Is Azir in a good place right now?

I was maining Azir last season. I've only played about ten games with him since his last nerf. He seems so much worse now because the whole point is to do damage at a distance. Now his damage is low enough that I've seen multiple people ignore his soldiers all together.

In one game I had a lee sin with equal number of items stand in the middle of two soldiers, stand there, use his taunt and then walk away. By this point I already had a rod of ages, the nashors, and a void staff with my boots and he wasn't even building MR.

Against AP users they just avoid the soldiers now and I get blown up. In another game I was against an Ori who could chunk Azir for like a 1/4 of his life points with each ball, but my soldiers just couldn't kill her. If I chased she used her ult or back tracked and used her empowered attacks, and if I stayed at distance she just walked around my soldiers.

Is this the way it was intended to be, is Azir any good now? Azir is a somewhat squishy mage, even when building him off tank (like with rod of ages/rylai's/liandry's etc). At this point it seems it is required to build a rod of ages or similar item just to not die in fights that are now extended because of the damage nerf (so if the fight against an opponent was going to last 7 seconds it now lasts 10 for example, giving them two extra shots to kill you in response). Building those items however just further detracts from the damage you already don't have.

I mean, what I'm getting at here is Azir already has to use his soldiers to attack which is a draw back. You have to set them up, move them around, try to get them into position. Without the damage you have all that extra work, but none of the upside. Why not just play an ADC at that point and do the same if not better damage?

TL;DR I don't know how to play Azir anymore and wondering if there has been any insights into his new play style.