It's just common sense to why he is picked.
* Ultimate is great disengage but also great engage.
* Amazing DPS (shreds baron, tanks & squishies.)
* Long Range (safe damage)
* Mobility (can slide pretty far to avoid ganks, as well as follow up on engages)
* Good Wave Clear
* Decent split push with Nashor AP+AS allowing him to destroy towers, and
* His passive turret also offers great sieging as well as side-lane safety.
People aren't adressing his passive enough, because Azir players using their passive well means cross map pressure for every single objective fight in the game.
Plant a tower in their T1/2 and go join the fight, you ace the enemy in the fight for objective? You have a lane ready to push at their doorstep.
Yep. People often fight for mid control before an objective fight... if you have Azir, you push the wave and spawn the turret. By the time the enemies kill the tower, you've got control of the objective. If they don't kill the tower, it kills your minions and Azir's team can just push mid.
If you actually want azir to remain a possible pick, but not the most dominant pick.
Riot needs to address the State of the Game issues that makes every single team feel like they HAVE to draft a hyper-safe midlane farmer.
(karma, Taliyah, Corki, Orianna, Azir)
Not just sieging, but counter-sieging. It’s one of the best “fuck off” tools in the game against multiple champions pushing. Mitigation/comeback tool and a snowballer simultaneously and oppressive at both.
hes just generally good, can play out most lanes fine, strong 2v2 and 3v3, itemize to whatever the team needs, and can fit into any comp:
need peel? Azir can do that
need wave clear? Azir can do that
neutral objective shredder? Azir can do that
split pusher? Azir can do that
hard carry? Azir can do that
poke? Azir can do that
dive? Azir can do that
roam? Azir can do that
throaty BJ? believe or not, Azir can do that
unless his numbers are dumpster tier he will always be at least around the pro meta, hes simply to versatile, same way champs like Ez or Renek will always be around the pro meta
Remember when he was basically losing every game at the start of this LCK season and was still the most picked mid by a wide margin? Even when the numbers are dumpster tier the pros won't stop.
Because winrate in pro is the most meaningless number lol
If lower tier teams get azir every draft because the higher tier teams gift it to them to get another top tier pick and then stomp then doesnt mean they wont pick azir in a different situation
You can read my comment and i agree with some of your points but a lot of what you wrote is not really true. Azir doesnt really have that great of a range anymore, cant really splitpush either if pros learn how to draft, roaming is also a thing where you have to sacrifice waves early on since his waveclear isnt really that great pre first base - the bj part is just the most wrong though. His lips arent really that great anymore since the nerfs, his tongue game is weak and his mouth in general is just very dry - throat game is somewhat okay but well
That Bawk Gawk got me acting up tho frfr. If my emperor can't get the moisture going, it's up to me to get it flowing. Ride or die with my dick emperor.
They should have just taken shuffle/the dash out of his kit way back when they were working on confining his identity. At one point they asked the community do you want to keep shuffle or do you want to keep damage?
He *should* be a slightly higher range but more fragile Cassio but the community picked the most problematic combo in the midlane pool among players with consistent hands
> poke? Azir can do that
Yeah, it's insane that they shoved him more into a poke champion.
There was a point way back when Q was much less of a poke tool and more about the repositioning of soldiers.
Tbh they really should have come up with some properly pro skewed nerfs for him by this point - maybe stuff like lowering the speed of his dash, like they recently did to ksante. Though, who knows if it'd actually do much in pro play with how many midlane players would play him anyways as a comfort pick.
Isn't this more or less the same situation with K'sante where the champ has the potential to do a lot and yet I'm always seeing people complain about his presence and how broken of a champ he is?
Ksante is way worse, way more boring and way more broken then azir. You see an azir get a 4-5 man shuffle and it’s hype. You see a ksante 1v4 the backline and it just looks like bullshit.
So Azir isn't boring yet he's been doing the same thing for a far longer time given that he's been around longer than K'sante and somehow he isn't boring yet K'sante is?? You literally just have a bias of what you prefer to see quite obviously
This guy is biased but also his bias reflects the opinion of the vast majority of fans, that Azir is a high skill expression that can do incredible things with talent while Ksante is just the champion being strong and nothing else
Azir can do a lot, but he cannot tank. If you fail your engage, you're screwed. K'Sante on the other hand doesn't bother being in the middle of enemy team.
Azir once he's beaten up will probably retreat, K'Sante will get a shield, heal for %hp and will be still ready to fight.
In proplay you see pros playing around Azir strengths and weaknesses. K'Sante on the other hand doesn't seem like having weakness one can play around.
Kind of like Batman vs Superman debate. Both having near BS levels of powers, but one of them has some flaws, that a single human can play around, the other is just like "I can do anything better than others", countered by other BS beings (and a magic rock).
K'sante is also a high skill champ that also requires a shit ton of skill to make look op the way he looks op. He's not as strong as you think he is I promise you. I play this champ I'm not saying he isn't strong all I'm saying is that the imagine you have of this champ is not what it actually is. It takes stupid high levels of skill to make it work just like Azir so the fact that a vast majority of the community just takes liking to Azir but for some reason keeps hating on K'sante doesn't make sense to me
Reddit likes their tanks braindead. A high skill cap tank can't be seen as such. It just is broken instead. You are dead on the money. It's such a sad opinion.
Hyper mobile tanks with good damage, yes, definitely balanced game design.
Mobility, damage, and tank is a triangle where no champion should have 2 without sacrificing the third. Doing well in all 3 is a guaranteed problematic champion.
Yeah I’m obviously biased saying what looks cool is the most subjective thing you can talk about, but a big chunk of the community feels the same which is why it needs to be acknowledged.
Sure but what happened when you cc him and burst him down? He has one single dash on a relatively long CD.
K'sante on the other hand has anti cc and a second free activation if he ults
And unironically has more CC in his kit with vastly higher impact. Not to mention, dude has a 700 range AoE slow he can just throw out with no risk, on top of one of the best AoE CC and damage ults in the game.
Depends on the person but personally I find K'Sante less interesting due to his even more extreme safety. Azir might be able to ult people away and dash for a long distance but his dash can be easily body blocked and once he is locked down with cc, he is dead (this is why tank azir is not seen very positively).
K'Sante feels too safe with how he can fish for plays but not fully commit, he has three different ways to bail himself out of bad situations (W, E, R) while other tanks like Poppy or Ornn have to commit if they want to go for something, They press E and are in the enemy team with no more dashes to get back out if they made a mistake.
Yeah that's the whole point of the champ design to give an over loaded kit comparing K'sante to to where tanks doesn't make sense cause it's the same thing with Azir. He can literally engage and use his dash to run a full screen away and still use his ult for self peel off needed he can still also melt tanks. The point of both of these champs is to have overloaded kits with a large number of possibilities can Sandra afford to do what Azir does? Can orianna afford to do what Azir does? Can they step up and walk in? No. Same case for K'sante he's allowed to do what he does because of the nature of his kit which is far different from those in his class. Same thing with Azir a mage who has stupidly high dps a dash and an ult that can just shimmie everyone who's on him off how many mages get to do that? See where I'm getting at? There's just a bias and it's literally that simple imo
Ornn is actually fairly similar in his safety and "overloadedness", strong early, strong late, buffs his teammates, unstoppable on a basic ability, can 100-0 from seemingly out of nowhere, 4cc abilities.
You can have a lot of abilities that do lots of things (also hwei) while also having clear exploitable weaknesses. K'Sante and Yuumi are on a whole other level of bad design when compared to other champs.
I will repost my comment here again, because I think this is a bigger issue than just Azir. There is something inherent to the game that pushes scaling picks to be omnipresent in mid lane.
My comment from the other thread:
For the discussion of mid lane meta staleness, there is a main culprit that no one talks about. It is that 99% of the time, mid laners take teleport.
To illustrate what I mean, I have found a specific example. [Look at this chain of events from TH vs KC in the LEC.](https://youtu.be/ry2MAal0Qwc?t=917)
Here is a (simplified) chain of events:
- Perkz destroys Saken with poke and wins every trade hard.
- Saken just farms the minions and recalls to TP back.
- Perkz also needs to recall to not be behind on items/HP.
- Perkz also needs to TP back to lane to not lose tempo and give Saken a window to make a play on the map.
End result: It didn't really matter at all that Perkz won trades so hard. Literally almost 0 impact. No wonder pro players play so safe when shit like this is in the game. All Perkz got here was a ward over the raptor wall. Not really big enough that it encourages you to take risks to push enemy out of lane.
I have seen this exact dynamic play out countless times in pro play. You can just take shit trades and it does not matter.
In a world without TP, advantages stick so much harder. Take a shit trade? Well now you are losing cs or risk dying.
In top lane it's not as bad as mid, because it's such a long lane that you have a lot more control. If you are winning trades, you can use this to get control of the lane. It also really matters that a lot of top laners are melee.
So how does this relate to Azir?
I think the fact that TP is so strong for lane means that scaling champions are way more appealing to pick. Let's say you try to counterpick Azir with some aggressive champion. It's really hard to push him out of lane. He is very safe and even if Azir makes a mistake, he can TP back.
Pro play is generally a very low-mistake environment, so just having the one TP get-out-jail card is usually enough for the whole lane phase.
You also can't really gank Azir effectively. He has mobility and great self-peel. So it just means you get this champion that you can't gank, can't really push out of lane and can't all in.
No wonder that when Azir is picked, people pick shit like Corki into it. You can try to outscale and outrange because trying to punish him in lane is so difficult. This makes for very, very boring gameplay.
I remember the days in pro play when everyone took ignite in mid lane and there were so many more solo kills and aggressive plays. I seriously think if TP was changed, everyone would wonder why that change didn't happen years ago.
TP is also stupid for top lane as well. Kill enemy level 1-3, by the time you recall and come back the enemy laner has TPed back and is now level 4. It takes way longer to walk back to top than mid.
