r/AatroxMains • u/UNIDENTIFIED_AATROX • 8h ago
Discussion Sundered Sky is Actually Holding Aatrox Back.
Sundered Sky has been in meta for the past 2 years, and has consistently had one of the strongest synergies on Aatrox - with the auto healing being empowered through Aatrox's ult.
It might seem like Sundered Sky has been great for Aatrox, but instead, I wanted to raise an argument as to why it has actually put Aatrox in a more unhealthy state.
The closest item to Sundered Sky would be Divine Sunderer back in the Mythic era, but it could be argued that Sundered Sky heals Aatrox more effectively than Sunderer ever did in certain teamfight scenarios, such as not requiring a sheen proc, and enabling instant healing from each opponent. Even goredrinker, with it's ludicrous full HP heal could only do so every 12 seconds and would fall off easily with 60% antiheal being applied back in those days. Sundered ALSO heals Aatrox to full HP on ult, but with 1 auto instead.
Sundered Sky is the closest thing we have in League's modern Item system to a "mythic" level item, and not building it really feels like shooting yourself in the foot. Why is this a problem? because it creates a lot of - at least in my opinion - unhealthy gameplay loops for Aatrox.
- It heavily reduces a lot of Aatrox's skill expression - a champion that is rewarded for hitting q's and punished for missing them is jailbreaked with 1 auto, allowing him to survive long enough for another rotation in situations where he normally would have died. Reduced skill expression incentivises riot to give less of a reward for hitting spells, holding Aatrox's built in healing back.
- Aatrox has started to become a more stat checking champion than he should be - sweetspots missed? just throw everything and pray sundered heals you enough to kill them.
- Aatrox's meta/core items start becoming stale, since building Sundered Sky is so powerful and clutch that not building it starts feeling really bad. Doing so for 3 years adds further fuel to the fire. Aatrox himself will never be boring, but his itemisation really has started to.
Yes, there are games where Sundered isn't preferable, such as vs full ranged comps, but honestly, the insane clutch power can still completely turn fights with even 1 good sundered sky proc.
If Sundered Sky was removed (or nerfed), Riot might have to look at rebalancing Aatrox to not be so dependant on exterior forms of healing through items, in which sense we might be looking at pre season 11 Aatrox levels of healing on his kit again, giving players a greater reward for hitting Aatrox's sweetspots, and greatly punishing players who miss them. This is at least in my opinion, the healthiest state for Aatrox. I would even say Goredrinker was a healthier item than SS for Aatrox (and that item was so OP), because at least with goredrinker there was a 12 second cooldown before you could use it in teamfights again, giving opponents enough time to burst down Aatrox down in that window. Goredrinker's healing also depended on the number of enemies hit - unlike Sundered Sky, which is fixed.
After all, it's not Aatrox's healing that people complain about, moreso his insane interaction with Sundered Sky (1 auto, full hp heal).
