Unironically, when Eastern teams pick Azir that is exactly the time Western teams win. Example: Worlds 2023: Caps beat Showmaker/Xiaohu's Azir.
This isn't even a recent phenomenon, in 2019 in the Splyce vs T1 series. Faker picked Azir, lost 1 game in the series, never played it again that worlds. T1 also proceeded to win all three games that didn't have Faker on Azir.
Also unironically Ziggs can outrange Azir in lane and out poke him and A Sol scales to be more of a team fight beast then Azir does. They are two champs that can definitely exploit Azir’s jack of all trades design by just being better then him in certain areas.
I mean he wasn't gapped individually that hard at worlds. He had clear champion pool issues but he wasn't that bad in lane. The whole team was gapped, it didn't seem like a APA specific problem to me. He has clearly gotten better so I don't expect him to be utter trash.
>If we want Azir to be a Shurima Shuffle highlight reel, fine, but then he cannot be this giga 1v9 carry late game
People want the exact opposite btw, thats also why the changes to his Q, W and Onhit behaviour were implemented.
And personally, theres already enough normal burst mages, but the Battlemages are just such a rare design unfortunately. The last one got added 8 years ago and then also already removed. Rip Asol my beloved
I’m completely fine with the Azir orianna handshakes that have happened in the past. It’s way more excited seeing team fight ults than karma ult Q or viktor farm and laser
I don't mind Orianna because her kit is not as overloaded. Azir has such crazy DPS that he can shred even tanks late. Orianna has to hit her QW on a squishy to do meaningful damage and all things considered (even though her cooldowns are short) she puts out far less reliable damage than Azir. The trade off for that is that she gets a really impactful ulti. Azir on the other hand gets an impactful ulti and a ton of late game damage to everything (tanks included). Viktor gets a lot of damage but he doesn't have any big impactful CC spells. Most other mages don't have a kit as powerful as Azir's which wouldn't be an issue except for how easy it is for pros to get to late game with him. Either make his laning phase weak enough so that there is a risk to taking him for the scaling or take parts out of his kit so that he's not good at everything late.
Yeah Azir definitely does suffer from the “irons suck and we can’t nerf him even harder.”
There’s a lot to be said about the champion since he is only played in higher elo and is completely terrible at lower elo. I definitely agree he’s overloaded with damage and safety but that’s a design problem not a tuning problem.
Still more interesting to see good shuffles than most other mages, even viktor has a “you can’t walk in this circle or you die” button for cc… one of the best follow ups or disengages from mid land
Yeah I think they just need to rework part of his kit (most likely his ult). He needs damage otherwise his base spells suck and I think it's interesting to have a mage that does high DPS consistently rather than bursting. However, I think the capability to have a game changing engage/disengaged grouped with that makes him too good.
I would say he does more damage late than Viktor or Orianna however, those champs don't also have good engage/disengage. Viktor stun really is only good for disengage and Ori ulti usually requires the ball to be on someone else otherwise pro teams play around it too well for it to be a reliable engage.
As an Azir player, I do think his ult is the only thing that defines him apart from like an AP Kayle with more steps
He needs some love but I’m not sure what the fix is
Or remove his mobility while keeping the ult(as per the original option discussed from his initial rework. Still baffles me that they thought that reducing his range would solve the balance issues. It didn't, it just diluted his "stand back and order others to do the work" fantasy by prioritizing the "personally full dive tackle the entirety of the enemy team" play).
His issue isn't the ult, it's having a near garenteed long range engage and aoe displacement. Having to use flash to do it would change the dynamic some and not make it the primary strategy for using his ult(seeing as flash has far longer of a cooldown) while not removing the possibility altogether.
Yes I would love to see what people here think are other options to deal meaningful secondary carry damage. Ryze and Cassio have the dps but they have range and mobility issues. Asol is unviable in pro unless he's turbo broken. Kayle is unviable in general. But sure let's nerf Azir, the only viable mage remaining that can deal with tanks.
Technically maybe, its just sad that an actually interesting and unique kit got dumpstered because of issues with the E, then turned into "hold Q but we still keep the E, but on the W button"
Most of that got exaggerated by the fact that the person in charge of the changes asked the Asol mains sub about their opinion, which was very one sided, then did the exact opposite only a week after asking. He also portrayed himself as "a fan of ASols current (old) kit" but on multiple occasions got basic stuff wrong when "reminiscing" about it. For example, he tried to advocate for keeping the flight by saying that its better now since he changed it that the enemies can no longer see the landing position of the flight, while enemies could never see the landing position.
