Aldous

Aldous only works if your team buys you twelve minutes

Aldous has a permanent stacking mechanic that caps at 650 stacks. Every stack adds 5 physical damage to his enhanced punch. That means he does not spike from items the way normal fighters do. He spikes from time spent farming. If your team cannot hold the map 4v5 for the first 10-12 minutes while Aldous collects stacks in the EXP lane, the pick is sabotage.

Pick Aldous when the enemy draft has squishy carries you can fly to and delete once you hit 300+ stacks: Layla, Hanabi, Miya, Nana, Lesley. Pick him when the enemy lacks a strong invade jungler who will camp your lane early. Pick him when your own team has early-game pressure from the other four positions: a roam like Mathilda or Rafaela who can babysit your lane, a jungler who can contest objectives without you, and a mid laner who rotates to fill the gap you leave by farming.

Avoid Aldous when the enemy has Chou (his kick knocks you out of your ult flight and repositions you under his tower), Franco (hook plus suppress cancels everything you do after landing), or Phoveus (his passive triggers on your ult dash, pulling him directly onto you the moment you land). Avoid him when the enemy EXP laner is Esmeralda, Paquito, Thamuz, or Yu Zhong, all of whom out-trade you pre-stacks and zone you off minions. Avoid him when your own team already has a late-game marksman, because two scaling heroes and zero early pressure means you lose objectives before either of you comes online.

If you cannot name which of the enemy's five heroes your ult will delete at 15 minutes, Aldous is the wrong pick.

The one thing that makes Aldous work

Aldous is not a fighter in any meaningful sense of the word. He is a savings account that punches people.

Every minion last-hit with Contract: Soul Steal adds stacks. Every stack adds 5 physical damage to his next enhanced basic attack. At 100 stacks that is 500 bonus damage on a single auto. At 300 it is 1500. At the 650 cap it is 3250 on top of the base 450 plus his total physical attack. The math is not subtle: Aldous does not scale with items the way other fighters do. He scales with time, patience, and disciplined last-hitting.

The passive shield reinforces the same idea. Every third basic attack generates a shield that grows with his stack count: 500 base plus 3 per stack. At 400 stacks that shield is 500 + 1200 = 1700 HP every 5 seconds. He is not tanky because of items. He is tanky because he farmed.

Contract: Chase Fate exists to convert all that stored damage into a kill. It reveals every enemy on the map for 5 seconds, then lets him fly across the battlefield to land on one of them. The ult's own damage (250-400 plus 8% of the target's max HP) is secondary. The real payload is the S1 enhanced basic attack he throws the instant he lands, carrying every stack he has ever earned.

Once that loop clicks, Aldous stops looking like a bruiser and starts looking like a delivery system for a single overloaded punch.

Laning: the first eight minutes

Aldous's lane phase is not about trading. It is about turning minions into stacks without dying.

1. Auto the minion to low HP, then press S1 for the kill. Contract: Soul Steal gives 4 stacks for killing a regular minion and 10 stacks for a Siege Minion. Missing the execute wastes the stacks entirely. The enhanced basic attack deals 300% extra base damage to minions, so it will usually secure the kill if you time it right. At early levels with low base damage, wait until the minion is below roughly 25% HP before pressing S1.

2. Prioritize Siege Minions above everything else. A Siege Minion killed with S1 gives 10 stacks. You also earn 5 passive stacks just from being near any Siege Minion that dies. That is 15 stacks from one cannon minion versus 4 from a regular last-hit. The math makes Siege Minions worth more than three regular minions for stacking purposes. Never let one die to your own wave if your S1 is off cooldown.

3. Save S2 for survival, not trading. Contract: Explosion gives 30% damage reduction and a 0.5-to-1-second stun, which sounds like a trading tool. It is not. The 12-second cooldown at rank 1 means you are defenseless for the next 10 seconds against any gank. Use it only when the enemy jungler shows on your minimap heading your direction, or when you are about to die under tower. Sprint serves the same purpose: do not burn it for a chase before 10 minutes. Keep it as your escape.

The power spike you are farming toward

Aldous's first item is War Axe, every game. At 2100 gold it is the cheapest Tier 3 damage item in the game. It gives 10% CDR to rotate S1 faster for stacking, +35 Physical Attack for the S1 scaling, +400 HP to survive trades, and 8% Spell Vamp to sustain off S1 casts during laning. The stacking passive (Fighting Spirit) also synergizes with his trading pattern: each hit builds extra Physical Attack and Physical Penetration, which means a full S2-into-S1 trade sequence delivers the punch with boosted stats.

But War Axe alone is not the spike. The spike you care about is War Axe plus roughly 250-300 stacks, which usually arrives around the 10-to-12-minute mark if your last-hitting is disciplined. At that point, S1 deals north of 2000 physical damage before armor reduction, which is enough to threaten any mage or marksman from about 70% HP.

Before that threshold you are a melee minion with a global ult. After it you are a guided missile. The difference between "I can trade" and "I can delete" is roughly 80 correctly last-hit minions.

Blade of Despair goes second because S1 scales with 100% of total physical attack, and Blade of Despair gives the highest raw physical attack in the game at +160. Its passive (25% extra physical attack against targets below 50% HP) compounds with the one-punch pattern: the ult landing damage often pushes the target below half, and then the S1 follow-up benefits from the bonus. With War Axe, Blade of Despair, and 300+ stacks, the one-punch rotation starts producing kills.

Teamfight positioning and target priority

The reflex when a teamfight breaks out is to stand with your frontline and start swinging. That reflex loses Aldous games. He is not a teamfighter. He is an assassin who happens to look like a fighter.

