Azir General Tips and Tricks

So I've been maining Azir since he came out. I fell in love with the guy ever since I saw his champion spotlight, and saw that although he was gonna be tricky to get a handle on, he had ridiculous amounts of potential. Then he was released, and along came a plethora of bugs that forced Riot to once again tinker with him more before releasing him again. Although he's been mostly fixed, there's still no small amount of debate whether he's a good champion or not. So let me cut to the chase:

Is he a good champion?

Hell yes he's a good champion! Played properly and given even a bit of feeding, an Azir can lock down areas and rule over them with the absolute dominion of the Emperor he is. If you have a competent Azir on your team and a teamfight breaks out, you're almost guaranteed a win if he's around. His versatility is also amazing, as he can siege, attack, reposition, backdoor, defend, what have you with little problem!

Is he easy to use?

A thousand times HELL NO. I get the feeling a lot of people mistake 'hard' for 'bad' when it comes to champions. See, the thing about Azir is that he's not the kind of champion one can just pick up and play and expect to master him quickly. A competent Azir has a lot of things to keep in mind and track: His positioning, his soldiers' positioning, CDs, the positioning of his enemy, distance his Q reaches and whether or not to E, last hitting, map awareness, etc. I know a lot of this is definitely second nature, and it is for me too, but the first three - positioning - is absolutely key to Azir. An Azir who can position himself carefully and correctly will be able to farm and harass at his leisure while his enemies can't really do much to retaliate. One who can't basically ends up as delicate as a canary on ground level in the jungle. Here's a small breakdown of his strengths and weaknesses:

Pros

• Potentially ridiculous amounts of sustained burst damage (sounds kinda silly, but I'll go into this a bit later)
• Can remain at a very comfortable, safe range while doing his work
• Exceptionally versatile and mobile

Cons

• Squishy, squishy, squishy. Compounded with his E and the short range of his ult, it means any engagement has to be done carefully.
• His Q makes his soldiers follow somewhat unorthodox patterns, especially if there's more than one.
• Very easy to gank, as he's nothing without his soldiers around.
• Horrendous early game
• Steeeeeep learning curve

A competent Azir is a valuable asset to any team for a variety of reasons, but before you can contribute to your team, you need to win lane and be careful about it. As I just said, he has a pretty bad early game. Luckily, there's ways around this.

Last hit carefully with your soldiers - Fairly obvious, but a lot of people might try to 100 to 0 a line of minions in a row to get the boost in gold. That's perfectly reasonable, but only after you got a bit of feed first and you know not a lot of your minions will push through, otherwise your opponent can just hug tower and farm rather easily. It also doesn't help that you have a ridiculously low attack speed early on either.

One for the road - When laning, use ONLY ONE soldier for farming and harassing. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT use your second soldier unless you're going all in or escaping! I've seen far too many Azirs summon their second soldiers way too early, and I've made them pay each and every time for it. This is especially important when your opponent is an assassin! Being able to disable them with an E could save your life!

Map Awareness, map awareness, map awareness! - This one seems like common sense, but when you're busy keeping track of your soldiers, their timers, positioning, your enemy's positioning, your own positioning, one tends to get tunnel vision really quickly. Be aware of your surroundings at all times. Ward regularly, keep an eye out on your minimap, and watch out for pings.

Q Sparingly - The thing about Azir is that early game, he's rather mana hungry. See if you can summon your soldiers in a location that forces your enemies to come close to your soldiers to farm instead of using Q all the time. That being said, I never said NEVER use your Q - it's a really good poking and harassing tool and can eat up your opponents' health surprisingly quickly. Just use it wisely so you don't find yourself out of mana at the worst timing possible. Now, two more notes about Azir's Q:

1. The Straight Shot (one soldier) - With only one soldier, Azir's Q works a lot like a stronger, slightly slower version of Orianna's Q. It can be used like a regular skillshot, designed to harass and poke, and perhaps used as an engagement. The power of one musn't be underestimated.
2. The Bombardment (two-three soldiers) - Here's where things get tricky. Azir's soldiers follow a rather odd path when Q is used and there's more than one available. Chances are even good you'll miss who you were hitting entirely despite accurately pointing at your enemy. The way you have to go about it is to treat it like a tactical carpet bombing. Send them straight into a melee or past a wall you have no vision of and you don't know where exactly your enemy is. They cover a large area and make anyone caught by them miserable.

E Rarely - Azir's E is his gapcloser and escape, but remember that it's used only when you're sure you need to engage or escape. It has a long cooldown and eats up a lot of mana. Don't use it willy-nilly or you won't be a happy bird.

Tactics

Now, when I say Azir is versatile, I mean it. He can fulfill quite a few roles by himself, and excellently too. Here's a few common things you can do with Azir that are hilarious to do, yet extremely effective.

That's a nice tower you got there... - Thanks to Azir's W, he can push lanes and chew up towers like there's no tomorrow. Feel free to ask your teammates to provide a loud distraction somewhere else while you push down a lane. With any luck, you will probably have taken a tower or two from their lane and have gotten away, laughing loudly.

