Glad they nerfed Azir. . . . .

After my favorite champion, Yorick, was nerfed into an early retirement from grave digging, I waited for another champion that I could really sink my teeth into. Azir was that champion.

He was very buggy on release, but I still had a lot of fun with him. The combos of his Q and E were great, and his ult was fantastic. Seeing my wall of soldiers beat back the enemy team always brought me joy.

I think the changes to his passive are fine. Building cooldown reduction was good on him anyway, so, yeah, good change there. On the other hand, the change to his E. . .no longer knocking up the first enemy hit. . .

Well this is disappointing. Originally I thought this was a very well designed skill. It had escape potential, but it also offered that incentive to really go all in as a squishy AP carry. It also meant that you had some small form of CC for those times that the enemy would dive you, like a significant number of other AP carries. Now what does he have. . .

His ult. He has to rely on his ultimate teamfight presence ult in order to survive being dove. Well, if there was ever a reason to never use his E to engage, it would be now. In fact, I find myself almost never using the E, just because it has no impact. The shield is negligible when you are bringing yourself closer to the people trying to kill you instead of staying at a distance and using your soldiers (When an emperor goes into battle personally, it should have some impact).

Long story short, I think removing this piece of CC from his kit (and if experience is correct, making his ult dashable) has made Azir a lot less dynamic and a lot easier to assassinate than before, and this saddens me as a fan of an Emperor who can defend himself if the situation calls for it. It's unfortunate how little use Shifting Sands has now.