Your ult has a 50-to-60-second cooldown and reveals every enemy on the map. If you use it to fly into a 5v5 brawl, you land into CC, blow S2 to survive for 2 seconds, die, and accomplish nothing your actual initiator could not have done better. The correct play is to ult when the fight has already started, identify who is isolated or retreating, and fly to them. The 1-second knockback on landing plus the S1 enhanced punch kills any mage or marksman at 300+ stacks. You are the cleanup, not the engage.

Three positioning rules:

1. Split-push until your ult is up, group when it is. Aldous generates stacks faster in a solo lane than in a team rotation. When Chase Fate is on cooldown, you are worth more in a side lane adding stacks than standing in the river doing nothing. When it is ready, rejoin your team. The threat of your ult forces the enemy to stay grouped, which limits their map control even if you never press the button.

2. Never fly into fog you have not scouted. Chase Fate reveals enemies for 5 seconds before you choose a target. Use those 5 seconds. Count how many enemies are near your target. If the target is alone or with one ally, fly. If three or more enemies are within a screen of your landing point, do not fly. The vision is half the skill.

3. Cancel the flight if the window closes. You can press ult again mid-dash to cancel and blink a short distance in your chosen direction instead of landing on the target. If the target flickers into their tower or their team collapses onto the landing point, cancel. A cancelled ult that keeps you alive is worth infinitely more than a completed ult that trades you for a support.

If your roam is Angela, the calculus changes entirely. Angela can ult onto Aldous during his Chase Fate flight, arriving together for combined burst. If you have an Angela on your team, ping your target and wait for her ult before you fly.

Itemization: defaults vs flex slots

Frame the build as three locked slots and three real conversations.

The locked three are Tough Boots, War Axe, and Blade of Despair. Tough Boots because Aldous lands from his ult directly into enemies and needs CC reduction to survive the first second after impact. War Axe for the reasons above. Blade of Despair because raw physical attack scales his S1 harder than any other stat.

The fourth slot is the CDR conversation. Hunter Strike gives +80 Physical Attack, 10% CDR, and 15 flat Physical Penetration. That flat pen matters in mid-game when enemy squishies still have low armor. Endless Battle gives +60 Physical Attack, 8% Hybrid Lifesteal, and the Divine Justice passive (60% of Physical Attack as true damage on the next basic attack after using a skill). Since you activate S1 before every punch, the true damage fires on the follow-up auto. Hunter Strike is the stronger damage option. Endless Battle is the stronger sustain option. Build Hunter Strike when ahead, Endless Battle when even or behind.

The fifth slot is the pen conversation. Malefic Roar when the enemy has two or more armor stackers. Skip it if the enemy team is squishy. Your stacks already handle squishies without pen. The +30% Physical Penetration plus the Armor Buster passive is specifically for cutting through enemy tanks who built Dominance Ice or Antique Cuirass.

The sixth slot is the survival conversation. Immortality if you are the primary dive target and need a second chance after a failed ult. Brute Force Breastplate (+600 HP, +20 Physical Defense, stacking defense passive) if you are taking sustained damage in extended fights. Athena's Shield against magic-heavy comps. Do not default to another damage item in the last slot. A dead Aldous deals zero damage regardless of how many stacks he has.

Boot alternative. Warrior Boots when the enemy is full physical damage and has no meaningful CC. Tough Boots in every other scenario. The CC reduction is too important for a hero who lands directly on top of enemies.

Mistakes that lose Aldous games

Missing S1 last-hits on minions early. Every minion you fail to execute with Contract: Soul Steal is 4 stacks you never get back. At 8 minutes, the difference between an Aldous who landed 90% of his S1 last-hits and one who landed 60% is roughly 80-100 stacks. That is 400-500 damage per punch for the rest of the game. The discipline is tedious, but the math is not optional: auto the minion down to S1 execute range, then press S1. Do not use S1 to poke the enemy hero in lane unless you are certain no minion is about to die.

Ulting into grouped enemies. Chase Fate's 1-second knockback does not protect you from the other four heroes standing next to your target. If you fly into a cluster, you knock one person back and immediately eat every CC the rest of the team has. The correct Aldous ult lands on a 1v1 or a 1v2 at most. Three or more enemies near the target means you do not fly. Use the 5-second vision window to find the isolated target, or let the ult expire and split-push instead.

Using S2 to engage instead of survive. Contract: Explosion has a 0.5-to-1-second stun and 30% damage reduction. Walking up, stunning with S2, then punching with S1 feels intuitive, but S2's 12-second cooldown at rank 1 leaves you with zero defensive tools for the next 10 seconds. If you opened with S2 and the fight extends past your punch, you have no damage reduction and no stun for the counter-engage. The correct sequence after an ult landing is: land (1s knockback), immediately S1 punch, then hold S2 for when the enemy retaliates or when you need to retreat.

Fighting before the stack threshold. At 150 stacks, S1 deals 750 bonus from stacks alone. That is a bruise, not a kill. At 300 stacks, S1 deals 1500 bonus from stacks, enough to threaten most squishies when combined with base damage and items. If you force fights at 8 minutes with 120 stacks, you are a melee hero with no gap closer outside a 60-second ult. The game does not reward impatient Aldous players. Wait for the spike.

Ignoring the vision component of Chase Fate. The ult reveals every enemy on the map for 5 seconds even if you never fly. That information is worth using even when no kill is available. Press ult to check for ambushes before your team takes Lord, to verify enemy positions before a split push, or to confirm the enemy jungler is not about to contest Turtle. Then let the ult expire without dashing. A 50-second cooldown is short enough that you can afford to burn it for intel every other objective fight.

Key tips