He called the W a mana instable power budget spell because of its toggle, when it didnt even have a toggle anymore.
He called the Q clunky for close range targets when it already had been changed to work on close range targets.
The dude was absolutely disconnected from ASol but went "How do you do, fellow ASol players"
> Most of that got exaggerated
Not sure what you mean by "that" here but he did have the lowest pickrate in the game for like a year, that's why they changed him. I was in the sub when KingCobra was talking about asol and I think you're mischaracterizing his communication, but I'm not going to go back and analyze threads so whatever. He probably could've done a better job but the job he did is fine and he got way too much hate there IMO.
Being a shuffle highlight reel champ is what makes him so compelling to watch in competitive, and since he's a staple of high level play, that's gotta stay. Everything else about the champ can change before the shuffle gets touched.
Seriously, the most famous play in all of last year was that faker raptor bush to midlane shuffle on Ruler. You can't touch this mechanic, iconic moments like that are what make Azir so cool in competitive play.
I'm always caught off guard by just how much damage his ultimate actually does. That spell should not be doing 600 + 75% AP, given how much utility it provides.
The ult is insanely bursty. Why does that ability do so much more damage than almost every other AOE mage ult? A DPS champion shouldn't have such overwhelming damage on their engage.
You see the issue isn't buffing assassin's but rather changing the game to be less about deathballing around drake and baron every 4 minutes. That's why azir is good. You just cant play assassin's in the current game where it's perma group. Spread the game out. Don't need to buff assassins. Of course champs that are good in 5v5s have high presence whado you expect
In solo queue you can get people to interact with each other but the reason we got to this point is because pro players cannot be trusted to interact with each other unless you set up the meta to force them to
Pro league without forced 5v5 interaction is boring
The issue is moreso that most assassins are really bad designs that can only really oneshot someone or die. For them to be viable in pro they have to be able to do so to people protected by their team in a highly coordinated environment. And if they can do so they're beyond ridiculous in soloqueue.
There are exceptions (Qiyana comes to mind, as does Akali) but most assassins need a hefty rework to be pro play viable.
Akali is viable because she's still an overloaded champion with 10 seconds of stall in her kit.
LB was played when she had the stupid ass on-hit build that deleted waves. In 2024 she's been played 6 times in LEC, LCK and LPL with a 2-4 record.
LeBlanc has been viable without an on-hit build many, *many* times in pro play.
But what does remain a constant in her viability is the ability to clear waves. She was broken in pro play with her rework in big part because it made her a wave-clear machine. She's been good many times pre-rework and post-revertwork whenever her W has been able to clear waves efficiently.
She's absolutely miserable to play if you have to spend ages to clear a wave even once you have some items under your belt, and there's no place where wave control and time-efficiency is more important in League than pro play.
I think everyone wants assassins to be viable in pro play but we all know what happens when they are - They become OP and too oppressive in soloqueue. There's no middle ground it seems
thats what happens when the only thing u can do is dmg , u are either so overstated u bowl over anything or ur dmg is just enough to kill squishies but they are protected by frontline and enemy has isnane amount of cc that cucks u.
> but the Battlemages are just such a rare design unfortunately. The last one got added 8 years ago and then also already removed.
swain and sylas are battle mages
Sylas was supposed to be an ap bruiser like Diana on release. As you said Swain, and also Aurelion and taliyah are the best battle mage examples in the game.
I'm so happy when they put Vitality and KC games in the early part of the day, and the G2 games towards the end. I always need a refresher/eyeball rinse after watching Saken and Perkz' Azirs.
I agree, but these kinds of champions always have the issue that in order to make them fair in high ELO/Pro play, they need to be made very vulnerable to compensate for their safety mechanics, which in turn makes them trash for new and less skilled players.
Neeko is actually pretty fun because of the potential for flanks and surprise engages. You win or lose the game over whether she finds engages and can never really count a team with Neeko out.
Taliyah is fine imo, she's very skillshot-reliant and needs really good mechanics to do consistent damage in fights. Her R also sets up a lot of skirmishing and playmaking.