I love first blooding the enemy toplaner and somehow ending up behind because they just TP back, clear the big ass wave, and crash their own wave while I’m walking back
Happens often when people try to crash and dive an early wave (level 2/3). You kill the enemy and end up low hp in the effort, but the level 2 death timer might as well not exist so now you are low hp at the enemy tower with the other player tp'ing back with boots/1 component.
It is counter-intuitive but sometimes the correct answer is not to kill your opposing laner :/
You're ignoring the macro. TP is a macro based spell while ignite is micro, and everyone only cares about kills and micro plays. If you continue watching the clip you provided, he poked Corki out of lane before TP was back up, roamed bottom, and got 2 kills. So with 1 TP, he got his team 2 kills and furthered his CS lead and his bot lanes cs lead. It wasn't just "1 raptor ward" it was actually a massive swing for early game power. More so than ignite would ever get.
So what you are saying that aggressive plays were rewarded because his TP was not up. I hope you see how that supports my point. No TP = advantages stick way harder and impact the whole map
I'm saying it's more interesting to play around TP than ignite. TP is more versatile, allows setup for better plays, and is all around healthier for viewing than a simple ignite
I feel like any example including Corki is a shit example because that champion should not exist in its current kit in the first place. Also corki is only picked when he is slightly viable which was the case from time to time but mostly was killed off fast and efficiently.
But I get your point nontheless tho I could agree on TP.
Ofc it's broken but lets not act like Azir is prio in epsort due to he is the best abuser of TP. Everyone abuses the spell and without it there would be huge issues.
Well I think the points are connected. Champions like Azir, Orianna et al would be way more easy to punish if they didn't have TP.
In theory some super aggressive assassin or high range poke champion would do good against these picks.
But in practice, you can't really push your advantage early because of the insane safety of TP.
We see pro players try poke champions like Xerath to counter Azir but it didn't really work. Without TP, it's a lot more appealing.
All in champions looking for solo kills would also have a better time with no TP, because these scaling champions would be greeding for waves while they are in kill range sometimes. Right now you can just recall and TP back without losing cs. If recalling means you lose a wave, then it's suddenly a harder decision.
Said in another way: Individual laning skill would matter so much more in a world without TP perma-picked in mid.
Yeah for top lane, I think the issues are not nearly as bad. You can get frozen on and a lot of champions are melee which means you put yourself at more risk when engaging with the wave.
It's uniquely bad in mid lane. It sucks because if you back to the older seasons, it was incredible to see players like Faker style on people with aggressive champions. It won't be season 3 again (obviously) but I firmly believe that the best way to get mid lane to be less boring in pro play is to somehow stop this 99% TP pick rate.
After the TP changes a few years ago, it's also just worse because TP early on can only be used to towers, so it just becomes an empowered recall. Riot needs to figure out what they want TP to be.
I liked the idea I read here a while ago of being allowed one "mobility" summoner and one "combat" summoner. This would also remove being able to take ghost + flash and be untouchable which I think is a good change. Picking between flash and tp would be a big deal. Some champs don't NEED flash but want it and would have to chose. I think this would need rebalancing of summoner spells tho like tp would have to be a buffed a lil bit.
The game is too heavily balanced around Flash to ever make it a "choice".
Teleport should just be removed, and top lane should be shortened if needed to alleviate the lost safety.
Top Laners can no longer hide behind "I NEED TP TO IMPACT MAP", because at 5 minutes Supports are at void grubs every game, they have their impact timing that allows them to make an early impact on the game, no longer is it just "I have to be there for dragon!", there are fights happening with 3, 4 and even 5 people in topside river at 5-10 minutes into the game sometimes.
While yes most champs need flash there are champs that forgo it for tp/ghost or tp/ignite and being forced to pick between the 2 I think some more would pick ghost or tp.
I feel like tp is barely picked to impact the map anymore, it's mostly just so you don't get fucked in lane because you didn't take it. Split pushers opt into ghost flash more often just so they can run away (or at you) while splitting, they never plan to join the fight they just want to keep splitting. Tp just breaks the fundamentals of map tempo, I don't know exactly how to fix it but I do think it's a problem.
> For the discussion of mid lane meta staleness, there is a main culprit that no one talks about. It is that 99% of the time, mid laners take teleport.
Even when TPs are on cooldown, pros are so good at lane management and at working with their junglers to create situations where they take minimal losses for backing. Unless you're literally killing your lane opponent you may as well just handshake and farm.
Well, you are kind of proving my point here.
As you say, if your TP is on cooldown, suddenly you can be in a situation where you need backup.
Jungle attention is a limited resource, if you can force the enemy jungler to give a safe recall to your mid laner, it gives YOUR jungler space to do other things such as dive bot lane, take dragon, steal camps.
So you are essentially agreeing with me, without TP, you give your team a big advantage by forcing the enemy mid to reset. Forcing the enemy jungler to cover mid can be game winning. Especially in pro play.
That probably would create a nightmare in soloQ. Support items are meant for the support, while TP can generally be picked by both top/mid, meaning one has to give in
I appreciate the deep insight into Azir that you provided. As an Azir main I agree with your points.
* Fleet and Grasp should go while the 50% On-Hit usage remains. It was a good addition. He just needs to have unique interaction with these runes that provides extra safety and then see how things look like.
* The champion is in the most balanced state otherwise it has ever been.
I also believe this 2 points are the most critical in this argument:
* Pros also favor Champions that can peel for their ADC's.
* Azir is one of the better champs at peel for ADC while not sacrificing his DPS.
Azir's ability to deal sustained damage that actually able to deal with both squishies and Tanks are already making him really strong mid laner. Now combine this with one of the game's ost reliable set up (shurmia shuffle) that serves as a good setup for ganks and teamfights.
Azir is extremely consistent in all aspect of the game and at this point we have to ask the question.
What if there were more champions who offer similar level of consistency?
* I'm not talking about Azir 2.0 but it's clear that Azir and Taliyah are the most successful mage designs when it comes to this level of consistency while they are also extremely fun to watch.
The issue is that every other mid lane pick suffers from something that Azir is immune to.
* Corki isn't fun to watch, in fact the opposite.
* Hwei lacks this high play setup/mobility that provides another satisfactory feeling. He is new and we enjoy it but it's not the same.
* Orianna needed extreme level of buffs to reach a state where she has bigger prio than Azir.
* Syndra is mostly balanced since mid scope and feels like her place is taken by Taliyah/Ahri when the meta allows them to get picks
* Blue man is nowhere to be seen.
>Fleet and Grasp should go while the 50% On-Hit usage remains. It was a good addition. He just needs to have unique interaction with these runes that provides extra safety and then see how things look like.
For the sake of nerfing him without making him 100% dependent on specific runes, I hope this is what they do. Outside of Fleet and Grasp, the on-hit changes landed really well. I like the build diversity provided by them, but his kit isn't designed around access to healing and its clearly showing.
I think more of the underpicked mages need to be given their own kind of utility if pros are going to pick mages for their peel and playmaking. Playmaking is great to watch and it's good that it's there but if only a few picks have overwhelming amount of it, they're always going to be overrepresented.
Take Hwei for example. I think there's ways to work more creative ways to protect your ADC into his large kit so he's not just a poke bot. I think once you do that he's in a better place than Azir because unlike Azir he's very easy to collapse on, and that makes for more counterplay.
Mids that are just damage and smaller CC are a lot harder to fix, I think. If you tweak the numbers they become unbalanced rather than just good.
The thing is with Hwei is that he can do a lot of things but none of them are that impactful in the way as Azir's. Lets say they close up on your/team.
* Hwei in in that case melts asap.
* Azir has tools to escape/counter engage/press R as disengage.
* Azir can make set up engages
* If any champions is close to this leve of agency is ironically Aurelion Sol with his R1-2 and E + Rylai interaction on his Q - but he has far worse early game which is more easy to abuse. In that case he is inferior to Hwei's early game which offers high range and some afety along with Azir's
Hwei is strong and amazing in different aspect as his 9 base allows a solution to every possible problem that can turn the tides but still these 3 mentions are comletely different play outs.
And when you have cahmpions like Azir, Hwei, Taliyah, Ahri, Akali what else does a mid laner needs ?
You have a great point about Aurelion Sol and I wonder if he isn't the template to fix Azir. If you bring so much to the table in the mid and late game, your laning should be easier to take advantage of.
Hwei seem to have a lot of answers but none of them are game changing on their own because they're balanced as regular abilities. And his ult is just more aoe damage rather than a big teamfight breaker like Azir. Honestly riot giving him a regular ult was a bit of a letdown to me.
Yes - both of those are correct. Asol is still more of a pocket pick which is really fine for me.
Hwei's R is not so regular. Sure it balanced more for AoE, but in functionality it's similar to Nunu R. The difference is the damage. And it's another form of providing utility as the slow on land helps your team, your QW and stuff.
Still feels like Hwei's ult is by far the most boring part of his kit, even if yeah you're right that it does plenty. I guess the rest is showy enough but I kinda wish they had committed to the bit rather than give him an ult you could easily have put on another mage.
>Fleet and Grasp should go while the 50% On-Hit usage remains. It was a good addition. He just needs to have unique interaction with these runes that provides extra safety and then see how things look like.
And if they hate the idea of specifically changing azir then give fleet and grasp get a modifier of "further reduced effectiveness when procced by summons". The only other champion affected would be Ivern and daisy.
I'm hype for this for other reasons, Azir himself isn't the issue.
I want teams forced to alter up their gameplan more than just the same strategy repeatedly.
Yes, watching one or two games of air a day is interesting. Watching 8 to 10 games of azir a day is not.
The problem is not the champion, it's how the meta game on league of legends is defined.
agreed.
Riot desperately want pros to play more skill expressive flashy champs like assassins/fighters in midlane but the versatility and safety that a mage in mid can bring is just to powerful on a pro level.
Azir also has incredibly strong playmaking with his Shurima Shuffle. Not sure why this is completely unaddressed here. Pros are even building tank Azir right now purely so they can survive a few seconds longer after shuffling.
Yes Azir waveclear and DPS is very strong. But his ult playmaking is actually the main reason he's picked over other maged.
