remember that Korean OTP named “DontRemakeAatrox”? Well, he quit streaming and playing the game. When the LeBlanc and Rengar mains complained about their reworks, they got reverted. But Aatrox mains didn’t get their champion back, instead they got a new one. That entire process didn’t feel like a rework, but it felt like it was the first champion Riot removed from the game, completely erased, and replaced.

 

(Header image via League of Legends)