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Shurima at Lost

Jayhobbit·5/23/2017, 4:54:55 PM·1 votes·220 views

Hey, this is a first for me, writing this discussion on the community board. Never thought I'd write one. But this year and last year I came to notice that one of the most difficult champions, Azir, has lost his glory. I get it, his mechanics are crazy and it takes immense practice. The thing is, Azir's early game status is far too squishy, literally. I am trying to main Azir, but damn. I really hate the early game, can't cs without wasting my mana so quickly. Yeah, yeah. I keep my mana at a minimal use. I usually cs better than my enemies, even as Azir without using abilities. BUT back to the early game, the most hated part because Azir can easily be ganked (I KNOW ABOUT WARDS). Azir can be abusively ganked to the point he feeds easily. Easy pick for gank, easy feed. Then not only you have your enemies, but my own teammates start to blame me, as Azir. I've played many champions down mid and other lanes, except supp and do good, but this sucks. I know some of which used to main Azir, now they say he is trash and I agree, Azir is now trash. I still want to main him, but there needs to be some fixes to his stats (I also know of runes). [zombie-brand-facepalm]

2 Comments

LostFr0st5/23/2017, 5:12:12 PM1 votes

They had a meeting to discuss his direction recently, some info about it was posted on ZenonTheStoic's Ask.fm: https://ask.fm/ZenonTheStoic

Q: Are you gonna do any exploration for Azir's rework like BeatPunchBeef did for Rek'Sai, what direction do you want to push him in A: Yeah, we already had a kick-off meeting exploring what spaces are available. Here's the super high level TLDR: Azir combines the power-over-game-time and sustained damage profile of an ADC with the mobility, CC, and AOE of a battle mage. The former is why he is so powerful when he's powerful and the latter is what makes him really exciting to play (Shurima Drift and Shurima Shuffle are made possible by Shifting Sands, which is too much mobility even for a battle mage). The reason why he can have the strength profiles of two classes without any of their usual weaknesses and not be the most broken champion in the game is down to numbers and just how hard he is to play: most people will never access even 10% of his true power (insert glowing brain meme). There's two paths we can go that are immediately obvious:

Double down on the marksbird nature of his kit: maintain ranges and uptimes of soldiers, keep the hyper-scaling nature of the kit, but harshly reduce mobility and AOE. (Possible we'd need a new E that has no mobility on it here).
Support his Shurima Shuffle-centric identity (quick, find me an Azir highlight reel that doesn't include some Shurima shuffling). This would mean sharply reducing damage over time, shifting (hah) it into spell casts, reduce exponential scaling over game time (AS scaling would need to go on the chopping block I suspect), bring in his ranges, etc. There's some easy wins regardless of which way we go: a lot of his power is in the fall-off free nature of his AOE (everything takes the same damage). You don't appreciate damage against collateral targets, but I'm convinced that's a lot of his power. There could be a world where only the target you right clicked takes full damage and everything else takes X% damage. And then once we've aligned around which direction we want to go, we have to figure out where we feel good putting power back in. This'll be a tough one.

Shrek Luigi5/23/2017, 5:22:50 PM1 votes

Bjerg managed a 100% WR with him, with a KDA ratio of 26, in the professional scene recently. That's not exactly a credible excuse for Azir being the way he is right now, but buffing Azir's early game has an exponential effect on his performance as a match progresses and, when Azir gets this kind of gratuity, he becomes one of the most oppressive champions in the game in the hands of a skilled solo-laner. I can't vote for either because I honestly couldn't give you a correct answer; I do enjoy playing him, however, and I personally don't consider Azir to be particularly bad once one picks up on the ins-and-outs of his kit.

If you are having a hard time with him, consider forgoing Nashors early on for a ROA or Ludens for the movespeed. Attack speed is important, but if you're spending a disproportionate amount of time repositioning then a lot of the potential value of Nashors is pretty much wasted--beserker greaves are a good alternative if you need ASPD. Azir's W + Q + E is a astounding escape tool, and making decisions re. when to go on offense versus when to get the hell out of dodge is an integral part of his playstyle.