Aatrox/LoL/Strategy

Champion Spotlight

By David 'Phreak' Turley

Learn to dominate top lane through damage-heavy exchanges and potent life steal in the Aatrox Champion Spotlight.

Aatrox's combination of mobility and survivability enables a hyper-aggressive playstyle, punctuated by brazen dives and daring escapes. He excels at relentlessly pushing lanes, relying on his Dark Flight and Blood Well to evade incoming ganks. In team fights, Aatrox's mobility takes on a more offensive bent, allowing him to dive past tanks onto valuable back line targets.

Learn how to Massacre your enemies with Aatrox in the Champion Spotlight, where we'll sample the Darkin Blade's tactics, masteries, and more.

Recommended Items

Tips

Playing As Aatrox

• Avoid engaging in a fight with low health unless your Blood Well is full so that you regain enough health to continue fighting.
• Building Life Steal can be very potent on Aatrox to help compensate for his health costs.
• Massacre is great at turning the tide of a battle. Make sure to use it at the right moment to maximize its benefits.

Playing Against Aatrox

• When Aatrox takes fatal damage he is healed for the amount currently in his resource bar, landing a fatal blow on him while the resource bar is low will result in him reviving with a lower amount of Health.
• When Aatrox casts Dark Flight towards your location, avoid being knocked up by moving away from the center of impact.
• Aatrox is auto attack reliant for most of his damage and survivability, reducing his attack speed by purchasing Randuin's Omen or Frozen Heart can help reduce both of those components greatly.

Tricks

Ability Usage

• When it is safe to do so, Blood Price increases clear speed greatly by sacrificing health. Then Blood Thirst will quickly refund that health when you are low.
  • ​This is more useful in the jungle than it is in lane, as intentionally lowering your health makes you vulnerable, especially to being bursted down.
• Blood Well allows Aatrox to play aggressively early on, allowing you to revive after the first death.
  • Paying health to fuel his abilities will fill his Blood Well. Remember, that it doesn't only increase health with which you will revive, but it also increases your attack speed.
  • Dealing damage will stop leaking Blood Well's blood. If possible, deal damage to keep the full attack speed boost from it by attacking a minion frequently.
• Dark Flight can be used defensively and offensively.
  • Use it when starting a fight to send enemies airborne and auto-attack them a few times to maximize damage.
    • Note that you have to hit with its center to actually knock your enemies up. Hitting them with the edge of this ability will only deal damage, which isn't actually high.
  • When being surrounded, use it on one of the approaching enemies to set them airborne, then when the effect expires, cast Blades of Torment to slow them and allow you to escape.
  • Use Dark Flight to jump through walls for an unsuspected hit or to escape from the enemy.
  • Use this ability to initiate fights, as the airborne effect will stop the enemy for a short duration and allow your team to lock them down or just burst them.
• Blood Thirst is a great source of healing. Toggle to Blood Thirst to heal between fights or to keep alive during fights.
  • Note that its healing is tripled when below 50% of your health, so it's better to toggle Blood Price off when low on health, as healing is mostly more effective than damage.
• Blades of Torment is Aatrox's main tool of harassing enemies when laning. It has pretty long range and also slows, allowing you to land some bonus attacks on your enemy.
  • It also deals magic damage, so even if your enemy is building armor, they will still take significant damage from it.
• Maxing Blades of Torment first is probably the best option, as it grants him magic damage, decreases its cooldown, and increases the duration of the slow, allowing you to endure even versus Malphite.
• Aatrox has deceptively strong burst damage. Attack two times, jump into an enemy with Dark Flight, then cast Blades of Torment and Massacre to take most of the health out, then attack your enemy with a well-prepared Blood Price.

Mastery Usage

• Aatrox can in fact have enough life steal at the beginning of the game to completely negate Blood Price. This requires the use of  Vampirism,  Warlord's Bloodlust, and Template:Rune.

Item Usage

• To counteract the effects of Blood Price, Aatrox needs at least 4.2% - 20.3% Life Steal.
  • The more AD Aatrox acquires, the more Life Steal too, but this effect is practically marginal as it never realistically increases enough to require more than one Life Steal item.
• Attack speed is a significant stat on Aatrox. It will benefit not only his damage, but also his healing from both Life Steal and Blood Thirst.
  • One of the most effective items on Aatrox is Blade of the Ruined King. It grants bonus attack speed and lifesteal, from which Aatrox benefits. It also grants great active and passive components, both helping in assassinating his targets. Also, since Aatrox gains bonus attack speed from Massacre, the health shred will occur more frequently.
  • Another useful item on Aatrox is Titanic Hydra, however only if you also are going to take other health items. This item grants an on-hit effect that will apply frequently thanks to Massacre's attack speed boost and a health boost that will allow him to survive in fights longer.
    • When going for Titanic Hydra, take into consideration Spirit Visage and Randuin's Omen. Frozen Mallet can also be considered.
      • Spirit Visage grants lots of health and magic resistance. It also decreases the cooldowns of your abilities and increases your base health regen greatly. Its unique passive also increases health gained from life steal items, Blood Price and even Blood Well.
      • Randuin's Omen grants bonus armor, health and critical hit resistance. It also allows you to slow surrounding enemies, allowing you to land a few more attacks. The slow from Randuin's Omen and Blades of Torment will allow you to near-root enemies hit for around 2~3 seconds.
      • Frozen Mallet will allow you to stick to your targets. Even if your enemies attempt to blink away, you can hit them with Blades of Torment or just increase your attack range with Massacre. The extended attacks still count as melee, so it might help catch fleeing opponents. Frozen Mallet also grants some bonus damage and greatly increases health, allowing you to survive for longer and increasing damage from Titanic Hydra. However, it doesn't grant any other defensive stats as armor or magic resistance.
  • Guinsoo's Rageblade works very well on Aatrox. When fully stacked, it will allow him to trigger Blood Thirst/ Blood Price once every two attacks and also grants attack speed and attack damage.
    • The ability power will not go to waste, as he has a medium-high ratio on Blades of Torment and a huge ratio on Massacre.
    • When going Guinsoo's Rageblade, Nashor's Tooth might be also good option, as it will turn you into a hybrid champion with lots of magic damage and physical damage. However, it is suggested to play him more AD-oriented, so when taking Nashor's Tooth, consider also an AD item. Blade of the Ruined King seems perfect to match these items.
• Ravenous Hydra will allow Aatrox to deal lots of damage as it grants bonus attack damage. It also grants bonus life steal and increases already high area of effect damage.
• When damage-oriented, Death's Dance might be pretty good, as it will allow you to reduce incoming damage and heal from all your abilities. It also grants you some form of life steal and lots of attack damage.
• When under focus of enemy mages, Banshee's Veil might prove useful. Its spell shield will negate most of the crowd-controls affecting you. Also, its magic resistance boost will greatly reduce damage taken and the health boost will improve your general survivability.

Countering

• Template:Cctip reduces healing from Blood Thirst. This is essential to executing any Aatrox that can't be bursted down.
• Malphite seems to be an excellent counter for Aatrox. He gains lots of armor from Brutal Strikes, plus his abilities scale with armor and he can greatly reduce Aatrox's attack speed, all while granting a very useful ultimate for his team. However, remember that when laning, Aatrox also deals a good amount of magic damage, thanks to Blades of Torment and Massacre. The latter can also negate the attack speed reduction from Ground Slam, so the 1v1 matchup is probably still in Aatrox's favor.
• Attack speed reduction is very effective versus Aatrox, so when playing against him, consider taking Randuin's Omen or Frozen Heart.