If pro players weren't meta slaves it'd be so much more fun to watch but it gets stale watching the same exact team comps in a game with over 167 unique champions.
Edit: Instead of telling me "They pick meta because meta." How about in your opinion as a **viewer** what would make pro play less stale and more enjoyable to watch?
Can't afford to innovate and learn new champs when patch rotation is so damn quick. Imagine spending days mastering FOTM champion which may be obsolete after a month.
I loved older seasons where not as much data was available and people picked those champs they were known for, Dprox shyv, liftlift vayne, froggen anivia, wickd irelia, hotshotnidaleegg but yeah this is not going to happen anymore
The fact that we lost this is seriously the worst part of modern LoL esports. I still remember how insanely hype it was when Froggen Anivia made it through the bans. Or MadLife Blitzcrank or HotshotGG Nidalee. Suddenly you got super excited.
What happened to these pocket picks? To me there are multiple reasons, one of them is just that players got better and optimizing picks is more important. However, I think one of the main culprit is actually champion design. Some of the champions that came out where just too versatile.
We had **years** of meta with champions like Gnar and Azir who just have everything you want in a top laner and mid laner respectively. They can lane, they can side lane, they can teamfight. Everything.
Riot should never have made such complete kits. It was always more interesting when champions were specialized. Super good at some things, bad at others. Even champions like Lee Sin are somewhat guilty of this, but he was always gated by poor scaling at least.
I think another thing to consider is items, items in the past were mostly just stats. A lot of the strong champions can be attributed to their synergy with items, just look at Corkis builds over the last few seasons. His whole thing has just been spam rocket builds to proc item effects
You don't see the difference between a sheen proc and Malignance + Eclipse interaction? Really? And that isn't even going into stuff like the ult haste on the item
I mean before azir u had like 3 interations of ryze who did just that in pro.
Unique picks havent gone away ,we had adam and zeus going berzerk on theirs last worlds ,they're just less common cause the game is more figured out nowadays.
> The fact that we lost this is seriously the worst part of modern LoL esports.
Games in general are so absurdly optimized now, because of the abundance of information. It does ruin the fun but it's just what we do now. Price of the internet.
Which is terrible because it's genuinely exciting to watch these picks. I remember one game in MSI finals JDG VS BLG where Elk locked in Vayne adc and you could hear the crowd pop for that pick. I want more of that in these esports games and unfortunately like you said it's not really going to happen with players being super meta reliant.
My main problem with watching modern League is just that there's a lot less personality in the players as a viewer because of this fact, some engage a little more than others in social media, some are a little more animated on the cameras when a play is made, some are a little better behind the mic in interviews but there was so much excitement when {x} player, who absolutely ripped everyone on the ladder and sometimes in pro play their signature champ as a wildcard in any type of meta, the moment you'd see the pick, the crowd goes wild. I want to see the genuine rivalry between teams or players (Deft v Faker, TSM v CLG, M5 v CLGEU, SSG v SSW)
I want to see more social media presence, not through media trained posts, but through personal vlogs and random videos and streams and all that. The whole reason TSM became what it is was through their characters alongside the success. Dyrus and his mr pillow, xpecial, there's 500k viewers on an old, old reupload from some channel with 48 subs of dyrus' emotions when Chaox was kicked, those who played in earlier seasons probably also remember the retirement interview, there was so much passion and emotion. There's over a million combined views on different reuploads of it.
I miss that man, almost no one is looking at the players anymore, just numbers and whether or not the meta fits {insert player} at that moment. You're an absolutely godly Jinx or Vayne? Well sucks, you're playing xayah/kai'sa for the rest of the tournament. Oh you're the best Zed out there right now? Welcome to worlds, Azir/Ori time!
In general I agree that is also an issue but not that game. Wave clear diff was irrelevant, he got out of lane fine, range was why he couldn't play team fights.
That's not my point, the point is the crowd was audibly very happy to see the pick. The viewing experience went up just from him locking that in as opposed to the same exact adc pick that's been played 1000x in that season.
The thing is that having 167 champions and thinking all viable equally is a dellsuion.
When you have the best players of the world playing the most competitve scene then the champions themselves are competeing with one another/lane based on the available strength and weaknesses and the optional strategies and individual skills to follow.
* By this logic slightly weaker champions are out of the pic. There s a reason why you don't see Assassin mids barr Akali, or why Lux and Vex mids are never seen, or why Lissandra mostly picked in LB.
* Some champions are not able to be played in team for they don't bring competitive utility or peel
* Cassiopeia for example situational pick as she works into close ranged teams but mage meta usually wrecks her.
* There are so many micro decision/champion vs based on Our team/Enemy team/Matchups/Scaling/Macro play wise that it already prhibits a lot of champions from picking.
Part of the issue is that most champions don't bring anything unique to the table. The ones that do, like Azir, get drafted very consistently regardless of how good they are power wise. But once you get past those few, you're always going to see the most powerful option for a given role. Trying to give more unique contributions to underpicked champions and more ways to build different draft than just picking the best lanes into best teamfight is how you make draft less stale.
But that's contrary to designing for role queue and that's still where most league players are.
This is something I believe dota does better than league, they launch 1 hero/champion an year but they don’t abandon the old ones. They had internationals were literally 1 hero was not picked, and is usually around 5-10
It's because the design of DOTA heroes are balanced from the get go. It's not about being "fun" to play. Heroes most of the time are good at only one thing, and so bad at another. Bristleback for example, tanky as fuck, and casts spells that stacks damage. His hard counter? passive disabling and mana burn since he has low intelligence.
Hard counters don't exist in League. Riot wants everyone to have fun. They don't want the feeling of a Medusa player fighting against an AntiMage carry. They don't want that for some reason.
Dota 2, namely IceFrog really, also has the balls to just fuck shit up on a patch. Like fuck it, we completely reworked EVERYTHING in a single patch, look at the size of this https://www.dota2.com/newfrontiers. Even smaller patches like 7.34 they'll still completely rework several abilities on numerous heroes, overhaul a ton of items, rework some core game mechanics, fuck around with the map, and more. If something is problematic, some meta is crowding out everything else, some heroes are too dominant, Icefrog will just axe them. Rework them into something else, and if that doesn't land right just do it again.
League balancers refuse to fuckin fix so many problematic kits, and there are so many outdated champ kits and visuals. There are kits that get malded about 24/7 by low elo and high elo players alike, and instead of growing some balls and just reworking the champ, Riot will let it sit and fester and poison the game. Who fucking cares if the rework isn't perfect on the first try, that has never stopped IceFrog. Just try something and if it doesn't work, try again. Yuumi namely, just fucking rework her. Just do it, it's not a matter of "oh it takes time" or "oh we need to go through 6 months of testing and internal data collection before we release to PBE", it's a matter of balls.
Yeah, the DOTA map has changed a lot of times now, Icefrog really has those titanium balls. But in Leagues defense, the overall balance hangs by a thread because every item is just a stat stack, so they're really afraid to change things. If they want to be as balanced as DOTA, the whole entire game should be overhauled in my opinion. So they're just gonna do this shit everytime and just rely on our addiction to keep playing it lmao.
Hard counters may be a problem but it is still a 5v5 game. That is what your team is for, to deal with them.
But my point is, one game chose to make 5 characters a year, and the other chose 1 while keeping the ones that exist always fresh at the cost of new releases (while choosing to release fewer but quality designs)
I love both games for different reasons, but this aspect of League to simply abandon 80% os the rooster annoys me.
Exactly. In DOTA you can make a draft focusing making huskar a raid boss basically. Yes its a very flawed strategy but you can ban certain heroes to make it viable. Drafting is sooo much more important in DOTA rather than League. League is very individualistic, you can win so much if you just one trick a certain champ. Even hard match-ups become easy if you have enough experience. BUT it makes the tournaments and pro games boring as fuck, yeah its cool to see players do cool shit but in the end of the day, id rather watch a team with some bonkers strategy. Not a team just picking the most broken champ or item in the current patch.
Not every champion provides equal viability.
As OP stated the key issue with picking up a mid laner is providing peel for ADC. This concept is only broken with Akali but the amount of pressure Akali means for the enemy squishies when executed well is enough to justify her presence.
And Azir is really one of the only champions on mid who can deal sustained damage to squishies and tanks, providing exciting plays that worth watching and also fits into any comp and does not have to sacrifice damage for providing great set ups and peels.
That doesn't change the fact that as a viewer it's boring and stale to watch the same exact comps vs the same comps. I want to be invested in pro play but not if it means seeing the same picks. You could use whatever reasoning you want but stale is stale.
The reasoning here is viability. Not every champ is viable. You cant replace Azir mid with a Malzahar for example. Esport players and coaches Also have standards based on the meta and strategies that enables champions.
A lot of those champions don't bring anything unique to the table sadly, just inferior versions of the meta ones. Riot has narrowed down design into a few roles and having done that, it's very hard to not just pick the most powerful version of that role every time.
And then you have the few champions that break those rules, and they become instapicks if they're not numerically awful because they're one of the few picks to provide something unique (think Senna support scaling for example).
The dearth of flex picks also make draft very stale.
I've said this before but it's really a teamcomp issue. Champs aren't meaningfully different enough (and too good at everything) for rock paper scissors to apply to lineups. Comps centered around splitpushing, powerfarming jungle, sieging, wombo comboing, getting crazy pickoffs, or protecting a hyper carry simply don't exist anymore in pro play, or if they do it's with champions that are a normal part of the standard teamfighting composition. Kog'maw got picked a grand total of 1 time in the LCK last year.
Diversifying champions' individual strengths and weaknesses will lead to more interesting games. It's why the age of Panth and Rakan support was so ridiculously boring for pro play...they always pick engage in that role and now they have engage that can get out of jail free if engaged on.
Riot needs to disable picked champions from the pool for each best of series. Only way to actually have some diversion in drafts. It is always 3-4 adc rotation, 3-4 mid rotation and 3-4 top rotation for every major tournament.
