Pending Azir ReWork (PLEASE GOD NO)

J3diMindTr1cks·Jul 23, 2016·2 votes·2,101 views

Okay, so I just read a rioters post on this and it actually really worries me. I'm pretty upset actually. So apparently there is a plan to rework Azir basically because Riot believes he isn't in a good place. So I believe it was Riot Gypsy who said I imagine to get Azir in a good place without a full on rework they will need to one of two things. Either COMPLETELY REMOVE the Sharima Shuffle or significantly nerf his range and turn him into a battle mage. Two things one why is Riot nerfing a character that in the higher elo's didn't even have over a 50% win rate and two if they make one of these potential changes you might as well just kill the character. Well I mean they have already nerfed him into the grave already. I mean lets see we made his range shorter once already, not so bad, then they got rid of his knock up so now its much more difficult to do his Sharima Shuffle. Then removed his siege mechanic. Lastly the crushed his dps. So now that he has the 3rd worst win rate among I believe mid laners the answer is to rework him. The reason I care about this so much is because Azir is one of the most unique champions in the game. He can do so many things. He empowers strong players for being skilled, he can play make, and he can hard carry. If you remove the Sharima Shuffle then he just becomes a one dimensional ranged caster... all the creativity of the character is gone. If you destroy his range even more then he basically just becomes an assassin or someone he loses the ability to carry because everything he will do become inherently risky. Everyone is aware that azir is basically a ap adc, but that is what makes him great. He is a champion that supports someone being skilled and or hardworking. He is one the best made characters you have come out with in my opinion and he recently didn't have a outrageous win rate. I understand he is highly contested in pro play but he isn't the only character that is or has been. Azir right now is falling in the same category as Lucian. He is too popular for his own good in the pro scene. Look at the end of the day I know you will do what you want and I'll probably just stop playing the character. Sucks for me, but I'm seriously asking you to find a better answer then destroying his kit simply because he is popular among skilled players. Please do not change or ruin one of the best characters and one of the reasons I like this game just because he gets spammed in pro play. I'm pleading with you. I also believe I'm not the only person who feels this way. At least I hope.

For Shurima....

21 Comments

CrazFight Jul 23, 20163 votes

1: Trump hasn't privatised Education yet so education is free, English told you how to write paragraphs 2: Azir has been a problem since his release, at least they learned from kalista that maybe nerfing him to nothing isn't the best option 3: what would you propose they do instead ;)

J3diMindTr1cksJul 23, 20161 votes

1.) Not gonna lie, should of put separate paragraphs but I was kind of rushed.

2.) Kalista got nerfed when they removed the boot enchantments. Then ended up having a huge impact on her. Not mention in high elo she has a high win rate. Azir has consistently been sitting around 48 to 50 percent. So when you say problem what do you mean? He doesn't have a outrageous win rate like some champions have had. Ahri at one point had a 57 percent win rate, Sej had a 57% and Sivir a 58% win rate. Rammus had a 60% win rate at one point and Talon at 62% win rate. The highest I've ever scene was Scarner at 64%. So explain to me how Azir is the problem when he has never even come close to these win rates.

When say a problem from release I don't understand what you mean. Most champions get changed immediately at release. Rengar did, Zed did and Aerilion Sol. Most champions will see some changes at release so I don't think saying he was a problem at release is fair since most champions can be viewed that way.

3.) Here is the thing after they removed his knock up and nerfed his range he still didn't have a crazy win rate. I personally feel that before they nerfed his damage he was in a good place. Remember the real reason they believe he should get changed is because in a pros hands he is very powerful and he gets spammed in pro play. He is basically pick or ban. The problem with that is you are changing not because he is overtly powerful but simply because he is popular. Lucian is going through similar problems. Since pro's like him as a champion he keeps getting nerfed but even know that they nerfed him into the dirt people like Doublelift said bump you riot I'm still going to play him. So personally I didn't think he needed to be changed.

