Aatrox is absolutely busted. Riot admitted as much in a post on Reddit that laid bare just how unhealthy the champion currently is, and how his rework—currently on PBE—is aiming to fix him.
That doesn’t help professional teams that have to suffer through his current level of insane damage, though. Just look at poor SK Telecom T1 top laner Park “Thal” Kwon-hyuk’s experience playing against him in his team’s second game vs. MVP on Wednesday morning.
Thal did almost everything right against Kang “ADD” Geon-mo’s Aatrox. Sure, ADD had the advantage of a counter pick. But Thal had Darius, a champion with early damage and healing in Darius. He took down the Aatrox passive and with the help of jungler Park “Blossom” Beom-chan, got First Blood.
After that, Thal diligently built a CS lead and did his best not to die. It should have been a situation from which ADD could not recover. But he did, because he played Aatrox.
ADD had help—MVP jungler Kim “Yondu” Kyu-seok swooped in to get him some kills. And those kills were not Thal’s fault, what is he supposed to do? Not get taken from 100 to zero while under tower because Aatrox is busted?
The crazy part is, those ganks from Yondu didn’t actually slingshot ADD ahead in a material sense. Thal still had a CS lead and a similar scoreline. But somehow, after his Rageblade, Hydra, and Ninja Tabis were finished, ADD became unstoppable. He melted through champions and towers alike. In one hilarious instance, SKT was forced to send four people to deal with him—and MVP still got a turret trade on the other side of the map.
That one champion almost single-handedly won MVP the game—all without ever having a lead on his lane opponent. In the current meta, there aren’t ranged ADCs that can DPS him down from distance while kiting away. With only a Lucian in their arsenal, SKT were basically inviting MVP to dive them. The game’s outcome was virtually decided in less than 15 minutes.
That’s one of the chief problems with the current meta: bot lane diversity has increased, which is good. But games snowball way too fast and even teams that start with a few good plays can see everything crash in an instant. So while Aatrox has some specific problems, there are issues with balance in multiple areas.
The good news for most of us is that Aatrox’s rework, slated for Patch 8.13, is coming soon. The bad news? Competitive play is still on 8.11. That means the pros will have to deal with him for a lot longer.
