Aatrox Guide

Quick guide

Quick guide. If there's anything missing in the guide please comment and I'll work on a fix ASAP.



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Quick Aatrox Lethality Top Build

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Summoner Spells

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Starting Items

Best Overall Build

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About Aatrox

Identity

Aatrox is a dominant lane bully that wants to get ahead early and become the fantasy drain tank that all players dread. You can easily turn 1v2s to your favor even without having a big lead. The stronger Aatrox gets the more pressure he wants to create. Take towers, clear enemey junglers topside, group for drakes if needed. In teamfights you're either looking to kill the enemy carry or do as much damage as possible with your AOE Q. If that's not your thing you can choose to protect your carries by not allowing enemies get near with your CC.

Laning

Depending on the matchup you either want to play safe until you have some items besides your starter item or you want to be agressive, look for early solo kills, poke and permanent pressure on the lane. You have great gank setup potential so there's no shame in playing under tower and waiting for a gank. Once you've gotten a kill if you can either look for a full all in or poke them down and then kill them.

Strenghts

Decent sustain, ok build variations, very strong early and mid game, good lockdown potential, snowballs very well, can carry teamfights if played properly.

Weaknesses

Can fall behind very easily, a lot of bad matchups and even more champs that can outperform you, bad splitpushing, bad late game, very hard to play from behind as you're essentially useless and only there for the cc.

Rune setup for Aatrox



• Poke
• Heavy Trades
• Also Works
• Ranged Top :(
• Midlane
• Support
• Ranged Top 2.0

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Quinn

Malphite

Vayne



Garen

Darius

Jax

Summoners spells







!!!ALWAYS HAVE

Skill path

• Skill path

Aatrox

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Skills

Skill breakdown

• Breakdown

Aatrox

Champion



Deathbringer Stance

Ability

Passive is probably the most underrated part of his kit. Dealing %health AD damage and healing 100% of the damage dealt. His passive also increases his auto range. Whenever Aatrox hits an enemy champion champion or large monster with his auto or an ability, the cooldown of his W is reduced by 2 seconds, increased to 4 seconds if he hits something with the Q sweespot. If you still think Aatrox passive is useless (while granted, it is pretty bad compared to other passives) just watch this "TheBausffs" clip!

The Darkin Blade

Ability

Q is Aatrox's most important skill. The damage, healing, poke, kite, CC and outplay potential it offers is unmatched in his skill set. A big AOE with extra damage if you hit something with the sweet spot, the damage increasing with every Q. Hitting the sweetspots is what makes an Aatrox player good, being able to navigate the Q with his E correctly, knowing when you can hit someone and understanding it's range. These things combined allow Aatrox to turn ganks into an easy 1v2. Protecting your carry with the CC you offer, healing so much the enemies cry about it to Riot, begging Aatrox to be nerfed.

The Darkin Blade

is by far the best thing Aatrox has to offer.



Umbral Dash

Ability

E is Aatrox's second most important spell after Q. All of his healing comes from this skills passive. At level 1 this skill gives Aatrox 18% ompnivamp increasing to 24% when it's maxed. On top of this, when Aatrox uses his ultimate he increases the healing by 25%. Another reason why this skill is very important is because it lets Aatrox change where he will land his Q, by using E while Q is still casting. And on top of all this it lets him dash through walls! For walls he can dash through - read below.

Infernal Chains

Ability

W is every players worst nightmare. Although easy to escape even when this skill applies a slow, W is what allows Aatrox to lock down enemies, by pulling them back to you. The main thing when trading with W is waiting for the to be pulled back in and getting a guaranteed third Q hit. But this skill isn't just used for locking enemies down: secure minions with this skill because it offers more damage than your regular auto, when you're getting chased by an enemy W them, fight for a bit and run, the distance you create when they're pulled back in is almost guaranteed to make them give up.

World Ender

Ability

R is what makes Aatrox, well, Aatrox. Players screaming at his damage and healing without understanding why Aatrox is able to do this. His ultimate increases not only his healing, but also his damage (this leading to lethality build and

Maw of Malmortius

being absolutely broken). When ulting you also gain movement speed this allowing you to either run away or chase down an enemy. If Aatrox gets an assist or kill while in his ult, it is reset for 5 seconds. On top of this Aatrox's ult fears minions for 3 seconds.





Wall dash

Blue - easy to dash through

Orange - can be tricky/hard to pull off in games consistently.

Red - spot specific, either practise this or don't try in games.



Builds and Items

Full Build

!PLEASE READ!

This used to be an important section but now Aatrox is a bit nerfed so just follow the season 13 build and you'll be fine-ish.



Divine vs Eclipse

Credit for idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX8w5uQHPk0&t=749s Thank you Naayil.

• Divine vs Eclipse

Divine Sunderer

Item



Divine Sunderer

is a possible mythic choice on Aatrox into very tanky teams. This is not the better mythic by any means, but in some cases it will work better. Let's say enemies have

Ornn

,

Braum

and

Udyr

in their team, in this case divine is a lot better because it helps fight tankier oponents easier.

Eclipse

Item

Best mythic

Goredrinker

Stridebreaker



Iceborn Gauntlet

Starting items



Items to help you out in lane



Situational items



• Magic Resist
• Armor
• Shield and armor shred
• Boots
• Really fed enemy carry
• VAYNE

Maw of Malmortius

Item

IDK maybe good if you're 25/0 and enemies have fed ap.

Force of Nature

Item

BEST ITEM

Spirit Visage

Item

OK item, don't know if it's better than Maw, but this item will boost your healing, help you against AP heavy comps and it works really well with champs like

Soraka

and

Yuumi

on your team as it boosts their healing to you.

Death's Dance

Item

Best armor item on Aatrox, hands down a must-buy.

Guardian Angel

Item

Works well as a second armor item if the enemy is full AD or heavily focused on AD.

Dead Man's Plate

Item

Ok item, nothing special, nice movement speed.

Thornmail

Item

Buy this if you bought bramble.

Serpent's Fang

Item

Not a great item on Aatrox, but it's really good to have on your team especially VS champs that shield a lot (

Ivern

,

Lulu

for example)

Black Cleaver

Item

All around a great item on Aatrox, good into every possible team, a must buy.

Mercury's Treads

Item

Big CC or a lot of AP damage.

Plated Steelcaps

Item

A lot of AD damage, CC is bearable.

Anathema's Chains

Item

Great item to reduce the enemies carry potential, can buy at any point in the game.

Edge of Night

Item

I can't believe I didn't think about this item when laning vs Vayne. Credit goes to the chinese rank 1 Aatrox XCM. Saw a clip of him with this item on TikTok, and it just cucks Vayne so hard. The only reason Aatrox maybe can't beat Vayne is because she knocks you away, but with this item she can't! Buy as a first item.



Matchups



Toplane

Even though I've listed most of the matchups as major threats, Aatrox pretty much doesn't have a matchup that you can't outplay or just play safe into and wait for a gank. If you're not comfortable with a matchup, don't force anything, it can cost you the lane and the game.

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Threats:

all

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Midlane

It's surprising how much better Aatrox can deal with midlaners even though most of them are ranged. You generally outdamage them and can easily lock them down with W and a follow up Q.

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Threats:

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Support



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Threats:

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Tricks

This section is for beginners, but some advanced players might learn a trick or two!

1. You can control how you land your Q and even extend its range if you press E. 2. E+Q is faster then Q+E. 3. You can cast your w a bit faster and at a further range if you first press E then W right after. 4. You can use your E to go through walls by standing next to them and using E into them. You can combine this trick with the first and and Q over walls, making for some unexpected plays. 5. You can Flash while using your Q to extend its range even further, combine this with the first trick and your Q range will increase dramatically! 6. Using your E at a short range right after you auto attack resets it, in turn, making you auto attack quicker. 7. If Aatrox's passive is up and he has vision on you, his stance will change (he kinda swings his sword around and looks like he's gonna stab you). This is useful to know when you're camping in a bush and want to ambush Aatrox, but you don't know if he has vision on you.

8. A great way to poke enemies under tower is to Q and insta E away after the Q hits. This allows you to poke enemies a bit deeper under their turret and not get a tower shot.

9. Aatrox Q cooldown is smaller if you don't use the third Q.



Skin tierlist

Don't hate, just my opinion.

Outro

Thanks for readings my first guide! I've been playing Aatrox for a while and it means the world to me that I can help other people pick this champ up. I really want to expland this guide a lot, maybe even add off-meta builds like jungle Aatrox. If there's something I can add or fix please comment down below.

Change log

V1.1 Added Skill Explanations to the guide, still a work in progress so the only skill explained is

Umbral Dash

V1.2 E wall dashes updated to make it easier to see what walls Aatrox can dash through.

V1.3 Guide expanded for midlane.

V1.4 Added skill explanations for

The Darkin Blade

Infernal Chains

World Ender

Deathbringer Stance

V1.5 Made Skill Explanations look better, added

Gwen

Rengar

Shaco

Heimerdinger

Sejuani

Yorick

Rumble

V1.6 Added a section "About Aatrox" that includes his identity, laning, weaknesses and strenghts.

V1.7 Updated lethality build to a better build path, added

Warwick

Nocturne

V1.8 Moved

Yorick

Rengar

V1.9 Support Aatrox build being worked on, Added the build and runes for it.

V2.0 Expanded Aatrox support matchup list.

V2.1 Added

V2.2 Support synergies finished.

V2.3 Added tip.

V2.4 Added Comet rune setup for Aatrox vs ranged.

V2.5 Updated whole guide for preseason.

V2.6 Season 13 update.

V2.7 Mini update for everything