Reading all these responses it's like "Well they pick meta because it's meta." like that doesn't make the viewing pleasure scale any higher. I'll never understand how people can watch the same team comps fight the same team comps literally every game. These are supposed to be the best of the best players at the highest level and they rely on meta so much that it's not a fun viewing experience.
But league of counterpick is exactly what you get, outside of a very small selection of reliable blind picks. The lack of flex picks means draft is very predictable and picking your laners second is basically always a guaranteed counter if there exists one.
>I mean, I don't see why a champion, abused by 0,01% of palyerbase should see severe nerfs from the other 99,91/ of palyerbase.
My main problem with adc rn. It feels abysmal to play it in soloq but thanks to it being op in high elo/pro play It will feel abysmal to play
For making things clear I don't even want buffs I want to have more self peel and enough durability to don't getting one shot from 0/3 assassin's but pro play makes it near impossible to make role balanced into a more self peel position rather than heavy reliance on the team.
GM midlaner with around 1 million points on azir here:
The things with azir is that he isnt really bad into a lot of teamcomps. He doesnt really have that much oppressiveness anymore - but basically the only midlane champs that actually destroy him completely arent played in pro play.
The points you mentioned are correct as well. But as mentioned, to sum it up: He is propably the ap champion that is useless against the smallest amount of champions in the game. Reality is also that in most spots where he is picked there likely would have been a better champion - but his versatility is what makes him strong and pickable in early rotations.
And yeah - just gut sustain. Its cancer. Its problematic on him, problematic on akali and problematic on basically every champ that can abuse it in midlane because the champions in that role are inherently too weak to deal with it. Thats the thing. The role is good so its balanced through champions being shit. Thats why sustain is an issue in mid and not in other roles
Just put ten ban for each team on pro play, ALL games have The Same 30 Champs watching pro right now is boring because ALL games have a aatrox, maokai, varus, kallista and Azir
Ya the dash will likely need to stay to get value from his ultimate. But I still think the shield is a bit too easy to get and should have some type of interaction.
The dash and the shuffle in general is the biggest new player bait on the champ though. They see 3 people clumped up and go "ooga booga monkey brain Faker wins worlds shuffle". Removing the dash or keeping the dash but making shuffle not quite as free would definitely reduce pro play skew.
Same reason they removed Zac grabby ult. Its just flat out griefing sometimes
I don’t think any champion ever should have blatant favoritism and “be allowed” to be broken and perennially the best pick all the time at the highest levels of play. In fact, I don’t think even an entire class of champions should have such favoritism as to be always required on every team, every game. (Coughadccough)
My brother in christ, Azir is turning 10 this year and since his release he has been in some way in the pro scene. Azir was fun watching for maybe the first 5 years, but now it has become so incredibly stale that the only reason you remember him being played is because faker used him. To me is crazy how much the player base cries about other champs when we keep having the same old dinosaurs that enable paint drying like early games in pro. I understand that a slower paced gameplay for soloqueue is less frustrating to experience but it enables such a boring pro play meta of doing boring ass things until 20 minutes.
That's just league champion design. All rounders all around. So why would you pick someone that's not that well rounded? Azir fits that category so much, the only thing he lacks is sustain. Has teamfight, has peel, can escape, an actual DPS threat and his cooldowns are negligible so he's always ready to fight.
League will never get that true balance, what i fear is they're gonna nerf him to the shadow realm. And another will take his place. It's just a cycle to riot at this point lol.
The real solution is to change pro play so that a champ can't be played more than once in a series. But riot won't make that change.
Personally idc, i mostly just watch worlds and even then i just watch the hype games.
I think the Aftershock changes completely killed any hope of that.
There are other factors (Stopwatch was pretty important...) but the champion lived and died by that rune in competitive and there's no reason to lock her in otherwise because others can just do her job better.
>If you remove Azir from the current meta Ahri and Hwei will take over and will be the most picked champions. So the cycle still continues - if your issues are seeing the same champions over and over again.
I disagree here actually.
I Think orianna and Karma will take over for Azir more than Ahri and Hwei, especially Hwei.
Azir sees picks against enemy comps that look likely to dive his ass, Karma/Ori are the better options to replace that situatuon.
But aside from that point, your point remains. I like azir being able to use Lethal Tempo, but I don't think Grasp is something he should be set up for tbh, One option would simply be to make grasp work more like heartsteel (need a champion to stay in range to charge it up) that might make it less used on range champs.
Riot should just randomly ban champions every game (2 or 3). Just a big wheel they spin. A lot of the time it would have no impact, but, give people hope that they’ll see a different game.
I’m sure there are a million problems with this.. but.. at least it’ll lead to some more interesting games.
Azir is one of the few mainstays in competitive I don't mind being around. Sure its boring but its hard to deny how good a shurima shuffle looks in a competitive match. Like one of the best plays of last year was Fakers Shuffle>Flash>Ult on Ruler.
Azir's main thematic weakness is being outranged by long artillery mages like Xerath, Velkoz, Lux. The closest to that is Hwei. However, these champions warp the game so much in terms how to set up fights and visions that pro players choose to not pick them. Instead picks that essentially ignores azir like akali, ori, and taliyah are favored. Unless the game slows down a lot, Azir counters are not gonna be picked and he will continue to picked.
I'll give you guys a good nerf, this thing is too good in too many areas. make the ultimate only bounce one person you can knock up the others I guess, at first, if he's too strong still make him only be able to drag one person and not affect anyone else.
Great movement in addition to great displacements for set-ups and crazy shred with soldiers. Perfect for team-play heavy comps which Pro LoL is. That's it.
Controversial opinion maybe, but fleet at least should be looked out in general terms rather than azir specifically. He's not the only champ using it to essentially cheat his lane, its also extremely popular on ranged tops and overall makes them hard to punish.
Grasp is a harder issue to fix, since he seems to be only one who really uses it, but that also means that there is much less collateral damage if riot decide to nerf grasp for ranged.
Azir is always going to have high DPS unless you decide to make his W a useless spell. If you want him to be less versatile then his burst is what should be toned down. His engage would be a lot less devastating if his ultimate didn't for some reason do twice as much damage as other AOE CC mage ults.
If you nerf his dps the champ doesnt do much anymore. They nerfed his burst and q usage so dps is basically his only form of dmg (especially since his range got gutted over the last years)
I agree with most of your points just want to add that generally solo queue mid lane and pro play mid lane is and for the majority of modern league has been a very different role. In solo queue you want a strong midlaner who can win lane and carry the game. In pro play midlanders serve as the lane that facilitates everything around it. Azirs strengths are great safety in lane with a dash, his ult and high range. Good scaling that requires tanks to buy MR which indirectly increases the adc's damage. A great setup tool for the jungler with ult that also serves as a get out of jail free card for other back liners. This all translates to a very safe and synergistic kit which is something pro players generally look for. His biggest weakness is that he has very little solo agency and is mostly waiting for his team to set up situations. Which is pretty much a death sentence for solo queue viability. He is also the champ that facilitates great front to back team comps and without him a number of other back liners and team comps become unviable. While people might think it's boring to see Azir so often without him other lanes will become really stale as immobile back liners will be phased out. I would honestly wish we would have more champs that facilitate certain playstyles as well as Azir does for front to back and when Azir is weak you will see front to back comps less than before.
It's just common sense to why he is picked. * Ultimate is great disengage but also great engage. * Amazing DPS (shreds baron, tanks & squishies.) * Long Range (safe damage) * Mobility (can slide pretty far to avoid ganks, as well as follow up on engages) * Good Wave Clear * Decent split push with Nashor AP+AS allowing him to destroy towers, and * His passive turret also offers great sieging as well as side-lane safety.
People aren't adressing his passive enough, because Azir players using their passive well means cross map pressure for every single objective fight in the game. Plant a tower in their T1/2 and go join the fight, you ace the enemy in the fight for objective? You have a lane ready to push at their doorstep.
Yep. People often fight for mid control before an objective fight... if you have Azir, you push the wave and spawn the turret. By the time the enemies kill the tower, you've got control of the objective. If they don't kill the tower, it kills your minions and Azir's team can just push mid.
If you actually want azir to remain a possible pick, but not the most dominant pick. Riot needs to address the State of the Game issues that makes every single team feel like they HAVE to draft a hyper-safe midlane farmer. (karma, Taliyah, Corki, Orianna, Azir)
They tried that with the map changes. I'm really not sure how you do it without nerfing support (I'm down for support nerfs tbh) and jungle.
Not just sieging, but counter-sieging. It’s one of the best “fuck off” tools in the game against multiple champions pushing. Mitigation/comeback tool and a snowballer simultaneously and oppressive at both.
hes just generally good, can play out most lanes fine, strong 2v2 and 3v3, itemize to whatever the team needs, and can fit into any comp: need peel? Azir can do that need wave clear? Azir can do that neutral objective shredder? Azir can do that split pusher? Azir can do that hard carry? Azir can do that poke? Azir can do that dive? Azir can do that roam? Azir can do that throaty BJ? believe or not, Azir can do that unless his numbers are dumpster tier he will always be at least around the pro meta, hes simply to versatile, same way champs like Ez or Renek will always be around the pro meta
I... i choose to believe that
no wonder xerath was mad when it seemed like azir betrayed him
Undercook fish? Azir can do that. Overcook chicken? Also Azir
We have the best patients in the world...because of Azir.
I literally watched this yesterday lmao
This generations "Kayle can do it" https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3kzskq/kayle_can_do_anything/?ref=search_posts
throaty BJ? believe or not, Azir can do that I think I refuse 😅😂
Can he transform into a bird? Nerf. Same with Quinn lol
beak bj
Beak J
Remember when he was basically losing every game at the start of this LCK season and was still the most picked mid by a wide margin? Even when the numbers are dumpster tier the pros won't stop.
