User blog comment:Chosmoss/Aatrox (Rework)/@comment-7709681-20151125200918/@comment-7709681-20151125235144

Revive
Such a passive on a champion that is meant to engage doesn't sound so bad and, additionally, gives him an AS steroid. The problem? Every other champions' Revive has tools fitting for the champ to determine how, and how hard they revive.

(eventually) gets resistances and forces the attacker to commit on killing her again, and against a timer, and for a champion meant to play safely, specially under tower, is excellent.

splits up into 4 blobs, and forces the opponent to kill each blob at a time to cancel his revive. Hard-engage with your E, followed by R, make a mess, likely get killed but either revive and make a mess again, or die and grant your teammates time.

can bait enemies and save allies almost reliably, with a reductible cooldown and a manageable cost.

But ? To keep his from reviving him with low HP, enough to get him immediately oneshot from the next ADC AA, he would have to either spam his abilities (And if he spams his, he basically loses the ability to chase once he has engaged until his  is back up, which the enemy team can abuse too.), or attack something. Meaning that if he doesn't spam, the enemy team will wait till his has emptied and continue to engage, making his passive hinders/limits him more than it helps him. Even more so that Riot adjusted his Base-AS and AS gain to accomplish for the fact that he can gain AS from the by using,  or , and then additional AS from his  (Hence Badly Implemented: Rather than having a consistent and meaningfull steroid, you have one divided in two, one half is too gated and the other is unreliable).

Sustain
Ws is what defines him as a champion, and for that, it does its job pretty poorly. Literally is the only thing that makes some sort of unique, yet it doesn't even give him this much of an advantage.

The sustain part is neat for early game, and makes for excellent tradeoffs early, but gets downright useless later on, since you are building 1-3 lifesteal items anyway, his AD scaling is pretty poor for a heal considering it hits only every 3rd strike.

scaling divided by 3 (Considering an amount per attack)? plus, at its best that's roughly 29 restoration (Asuming that, in the best of scenarios, you reach ) which, under this circunstances, is equivalent to 9% Lifesteal. You can literally outpower Aatrox bonus heal he gets per AD by building 3, or a with a lifesteal quint.

And yes, I am aware of the fact that get bonus heal once below 50% health, but then, that is a point where you are:
 * 1) Low enough for most executes, and...
 * 2) You'd have to wait 3 AAs for the heal to hit anyway.

can easily be kited and has no access to his sustain. His part would actually make for a good use... If it weren't contradicting itself.

The Damage part of it implies that you would want to stack bonus AD instead of tankiness, as does the flat heal on his, but the fact that he damages himself scaling with his own AD is flatout ridiculous.

Not only is the level 5 self inflicted damage already way high for a flat damage (a la, ), the fact that it also punishes you for building the path the rest of his kit wants makes it weak enough to not be used in extended trades. Adding to the mix makes him nearly unduelable with, but makes him consume too much health with , which is disgracefully it's only gating.