Graph of azir's soldier base damage nerf-- a visual aid:

Unfortunately, sometimes even graphs can be manipulated to sneakily further a claim - for example, if the graph's vertical axis had intervals of 200 instead of 20, you would notice that there isn't much difference between the orange and blue graphs. Thus you could say that the nerf barely affected Azir's damage.

In this case, manipulation would probably be easily called out upon - but that's not so true with other graphs. I'd argue that the only form of pure and unbiased info is the data table itself.

That's literally it. Oppressive lane harass? Check. Safety? Check. Incredible engage and initiation potential? Check. Late game damage? Check.

One of the issues, though, is that a lot of it is locked behind an huge skill barrier. Can't Shuriman Shuffle well? Initiation potential plummets and safety takes a big hit. Can't utilize early game soldiers well? Well, lane harass can go from oppressive to annoying to pitiful. Really bad at placing soldiers and utilizing Q? Well, there goes his primary sources of damage. And to top it all off, he loses even more power without a team he can rely on.

Which basically means that outside of a handful of players, he's trash outside of pro play, and even then he's still so much more powerful in pro play than outside of it. And he's so powerful in pro play that he can define the entire game. So that's why he's nerfed so often, despite the fact that you basically never see him do anything outside of tournaments - he's basically the Lee Sin of mid, just incredibly more so.

bonus power.... he already has constant aoe damage along with huge cc and a huge dash...?

1. lane bully
2. upper average midgame
3. hypercarry

Kek.

Bonus power? So he should be better than other champs? Lol. Dat logic.

because after a certain point, the community's overall/average skill with a champion grows to the point where they aren't actually difficult

Lee sin is a big example of this

in season 3, people were all about how lee sin takes skill, how he's complicated and hard to play, but also rewarding (especially if you learn to insec)

over time however, the majority of the community picked up on how to play lee, and as such nowadays, making plays like the insec is just common nature-everyone does it. I guess you could call it skillcreep.

I'm an Azir main and his midgame was way too strong last patch. Mechanical difficulty is nice and stuff, but it doesn't warrant Azir being one of two decent midlaners in the entire game. He still is stronger than average, but last patch was overkill. A mechanically well-played Azir should NOT be able to stomp his enemy in lane, midgame and late 5v5 fights without the other skills - such as game knowledge - that you need to carry on your average difficulty champion. Don't forget that mechanical skill is not the only thing you need to win, or else you woulda carried yourself out of Plat 5 with your Draven and Vayne for a long, long time. Even "brain-dead" champions like Ryze require decision making, map awareness and some good experience about your damage. There are less than 10 champs in the game that don't even require those (Malzahar comes to mind).

Really, he just needs more dedicated players. His utility is amazing, and he is fantastic if he has a good team, but many people only play him because the pros do.

A good start? If this graph is accurate at all it literately states he his soldiers only do live damage at max level. Thats a pretty significant nerf. He can be laned against by quite a few mids at the moment moderately/really well, and with this change that only opens up more picks, while making the existing picks to lane against him stronger. Any more nerfs and he's legitimately Kalista levels of "useful". His kit is fine, it's literately cringe worthy how so many people complain about kits being the issue, when all they want is a babied answer to every champ.

As if every champ that exists deserves a hard counter matchup. "Immboile champ? NOT BALANCED IF IT IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY SCREWED BY HARD ENGAGE"! "Highly mobile champ? NOT BALANCED IF CANNOT BE COMPLETELY WEAK THROUGH ALL STAGES OF GAME!". Champions should not be balanced around the notion that theres a simplistic binary answer to every one of them. Having a kit that is versatile enough to do a multidue of meaningful things if mastered is something that brings life into the game honestly. We dont need to rework every high skill cap champ so its brain dead and binary.

Uh no thanks, a lot of us really enjoy his playstyle. And his general winrate was already 46/47% before these changes. Just suck it up and learn how to fight him tbh