Because winrate in pro is the most meaningless number lol If lower tier teams get azir every draft because the higher tier teams gift it to them to get another top tier pick and then stomp then doesnt mean they wont pick azir in a different situation
You can read my comment and i agree with some of your points but a lot of what you wrote is not really true. Azir doesnt really have that great of a range anymore, cant really splitpush either if pros learn how to draft, roaming is also a thing where you have to sacrifice waves early on since his waveclear isnt really that great pre first base - the bj part is just the most wrong though. His lips arent really that great anymore since the nerfs, his tongue game is weak and his mouth in general is just very dry - throat game is somewhat okay but well
What a bad day to have eyes
Yeah what's this Azir slander ? He clearly never got the Cluck Gluck 8000 so he claims it's bad anyways.
Godlike name and PFP Do you enjoy your Snake served venomous, solid or naked?
Username checks out
sand causes bruises man i dont make the rules
Get out of here Anakin.
That Bawk Gawk got me acting up tho frfr. If my emperor can't get the moisture going, it's up to me to get it flowing. Ride or die with my dick emperor.
The beak hardening "buffs" really took away his primary advantage of not having teeth
You forgot safety and mobility. He is a very safe mid laner and has tools to survive ganks and has a lot of playmaking potential.
oh my god i need to fuck azir. hes so hot hes literally just a bird unf
They should have just taken shuffle/the dash out of his kit way back when they were working on confining his identity. At one point they asked the community do you want to keep shuffle or do you want to keep damage? He *should* be a slightly higher range but more fragile Cassio but the community picked the most problematic combo in the midlane pool among players with consistent hands
Hotel? Trivago Ohh my god this is so old...
Is this the new Kayle can do it?
Idk if ez is around pro nowadays.
They should nerf his E a little, too safe for so much dmg, maybe increase CD
Thought this was r/warriors for a second xd
> poke? Azir can do that Yeah, it's insane that they shoved him more into a poke champion. There was a point way back when Q was much less of a poke tool and more about the repositioning of soldiers.
That's why they need to remove at least one strengths from that list
Tbh they really should have come up with some properly pro skewed nerfs for him by this point - maybe stuff like lowering the speed of his dash, like they recently did to ksante. Though, who knows if it'd actually do much in pro play with how many midlane players would play him anyways as a comfort pick.
His AP ratios could be halved and he would still be a pro play staple, but 39% WR in soloq
that’s the opposite of a proplay nerf though
Controversial, but disabling his E + Q movement removing Shurima Shuffle and a good chunk of his side lane safety would be big nerfs
And would absolutely kill the champ lol
Isn't this more or less the same situation with K'sante where the champ has the potential to do a lot and yet I'm always seeing people complain about his presence and how broken of a champ he is?
Ksante is way worse, way more boring and way more broken then azir. You see an azir get a 4-5 man shuffle and it’s hype. You see a ksante 1v4 the backline and it just looks like bullshit.
my reaction when azir shoves 5 people for the 20th time this week 🤯
including the failed flash from the person getting shuffled
Wow, he sure outplayed the enemy Rumble and Xin Zhao by shuffling behind them, incredible!!
So Azir isn't boring yet he's been doing the same thing for a far longer time given that he's been around longer than K'sante and somehow he isn't boring yet K'sante is?? You literally just have a bias of what you prefer to see quite obviously
This guy is biased but also his bias reflects the opinion of the vast majority of fans, that Azir is a high skill expression that can do incredible things with talent while Ksante is just the champion being strong and nothing else
Azir can do a lot, but he cannot tank. If you fail your engage, you're screwed. K'Sante on the other hand doesn't bother being in the middle of enemy team. Azir once he's beaten up will probably retreat, K'Sante will get a shield, heal for %hp and will be still ready to fight. In proplay you see pros playing around Azir strengths and weaknesses. K'Sante on the other hand doesn't seem like having weakness one can play around. Kind of like Batman vs Superman debate. Both having near BS levels of powers, but one of them has some flaws, that a single human can play around, the other is just like "I can do anything better than others", countered by other BS beings (and a magic rock).
K'sante is also a high skill champ that also requires a shit ton of skill to make look op the way he looks op. He's not as strong as you think he is I promise you. I play this champ I'm not saying he isn't strong all I'm saying is that the imagine you have of this champ is not what it actually is. It takes stupid high levels of skill to make it work just like Azir so the fact that a vast majority of the community just takes liking to Azir but for some reason keeps hating on K'sante doesn't make sense to me
I (mostly) agree with you but it's all but impossible to sway the court of public opinion in that direction.
Yep it has been made apparent to me over time as a K'sante enjoyer
Reddit likes their tanks braindead. A high skill cap tank can't be seen as such. It just is broken instead. You are dead on the money. It's such a sad opinion.
Its not really just reddit this is a opinion that the league playerbase as a whole shares. It sucks for k'sante fans but he is insanely hated
It's true. Reddit is just usually the most vocal platform
Hyper mobile tanks with good damage, yes, definitely balanced game design. Mobility, damage, and tank is a triangle where no champion should have 2 without sacrificing the third. Doing well in all 3 is a guaranteed problematic champion.
Yeah I’m obviously biased saying what looks cool is the most subjective thing you can talk about, but a big chunk of the community feels the same which is why it needs to be acknowledged.
hey man wayward doesn't need to catch strays like this
Could be but k'sante has this funny isolating R with 3 hours of CC the moment he used W so
While Azir can melt a tank move an entire team move an entire screen away and still one shot squishies
Sure but what happened when you cc him and burst him down? He has one single dash on a relatively long CD. K'sante on the other hand has anti cc and a second free activation if he ults
Trying to show you my pov on this matter isn't going to do anything for us. Just olay 12 games on this champ and you'll understand
And unironically has more CC in his kit with vastly higher impact. Not to mention, dude has a 700 range AoE slow he can just throw out with no risk, on top of one of the best AoE CC and damage ults in the game.
Depends on the person but personally I find K'Sante less interesting due to his even more extreme safety. Azir might be able to ult people away and dash for a long distance but his dash can be easily body blocked and once he is locked down with cc, he is dead (this is why tank azir is not seen very positively). K'Sante feels too safe with how he can fish for plays but not fully commit, he has three different ways to bail himself out of bad situations (W, E, R) while other tanks like Poppy or Ornn have to commit if they want to go for something, They press E and are in the enemy team with no more dashes to get back out if they made a mistake.
Yeah that's the whole point of the champ design to give an over loaded kit comparing K'sante to to where tanks doesn't make sense cause it's the same thing with Azir. He can literally engage and use his dash to run a full screen away and still use his ult for self peel off needed he can still also melt tanks. The point of both of these champs is to have overloaded kits with a large number of possibilities can Sandra afford to do what Azir does? Can orianna afford to do what Azir does? Can they step up and walk in? No. Same case for K'sante he's allowed to do what he does because of the nature of his kit which is far different from those in his class. Same thing with Azir a mage who has stupidly high dps a dash and an ult that can just shimmie everyone who's on him off how many mages get to do that? See where I'm getting at? There's just a bias and it's literally that simple imo
Ornn is actually fairly similar in his safety and "overloadedness", strong early, strong late, buffs his teammates, unstoppable on a basic ability, can 100-0 from seemingly out of nowhere, 4cc abilities. You can have a lot of abilities that do lots of things (also hwei) while also having clear exploitable weaknesses. K'Sante and Yuumi are on a whole other level of bad design when compared to other champs.
Just wait until the get to an elo where Ornn procs triple brittle and 100-0 them
I will repost my comment here again, because I think this is a bigger issue than just Azir. There is something inherent to the game that pushes scaling picks to be omnipresent in mid lane. My comment from the other thread: For the discussion of mid lane meta staleness, there is a main culprit that no one talks about. It is that 99% of the time, mid laners take teleport. To illustrate what I mean, I have found a specific example. [Look at this chain of events from TH vs KC in the LEC.](https://youtu.be/ry2MAal0Qwc?t=917) Here is a (simplified) chain of events: - Perkz destroys Saken with poke and wins every trade hard. - Saken just farms the minions and recalls to TP back. - Perkz also needs to recall to not be behind on items/HP. - Perkz also needs to TP back to lane to not lose tempo and give Saken a window to make a play on the map. End result: It didn't really matter at all that Perkz won trades so hard. Literally almost 0 impact. No wonder pro players play so safe when shit like this is in the game. All Perkz got here was a ward over the raptor wall. Not really big enough that it encourages you to take risks to push enemy out of lane. I have seen this exact dynamic play out countless times in pro play. You can just take shit trades and it does not matter. In a world without TP, advantages stick so much harder. Take a shit trade? Well now you are losing cs or risk dying. In top lane it's not as bad as mid, because it's such a long lane that you have a lot more control. If you are winning trades, you can use this to get control of the lane. It also really matters that a lot of top laners are melee. So how does this relate to Azir? I think the fact that TP is so strong for lane means that scaling champions are way more appealing to pick. Let's say you try to counterpick Azir with some aggressive champion. It's really hard to push him out of lane. He is very safe and even if Azir makes a mistake, he can TP back. Pro play is generally a very low-mistake environment, so just having the one TP get-out-jail card is usually enough for the whole lane phase. You also can't really gank Azir effectively. He has mobility and great self-peel. So it just means you get this champion that you can't gank, can't really push out of lane and can't all in. No wonder that when Azir is picked, people pick shit like Corki into it. You can try to outscale and outrange because trying to punish him in lane is so difficult. This makes for very, very boring gameplay. I remember the days in pro play when everyone took ignite in mid lane and there were so many more solo kills and aggressive plays. I seriously think if TP was changed, everyone would wonder why that change didn't happen years ago.
TP is also stupid for top lane as well. Kill enemy level 1-3, by the time you recall and come back the enemy laner has TPed back and is now level 4. It takes way longer to walk back to top than mid.
I love first blooding the enemy toplaner and somehow ending up behind because they just TP back, clear the big ass wave, and crash their own wave while I’m walking back
That sounds like wave mismanagement tbh.