4.) Gypsy did say he felt Azir was capable of too much. The problem with that logic is then you end up with a bunch of one dimensional characters. Not mention Azir has very clear and defined weak points. One he is pretty weak early. Two, a good assassin player can shut him down. See Zed, Talon, Rengar, or Kha' zix.

I'm not mad at anyone for their opinion. I just feel that if you remove these aspects of the character then his no longer Azir. He becomes champion 120. He becomes boring, irrelevant and no longer creative.

EedatJul 23, 20164 votes

Kalista got nerfed when they removed the boot enchantments.

No, Kalista got nerfed when they directly nerfed her over and over and over again

Not mention in high elo she has a high win rate

Flat out lie. She has a 45% win rate even in higher ELOs

So explain to me how Azir is the problem when he has never even come close to these win rates.

High skill cap skews his win rate. A new Azir player is garbage but an experienced one can solo carry games. You are comparing him to champions that were broken on one specific patch that have much easier kits for people to pick up. Azir has been a powerhouse since release in the right hands. This is why people and Riot themselves keep telling people win rates arent everything.

the real reason they believe he should get changed is because in a pros hands he is very powerful and he gets spammed in pro play. He is basically pick or ban

Partly, but even normal players with a lot of experience on him are absolutely oppressive

Gypsy did say he felt Azir was capable of too much. The problem with that logic is then you end up with a bunch of one dimensional characters. Not mention Azir has very clear and defined weak points. One he is pretty weak early. Two, a good assassin player can shut him down. See Zed, Talon, Rengar, or Kha' zix.

Azir is not weak early. Getting very sick of hearing this. Azir is a strong laner with an insane late game. Azir also counters assassins I dont know why you think he is weak to them. Azir is pretty much only weak to champs that out range him.

J3diMindTr1cksJul 23, 20161 votes

{quoted}

No, Kalista got nerfed when they directly nerfed her over and over and over again

Flat out lie. She has a 45% win rate even in higher ELOs

High skill cap skews his win rate. A new Azir player is garbage but an experienced one can solo carry games. You are comparing him to champions that were broken on one specific patch that have much easier kits for people to pick up. Azir has been a powerhouse since release in the right hands. This is why people and Riot themselves keep telling people win rates arent everything.

Partly, but even normal players with a lot of experience on him are absolutely oppressive

Azir is not weak early. Getting very sick of hearing this. Azir is a strong laner with an insane late game. Azir also counters assassins I dont know why you think he is weak to them. Azir is pretty much only weak to champs that out range him.

Okay, yes Kalista got a standard nerf. BUT when they removed they boot enchantments it was a indirect nerf to her. It shortened her jump distance. Fact, I'm not lying.

As for Kalista's win rate that you posted that is counting low elo. In the EU LCS right now she has 64% win rate. The rate you posted counts low elo. I looked it up before I posted I wasn't lying. She has a high win rate in higher ELO's. If you don't believe me that is your business.

Also win rates aren't everything but they are the first green light that a champion is overtly overpowered. Its the first thing that tends to get Riots attention. If a champion has a 54% or above win rate they tend to get nerfed in some way. Skill cap is not a good reason to change or nerf a champion. You shouldn't punish someone for being skilled or well practiced.

I'm aware normal players find him oppressive but alot of that has to do with lack of experience or understanding the champion. A lot of people find Illaoi oppressive but in higher elo she is considered bad because all you have to doe is dodge her Q and E and she really has nothing she can do. Which by the way is easy to do. A lot of players find a good Yasou oppressive but he hasn't been nerfed in a while. He has similar problems where a strong Yasou can solo carry a game.

As for Azir counters, I'll agree counter picks can sometimes be squewed based on a person's personal experience but two basic counters to Azir are Fizz and Zed. Those two are assasins and are widely considered a counter two him. As for Azir having a strong laning phase sure. The problem is Azir doesn't truely come online until late game. Azir is not the be all and lets be realistic here there are not as many good Azir players as people think. My proof for that is his lack luster win rate.

Sightless66Jul 23, 20161 votes

Okay, yes Kalista got a standard nerf. BUT when they removed they boot enchantments it was a indirect nerf to her.