YOU SHALL NOT PASS! - Create and/or stand by your tower. Wait for the enemy team to come. What's great is that if you do it right, Azir can nigh-literally fend off an entire enemy team trying to bear down on a tower. The tower provides additional firepower for you, and you keep them at bay with your soldiers and your ult. That being said, if you do create a tower to begin a siege, do all in your power to make sure your teammates don't just scatter or run. I've found myself dead countless times because I'm left here by myself at my Sun Disc while my teammates randomly wandered off for no reason.

Flip Heaven and Earth - Here's my most common trick that I do in lane: I use my Q and soldiers to whittle down my opponent from a safe distance. I keep doing this until they're down to 40-50% HP - enough that they'll start hanging back, but not enough for them to tower hug or recall. I move a bit closer, then send a sand soldier at them. THIS time, however, I follow up with an E that knocks them up while simultaneously popping Ignite on them and ulting them AWAY from their tower. After I know where they land, I summon my second sand soldier to keep up the assault. This works in a lot of ways: They're now forced to either go through me to get back to their tower while low on health or take another path that I can intercept easily. At the very least, they'll be very low and forced to retreat, burning through their escapes to do so and allowing me to take a wave or two. They'll usually end up dying. It takes practice, but once you pull it off, you've turned their whole world upside down as in a split second, they've ended up in mortal danger and absolutely nowhere to run or escape. Very fun to do.

Nashor's Tooth: Yes or no?

There's a lot of debate about whether Nashor's Tooth is a good item for Azir or not. Personally, I like it - a decent amount of AP, 20% CD reduction that procs Azir's passive, and a further 20% attack speed bonus that sends his DPS off the charts, especially when stacked with out more AP potent items. The more hits his soldiers can land, the more damage he can do - and Nashor's helps with that immensely.

Cooldown Reduction

By now, everyone knows that the more CDR you have, the higher your attack speed (1.25% increase in attack speed, capping off at 50% because only 40% CDR is allowed). However, there's a lot of CDR items out there so it can be confusing which ones to get. Here's a couple of my particular favorites for CDR:

Very cheap, but very effective - 80 AP, mana regen, and 20% CDR is nothing to sneeze at. I typically run Morellicon if I'm going up against an assassin, as I need to shut them down ASAP and need both the mana and firepower to do so.

A bit more expensive and less punch than Morellicon, it's still provides a decent boost to your AP, great mana regen, and of course, the CDR. I grab this if I'm laning against an AP caster - a bit of MR goes a long way to winning lane against one.

I've already said what I've needed to about Nashor's directly above so I won't be redundant. I typically pick this up early-mid / mid game after getting a for some additional firepower.

I'll be honest - I typically don't go Ionian boots, instead going for for the magic pen. This is because the items above provide me with the necessary CDR as is and hence, would make Ionian boots redundant. Still, if you have a different item build, it's something to keep in mind.

Mid Matchups

Like with my Talon guide, I'm not going to go through them all. Here's just some mids I've come across and had interesting times dealing with. For a certain measure of 'interesting'.

Zed apparently counters Azir, and that is true.... after level 6. Before that, though, he's fair game for the Emperor of the Sands. You should be able to keep comfortably out of range of his Q and shadows while punishing him for whenever he tries to farm and harassing the crud out of him. With any luck, by the time he hits 6, he'll be far too starved to do much damage to you. Nevertheless, once he has his ult, keep a safe distance and always have your backup soldier and ult handy to either escape or counter burst - whatever the situation dictates.

The developers say that Ziggs counters Azir with his ridiculous range, and I can see where they're coming from. Zigg's Qs go far beyond the indicated range and they hurt. However, they have a few weaknesses: Splash damage only works if there's someone actually around to damage, they're fairly slow, and they go straight ahead. Keep on your toes, keep away from your own minions, and stay away from the bombs. If you play smart, Ziggs will have wasted his mana trying to get at you whereas you should be able to keep relatively fresh.

The ultimate battle of range. Xerath focuses on bursting and sniping you down while you do what you can to whittle him down. I'll be blunt - if you're up against a competent Xerath, this will not be easy. Move quickly, get early boots if you must, and make sure he misses while you keep whaling away on him. And don't let your guard down for even one second - it only takes a few good shots from him to put you in danger.

I haven't faced against Kassadin too many times as Azir, to be fairly honest. When fighting against Kassasin, it's a lot like fighting Zed as I mentioned above: He does counter you and he's ridiculously dangerous to you... once he has his ult. Until then, use your range. Harass, poke, and farm. Once more, with any luck, he'll be too starved by the time he has his ult to do anything serious to you. But again, keep your guard up.

With that, I'm just about done. One final note:

PRACTICE!!! - As I've stated multiple times, Azir is not a champ you can easily use! These tips and tricks are just general guidelines! In order to use his full potential, you need to practice him - learn the range of his abilities! Learn his skillshot pathing! Learn how to position! Learn how to use your soldiers! Once you do, there can be no doubt Azir is ridiculously powerful.

That's it for now. Please post if you have anything more to add or if you'd like to point out something I didn't do right.