New Azir ult idea
So I love playing Azir. Or at least I used to before he was made unplayable. I've been thinking a lot about Azir's kit lately. And while I absolutely love this champion, or what he used to be, I think his kit just seems to be very zone mage.
The only other very good example of a zone mage that I could think of that could poke with a spammable q, but not from super far distances, was Orianna. Her kit and Azir's kit are actually very similar. You have to play around Orianna's ball just like you have to play around Azir's sand soldiers.
But I will admit, that Azir's kit can seem a little overloaded. I think what would put Azir in a good spot is basically matching his q range with Orianna's and making his soldiers still be able to attack just a little bit further than that. NOT like the range of Orianna's ball or her e. To be able to auto with sand soldiers from that far would obviously be absurd.
I could honestly do with out Azir's current passive. It is cool but there are more effective things in the game than a temporary turret. I would like his passive to go back to increasing his attack speed based off of cdr. This could help Azir as well, not through his abilities, but through the items that would now work better with his kit. If you were to buff his ult to scale again with 3/4/5 seconds would be nice too. there are many champions that can do enough damage to Azir to kill him and also wait 5 seconds in the late game to pass the wall (Volibear)(talking from personal experience).
I also think Azir's ult should go back to being impassable by enemies, even with dashing over it. You just took this champion that had so much commandment over the map and gave him none. Yes I would agree he was very very strong at first and needed these nerfs. but what you have done to him now is just sad. He is sitting lower than a 1% pick AND ban rate, and his win rate is still about 45%. Your rework did not fix Azir.
Another thing about your rework is that it was not much of a rework at all. You took his old kit, reduced the range on his q and gave him a three soldier attack speed buff passive on his w and called it a rework. Come on riot.
A current thought I am having is a new idea for his ult. Instead of A wall of soldiers that enemies SHOULD NOT be able to pass through. You could base it off of a scrapped champion that I recently heard about, Seth. Seth was the inspiration for Azir. You can obviously tell from his concept art.
The idea of Seth was he wanted to turn everything to sand. For performance reasons that was not possible, but maybe the idea of sand for just ONE ability isn't a bad idea. Again, Azir's kit seems pretty zone magey to me. An ult that allows you to further zone out your enemy would make since, not that his current ult already does that but his current ult just seems more like a disengage now. Does not seem right to make an emperor have an ult that leaves him running away from a fight.
New Azir R ability idea! Azir summons a sand storm from the Shurima desert. For 5 seconds enemies within the sand are slowed by 30%/45%/60%. If enemies with in the sand do not step out with in 2 seconds or by the time the storm ends, they will be stunned (or rooted) for 1/1.75/2.5 ( or maybe 1/1.5/2) seconds. The sand does 30/50/70 + 0.14 ap ratio damage every 0.5 seconds.(think like Anivia's ult but bigger. Also think smaller than Trundle w)
Enemies that are stunned (or rooted) will take double damage from the storms remaining duration. (either that or) Soldiers spawned by Azir in the sand storm will have (ranged based 475, cleaved, or empowing slow for 1 second) attacks.
I'd say the size of Zyra's ult would not be bad to try out for it first.
I would very much like to see how this would work out as an ult for Azir. Please at least give this a thought riot and look into the possibility of this kind of ultimate for him.