Concerns about Azir's identity (@Meddler or other Red)

I'm not going to complain or whine about Azir's recent nerfs. But I am going to say that they leave me concerned. I've always loved playing Azir, and I thoroughly enjoy the champion. He's one of the few I actually played on PvP, and in terms of Mastery he's my #2 champion. But as an Azir player...

I don't agree with the identity you've recently discerned for him.

When released Azir was about versatile zone control. His entire kit was about controlling areas with his soldiers, with periods of time where they were down and the enemy could strike back. The skill-shot style of his soldier autos, his respositioning of his soldiers with his Q, his conditional escape or initiation via his E, the knockback and impassable terrain of his ultimate; even his passive has always been about taking a part of the map and essentially claiming it as his land, and woe betide any who would trespass on the territory of the Emperor. If you couldn't get past his soldiers, you'd face the Marksman-like sustained damage he could put out, and if you left him alone he'd be a unique midlane pushing threat because of his W.

But as of the recent 6.11 Patch Notes, Riot has decided "Azir’s signature strengths lie in his high sustained damage as well as his ‘Shurima Shuffle’ to turn the tables on opponents with a flashy initiation." My big problem is that unless you experiment, read a guide, or come across it by pure luck, a player just trying to pick up Azir has no idea what the Shuriman Shuffle even is. But in order to preserve it and its power, you've taken away from Azir's ability to selectively pick and control his zones of power.

This post isn't about whether or not Azir is strong or weak. He could very well still be overpowered, or he may end up being too weak. With regards to this post, that's irrelevant. This post is about Azir's identity and strengths. And right now Riot has decided that a core part of Azir's strength is something that isn't covered or made known to the player via tooltips or other information sources within the game. Moreover, I don't want to see Azir become another Alistar, where one skill combination becomes so prevalent and so powerful that Riot feels it necessary to severely nerf and limit the other aspects of his kit that were originally intended to be the core functions to his kit and identity.

As someone who's very passionate about Azir, both as a champion in the game and a character in the lore, I implore that Riot consider their balancing of Azir around the Shuriman Shuffle mechanic. Azir is undoubtedly a high skill-cap champion, but please don't bar him off even further because of an ill-explained and largely invisible kit mechanic.

EDIT: Gotta love it when you see the vote counter go up and down but absolutely no-one can spare the decency to comment...