Boards›Gameplay

A simple fix to Azir to make him viable.

SIayton··2 votes·580 views

So I wanted to withhold my judgement on Azir until I really felt like I had him down, but after playing him since he came out I can honestly say I just don't think he's that good of a champion. His kit's power curve is way too skewed towards late game, as he contributes almost nothing to the game early on and very little to mid game. It mainly stems from his extremely low chase / kill power IMO. People can just walk away from him and at most he can get a Q and 1 or if he's lucky, 2 autos. Also his escape is very easily bodyblocked, and I think with his minions taking up so much mind share, his escape should be reliable / easy to use to make up for that.

So here are the changes I would propose, all involving his E:

  1. Azir shouldn't stop at enemy champions hit. That way if someone is standing near him (not even between him and the minion), he isn't popped up and in a terrible situation. I can't think of any situations where I would actually want to stop next to the enemy champion as Azir consider his kit favoring him being at range at all times, so I think that one change would help a lot.

  2. Using E should reset the cooldown on his Q. This would help with his chase potential a lot, because right now at most if you want to DPS someone you can Q and get one auto, dash to the soldier, and then spawn a soldier slightly ahead for one more auto. So with this change you would be able to Q > E > Q and continue DPS for a little longer. E already has a very long cooldown so I think that giving it the reset wouldn't be too op. He also has to give up his escape to do it, so there is a bit of risk to it as well.

Just those 2 simple changes would increase the usability of Azir by a ton and make him a much stronger and more reliable champion, IMO.

8 Comments

Drunk Rummate4 votes

if they increased the range of his Q i think Azir would be way overbearing in lane. i think a nice change would be to increase the range of his W because that wouldn't increase his total range, but it would give him a bunch of nice quality of life changes. the intial positioning of soldiers would be easier and he could W+E to escape or chase at a longer range. a big issue i've noticed when playing him is that oftentimes in a teamfight i have to cast my soldiers out of range and then use Q to get them IN range. this wastes the entire value of repositioning them, and getting close enough for W to hit is almost sure death in most cases.

Hayaishi3 votes

I agree with everything except the reset.

I think his Q lacks range, his play style focuses on staying at range and controlling the battlefield with your ult and soldiers, his range is too low for him to be rewarded properly.

He also lacks burst, and his DPS is lackluster until he gets atleast 3 items so basically if he can't stay at range he just loses horribly but staying at range is hard when his max range is too low.

SIayton1 votes

I feel like the reset is the most important part though, otherwise he has no chase potential. Pretty much if the battleground moves at all, he just can't do anything for however long the cooldown on his Q is. I'm sure the damage could be adjusted to balance it out since it could be double cast, but either way I think he'd be much better off if he had some way of repositioning his minions more than once per skirmish.

SIayton1 votes

Although if they increased the range you could summon your dudes that would also help a lot. I get that they wanted to give a little counter play in that he has to come in to get his minions in range early on but once you get Q that seems like a moot point anyway.

Zaikyo1 votes

The more and more I see Bjerg and Faker on Azir...the more I wonder if he needs much help. I'm not saying he doesn't need tweaks...only that the more people play him, the more terrifying he looks.

SIayton2 votes

Honestly, what champion doesn't look terrifying when played by those two?

Zaikyo2 votes

This is a fair point.

Alford1 votes

Good suggestions, though I also disagree with the reset, in theory. What I like about Azir is that he isn't a burst/chase kind of mage. He's more about dominating the zone he's in. As of now, his late game chase is really good, if you build full CDR, which I think is when he should be chasing.

Nasreth's suggestion of increasing the W range would give him some better sticking power early game, and that added with no stopping on the E, while retaining the knockup, would give him a good chase. Summon a minion in front of the running champ, E to that minion, hit a few times, then Q when they get far enough away.

I think another good change that could be made is increasing the ult width by 1 soldier, or having the ult get wider as ranks are spent on it. (See Anivia Wall). As it stands, the wall is so small (not to mention glitchy) that after the initial knockback, it's pretty much useless as blocking terrain. In my experience, you have to be very well positioned to really block anything, and I've even had people walk right through it or fail to get carried with the wall (thus they are on MY side of the wall and can still kill me).

Sorry that this is going so long, but I also want to address the minion attacks. When Azir is a relatively long distance (about from center to left or right edge of the screen) from his minions, and those minions have enemies in their ranges, instead of the minions auto attacking, Azir will attempt to move into auto attack range. If the remote auto attack range is limited by design, I think this needs to be better indicated visually. If it's a bug than by golly this needs to be fixed!

Too many times have I tried to harass an enemy at a distance, only for Azir to start a spaztic back and forth path due to a conflict of commands where it doesn't look there should be any.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by SIayton

As a Diamond, Silver elo is surprisingly hard.
Gameplay1,056 comments
1,283
votes
Can we get health indicators on the minimap?
Gameplay74 comments
161
votes
"The jungle should be a little easier this season, especially for struggling champs before"
Gameplay141 comments
135
votes
#1 rule of Solo Queue
Gameplay99 comments
113
votes
Dear Riot, WE HAVE ENOUGH SAND / SHURIMA SKINS, PLEASE DO SOMETHING ELSE NOW
Concepts & Creations91 comments
113
votes
Aurelion Sol rework feedback for devs since they asked for it on twitter.
Gameplay36 comments
81
votes