Why Azir soldier scaling needs to be .70 [Balance]

Hi league forum goers,

Posting this hoping to get some input from other Azir players, league in general, and hopefully the riot team that focuses on Azir's power level (which they keep saying they are watching in the patches, but then just altered right between two sets of bug fixes). Primarily they added a flat 15 damage to his Q, but reduced the damage his soldiers do by 10% ( .60 AP from .70 AP). This is not a QQ post. I will be laying out the reasons why I think the the scaling needs to be returned to where it was and what it means for Azir. I don't think Azir is unplayable at all (I main him in mid level silver and have a decent win ratio of 55%ish depending on my recent games), just that the recent nerfs hurt him quite a bit and will outline why.

1. I understand that Azir with the normal .70 scaling does become pretty strong late game. If done correctly he could chunk an ADC to half health with Q and two soldier hits. In the patch notes they are claiming this is too strong. I'm all for balance, but I also don't see how this is different from any mage who can chunk someone with a spell. No one stands inside your soldiers unless they just aren't paying attention and then you should be able to kill them with it. On top of this it's very common for late game champions to be able to carry well. For example, Yi can pentakill an entire team late game and does true damage. So by comparison why is this bad for Azir who is not nearly that powerful? It seemed like Azirs abilities as a zoning/siege mage were supposed to add some of that damage to your opponents back line in the first place (as seen in the champion spotlight). Keeping in mind that this is the same as if you had an ADC that had all their normal attack damage reduced to 60%, and in this case Azir must move his soldiers to said target to attack at all to begin with.

2. For attack speed to matter the soldiers need that .70 scaling. If they don't do enough damage (and dropping off 10% is a big number as the majority of your damage comes from your soldiers as your ult and E are situational and require good placement) then this leads to longer sustained fights. Azir doesn't want to be in longer sustained fights with less damage. If you can't do enough damage with your soldiers that requires even larger burst on your Q, a lot more than 15 damage. Azir can build tanky, but he is not a tank. The last thing you want is to be standing in the enemy trying to whittle them down while they walk through your soldiers to kill you. This makes his passive and nashor's tooth less than optimal and a little pointless in this regard.

3. Enemies need to be afraid of standing in your soldiers. You are supposed to be able to zone them. There are already so many ways to negate magic damage that starting with already low soldier damage makes it hard for Azir to do what he is supposed to do best: Zoning. Since the change enemies see that your soldiers don't do that much and start almost ignoring them. The 15 extra damage on the Q at early levels doesn't make it easier to kill anyone, since you rarely finish off an opponent with Q, but rather Q to said opponent to get in extra soldier attacks and it doesn't make up the extra damage you lose resulting in a net nerf. His early game still suffers, but his late game has become worse.

4. A 60% AP ratio leads to tendency to need Mpen. At 50% Mpen becomes better because it's not directly negated through MR (I'm sure the riot team that works on Azir already knows this hence why vel'koz does true damage on stacks but all his scalings are low). The problem is this is really bad for Azir. He really badly wants all the items that are AP based. You want zhonya's, rabadons, rylai's,and so on. If you need mpen on top of that and also need to be building tanky because your fights last longer you land up with a mess of itemization where you can't optimally build for anything. He needs those soldier scalings to be good to get a proper benefit out of solid AP items rather than having to build extra mpen taking up more inventory slots.

5. The soldier attacks make up what makes Azir the champion that he is. He can sort of burst... but it's not really what he is designed to do. The best way to play him has always been getting in the maximum number of soldier hits which is now a weaker strategy. It's like the riot team is saying, "well, we didn't make him a burst mage, but we changed our minds so we tweaked his skills around." I don't understand this. You can occasionally kill someone with Q if they are weak enough, but it doesn't do enough damage by itself to be the center of his kit. It's also unlikely that you can do the entire Q, soldier attack, E, R combo on one person unless they are standing in place and even if you can you just blew all your cooldowns and need perfect positioning and timing.

Tl;DR the recent nerfs seem to go against Azir's kit as a late game mage (which I feel is what he is supposed to be). Want to get community and riot response. Even if they don't change it I want to at least get a feel for the reasoning involved here. I feel like riot puts a lot of thought into changes (even if they don't work out sometimes, I mean you never know how thousands of players will turn around things in a way you wouldn't expect), and that this was done for a very specific reason.

Considering Azir is still receiving bug fixes after being released months ago (yikes that's a lot of bugs) and also doesn't play quite like he did on release it seems weird to be tweaking his power levels at all.

So, what are everyone's thoughts on this?