Azir QoL Thoughts

I don't know if these are really considered "quality of life" changes or just straight up changes, but I had someone ideas about Azir's current kit. (TLDR at the end)

W - Arise Has anyone been playing Azir and run out of mana? Of course you have, silly question. In my opinion the most frustrating part about this is waiting for enough mana to use something, anything. The cheapest ability is his W, Arise, to place a sand soldier near him for 40 mana. This is good, right? I mean you actually can't use any of his other two abilities until you have a soldier out, and 40 mana isn't much. .. but then what? You have secured that spot. Hopefully you can clear out a minion or two before they move out of range. This probably won't help you too much against an enemy champion because they will just ignore your soldier and bash your bird-brain in. And now you're out of mana again. You can't reposition your soldier with Q because that takes another 70 mana, and by the time you get that much mana your soldiers wI'll probably have shriveled into dust, .. or, you're already dead. E won't do you any good because you'll dash about enough walking distance to save you a few seconds at best. Oh and that's also another 60 mana. So at this point you find yourself using your pathetically weak auto attacks, saving up to 100 or 110 mana to place a soldier and use one of your other two abilities. The full combo is 170. Or if you have your ult you can maybe save yourself for 100, but that's not the point.

Okay, so that's my rant, now what do we do about it. What if Arise would cost less, or even nothing, when you do not currently have any soldiers in the field? "Your first one is free." I would even be happy to accept the second soldier costing 40, then the third costs more, and then more for the fourth.

How does this help? As I mentioned earlier, an auto attacking Azir is just sad. This could make farming with a single soldier much more reliable without draining your mana before you have even done anything. As a result you will be able to actually engage your enemy without having to wait for your next resurrection. Now, that's the benefit, and like all balanced changes there is also a negative. By scaling up the cost of a third and fourth soldier, mana will still be a concern if you're planning on a full force assault. Choosing to use less soldier in order to conserve mana will decrease your damage output.

Last note, using W on towers should remain the same for mana cost.

E - Shifting Sands Once upon a time this ability has a knock-up. It got removed because Azir was pretty damn strong at the time and this made his ability to dive and assassinate his enemy pretty easy. Since its removal he has taken a pretty good power punch to the gizzard and I think he could get this back without making him broken again. If not I have an alternative idea.

Currently, his E is mostly used as a repositioning tool, for passing terrain, disengage, some wave clear, and occasionally as an engage in the famed Sharima Shuffle. With the knock-up, as I mentioned earlier, it was kind of an assassination tool because it gave the safety of the knock-up and a small shield. I highlighted safety because it seems to me like this was really the intent of this ability. Side story, I accidentally used this the other day and got this shield and I was confused what it was because nobody really uses this anymore. It is such a crappie shield that it doesn't really help at all. It does have a decent base stat, but it is most often the last thing maxed so that doesn't really help. It's stat scaling is 15% max HP. Who is building max HP Azir? And it lasts for 4 seconds, then poof, it's gone. Don't get me wrong 4 seconds is not terrible, but by the time you actually have several ranks into this ability your enemies will easily burn though this shield well before 4 seconds. If they don't, by some miracle, you have at best (5 ranks and 40% CDR) you have 9 second before you can get another shield. This could really use some looking into.

So, what can be done, ... aside from the knock-up? I'd really like to see a better shield. I do like the %HP but could we do better than 15%? Or could we also add some sort of scaling that Azir is strong with? I kinda want to stay away from AP, personally. % max mana? Maybe it could scale with CDR? Maybe it could have some mechanic that increases the shield size based on distance traveled before collision? ... I haven't really figured out what would be best, but I think this should help Azir be able to engage with relative safety because, .. I think that was the original intention.

One last request on this. Could it interact with large and epic monsters as champions, please??

TLDR W - first soldier is cheaper or free. Additional soldiers increase in cost.

E - knock-up returned OR stronger shield + applies to large & epic monsters.