@Riot: Overall long term vision for Azir?

First, this is not a complaint thread! Making this to start some actual meaningful communication with the team that works on Azir. I love Azir as a champion and immediately started maining him after release. The last set of changes and notes on those changes brought up some questions for me that I hope I can get answered here if they are watching these boards.

So, in the patch notes I saw that it says Azir was too strong late game and weak early game. I can vouch for this, he could get really insane late game, but in his early levels (especially upon release) you basically assumed nothing was happening until at least level 6.

I thought the point of Azir though was that he was a late game champion much like the reworked Cassiopeia. Essentially you didn't get to have first blood, but your champion later on would be a lot stronger.

My question then is why the specific add 15 damage to his Q across the board (instead of say changing it's scaling to .70 ap which would give you about 15 damage with your first tome or dorans ring) and is Azir meant to be a middle game champion? The way to increase damage on Azir has always been to find ways to get the most number of soldier attacks in at a time where as the Q change implies a change to more burst which is not exactly what Azir does.

What is the overall vision for Azir? Where would you optimally like him to be in terms of balance? ( I realize this is a sticky question so I understand if the answer is a little ambigious).