Azir feedback
I'll list my own thoughts here, but I'm eager to hear what other players think of the newest champion, Azir.
Damage - Seems in keeping with a mage. More sustained damage than bursty. Survival - Extremely low. His E has markedly short range and require a slight delay in casting for the soldier to first appear. Utility - Extremely low. Short slow with Q, short knockup with E, ult is kind of a joke.
He seems to be the product of another one of those "high risk, high reward" champion designs that never pans out. This is usually because the the reward is not great enough to outweigh the risk. His W+Q is really only a poke as you are lucky to get more than 1 attack off after a soldier arrives. Add to this the fact that the soldiers do not actually arrive where you click - one of them will, but if you have 3 of them they will all go different directions. Why don't they stack in 1 spot like the projectile indicator shows? This would be a huge spike in power for him. If it's current for is intentional, it's just to limit his power.
Damage: He does okay damage. Nothing strikes me as out of the ordinary about his solider or Q damage. In a team fight it doesn't seem much different than a Ziggs tossing bombs, a Ryze with ult active, Sydra Q's, etc. The only difference is that he is much more vulnerable than these mages.
Survival: I feel it's too low. His E is just not a reliable escape tool as it not only requires a soldier charge, but requires a cast sequence of at least 2 spells to be useful (usually the only way it's range is a suitable escape is if you W+Q+E or, slightly faster, W+E+Q). Casting 3 spells to escape not only costs time, but costs a lot of mana, and completely neuters his ability return offensive damage during a retreat or while repositioning. His E is most effective when using it to bop into an enemy to knock them up and gain a small (incredibly small) shield. But then he has 9s (with lvl 5 spell and 40% cdr) to use it again. Also, he can't escape if someone just dives him and stands on top of him because he will run into them when he casts E, stopping him in place; now he has to R, W, E, Q (use his WHOLE KIT!) just to escape. His ult seems a bit of a joke to me. It's range is so minimal that it's almost impossible to land it as a damage tool and it pushes people back so little they can just scoot around it quickly. Additionally, his ult will often just travel through players leaving them on the same side of the shield wall as you...or it hits stuff in the environment and stops way too short. It really needs to have no clipping with terrain elements imo.
Utility: The most useful thing he has is the slow from his Q. His E is far from any reliable for of utility and, again, his ult is usually useless.
It seems he offers no more or less damage than other mages but lacks survival and utility. I'd be okay with the latter two if he has extra-ordinary damage but he really doesn't. The current meta is a burst-fest from every lane and his low-mobility and lack of CC places him dead in the crosshairs of most every other champion that can just burst him and just step out of his soldier.
I'd like to see him casting smoothed out a bit. Often time I will cast W only to hear and see an attack animation but no damage be dealt. It would be nice if he could order his soldiers to attack while moving so he could have a bit more mobility outside of W+E. On the topic of his E - I don't get it at all. It's an okay disengage, but it requires him to cast 1/2 or more of his spells to use it, leaving him unable to do damage for 4-9 more secs (assuming lvl 18 with 40% cdr). On top of that, he has to have a solider queued up to use it, which gimps his offense just in it's nature. It's not even a trade off - he has to use all his soldiers all the time to be ready to go on the offense and deal respectable damage. It's not like he uses a 3rd solider and becomes a god. In the current game it seems nearly every champion has a dash/blink spell that is part of their damage kit from which they suffer not negative effects to their offense from using; Azir doesn't get the luxury. I'd really like to see his E shield buffed - it either needs to do decent damage or provide a decent shield, it currently does neither. The shield should go off on cast or at least on hitting minions. Another issue I see is the same issue we see with Yasuo: forced stats tied to performance. Yasuo has to get crit to be useful. Similarly, Azir has to rush max CDR to be useful, only it's worse. Not only does CDR make him to more damage (soldiers) but his kit it was to slow with only 1 damage/reposition spell like Q until you max 40% cdr and max lvl 5 Q. For this, the earlier stages of the spells are nerfed to accommodate the forced stat. It just feels wrong. I don't wanna drone on too much about this at this point.
A last point, the bugs. Oh god, the bugs.
- People don't get pushed back by R and stay on same side as Azir.
- Soldiers don't always Q in the direction they should (e.g. 2 side-by-side, cast Q between them, both shift to the left instead of crossing)
- Soldiers don't stack around the point where Q is cast. Sometimes they'll just jet all over the place even.
- Cast W and instantly attack for no damage
Well, I guess at this point just hit me. These are my opinions from my play. Agree, disagree, just be civil.
