Azir Q behaviour changes

RiotZenonTheStoic·1/7/2015, 1:36:02 PM·52 votes·41,818 views

Hello friends of Shurima!

One of the long standing issues that we've had with Azir is that his Q behaved a little unpredictably sometimes. UnknownMartian most recently posted a Youtube video to reddit that lays out the problem clearly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgdmjXMs7tI

TLDR: When assigning soldiers positions for Conquering Sands (Q), Azir would historically grab all soldiers on the map in random order (most often this would happen to be in order of creation, but not always). As demonstrated in the video, in the three soldier case this sometimes leads to an unfortunate situation where the nearest soldier is assigned one of the side positions, 240 units off your mouse cursor.

I took some time tonight to rewrite how Q works and cleaned up some bugs surrounding the 2/4 soldier cases as well (4 soldiers is technically possible, but very, very rare). Here's the breakdown, with pictures!

http://i.imgur.com/XxWuN12.png One soldier Pretty straightforward. Goes where you click. Your click position is a 75 radius green circle, the calculated soldier position is a 100 radius red circle. In this case they're identical

http://i.imgur.com/FTF77t1.png Two soldiers The soldiers align themselves around your target position, equidistant to the left and right of it. The nearest soldier always goes to the left position, viewed from Azir's perspective along the axis of your cast direction.

http://i.imgur.com/S8XhAyT.png Three soldiers This is the situation from Unknown Martian's video. I fixed this so the nearest soldier will always go to the MIDDLE, which is the position that you clicked on. The second closest will go to the left and the farthest will go to the right.

http://i.imgur.com/vTkJXGD.png Four soldiers This is very rare and hard to achieve. Hint: both Q and AA extend soldier lifetime by a fractional amount in certain situations. Not something I expect players will be able to exploit in real games, but just in case. As you can see, the first row of soldiers places itself slightly nearer to you than where you clicked, with the nearest soldier going to the center. This is only a difference of 120 units, and Q overshoots by 50 units, so this difference shouldn't make you miss (we do check forward an additional 100 units at the end of a Q to see if we can find someone to hit anyway, so it's a moot point).

None of this has been QA checked yet so details may change or the rollout of these changes may be delayed. They will also not be in the next patch; at the earliest, they will be in the patch after that.

Questions?

78 Comments

ElysMustache1/7/2015, 1:53:55 PM9 votes

I appreciate you taking the time to share this information.

Swippinfrafes1/7/2015, 1:49:38 PM8 votes

What can we look forward to in terms of Azir in U.R.F. Mode when it inevitably returns?

Rockman1/7/2015, 1:39:22 PM5 votes

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disregardable1/7/2015, 2:02:01 PM5 votes

This is such a great correction to the game. Thank you! It's great to see that that the game is getting improved in between patches.

Aryogaton1/7/2015, 4:31:59 PM3 votes

I've been nigh-maining Azir for the past few months and I've noticed this problem and here's my feedback in the form of a picture.

Rockman1/7/2015, 1:44:04 PM3 votes

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Nausicäa 1/7/2015, 8:50:14 PM3 votes

ZenonTheStoic, im impressed that you responded to and fixed this issue so quickly. Good job and thanks.

AccountaBilabudy1/7/2015, 1:57:55 PM2 votes

just nerf him already

xLegendary Troll1/9/2015, 6:45:09 AM2 votes

Can you make the soldiers lunge a little closer to one another, that way we can actually stack our slows? Right now stacking the slows is not even a thing since his Q is so random.

matrinox1/7/2015, 3:08:04 PM2 votes

Zenon, this will sound insulting but I just mean it objectively: why are your release champions so buggy? Is it cause you design complex champions? Is this just Riot releasing champions without performing unit and integration tests?

Lizdeath1/8/2015, 5:50:19 AM1 votes

Zenon, in the case of 4 soldiers, I just want to point out that the L shaped formation is kind of awkward, in terms of both geometry and viability of a soldier formation. What if the soldiers formed a rhombus around the cursor in the 4 soldier case? Its less awkward, although its still not the best military formation (though on the rift it would be an excellent formation).

TotalJerk1/8/2015, 10:10:09 AM1 votes

This is a nice fix. I love Azir's design on paper, but his abilities are so mechanically frustrating an unpredictable that I broke down and refunded him after 3 rage inducing games in a row.

One annoying aspect that ought to be addressed is attacking people right on the edge of a soldier's range (which is often where they end up when you Q a fleeing opponent) Sometimes the attack goes through, other times Azir runs his dumb squishy ass into the middle of the enemy team to AA the target himself, which gets him blown up. The difference is 1 unit.

If it were at all possible, I'd like a means of controlling my character that lets me completely separate camera movement, character movement, and attacking. That would make Azir a lot more playable.

kotsios5551/8/2015, 6:46:09 PM1 votes

2 things to fix

  1. must be able to cast W-Q immediately. i remember playing Azir when first released, and there was no casting animation between W-Q if pressed really quick.

  2. when extending to enemy turret and want to poke the enemy under enemy turret, the W should summon a new soldier, not dealing damage to turret when not clicking the turret.

These for nowAzir

A suggestion: Why not being to able to do W-E-Q combo to dash forth and then backwards? Something similar to leblanc distortion, but with dashing. The combo does work at some degree, but not straight forth and back

Kat Head1/7/2015, 3:06:01 PM1 votes

It is good that you guys are spending the time on this champion to get the bugs out.

However this champion is already much too strong and in need of gutting (OLAF LEVELS), you already know that you will eventually have to do it.

When you guys are making a champion like this that will obviously be unfun for everyone that ever has to play against him, what are you actually thinking and why do you still think it is a good idea ? Is there actually any thought at all put into fun or balance when champion concepts are being discussed ? Is champion concepts more a wow that idea sounds really cool and fun with no thought to the impact that kit will have on everyone else playing ?

gbumblebee1/7/2015, 7:35:19 PM1 votes

basicly this is nerf to azir?

King Mugiwara1/8/2015, 2:06:53 AM1 votes

Always noticed that and it stressed me all the potential kills I could of had >.>