Azir Rework Idea and Discussion

Azir ever since his release has thematically and ascetically one of my favorite champions (I love the ascended in general) and, as someone who really loved playing him in previous seasons and just decided its not worth the effort, I have had a few thoughts about what we could do to make him functional without breaking the pro scene.

 Way back when Rito was talking about all the iterations of Azir that culminated in what we have now they mentioned the armor and tassels as well as the spear shaped staff were to push the image that he is less of a typical mage and more of a battle mage so to speak. Personally I love battle mages and would love to see them turn that staff into the proper spear they originally imagined it to be and make Azir Melee. A large part of what makes Azir so hard to balance is that he is a lane bully that scales insanely well into later game team fights and objective taking and honestly I still want to be a scaling attack speed mage so if we take away range and and a result safety I think his numbers can be balanced more appropriately for everyone. 

I will now go into a few thoughts i have had about what we could change within his current kit to allow for a melee play style.

Passive: Azir has always had the issue of his construct able tower being much stronger in pro play where communication is much better so I think that honestly we ought to just do away with it. I like it visually but I don't think it is core to his game play or fantasy. What if we gave Azir a modifier to his basic attacks so that when he autos someone it marks them causing his soldiers to deal more damage, this incentivises Azir to go in as well as lets you tune his numbers on unmarked targets in such a way that he cant just destroy people in lane with poke. I do think it may make him a little too weak in a team fight as far as aoe goes but its a good start.

Q: I would leave this largely the same, maybe lower the cooldown since now for the soldiers to do good damage you need to auto them yourself as well which puts you in danger and limits target access quite a bit on its own. A potential tweak would be to make multiple soldiers hitting a target less core to Azir and have Q move only the closest soldier allowing Azir to set up some interesting and flashy plays with his E if he has soldiers spread around in good positions.

W: Honestly not something I feel a need to change at all

E: With Azir becoming Melee I would love to get the small knock up on whoever he hits back and maybe some of the health scaling as well since he is going to need to be a bit tougher most likely. Could also add a charge system or a Renekton style double dash if we want to get fancy with it but I am also not looking to give Azir an option to everything or undue safety.

R: Keep the same, I actually think this ability is naturally synergistic with a melee kit and personally I don't want to see the Shurima Shuffle go away.

If you made it this far thank you very much for reading and I am so sorry about the mess of a post i'm sure it turned into. Also I would love to hear thoughts, new ideas, and changes you would make to bring our Emperor into the light of the Sun (disc).