Aatrox is a AD Bruiser with the potential to out damage AD carries and last as long as a bruiser, his abilities are perfect for Jungles right down to his passive, I will cover that more in the skills section below

for those that are in a rush, follow the items, skilling, your route is wraiths, red buff, wolf, Golem (gank if needed), blue buff, try to keep your passive at max with your W remember to toggle it off once you are full in order to get the heal

Here I will cover the items, why to buy them

Wriggle's Lantern: A great early item it gives you damage, armor, free wards and life steal

Mercury's Treads: for those pesky crowd controls, handy for when your ganking the lanes, your welcome to change them though to what ever you prefer

Black Cleaver: Gives you Damage, health and armor pen which is great for the AD bruisers and tanks, the cool down reduction is a nice little bonus for those long cool downs

Frozen Mallet: This will not only help to keep you alive longer with the extra health but also slow the enemy to prevent them from escaping since blades of torment has a very long cool down time


Blade of the Ruined King: A great item for pretty much any AD, Damage, Life steal, attack speed, slow, speed boost, MaxHP% damage and 5% Current health as damage

Atma's Impaler: a item to help against the AD carry late game with some extra armor along with crit chance, you also get a nice attack damage boost from the health we have from the previous items

Maw of Malmortius: The last item we buy and for good reason, The shield from it's passive it handy but only against magic attacks so basic attacks will still harm you, the magic resist is handy for the AP mid and AP supports however your knock up and damage should be enough to destroy them before they destroy you. The good part of this item though is the attack damage gain based on the % of health you have lost, making you stronger when you loose health from your own abilities

I personally go for Flash and Smite, Flash is handy for quickly closing the gap, getting away or jumping over a wall, Smite for the minion kill and extra gold, you can swap these for Ghost and Exhaust

as for runes you want Greater Mark of Attack Speed which work well with your passive and your main skill blood thirst/price, Greater Seal of Armor for surviving the jungle and extra protection from AD carries and Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist for surviving the late game AP mid

As i mentioned earlier Aatrox is the perfect jungle champion and I will explain why here, I will first start of with the skill order

Massacre> Blood Thirst / Blood Price> Blades of Torment> Dark Flight

Now to get into the skills, how to use them and more

Blood Well : This is a great passive, the health you loose is stored into you blood well up to a max which is shown as your mana bar, the fuller the bar is the more attack speed you get. when you take damage that would normally kill you you will be healed over a short duration for the amount stored, so if you are hit down to 1hp you will then start to regenerate say 156 stored health giving you more time to escape and if you are lucky the enemy will think you are already dead and just move a long

Dark Flight : this skill doe snot have much damage and has a long cool down, however what makes this great for the jungle is that it will knock up anyone in the center of the target, perfect for initiating a gank or jungle mob, jump over walls, escape and chasing

Blood Thirst / Blood Price : This is our bread and butter for Aatrox, while toggled on it will deal additional damage every 3rd strike and do damage to you, increasing your blood pool, while off you will gain health every 3rd hit, how well you play as Aatrox will determine on your use of this skill. This is great for the jungle as not only can you survive for longer meaning less time recalling but you also deal more damage on those ganks and with your high attack speed you will have no problem getting those 3rd hits

Blades of Torment : A lot like Dark flight the damage is not great nor is the cool down, so what makes this a good skill? It will slow and damage all enemies in the line making it easier for your team to chase down enemies that are straggling behind

Massacre : When it comes to ultimate this isn't exactly great, what it does do well is killing the enemy as fast as possible, it will increase your attack speed and your attack range thus getting more hits before having to move as well as deal some damage when initiating it

The route is different from your regular jungle simply because you don't need blue buff

I start at the wraiths with blood price ON so to get my blood pool max, pop a potion on your 3rd strike to keep you healthy.

Move onto Red buff this time having Blood Thirst / Blood Price OFF so to get the heal keeping you alive longer, use a potion if needed.

Move onto Golems leaving Blood Thirst / Blood Price off, only turn it on if your blood pool is not full, continue onto wolves and then blue, by the time you are level 3/4 you can start ganking where needed

Ganking

Now for the important part... again

when you are initiating a gank you want to have your Blood Thirst / Blood Price turned ON before you start the gank, when you are ready initiate with your Dark Flight aiming for the knock up while cutting them off from their turret if the target appears to have some defensive items then use your Massacre, hit them with Blades of Torment just as they get pass you to make the most of the slow, at this point they should be running back to their mommies or dead, it is that simple!

Thanks for reading, this is my first guide so any tips / comments will be appreciated I will try to keep this up to date and enjoy!