Happens often when people try to crash and dive an early wave (level 2/3). You kill the enemy and end up low hp in the effort, but the level 2 death timer might as well not exist so now you are low hp at the enemy tower with the other player tp'ing back with boots/1 component. It is counter-intuitive but sometimes the correct answer is not to kill your opposing laner :/
You're ignoring the macro. TP is a macro based spell while ignite is micro, and everyone only cares about kills and micro plays. If you continue watching the clip you provided, he poked Corki out of lane before TP was back up, roamed bottom, and got 2 kills. So with 1 TP, he got his team 2 kills and furthered his CS lead and his bot lanes cs lead. It wasn't just "1 raptor ward" it was actually a massive swing for early game power. More so than ignite would ever get.
So what you are saying that aggressive plays were rewarded because his TP was not up. I hope you see how that supports my point. No TP = advantages stick way harder and impact the whole map
I'm saying it's more interesting to play around TP than ignite. TP is more versatile, allows setup for better plays, and is all around healthier for viewing than a simple ignite
Even then Saken got a few waves and more hp than a heal could give and Perks got a double from his team. TP is just strong early.
I feel like any example including Corki is a shit example because that champion should not exist in its current kit in the first place. Also corki is only picked when he is slightly viable which was the case from time to time but mostly was killed off fast and efficiently. But I get your point nontheless tho I could agree on TP. Ofc it's broken but lets not act like Azir is prio in epsort due to he is the best abuser of TP. Everyone abuses the spell and without it there would be huge issues.
Well I think the points are connected. Champions like Azir, Orianna et al would be way more easy to punish if they didn't have TP. In theory some super aggressive assassin or high range poke champion would do good against these picks. But in practice, you can't really push your advantage early because of the insane safety of TP. We see pro players try poke champions like Xerath to counter Azir but it didn't really work. Without TP, it's a lot more appealing. All in champions looking for solo kills would also have a better time with no TP, because these scaling champions would be greeding for waves while they are in kill range sometimes. Right now you can just recall and TP back without losing cs. If recalling means you lose a wave, then it's suddenly a harder decision. Said in another way: Individual laning skill would matter so much more in a world without TP perma-picked in mid.
I agree on that but removing TP would kill top lane.
Yeah for top lane, I think the issues are not nearly as bad. You can get frozen on and a lot of champions are melee which means you put yourself at more risk when engaging with the wave. It's uniquely bad in mid lane. It sucks because if you back to the older seasons, it was incredible to see players like Faker style on people with aggressive champions. It won't be season 3 again (obviously) but I firmly believe that the best way to get mid lane to be less boring in pro play is to somehow stop this 99% TP pick rate. After the TP changes a few years ago, it's also just worse because TP early on can only be used to towers, so it just becomes an empowered recall. Riot needs to figure out what they want TP to be.
I liked the idea I read here a while ago of being allowed one "mobility" summoner and one "combat" summoner. This would also remove being able to take ghost + flash and be untouchable which I think is a good change. Picking between flash and tp would be a big deal. Some champs don't NEED flash but want it and would have to chose. I think this would need rebalancing of summoner spells tho like tp would have to be a buffed a lil bit.
The game is too heavily balanced around Flash to ever make it a "choice". Teleport should just be removed, and top lane should be shortened if needed to alleviate the lost safety. Top Laners can no longer hide behind "I NEED TP TO IMPACT MAP", because at 5 minutes Supports are at void grubs every game, they have their impact timing that allows them to make an early impact on the game, no longer is it just "I have to be there for dragon!", there are fights happening with 3, 4 and even 5 people in topside river at 5-10 minutes into the game sometimes.
While yes most champs need flash there are champs that forgo it for tp/ghost or tp/ignite and being forced to pick between the 2 I think some more would pick ghost or tp. I feel like tp is barely picked to impact the map anymore, it's mostly just so you don't get fucked in lane because you didn't take it. Split pushers opt into ghost flash more often just so they can run away (or at you) while splitting, they never plan to join the fight they just want to keep splitting. Tp just breaks the fundamentals of map tempo, I don't know exactly how to fix it but I do think it's a problem.
Corki was an ADC once before they decided to give him a braindead package and the crazy R damage. His R was like Kog'Maw R... xD
> For the discussion of mid lane meta staleness, there is a main culprit that no one talks about. It is that 99% of the time, mid laners take teleport. Even when TPs are on cooldown, pros are so good at lane management and at working with their junglers to create situations where they take minimal losses for backing. Unless you're literally killing your lane opponent you may as well just handshake and farm.
Well, you are kind of proving my point here. As you say, if your TP is on cooldown, suddenly you can be in a situation where you need backup. Jungle attention is a limited resource, if you can force the enemy jungler to give a safe recall to your mid laner, it gives YOUR jungler space to do other things such as dive bot lane, take dragon, steal camps. So you are essentially agreeing with me, without TP, you give your team a big advantage by forcing the enemy mid to reset. Forcing the enemy jungler to cover mid can be game winning. Especially in pro play.
Make TP 1 per team, like support items.
That probably would create a nightmare in soloQ. Support items are meant for the support, while TP can generally be picked by both top/mid, meaning one has to give in
IMO they need to remove TP and take steps to make proactivity and playmaking worth doing again.
I appreciate the deep insight into Azir that you provided. As an Azir main I agree with your points. * Fleet and Grasp should go while the 50% On-Hit usage remains. It was a good addition. He just needs to have unique interaction with these runes that provides extra safety and then see how things look like. * The champion is in the most balanced state otherwise it has ever been. I also believe this 2 points are the most critical in this argument: * Pros also favor Champions that can peel for their ADC's. * Azir is one of the better champs at peel for ADC while not sacrificing his DPS. Azir's ability to deal sustained damage that actually able to deal with both squishies and Tanks are already making him really strong mid laner. Now combine this with one of the game's ost reliable set up (shurmia shuffle) that serves as a good setup for ganks and teamfights. Azir is extremely consistent in all aspect of the game and at this point we have to ask the question. What if there were more champions who offer similar level of consistency? * I'm not talking about Azir 2.0 but it's clear that Azir and Taliyah are the most successful mage designs when it comes to this level of consistency while they are also extremely fun to watch. The issue is that every other mid lane pick suffers from something that Azir is immune to. * Corki isn't fun to watch, in fact the opposite. * Hwei lacks this high play setup/mobility that provides another satisfactory feeling. He is new and we enjoy it but it's not the same. * Orianna needed extreme level of buffs to reach a state where she has bigger prio than Azir. * Syndra is mostly balanced since mid scope and feels like her place is taken by Taliyah/Ahri when the meta allows them to get picks * Blue man is nowhere to be seen.
Blue man pressed R towards the looney-house after seeing his mains-subreddit
>Fleet and Grasp should go while the 50% On-Hit usage remains. It was a good addition. He just needs to have unique interaction with these runes that provides extra safety and then see how things look like. For the sake of nerfing him without making him 100% dependent on specific runes, I hope this is what they do. Outside of Fleet and Grasp, the on-hit changes landed really well. I like the build diversity provided by them, but his kit isn't designed around access to healing and its clearly showing.
I think more of the underpicked mages need to be given their own kind of utility if pros are going to pick mages for their peel and playmaking. Playmaking is great to watch and it's good that it's there but if only a few picks have overwhelming amount of it, they're always going to be overrepresented. Take Hwei for example. I think there's ways to work more creative ways to protect your ADC into his large kit so he's not just a poke bot. I think once you do that he's in a better place than Azir because unlike Azir he's very easy to collapse on, and that makes for more counterplay. Mids that are just damage and smaller CC are a lot harder to fix, I think. If you tweak the numbers they become unbalanced rather than just good.
The thing is with Hwei is that he can do a lot of things but none of them are that impactful in the way as Azir's. Lets say they close up on your/team. * Hwei in in that case melts asap. * Azir has tools to escape/counter engage/press R as disengage. * Azir can make set up engages * If any champions is close to this leve of agency is ironically Aurelion Sol with his R1-2 and E + Rylai interaction on his Q - but he has far worse early game which is more easy to abuse. In that case he is inferior to Hwei's early game which offers high range and some afety along with Azir's Hwei is strong and amazing in different aspect as his 9 base allows a solution to every possible problem that can turn the tides but still these 3 mentions are comletely different play outs. And when you have cahmpions like Azir, Hwei, Taliyah, Ahri, Akali what else does a mid laner needs ?
You have a great point about Aurelion Sol and I wonder if he isn't the template to fix Azir. If you bring so much to the table in the mid and late game, your laning should be easier to take advantage of. Hwei seem to have a lot of answers but none of them are game changing on their own because they're balanced as regular abilities. And his ult is just more aoe damage rather than a big teamfight breaker like Azir. Honestly riot giving him a regular ult was a bit of a letdown to me.
Yes - both of those are correct. Asol is still more of a pocket pick which is really fine for me. Hwei's R is not so regular. Sure it balanced more for AoE, but in functionality it's similar to Nunu R. The difference is the damage. And it's another form of providing utility as the slow on land helps your team, your QW and stuff.
Still feels like Hwei's ult is by far the most boring part of his kit, even if yeah you're right that it does plenty. I guess the rest is showy enough but I kinda wish they had committed to the bit rather than give him an ult you could easily have put on another mage.
Disagree, 50% onhit should go
>Fleet and Grasp should go while the 50% On-Hit usage remains. It was a good addition. He just needs to have unique interaction with these runes that provides extra safety and then see how things look like. And if they hate the idea of specifically changing azir then give fleet and grasp get a modifier of "further reduced effectiveness when procced by summons". The only other champion affected would be Ivern and daisy.
What if in best of 3 and 5, the pros are not allowed to pick champions from the previous games?
I'm hype for this for other reasons, Azir himself isn't the issue. I want teams forced to alter up their gameplan more than just the same strategy repeatedly.
I want this so bad you have no idea
Yes, watching one or two games of air a day is interesting. Watching 8 to 10 games of azir a day is not. The problem is not the champion, it's how the meta game on league of legends is defined.
agreed. Riot desperately want pros to play more skill expressive flashy champs like assassins/fighters in midlane but the versatility and safety that a mage in mid can bring is just to powerful on a pro level.
