Azir needs more than a little work. Here's why I think so.

Azir seems like a reasonable champion at a glance - fairly strong skills, good damage ratios, but there are some fundamental problems with Azir right now that need fixing.

1. His cooldown timers are glitchy/errorful. You can't correctly tell if a skill is still on cooldown or when it's coming off. This is a mechanical problem, but it is definitely a problem.

2. He is essentially a zone-skillshot mage. But he has to autoattack to proc the extra "AOE" damage on his skills. If he goes to autoattack and the enemy moves out of the range, he will instead move toward the enemy. This sets him up for every single straight line skillshot in the game, and it's going to keep Azir out of competitive play. Juking in-and-out of a sand guardian's range to bait a specific move out of Azir, then slamming him with a skill is going to be something players do to beat Azir from Platinum up.

3. He isn't really a fighter, because although he relies on autoattacks, his autoattack sources do a very bad job chasing. The Sand guardians are good poke tools, because a well placed Q almost always gets an attack with it as well. But you can't really run a champion down with this.

4. His movespeed is sluggish and he has very bad health - and despite trying to encourage building attackspeed, his attack speed multiplier is one of the worst in the game.

5. When last hitting, his sand guardians also hit other creeps. This pushes the lane. And Azir lacks neither the health, movespeed, or mobility to get back out when the gank arrives, unless he has every single skill on cooldown: A guardian to place behind him, Q to move it further away, and E to escape - if the enemy doesn't get between him and the guardian or CC him first.

6. Azir has no CC except his ultimate and to slam into the enemy with his E. Flash defeats his ultimate. This only makes him more vulnerable.

The final result? Azir is a very unsafe mage with lots of poke, zone, vision, and utility - that takes lots of damage, has very little escape tools, very bad mobility and chasing power, and very little finishing power.

Let's compare and contrast Azir to another champion with great zoning, vision, poking and utility, but takes lots of damage and has bad mobility - Anivia.

• Azir can poke easily using W/Q. He can then follow up with an autoattack. This scales well with level and doesn't require much AP to be effective. But it also puts part of his escape on cooldown, and repositions all his soldiers whether he likes it or not.
• Anivia can poke somewhat easily using E. This has less damage - unless Anivia lands her skillshot, in which case she can inflict a massively damaging combo. She must get closer to use this than Azir has to. (650 range vs. 800)

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• Azir can only really cause damage with W/Q unless the enemy walks into the Sand Soldiers' range. This means Azir's fighting style is highly predictable. He will walk up, W/Q, and walk away unless he thinks he can kill, in which case he will follow up with E and try to take you out. He can advance fast in this condition, but lacks burst damage - and if he goes in, he cannot get out again safely.
• Anivia can attempt to skillshot you with Q, poke with E, or even create walls with W to adjust the lane. Her fighting style is flexible, but somewhat slow - she cannot gapclose to finish. She instead relies on landing a skillshot, and punishing a failure to dodge with a kill.

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• Azir does not face serious mana problems unless he spams W/Q with no mana fixing.
• Anivia requires all the mana she can get, but in return boasts much higher potential damage than Azir.

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• Azir will die if someone even looks at him crosswise. His wall is on extremely high cooldown and he will die to a flash. He cannot attack while escaping without slowing his escape, so he must simply flee. He must surrender zone control to survive.
• Anivia can eggform and try again in some cases. She can wall basically every time she is ganked, and cause serious damage and slowing to gankers by ulting and then moving through her ultimate. She can also unload her skills to cause stuns and slows as the enemy chases in. In other words, Anivia can seize zone control in an EFFORT to survive.

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• Both Azir and Anivia have impressive defensive AOE damage, but Azir's costs little mana. However, he must stop and attack to inflict it. Azir has a powerful and unique Pushing attack.
• Anivia, on the other hand, can maneuver while causing damage, and can egg-under-turret to survive, but lacks the unique Push attack Azir has.

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• Maybe worst of all, Azir is unstable. An Azir that falls behind will never catch up. He does not have the toughness to close out kills alone, and since his Sand Soldier damage is closely tied to level, dying even a couple times will seriously hamper his output. He is a delicious and easy mark once he falls behind - if you can stand between Azir and safety, he has already died.
• Anivia can die several times and still have enough burst, AOE control, CC, and utility to be useful to the team. She can be vulnerable, but she can never be counted out, because one successful Flash Frost/Frostbite combo can wound an opponent's health with no possible answer. Anivia can punish greedy players with timely stuns and help arriving during eggform.

So in exchange for a solid pushing tool, better mana, a safer poke, and a gapcloser that puts everything on cooldown, Azir has to take on worse survivability, finishing power, and defensive mobility, poor stability, no CC, and a difficult-to-use kit that becomes exploitable at higher levels of play.

**What can we do to fix this? **