Azir Update Ideas
Azir is currently "Basemented" due to his difficulty to balance and his overall ability to overshadow a postion with his kit able to accomplish many goals.
Honestly Azir feels fine for me to play currently and I find decent success with him, though he does fall short compared to many other options mid now. A quick look at his winrate and winrate after 80 games or so, will reveal an average of about 43% winrate from Bronze to Diomond+ and around a 50% winrate after 80+ games. In pro play he sees very practically 0 action, and even less success. Though all this is intentional through him being "Basemented".
I think a small shift in power of his kit and changes in numbers would help balance him more easily and remove some of the things that are most oppressive about Azir while keeping his thematic, his current feel, and reducing his ability to overshadow all others in his role when strong.
Passive: Shurima's Legacy - Place a turret in an empty turret slot outside of the enemies base. (15% AP scaling.) - (180s CD)
I feel his passive is decent, though it could fit another champions thematic much better. A new champion or current one able to create towers would fit better. If power needs to be added somewhere, his current tower summoning passive can go to make way for more power in his kit.
New Passive: (If necessary) Shurima's Might - Azir Gains 3/6/9/12/15% bonus damage (or possibly AS- with larger bonuses) based on the number of soldiers in the area. (Your Walls soldiers count toward this passive) Max 5 soldiers count? Nerfing certain damages accordingly to make room for this mechanic.
Q: Conquering Sands - Orders all Sand Soldiers to dash toward the target location and deal damage to all targets hit. (50% AP Scaling.) - (70 mana) - (10/9/8/7/6s CD) - (25% slow per soldier)
Azirs Q is, I believe, his main problem. It allows him to burst down squishy targets from extremely long range late game. I think his Q should be more of a utility spell to reposition soldiers around the battlefield easier and slow. Also some of the damage should be moved from his Q to his W Soldier Autos.
New Q: Differences: (20% AP Scaling.) - (30 mana) - (9/8/7/6/5s CD or if Qs passive is added 7s at all ranks) - (30% Slow per soldier) - (?Passive: Each Auto Attack from a soldier to a champion reduces the remaining CD by 1s.?)
W: Arise! - Azir summons an untargetable Sand Soldier at the target location for 9 seconds, when in range of the target, this replaces his auto attacks. Each additional soldier does 25% damage.
Arise! Passive: Azir gains bonus attack speed permanently (20/30/40/50/60% per Rank of W) (60% AP Scaling) - (40 Mana) - (10/9/8/7/6s Recharge) - (2 Charges) - (45 + 5 or 10 at each level, Base Damage)
The scaling damage taken away from his long range poke Q should be added more to his W auto attacks. So he can still hurt people from long range, but they have the ability to avoid the damage by moving out of soldiers quickly.
New W: Differences: (70% AP Scaling OR 60% + 5% per Soldier in the area) - (Possibly: Higher Base damage earlier)
E: Shifting Sands - Azir dashes to one of his Sand Soldiers, dealing magic damage to enemies he passes through. If Azir hits an enemy champion, he stops and gains a shield for 4 seconds. (40% AP Scaling) - (60 mana) - (19/18/17/16/15s CD) - (Shield 80/120/160/200/240 base + 0% Scaling)
This ability is fairly decent where it is at, though a slight buff to some base shielding or adding some kind of scaling to the shield for early skirmishes around mid lane would be helpful in a meta where the mid laner needs to help its JG a lot early.
New E: Differences: (Shield 100/120/160/200/240 Base + 5% AP Scaling?)
R: Emperor's Divide - Azir summons a wall of soldiers from behind him that travels forward and knocks back enemies hit, upon stopping the wall remains for a duration. (60% AP Scaling) - (100 mana) - (140/120/100s CD) - (4/5/6 Soldier Width) - (3s Duration)
This ability has become more of a peel ability and less of a control mage ability with recent nerfs to the width and durations of the wall. The power shifted into this ability is why the Passive tower has been considered to be removed or changed.
New R: Differences: (5/6/7 Soldier Width OR 5 at all ranks OR unchanged) - (4/5/6s Duration OR 4/6/8s Duration)
Optional Alternate Passive: Emperor's Might: At levels 6/11/16 Azir can choose an ability to empower.
Q: Makes Q slow last 2s OR Lowers Q CD by 1s for each soldier auto on a champion (taking the suggested optional Q passive above).
W: Makes W deal more damage based on the number of soldiers in the area, possibly including ult soldiers (Weak version of the other suggested passive).
E: Makes E have a .25s Knockup OR a Health/AP Scaling Shield. (In exchange for above E changes except the base changes)
R: basically increases the Walls width to 5/6/7 at each rank AND/OR the duration to 4/6/8s. (In exchange for the above mentioned changes to R)
Overall: TL;DR : These changes are meant to move power from his Passive to move some utility in controling areas and outplaying enemies with your ult instead of turrets and playing around how many soldiers you have, to do equal and then more damage than currently. Moving power from his Q to burst people, and making it a more utility spell for repositioning soldiers and slowing enemies. The power from Q can go toward his new passive doing more damage with more soldiers, or to his W dealing more damage with soldier autos. This buffs constant damage but highly nerfs poking power unless they stand in your soldiers for the poke. The overall goal is just to shift power from poke to utility and sustain damage from afar, and the power of his passive to a more control mage centered ult.
Please feel free to comment and discuss ideas and add constructive feedback.