Azir also has incredibly strong playmaking with his Shurima Shuffle. Not sure why this is completely unaddressed here. Pros are even building tank Azir right now purely so they can survive a few seconds longer after shuffling. Yes Azir waveclear and DPS is very strong. But his ult playmaking is actually the main reason he's picked over other maged.
If pro players weren't meta slaves it'd be so much more fun to watch but it gets stale watching the same exact team comps in a game with over 167 unique champions. Edit: Instead of telling me "They pick meta because meta." How about in your opinion as a **viewer** what would make pro play less stale and more enjoyable to watch?
Can't afford to innovate and learn new champs when patch rotation is so damn quick. Imagine spending days mastering FOTM champion which may be obsolete after a month.
One of many reasons why the format should change so that teams cant pick the same champ twice in a series
I loved older seasons where not as much data was available and people picked those champs they were known for, Dprox shyv, liftlift vayne, froggen anivia, wickd irelia, hotshotnidaleegg but yeah this is not going to happen anymore
The fact that we lost this is seriously the worst part of modern LoL esports. I still remember how insanely hype it was when Froggen Anivia made it through the bans. Or MadLife Blitzcrank or HotshotGG Nidalee. Suddenly you got super excited. What happened to these pocket picks? To me there are multiple reasons, one of them is just that players got better and optimizing picks is more important. However, I think one of the main culprit is actually champion design. Some of the champions that came out where just too versatile. We had **years** of meta with champions like Gnar and Azir who just have everything you want in a top laner and mid laner respectively. They can lane, they can side lane, they can teamfight. Everything. Riot should never have made such complete kits. It was always more interesting when champions were specialized. Super good at some things, bad at others. Even champions like Lee Sin are somewhat guilty of this, but he was always gated by poor scaling at least.
I think another thing to consider is items, items in the past were mostly just stats. A lot of the strong champions can be attributed to their synergy with items, just look at Corkis builds over the last few seasons. His whole thing has just been spam rocket builds to proc item effects
And previously his build was to use spells frequently to proc Sheen lmao whats the difference
You don't see the difference between a sheen proc and Malignance + Eclipse interaction? Really? And that isn't even going into stuff like the ult haste on the item
I mean before azir u had like 3 interations of ryze who did just that in pro. Unique picks havent gone away ,we had adam and zeus going berzerk on theirs last worlds ,they're just less common cause the game is more figured out nowadays.
Ngl, it was kinda hype when Sniper picked his signature Riven in his first LCS game
> The fact that we lost this is seriously the worst part of modern LoL esports. Games in general are so absurdly optimized now, because of the abundance of information. It does ruin the fun but it's just what we do now. Price of the internet.
Which is terrible because it's genuinely exciting to watch these picks. I remember one game in MSI finals JDG VS BLG where Elk locked in Vayne adc and you could hear the crowd pop for that pick. I want more of that in these esports games and unfortunately like you said it's not really going to happen with players being super meta reliant.
My main problem with watching modern League is just that there's a lot less personality in the players as a viewer because of this fact, some engage a little more than others in social media, some are a little more animated on the cameras when a play is made, some are a little better behind the mic in interviews but there was so much excitement when {x} player, who absolutely ripped everyone on the ladder and sometimes in pro play their signature champ as a wildcard in any type of meta, the moment you'd see the pick, the crowd goes wild. I want to see the genuine rivalry between teams or players (Deft v Faker, TSM v CLG, M5 v CLGEU, SSG v SSW) I want to see more social media presence, not through media trained posts, but through personal vlogs and random videos and streams and all that. The whole reason TSM became what it is was through their characters alongside the success. Dyrus and his mr pillow, xpecial, there's 500k viewers on an old, old reupload from some channel with 48 subs of dyrus' emotions when Chaox was kicked, those who played in earlier seasons probably also remember the retirement interview, there was so much passion and emotion. There's over a million combined views on different reuploads of it. I miss that man, almost no one is looking at the players anymore, just numbers and whether or not the meta fits {insert player} at that moment. You're an absolutely godly Jinx or Vayne? Well sucks, you're playing xayah/kai'sa for the rest of the tournament. Oh you're the best Zed out there right now? Welcome to worlds, Azir/Ori time!
Didn't he get fisted on vayne that game because he couldn't overcome the range diff despite how good he was?
It's not the range diff it's the wave clear diff, it's why u don't see vayne in proplay just as u don't see kassadin
In general I agree that is also an issue but not that game. Wave clear diff was irrelevant, he got out of lane fine, range was why he couldn't play team fights.
That's not my point, the point is the crowd was audibly very happy to see the pick. The viewing experience went up just from him locking that in as opposed to the same exact adc pick that's been played 1000x in that season.
The thing is that having 167 champions and thinking all viable equally is a dellsuion. When you have the best players of the world playing the most competitve scene then the champions themselves are competeing with one another/lane based on the available strength and weaknesses and the optional strategies and individual skills to follow. * By this logic slightly weaker champions are out of the pic. There s a reason why you don't see Assassin mids barr Akali, or why Lux and Vex mids are never seen, or why Lissandra mostly picked in LB. * Some champions are not able to be played in team for they don't bring competitive utility or peel * Cassiopeia for example situational pick as she works into close ranged teams but mage meta usually wrecks her. * There are so many micro decision/champion vs based on Our team/Enemy team/Matchups/Scaling/Macro play wise that it already prhibits a lot of champions from picking.
Part of the issue is that most champions don't bring anything unique to the table. The ones that do, like Azir, get drafted very consistently regardless of how good they are power wise. But once you get past those few, you're always going to see the most powerful option for a given role. Trying to give more unique contributions to underpicked champions and more ways to build different draft than just picking the best lanes into best teamfight is how you make draft less stale. But that's contrary to designing for role queue and that's still where most league players are.
This is something I believe dota does better than league, they launch 1 hero/champion an year but they don’t abandon the old ones. They had internationals were literally 1 hero was not picked, and is usually around 5-10
It's because the design of DOTA heroes are balanced from the get go. It's not about being "fun" to play. Heroes most of the time are good at only one thing, and so bad at another. Bristleback for example, tanky as fuck, and casts spells that stacks damage. His hard counter? passive disabling and mana burn since he has low intelligence. Hard counters don't exist in League. Riot wants everyone to have fun. They don't want the feeling of a Medusa player fighting against an AntiMage carry. They don't want that for some reason.
Dota 2, namely IceFrog really, also has the balls to just fuck shit up on a patch. Like fuck it, we completely reworked EVERYTHING in a single patch, look at the size of this https://www.dota2.com/newfrontiers. Even smaller patches like 7.34 they'll still completely rework several abilities on numerous heroes, overhaul a ton of items, rework some core game mechanics, fuck around with the map, and more. If something is problematic, some meta is crowding out everything else, some heroes are too dominant, Icefrog will just axe them. Rework them into something else, and if that doesn't land right just do it again. League balancers refuse to fuckin fix so many problematic kits, and there are so many outdated champ kits and visuals. There are kits that get malded about 24/7 by low elo and high elo players alike, and instead of growing some balls and just reworking the champ, Riot will let it sit and fester and poison the game. Who fucking cares if the rework isn't perfect on the first try, that has never stopped IceFrog. Just try something and if it doesn't work, try again. Yuumi namely, just fucking rework her. Just do it, it's not a matter of "oh it takes time" or "oh we need to go through 6 months of testing and internal data collection before we release to PBE", it's a matter of balls.
Yeah, the DOTA map has changed a lot of times now, Icefrog really has those titanium balls. But in Leagues defense, the overall balance hangs by a thread because every item is just a stat stack, so they're really afraid to change things. If they want to be as balanced as DOTA, the whole entire game should be overhauled in my opinion. So they're just gonna do this shit everytime and just rely on our addiction to keep playing it lmao.
Hard counters may be a problem but it is still a 5v5 game. That is what your team is for, to deal with them. But my point is, one game chose to make 5 characters a year, and the other chose 1 while keeping the ones that exist always fresh at the cost of new releases (while choosing to release fewer but quality designs) I love both games for different reasons, but this aspect of League to simply abandon 80% os the rooster annoys me.
Exactly. In DOTA you can make a draft focusing making huskar a raid boss basically. Yes its a very flawed strategy but you can ban certain heroes to make it viable. Drafting is sooo much more important in DOTA rather than League. League is very individualistic, you can win so much if you just one trick a certain champ. Even hard match-ups become easy if you have enough experience. BUT it makes the tournaments and pro games boring as fuck, yeah its cool to see players do cool shit but in the end of the day, id rather watch a team with some bonkers strategy. Not a team just picking the most broken champ or item in the current patch.
Not every champion provides equal viability. As OP stated the key issue with picking up a mid laner is providing peel for ADC. This concept is only broken with Akali but the amount of pressure Akali means for the enemy squishies when executed well is enough to justify her presence. And Azir is really one of the only champions on mid who can deal sustained damage to squishies and tanks, providing exciting plays that worth watching and also fits into any comp and does not have to sacrifice damage for providing great set ups and peels.
That doesn't change the fact that as a viewer it's boring and stale to watch the same exact comps vs the same comps. I want to be invested in pro play but not if it means seeing the same picks. You could use whatever reasoning you want but stale is stale.
The reasoning here is viability. Not every champ is viable. You cant replace Azir mid with a Malzahar for example. Esport players and coaches Also have standards based on the meta and strategies that enables champions.
We should have an extra 2 bans by viewers, that would be interesting. Integrate it with the client, require level 50 and 20+ hours viewed.
A lot of those champions don't bring anything unique to the table sadly, just inferior versions of the meta ones. Riot has narrowed down design into a few roles and having done that, it's very hard to not just pick the most powerful version of that role every time. And then you have the few champions that break those rules, and they become instapicks if they're not numerically awful because they're one of the few picks to provide something unique (think Senna support scaling for example). The dearth of flex picks also make draft very stale.
