Azir: Attack move, Sand soldiers and Sun disc!
Hello!
After the huge Azir bug-fix-spree in 4.18, I decided to re-try him in a normal game. The game ended up a 3v5, and I can honestly say I can't remember having that much fun in a game of LoL. We defended the base, with help of Sun Disc and the range and sheer power of Sand Soldiers, and we held out 40 minutes. While playing, though, I noticed some inconsistencies and possible bugs, and I figured I could try and help out after having gained some experience.
First off:
Attack move can lead to accidental Sun Discs or Thresh lanterns.
As seen in this thread, this issue is already known. As a frequent Marksman player, I tend to attack move (click) a lot, which is also very important with Azir's soldiers, and I ended up creating several towers completely on accident.
The thread mentions that a fix will likely not occur in 4.19, but I wanted to suggest the following: What if code was added to Sun Disc and Dark Passage that made it so that Attack Moving on them does not trigger them? I'm sure there's some kind of way to 'exclude' those clicking methods of working on them. If it's an Azir-only issue, perhaps adding a similar piece of code to him making it so he can't 'activate' things with attack move would be a work-around fix. Maybe this is a horrible solution, I just thought it was worth sharing.
Secondly:
- When Azir summons a soldier, the 'stop' command times out and he instantly resumes attacking at will.
This is a somewhat vague issue, and the above thread asked for help on this. I believe I half figured out what's going on, somewhat relating my Marksman experience again. Most experienced players will know that if you use "stop" or "s", your character stops moving and doesn't automatically attack targets in range. They will also know that casting a spell or issuing a command, etc, will cancel this and make you start attacking again.
I think the handling of Azir's soldiers would be much smoother if summoning his soldiers didn't cause him to Instantly start attacking again. There's not enough time to press s or start walking again, sometimes, so you'll just end up attacking anyway. Makes for awkward situations under an enemy turret or kiting around dragon/baron.
Now, for the point mentioned in the bug fix thread:
- There are constant reports (and I've certainly seen this myself) of people summoning a soldier, immediately order the soldier to attack, and the attack failing. We cannot reproduce this in isolation though, so there must be something we're missing. If you have any further info here (or a video! A video would be great) please let us know.
I had a thought that, at least in my head, seemed somewhat logical. What if, and this is based on my experience as Marksman and my recent Azir games, the cancelled "s" command makes for an attack so soon that Azir starts the animation, but due to the arrival of his newly summoned Sand Soldier, the soldier finishes it? It seems to me like the attack happens sufficiently fast after summoning the soldier, that the soldier wants to attack for you but hasn't finished his summoning animation yet. It feels like a bad interaction happens somewhere in this mechanic.
Perhaps it's simply a problem of the Soldier taking over Azir's attack before fully finishing the animation, and thus not being able to do damage yet. In other words: it takes over Azir's attacks too quickly.
I have to say that I absolutely love the mechanics, skill requirements, skill cap and story behind this champion. I trust the balance team to keep him in a good enough spot to at least have fun with him in normals. Maybe if I get good enough with him someday, I'll whip him out in ranked and surprise people. :) Thank you for this amazing champion and your continued work on him and his kit. I will definitely keep playing him, and I'll be sure to have some kind of replay recording software running in the background so that should the latter issue happen, I'll be able to record it and provide you with a (slow motion!) video.
This message is aimed mostly at developers or people who can do something with this information, but feel free to discuss and speculate on the issue at hand!
Edit:
I just realised a lot of other things that were apparently fixed, according to the thread, that most definitely aren't:
- Fixed a bug where Emperor's Divide would sometimes cause a target to be pinned against a wall for the full duration
Just today I pinned a 
Gankplank against the north most wall in toplane. He was basically stunned for the full duration, allowing me to pick him off with Sand Soldiers from a long distance. He was basically trapped in a barely visible curve in the wall.
- Fixed a bug where Emperor's Divide would fail to fully bounce targets to the far side of the wall
I was proud to pull off my first successful "Azir-Insec" at a tower, only to see 
Vayne tumble away mid-bounce, straight through the wall, out of the tower range. Sad face.
Other bugs or things that felt wrong:
- Casting Shifting Sands will sometimes fail to provide a shield, even though an enemy was hit and knocked up. I noticed this happens more often when the enemy is extremely close to the point of departure (so when you basically instantly hit a champion).
Lee Sin's Resonating Strike passes right through the wall. I don't know if this was a one-time thing, or if it's intentional, but it feels wrong. I honestly expected the wall to block him. This may be true for other non-flash/blink abilities also. Perhaps I just expect too much of it. ^.^