Is Azir considered balanced now?

Velasan·May 8, 2015·2 votes·1,371 views

For a champion that has experienced a roller coaster ride of problems and changes since release there has been nothing about him in recent patch notes.

His win rate in norms is at a steady 43% and around 46% in diamond and never once ever coming close to 50%. A 50% ratio would still be only winning half your games. It seems pretty clear that learning curve is not the only reason.

As one of my favorite champions in league I feel like Azir was quickly abandoned.

So, is that all for Azir, is he considered balanced now?

17 Comments

Remlap1223May 8, 20155 votes

I still think he has unresolved bugs. Like, more than Shen and Quinn combined.

UnknownMartianMay 8, 20151 votes

Then tripled.

Very Hard EngageMay 8, 20152 votes

tbh, his passive is worthless. and he should just build traditional ap mid and he could compete in a team fight oriented team. hes got good wave clear and a solid aoe stun ult. that alone makes him useful. but riot cant decide how they want azir to play out, low grade damage and stays in the fight the longest? building all ap/tank items (which is super weak damage output for your MID laner). or attack speed/cdr even though his soldiers range is too short to get multiple hits off consistently.

TheRakkunMay 8, 20151 votes

Azir is an AP Marksman, this means he scales with AP and does CONSISTANT damage, unlike other mages who do burst, his passive is NOT useless as it gives him well needed AS.

Very Hard EngageMay 8, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Azir is an AP Marksman, this means he scales with AP and does CONSISTANT damage, unlike other mages who do burst, his passive is NOT useless as it gives him well needed AS.

this gives him insane single target damage, but what you're missing is the soldiers static position and short range. he already has relativley low CD's, azir's should capitalize on those rather than an obscure build which maximizes his theoretical damage.

Drunk RummateMay 8, 20152 votes

Meddler mentioned looking at his attack speed scaling and a small buff to his early game farming without returning him to 'lane bully' status again. That was a week or two ago if I remember correctly.

I love Azir but the dude is difficult to balance because his early game can be really oppressive if he's overtuned.

Personally I think if they just gave people incentive to skip the stinger that everyone's including in his build, Azir would be fine. I feel like absolute garbage around the time that I build stinger because it's just a cooldown + attack speed item and it feels like you do no damage once you build it, but you can't afford to skip it because his attack speed is so low without it.

TheRakkunMay 8, 20151 votes

As an Azir main I am tingling with joy, he's really just a high skillcap champ, get the right items and right playstyle and you will dominate nearly all lanes.

The reason why he dominates early is mainly due to his zoning with his soldiers, perhaps shorten their duration at lower levels, just enough so he can get the usual AA > Q > AA in but not enough to have his soldiers just lie around preventing the enemy from CSing

Drunk RummateMay 8, 20151 votes

{quoted}

As an Azir main I am tingling with joy, he's really just a high skillcap champ, get the right items and right playstyle and you will dominate nearly all lanes.

The reason why he dominates early is mainly due to his zoning with his soldiers, perhaps shorten their duration at lower levels, just enough so he can get the usual AA > Q > AA in but not enough to have his soldiers just lie around preventing the enemy from CSing

See the thing about soldier duration is that it ties directly into how reliable his farming is. In a lot of matchups Azir literally can't afford to walk up to the minions and auto them past level 2 (Ex: Leblanc, and most fighters like Riven/Irelia) because doing so would result in him immediately losing lane. It's okay that some champions should be able to zone him, but the fact that it starts so early is his main problem.

Most champions can return damage when they get all inned before disengaging (Ex: Xerath will EWQ and walk away), but Azir's trade does a lot less burst and relies on soldiers autoing a couple times to go even in damage. Most people will just walk out of his soldiers and proceed to zone him hard due to his long cooldowns, and if they deal any damage at all they win the trade.

I really like the direction they went with his shield, because it allows him to survive that all-in playstyle (especially from bruisers like Irelia). When they engage onto you, you position yourself between them and a soldier and E and it knocks them up and negates a lot of damage while you have time to walk away. I think maybe bumping the shield up even a tiny bit more to discourage people from all inning Azir so frequently may be the best way to improve his lane phase without making it super oppressive. His midgame still suffers heavily due to the reliance on stinger, though.

Stars ShaperMay 8, 20151 votes

I'm surprised that there are not already tons of thread about "Azir OP" since he won a MSI match

Knight SoIaire May 8, 20154 votes

43% means that he still winns some games

but its a fact that riot fked up, they were meant to nerf his early lane bullying, thats what they said

so they nerfed his late game dmg, late game tower pushing, the capability to hit stuf with his soldiers in teamfights which happen during the late game and so on while giving him some ad as a compensation

DivewingMay 8, 20151 votes

Riot doesn't know how to nerf. Have you seen rivens proposed nerfs - _- Right champs, wrong nerfs. Well.....asides from a few.....silences.....

RaptameiMay 8, 20151 votes

Unviable in ranked.

TengrichanMay 8, 20151 votes

He is bug ridden.Until those aren't fixed can't really determine whether he is balanced or not.

AtheosisXMay 8, 20151 votes

I'd say he's pretty balanced, maybe a little underpowered.

UnknownMartianMay 8, 20151 votes

If they changed his W range back to 400, It's at 375 right now, I think that would be the perfect small buff.

thePandevMay 8, 20151 votes

I don't want anymore changes to him. To me he is perfectly balanced, EazyHoon will show you that (Who I think is a 100x better Azir player than Faker) if used properly he can be.. good.