Aurelion Sol is kind of a worthless carry?

So after playing him a lot, I've noticed one major thing about Au Sol that seems to hold true no matter how many games I play with him or how fed I am: Aurelion Sol doesn't do any damage.

This leads me to believe what Riot thought would be a powerful carry was actually more intended to be a support, given the fact that spammable, low cost stuns and a general ring of "don't engage me, bro" obviously makes for an unfun laning phase for whomever gets matched against him.

The problem is that I still see LCS players playing him consistently in the mid lane, even though it feels like that's by far his weakest position considering the plethora of assassins that hard counter him. While I haven't seen the games personally, the only way I can imagine Aurelion Sol being useful is if he's more of a support laner like Karma or Sona mid rather than a hard carry who can do any meaningful damage (Then again, Karma and Sona both do roundabout triple his damage output with 1 ability, so yeah).

I'm sure there's a place for someone with dickloads of CC in every professional team comp, but is Au Sol even viable as a soloqueue champion? My experience says absolutely not, but then again, it's possible that he has a skill curve similar to Azir's. (Only, you know, Azir is actually a hard carry and unlike Au Sol, I can actually play him.)