The new Aatrox has arrived in League of Legends North America and Europe servers. Let’s check out his hero spotlight, abilities, tips and tricks and new bio.
AATROX CHAMPION SPOTLIGHT
The end of the world arrives with wings and sword. See how the Darkin Blade unleashes obliteration.
AATROX ABILITIES
PASSIVE: DEATHBRINGER STANCE
Aatrox’s next basic attack has increased range and deals a percentage of the target’s maximum health as damage. This attack also significantly reduces all healing and shielding on the target for a few seconds.
Deathbringer Stance’s cooldown is slightly reduced whenever Aatrox casts a spell or when he lands the edge of The Darkin Blade on a champion.
Q: THE DARKIN BLADE
Aatrox swings his greatsword up to three times. Each cast increases in damage, impacts a unique area of effect, and can hit with the edge of the blade (a second, smaller hitbox).
Edge of the blade: Hitting enemies at the far end of the first two casts and the center of the third briefly knocks them up and deals significantly more damage.
W: INFERNAL CHAINS
Aatrox smashes the ground, damaging the first enemy hit and briefly slowing them. If it’s a champion or large monster, they are chained to the impact area.
If the chained enemy is still in the impact area after a few seconds, they are dragged to the center and take damage again.
E: UMBRAL DASH
Passive: Aatrox heals for a portion of the damage he deals.
Active: Aatrox dashes, increasing his attack damage for a few seconds. Umbral Dash can store up to 2 charges and can be used simultaneously with The Darkin Blade.
R: WORLD ENDER
Aatrox unleashes his full might, becoming monstrous in size and taking flight on massive wings. As he transforms, Aatrox fears nearby minions and briefly increases his movement speed (this bonus is reactivated when out of combat).
While transformed, Aatrox increases his overall damage and gains a Blood Well that stores health over World Ender’s duration, reviving him if he takes lethal damage while in his true form.
PLAYING AS AATROX
Aatrox is an infernal warlord who cleaves earth and bone to massacre entire armies. Raze the battlefield with The Darkin Blade, landing precise hits with the edge to utterly decimate your opponents. Aatrox brings more ruin with the blade than basic attacks—focus on cooldown reduction to unleash a constant onslaught. As enemies learn to dodge, bind them in place with Infernal Chains for a guaranteed guillotine, or outplay their evasion with an Umbral Dash as you wield The Darkin Blade.
Umbral Dash’s passive turns bloody teamfights into fonts of health, keeping Aatrox alive for as long as his carnage continues. Allies who shield and sustain him for more swings of The Darkin Blade will be rewarded with a frontline juggernaut who can take as much damage as he deals. Wary enemies will try to slay the darkin before his Blood Well fills, but even death cannot halt his warpath once Aatrox transforms with World Ender. Flee, or die.
TIPS AND TRICKS
Keep advancing on the enemy to ensure you catch them with the edge of The Darkin Blade—each cast moves the hitbox closer to Aatrox, with the final swing of his greatsword crushing those immediately in front of him.
The combination of Deathbringer Stance’s reduction to your enemy’s healing and Umbral Dash’s passive boost to your own means Aatrox can go head-to-head with the biggest, bulkiest foes. As long as you’re dealing damage, it’ll be hell to bring you down.
Don’t wait to become the World Ender: use your ultimate early to rapidly join the fight from afar and start filling your Blood Well. The longer you wage war in your true form, the more you’ll recover upon reviving—time it right, and your death will give you a second health bar for the final slaughter.
AATROX NEW BIO
Whether mistaken for a demon or god, many tales have been told of the Darkin Blade… but few know his real name, or the story of his fall.
In ancient times, long before desert sands swallowed the empire, a mighty champion of Shurima was brought before the Sun Disc to become the avatar for a now forgotten celestial ideal. Remade as one of the Ascended, his wings were the golden light of dawn, and his armor sparkled like a constellation of hope from beyond the great veil.
Aatrox was his name. He was at the vanguard of every noble conflict. So true and just was his conduct that other god-warriors would always gather at his side, and ten thousand mortals of Shurima marched behind him. When Setaka, the Ascended warrior-queen, called for his help against the rebellion of Icathia, Aatrox answered without hesitation.
But no one predicted the extent of the horrors that the rebels would unleash—the Void quickly overwhelmed its Icathian masters, and began the grinding annihilation of all life it encountered.
After many years of desperate battle, Aatrox and his brethren finally halted the Void’s perverse advance, and seared the largest rifts shut. But the surviving Ascended, the self-described Sunborn, had been forever changed by what they had encountered. Though Shurima had triumphed, they all had lost something in their victory… even noble Aatrox.
And in time, Shurima fell, as all empires must.
Without any monarch to defend, or the existential threat of the Void to test them, Aatrox and the Sunborn began to clash with one another, and eventually this became a war for the ruins of their world. Mortals fleeing the conflict came to know them instead by a new and scornful name: the darkin.
Fearing that these fallen Ascended were as dangerous to Runeterra’s survival as the Void incursions had been, the Targonians intervened. It is said that the Aspect of Twilight gave mortals the knowledge to trap the darkin, and the newly reborn Aspect of War united many in fighting back against them. Never fearing any foe, Aatrox and his armies were ready, and he realized only too late that they had been deceived. A force greater than a thousand dead suns pulled him inside the sword he had carried into battle countless times, and forever bound his immortal essence to it.
The weapon was a prison, sealing his consciousness in suffocating, eternal darkness, robbing him even of the ability to die. For centuries, he strained against this hellish confinement… until some nameless mortal was foolish enough to try and wield the blade once more. Aatrox seized upon this opportunity, forcing his will and an imitation of his original form onto his bearer, though the process quickly drained all life from the new body.
In the years that followed, Aatrox groomed many more hosts—men and women of exceptional vitality or fortitude. Though his grasp of such magics had been limited in life, he learned to take control of a mortal in the span of single breath, and in battle he discovered he could feast on his victims to build himself ever larger and stronger.
Aatrox traveled the land, searching desperately, endlessly, for a way return to his previous Ascended form… but the riddle of the blade proved unsolvable, and in time he realized he would never be free of it. The flesh he stole and crudely shaped began to feel like a mockery of his former glory—a cage only slightly larger than the sword. Despair and loathing grew in his heart. The heavenly powers that Aatrox had once embodied had been wiped from the world, and all memory.
Raging against this injustice, he arrived at a solution that could only be born of a prisoner’s desperation. If he could not destroy the blade or free himself, then he would embrace oblivion instead.
Now, Aatrox marches toward this merciless goal, bringing war and death wherever he goes. He clings to a blind hope: if he can drive all of creation into a final, apocalyptic battle—where everything, everything else is destroyed—then maybe he and the blade will also cease to exist.