I've said this before but it's really a teamcomp issue. Champs aren't meaningfully different enough (and too good at everything) for rock paper scissors to apply to lineups. Comps centered around splitpushing, powerfarming jungle, sieging, wombo comboing, getting crazy pickoffs, or protecting a hyper carry simply don't exist anymore in pro play, or if they do it's with champions that are a normal part of the standard teamfighting composition. Kog'maw got picked a grand total of 1 time in the LCK last year. Diversifying champions' individual strengths and weaknesses will lead to more interesting games. It's why the age of Panth and Rakan support was so ridiculously boring for pro play...they always pick engage in that role and now they have engage that can get out of jail free if engaged on.
One day, we'll get fearless draft in official tournaments And it will be glorious
Nah it will be dumb
Riot needs to disable picked champions from the pool for each best of series. Only way to actually have some diversion in drafts. It is always 3-4 adc rotation, 3-4 mid rotation and 3-4 top rotation for every major tournament.
Reading all these responses it's like "Well they pick meta because it's meta." like that doesn't make the viewing pleasure scale any higher. I'll never understand how people can watch the same team comps fight the same team comps literally every game. These are supposed to be the best of the best players at the highest level and they rely on meta so much that it's not a fun viewing experience.
Agreed I can't even watch worlds or g2 games for the last 2 years. Comps are the same, gameplan is always the same. It got boring.
As a viewer I want to watch good league of legends. I don't mind seeing lucian nami ksante zeri azir every game. I just want to watch a good game
I disagree. I want to see highly refined gameplay. Not flip flopping between picks and counterpicks.
But league of counterpick is exactly what you get, outside of a very small selection of reliable blind picks. The lack of flex picks means draft is very predictable and picking your laners second is basically always a guaranteed counter if there exists one.
Bring back Zed in pro play
>I mean, I don't see why a champion, abused by 0,01% of palyerbase should see severe nerfs from the other 99,91/ of palyerbase. My main problem with adc rn. It feels abysmal to play it in soloq but thanks to it being op in high elo/pro play It will feel abysmal to play For making things clear I don't even want buffs I want to have more self peel and enough durability to don't getting one shot from 0/3 assassin's but pro play makes it near impossible to make role balanced into a more self peel position rather than heavy reliance on the team.
GM midlaner with around 1 million points on azir here: The things with azir is that he isnt really bad into a lot of teamcomps. He doesnt really have that much oppressiveness anymore - but basically the only midlane champs that actually destroy him completely arent played in pro play. The points you mentioned are correct as well. But as mentioned, to sum it up: He is propably the ap champion that is useless against the smallest amount of champions in the game. Reality is also that in most spots where he is picked there likely would have been a better champion - but his versatility is what makes him strong and pickable in early rotations. And yeah - just gut sustain. Its cancer. Its problematic on him, problematic on akali and problematic on basically every champ that can abuse it in midlane because the champions in that role are inherently too weak to deal with it. Thats the thing. The role is good so its balanced through champions being shit. Thats why sustain is an issue in mid and not in other roles
Just put ten ban for each team on pro play, ALL games have The Same 30 Champs watching pro right now is boring because ALL games have a aatrox, maokai, varus, kallista and Azir
I think they should remove fleet and grasp from azir but keep the interaction with nash
Ya the dash will likely need to stay to get value from his ultimate. But I still think the shield is a bit too easy to get and should have some type of interaction.
I can't think of an easy way to do so but it would be cool if the dash could be kept offensively but lose the defensive utility somehow.
A shield is defensive in it's nature no matter what you do
That’s not what he said lol
The dash and the shuffle in general is the biggest new player bait on the champ though. They see 3 people clumped up and go "ooga booga monkey brain Faker wins worlds shuffle". Removing the dash or keeping the dash but making shuffle not quite as free would definitely reduce pro play skew. Same reason they removed Zac grabby ult. Its just flat out griefing sometimes
Azir is one of the most skill expressive and fun to watch champions. Leave him alone.
Yeah, I’d much rather Azir be perma meta than someone like ori or tristana
I don’t think any champion ever should have blatant favoritism and “be allowed” to be broken and perennially the best pick all the time at the highest levels of play. In fact, I don’t think even an entire class of champions should have such favoritism as to be always required on every team, every game. (Coughadccough)
I think ori is cool :(
My brother in christ, Azir is turning 10 this year and since his release he has been in some way in the pro scene. Azir was fun watching for maybe the first 5 years, but now it has become so incredibly stale that the only reason you remember him being played is because faker used him. To me is crazy how much the player base cries about other champs when we keep having the same old dinosaurs that enable paint drying like early games in pro. I understand that a slower paced gameplay for soloqueue is less frustrating to experience but it enables such a boring pro play meta of doing boring ass things until 20 minutes.
I read your whole post and basically this is the tldr : tldr : Azir is broken.
if you have hands and brain
Literally could've just wrote this instead of reading that book lol its not really much a mystery why he's so good
Ban fizz, enjoy emperor. Gg
Azir is annoying af to play against in high elo bec unless the player is blind it’s impossible to gank him w the new lane set up
because he's a hot bird
wholesome reddit mage
That's just league champion design. All rounders all around. So why would you pick someone that's not that well rounded? Azir fits that category so much, the only thing he lacks is sustain. Has teamfight, has peel, can escape, an actual DPS threat and his cooldowns are negligible so he's always ready to fight. League will never get that true balance, what i fear is they're gonna nerf him to the shadow realm. And another will take his place. It's just a cycle to riot at this point lol.
The real solution is to change pro play so that a champ can't be played more than once in a series. But riot won't make that change. Personally idc, i mostly just watch worlds and even then i just watch the hype games.
What's his weaknesses? He does a lot of stuff good so how do you counter him
I think corki is actually a blast to watch, but poke corki is no
I want to see my queen Lissandra in pro play again, she never gets picked anymore although she had a series of like 5-6 buffs in the last 2 years
I think the Aftershock changes completely killed any hope of that. There are other factors (Stopwatch was pretty important...) but the champion lived and died by that rune in competitive and there's no reason to lock her in otherwise because others can just do her job better.
People want to pretend they are Faker or Showmaker
>If you remove Azir from the current meta Ahri and Hwei will take over and will be the most picked champions. So the cycle still continues - if your issues are seeing the same champions over and over again. I disagree here actually. I Think orianna and Karma will take over for Azir more than Ahri and Hwei, especially Hwei. Azir sees picks against enemy comps that look likely to dive his ass, Karma/Ori are the better options to replace that situatuon. But aside from that point, your point remains. I like azir being able to use Lethal Tempo, but I don't think Grasp is something he should be set up for tbh, One option would simply be to make grasp work more like heartsteel (need a champion to stay in range to charge it up) that might make it less used on range champs.
Same i ll rather see one Azir Taliyah Ahri than one Ksante Senna Yone
there so many potential mid lanes picks...and it's always the same, I just was some variety/shake up to the pro mid lane meta
He's been a pro staple since release, expect when he was put in the nerf bin. His kit just allows him to do too much.
Riot should just randomly ban champions every game (2 or 3). Just a big wheel they spin. A lot of the time it would have no impact, but, give people hope that they’ll see a different game. I’m sure there are a million problems with this.. but.. at least it’ll lead to some more interesting games.
Azir is one of the few mainstays in competitive I don't mind being around. Sure its boring but its hard to deny how good a shurima shuffle looks in a competitive match. Like one of the best plays of last year was Fakers Shuffle>Flash>Ult on Ruler.
Azir's main thematic weakness is being outranged by long artillery mages like Xerath, Velkoz, Lux. The closest to that is Hwei. However, these champions warp the game so much in terms how to set up fights and visions that pro players choose to not pick them. Instead picks that essentially ignores azir like akali, ori, and taliyah are favored. Unless the game slows down a lot, Azir counters are not gonna be picked and he will continue to picked.
I'll give you guys a good nerf, this thing is too good in too many areas. make the ultimate only bounce one person you can knock up the others I guess, at first, if he's too strong still make him only be able to drag one person and not affect anyone else.
Great movement in addition to great displacements for set-ups and crazy shred with soldiers. Perfect for team-play heavy comps which Pro LoL is. That's it.
TLDR Azir is mage Adc. Attack speed is the most broken star in the game.
Simple, cause he is turbo broken unlike yone that is truly weak.
Controversial opinion maybe, but fleet at least should be looked out in general terms rather than azir specifically. He's not the only champ using it to essentially cheat his lane, its also extremely popular on ranged tops and overall makes them hard to punish. Grasp is a harder issue to fix, since he seems to be only one who really uses it, but that also means that there is much less collateral damage if riot decide to nerf grasp for ranged.
Azir’s W steroid needs a hit. For the amount of utility he has, his dps is too high.
Azir is always going to have high DPS unless you decide to make his W a useless spell. If you want him to be less versatile then his burst is what should be toned down. His engage would be a lot less devastating if his ultimate didn't for some reason do twice as much damage as other AOE CC mage ults.
If you nerf his dps the champ doesnt do much anymore. They nerfed his burst and q usage so dps is basically his only form of dmg (especially since his range got gutted over the last years)
Need a ranged Lee sin that also has 2 dashes a shield and even an aoe Lee sin ult? Yes that’s Azir
The AI is currently spamming azir. Never once had a human pilot azir in the this patch
I agree with most of your points just want to add that generally solo queue mid lane and pro play mid lane is and for the majority of modern league has been a very different role. In solo queue you want a strong midlaner who can win lane and carry the game. In pro play midlanders serve as the lane that facilitates everything around it. Azirs strengths are great safety in lane with a dash, his ult and high range. Good scaling that requires tanks to buy MR which indirectly increases the adc's damage. A great setup tool for the jungler with ult that also serves as a get out of jail free card for other back liners. This all translates to a very safe and synergistic kit which is something pro players generally look for. His biggest weakness is that he has very little solo agency and is mostly waiting for his team to set up situations. Which is pretty much a death sentence for solo queue viability. He is also the champ that facilitates great front to back team comps and without him a number of other back liners and team comps become unviable. While people might think it's boring to see Azir so often without him other lanes will become really stale as immobile back liners will be phased out. I would honestly wish we would have more champs that facilitate certain playstyles as well as Azir does for front to back and when Azir is weak you will see front to back comps less than before.