While you are technically correct that the enchantment removal nerfed her, it really was a very small effect. By itself, it was almost negligible. Her winrate barely even shifted in the patch they did it. Her direct nerfs were much more important. When Riot wanted to nerf Kalista, they did.

I'm aware normal players find him oppressive

It's not just normal players. Azir was considered the god of midlane at high level play, including competitive. He's not like Illaoi, who is only really oppressive at low elo and is average to slightly good above it (she is used a bit in competitive since her most recent buffs, so just saying that is "considered bad" isn't really accurate anymore). He isn't like Yasuo, who doesn't see competitive play.

Those two are assasins and are widely considered a counter two him.

I'd refine that statement. Zed and Fizz are often considered counters to a bad Azir player, but a good Azir player has tons of options for responding to them. He's not great against them, but he's still perfectly fine at responding to them. This is particularly true as soon as the laning phase ends, at which point they really don't have much on him at all. In contrast, many of the champions that Azir is good against really can't respond to Azir, and don't gain any more options against him as the game progresses. That's the problem with Azir. He always has an option for responding to you, but you can very easily have no options for responding to him.

In the EU LCS right now she has 64% win rate.

Competitive winrates should be questioned unless they are also combined with extremely high pickrates. They are very, very susceptible to being influenced by factors seperate from champion strength. If Kalista is only played by the best teams (teams good enough to win without picking her) and she's never played by the worst teams, then her winrate will be inflated.

It is for this reason that popularity and banrate are generally better stats for competitive strength than winrate. Times first-picked is a good stat too, although it's hard to find that.

Of course, in plat+ solo queue, we can say that she only has a 45% winrate. Champion.gg supports this claim.

LohenngrammJul 23, 20161 votes

Azir is weak early, it's just that there aren't many traditional mid-lane champions capable of punishing him for it. If you don't believe me, just take him top lane against a bruiser or a tank. You'll have fun poking them down for the first 3 levels or so, then they'll come back to lane with a Spectre's Cowl and repeatedly kill you.

MarshbouyJul 23, 20162 votes

please make multiple paragraphs

TractJul 23, 20162 votes

I am an Azir main and I saw the post, and almost threw up. I am working on a far far far more extensive post that I hopfully will finish next week that hopfully rito actually sees.

CrazFight Jul 23, 20161 votes

{quoted}

I am an Azir main and I saw the post, and almost threw up. I am working on a far far far more extensive post that I hopfully will finish next week that hopfully rito actually sees.

Include paragraphs ;)

Sightless66Jul 23, 20162 votes

why is Riot nerfing a character that in the higher elo's didn't even have over a 50% win

Azir was very strong in competitive play and challenger level play. Unfortunately, that means that he had to be balanced around challenger+ play. Riot's basic design philosphy is to not let a champion be overpowered in any arena. They have to be balanced around their strongest point, not their weakest one.

Keep in mind, his solo queue winrate is not well correlated with his competitive strength. Even when he had a 100% pick/ban a year or two ago, he still didn't come even close to breaking 50% in solo queue. It's the same for champions like Leblanc, Ryze and Kassadin, who have all needed nerfs in the past despite having bad winrates in solo queue at the time. Their strengths were best realized in competitive play, so that's where they got balanced around. Their solo queue winrates were not useful data.

It's similar to how Master Yi got nerfed for his 53% solo queue winrate even though he had literally no presence in competitive play. He was stronger in solo queue than in competitive, so he had to get balanced around solo queue even if it left him unplayably bad at competitive play. Azir's problem is similar, except with competitive being the place where he is strong and everywhere else being his weakness.

I'll agree that Azir is a bit too weak right now, given that I think we're only seeing very limited pro play for him, but we really don't have much room for giving any power back to him.

He can do so many things.

That's the problem. When Azir is strong and played by someone good at him, he has a very good answer to every situation. He can engage, he can disengage, he can poke, he can dps, he has great zone control, he's a hypercarry late game and a good lane bully, he can waveclear and escape very safely if his lane isn't going well, and even if he gets put behind a Shurima Shuffle can still win the game. He just does too much. It's not good design for a champion to have no situations he's bad in. It actually creates the necessity for the champion to be nerfed. It's also a huge part of the reason why he's so good in competitive games. Extreme flexibility and an inability to be countered is the holy grail for competitive players. Right now, there are almost no good ways to play against a highly skilled Azir unless he's just too numerically weak to fight back, and that's a bad thing.

If he's going to get power back, then he has to have a real weakness. If he didn't have the Shurima Shuffle, then his damage, mobility, and possibly range could be turned up a lot amount because he suddenly doesn't have this amazingly good fallback pattern anytime he gets behind. He would actually have to do damage to win, so we can afford to enable him doing damage. If his range got hit, then he could get more damage, tankiness and CC because he suddenly has to take an actual risk to do something. Narrowing a champion's focus lets you make their more limited options much stronger.

I'm not saying that either of those are the ideal solution (there are obviously more options), but I do think Azir needs a redesign of some kind. He needs to have more substantial weaknesses than he has now. It should not be the case that a good Azir player just has more options in every situation than a good player on any other champion would have, but that's exactly where we've been with him for a long time.

Also, you really, really need to make paragraphs. That was almost unreadable. I know you're worked up, but it can only hurt your message if I'm too annoyed from reading that to actually listen to what you're saying.

VeraskaJul 23, 20162 votes

We should remove azir's E

Azir's fantasy is a general/emperor who commands a line of soldiers to due his bidding, in game he's an alternative DPS focused mage who relies on positioning himself and his soldiers for success (ideally)

His E kinda ruins all that, a mobility spell on a long range DPS champion with effective disengage/self peel kinda makes them have no weak point- old tristana (and tristana still to an extent) has the same problem

Something has to give, and I think the E is the least interesting part of the kit for how much it muddies up his identity (you'd think a back line commander wouldn't want to fly into the enemy team) plus without a mobility spell it'd give him a bit clearer of a weakness (get in his face)

The shurima shuffle might still exist, but it'd attached to using flash to get in position, an incredibly risky play for an appropriately powerful play

metaworldpeace10Jul 23, 20161 votes

Where is this Axir paragraph from Riot? I wanna read it, anyone wanna post a link?

J3diMindTr1cksJul 23, 20161 votes

I know Redmercy talked about it. I can send you a link to his vid.

1 800 MID LANEJul 23, 20161 votes

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/4tf4jl/lets_talk_azir/d5h37dt

That picture is a link. Reddit links come up silly here.

J3diMindTr1cksJul 23, 20161 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKLvmy__f2E

That's Redmercy's vid on it. He shows the reddit article in it.

YurÌ on IceJul 23, 20161 votes

They won't rework him. A Rioter recently stated that they are generalizing reworks into two things: Full-class reworks to a bunch of champs (like the recent mage rework, and the upcoming assassins rework) or full VGUs, like the Ryze update, the Taric update. Etc. They already did a mage rework very recently an assassins are on the way, and after them, diving fighters. So that's atleast 1.5 years before any possibility of a mage rework. He won't get reworked and does'n need to be reworked. He's fine as he is right now (only viable at the hands of dedicated mains with cooperative teams). Chill.

CalabokJul 23, 20161 votes

good Nerf chicken-butt man

J4 Ulted MexicoJul 23, 20161 votes

MAKE SHURIMA GREAT AGAIN!!!

IxtaliKingJul 23, 20161 votes

If it were to come down to a choice out of the two, would you prefer to support his ranged hyper carry status w/o Shurima shuffle, or keep Shurima shuffle as a tankier mid range Battle Mage?

USG FailsawceJul 23, 20161 votes

So... why can't they do this to Yasuo?... or Fizz...?

Also, I didn't read a single word of your post.

Darth Pixy MisaJul 23, 20161 votes

IMO they should half the CD on azir's minions, increase the duration of the sand minions, give Azir's minions Hp and make it so killing them damages Azir.