Ever since his rework in 2018, the Darkin Blade has been one of the most popular top laners in the League of Legends roster. He offers tankiness, sustain, and damage: basically everything you would ever want from a top lane champion.
That being said, Aatrox’s kit requires mechanical prowess and a great understanding of his strengths and his item spikes. Throughout the years, his builds have changed repeatedly, making it hard for players to find the most effective and optimal one.
To help you out, we have put together a guide to his best runes and build setups. That way, you can focus on learning Aatrox’s mechanics and quickly become a Darkin Blade master.
Here are the best builds for Aatrox in League.
Runes
Precision
Conqueror: No other rune is as powerful as Conqueror on Aatrox, so always take it as the main keystone rune. It grants him all the statistics you need and it’s easy to gain the stacks with his Q’s knock-ups and W’s slow. During the laning phase, it allows you to make aggressive trades without necessarily having a lot of items, and the sustain is just the icing on the cake.
Triumph: Health restoration can be useful during skirmishes and teamfights. In this row of the Precision tree, there isn’t much else you can go for since the other two runes, Overheal and Presence of Mind, do not synergize well with Aatrox’s kit.
Legend:Tenacity: Aatrox is quite an immobile champion without his ultimate activated, which means he’s easy to take down with crowd control. Tenacity should help him get out of nasty situations and it’s a good alternative especially when you won’t be building Mercury’s Treads.
Last Stand: This is a must-pick rune for the champion and there are no better choices. It works wonderfully with Aatrox’s kit and playstyle and is a great bonus during mid and late-game fights. Having an 11 percent damage increase is massive, which in return converts into more sustain, allowing Aatrox to get those great two-vs-one montage plays.
Resolve
Bone Plating: This rune is situational and it depends more on what kind of champion or enemies you’re facing. Generally speaking, you would want to get Bone Plating since it negates a lot of damage in a trade, especially in the early game. That being said, if you’re facing a ranged champion who can easily proc the rune, Second Wind will be the better alternative.
Revitalize: Similarly, you can go either for Revitalize or Unflinching in the last row of the Resolve tree. Both are equally valuable and the choice will depend on how effectively you can use either of the two. Revitalize works best if you also have other healing sources within the team that can be combined with yours. Instead, if you’re facing a team with lots of crowd controls, Unflinching is the rune to go.
Items
For Aatrox, there are two standard starting item combinations: Doran’s Blade or Doran’s Shield. The first one is better for aggressive trades and rewards you more if you manage to land your spells and deal damage, while the Shield declares a more passive playstyle to survive the enemies. For example, against a Jayce, you would prefer having Doran’s Sheild due to the range advantage and poke he has over you. While you will lose damage, you’re sure you can get through the laning phase safely and not hand kills to your opponents.
If you’re feeling confident with your mechanics, you can also consider buying the Long Sword immediately to have the Serrated Dirk in advance. The lethality item is the first item spike for Aatrox since it grants him greater dueling power and having it one or two minutes earlier into the game can make a difference in killing an opponent. That being said, it’s a risky strategy and it’s recommended to go for it only in certain matchups when you know you won’t get easily punished.
We mentioned how the Serrated Dirk is the important item rush and that is always the first item to buy in the Eclipse recipe. After that, you can build the Vampiric Scepter for the additional lifesteal and attack damage. At this point, you have two choices: you can either rush Eclipse and close out your Mythic Item, or you can first buy tier-two boots. Since Aatrox’s combos as well as trading ability can be enhanced by greater movement speed, finishing your boots is the way to go. Plated Steelcaps are great for gold efficiency and work well against attack damage champions, while Mercury’s Treads are stronger against magic damage champions.
Once you have the Eclipse, Death Dance is usually the second item for the build since it grants you more attack damage, armor, ability haste, and the passive that converts part of the damage into damage over time. Together with the Last Stand rune and the sustain from Aatrox’s abilities, you can heal enormous amounts of health in the span of seconds.
After building the two core items, you have to decide on your armor penetration item. While you already have some coming from the Eclipse’s passive, Serylda’s Grudge and Black Cleaver can drastically increase your damage output since enemies will have built armor in the meanwhile. The first one works best if you can manage to use the slow from its passive to land more Qs or Ws. If you need some tankiness early on, then Black Cleaver can grant you extra health to survive for longer periods of time.
For the defensive items, we have two main choices, one for armor and one for magic resistance. Since you already have armor from Death Dance, you’d likely prefer to build Maw of Malmortius first so you have both types of defenses in the build, granting you even higher sustain when the passive is activated. Guardian’s Angel is useful in the late-game teamfights when you can take advantage of the revive to engage or bait the enemies into focusing on you.
To conclude, this is what a typical Aatrox build could look like:
