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Pending Azir ReWork (PLEASE GOD NO)

J3diMindTr1cks·7/23/2016, 5:44:26 PM·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 7/23/2016, 5:49:31 PM3 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 ;)

Sightless667/23/2016, 9:04:03 PM2 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.

Veraska7/23/2016, 9:33:39 PM2 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

Tract7/23/2016, 5:59:38 PM2 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.

Marshbouy7/23/2016, 5:47:05 PM2 votes

please make multiple paragraphs

IxtaliKing7/23/2016, 8:54:32 PM1 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 Failsawce7/23/2016, 9:35:20 PM1 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 Misa7/23/2016, 10:55:25 PM1 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.

metaworldpeace107/23/2016, 6:22:41 PM1 votes

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

YurÌ on Ice7/23/2016, 6:41:40 PM1 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.

Calabok7/23/2016, 6:42:27 PM1 votes

good Nerf chicken-butt man

J4 Ulted Mexico7/23/2016, 8:05:51 PM1 votes

MAKE SHURIMA GREAT AGAIN!!!