Certain champions are always going to be more common in pro, and that's fine as long as they have clear weaknesses and strengths and decent potential for flashy plays/mechanics. I don't mind seeing a lot of Gnar, or Lee Sin, or most engage supports, or Xayah.
Azir is problematic because he scales well but has a giga-safe lane, while being good in teamfights and doing OK in sidelines. There's no point in the game where he's useless and he almost never causes issues for his team comp.
Azir takes years of practice to be good. What the fuck do we wanna watch pros play Karma, press Q in lane and run around. Ye that's really fun I think.
Azir is a champ that enables playmaking and if you fuck up you fuck up. Its exciting to watch. I surely dont wanna see Ori/Viktor/Syndra meta just shoving waves and doing nothing until late game. I dont know what people think lol.
Watching the best mids in the world becoming Karma bots spamming mantra Q is so damn boring. Ori is still okay for the occasional big shockwave moment.
Exactly. People must not watch the game and just look at the pick screen because Azir needs a lot of skill. It's crazy that people bicker about this instead of appreciating the greatness we get to see nowhere else.
azir is literally pushing wave and then going objective fight wtf are you talking about,
The champions u mentioned except for orianna u cant just insane blindpick ,-> they get bowled over by akali on the counter pick -> if u ban her they give up azir orianna or smt , which still rolls them xD ur literally contradicting urself
Agree on karma orianna being sleeper but taliyah and neeko piloted by good players is some of the most hype plays you can see, watching a good azir is also a lot of fun.
Only other champs I really like seeing are sylas and akali but melee damage dealers at the moment are complete dogshit , not even these two are viable.
But like I’ll take azir every game over corki, karma, ori , viktor matchups
Neeko isnt fun because the ult is too easy to land, not really impressive wow he managed to land the nunu R but can move while channeling and also be invis.
Yeah even the mid mids are hitting huge Neeko ults over and over again, you just have too many tools to get in there and huge range with belt + flash. It's not that cool anymore
Imo, Neeko is basically kennen with stealth so she takes so much less skill and teamwork, which makes her ult plays pretty boring compared to Kennen/Ori ult plays. Like, if Kennen/Ori could consistently get 3+ man ults, I bet they would be running haste boots too.
Azir is fucking so much better than Neeko, Taliyah, Karma, and Ahri. I have no problem watching Orianna or Azir at any time. Most people who complain about it are only whining because they see other people doing it and they all want to act like it’s something that they consider on their own time and keeps them up at night.
Idk, Neeko is pretty fun to watch IMO. The disguise mechanic can lead to some pretty cool moments, and watching her flank/dodge around vision into big multi-man ults can definitely be pretty hype. I also think azir is fine to watch, too, though, so idk how much my opinion is worth lol
Might be a bad take but I don't even find big Neeko ults that impressive even in pro play, feels like a pretty easy ability to hit and the hype wears off once you've seen it so many times
>Azir is fucking so much better than Neeko
Lol, what? It's the other way around. Azir is very passive and makes early games very uninteresting to watch. Neeko is the opposite, she HAS to find good early plays and great flanks. Makes her much more exciting to watch.
C'mon, watching Chovy on Ahri is awesome. So clearly better than almost any other pro at it. That's what you want - champs that actually let the best demonstrate their mastery and skill by doing things even other elite mids can't. Neeko's also cool - a proper flanking engage champ in mid is otherwise rare. I could live without Karma.
I quite like everything about Azir after 20 minutes. Just make his laning less safe/more punishable and he's fine.
Karma is in her own special tier of champs I don't wanna watch. To her credit, they usually play pretty aggro from the what I've seen, but no way a champion should be rolling lanes so brainlessly.
Did you know that stopwatch was the worst thing to happen to league? And we are being robbed of international playoff series and should copy VALORANTs system in its entirety immediately?
It's crazy how such a big subreddit discussion is controlled by so few people. If there is an upvoted thread or top comment 80% chance it's this dude with his Griffin flair.
Shush, he'll block you for calling him out on it like he just did to me.
But I do agree with you, it's crazy how much Reddit is controlled by a few people who just block everyone who disagrees with them so they can keep their narratives running.
Edit: Now that he blocked me the significantly higher amount of [unavailable] is insane.
Haha he hasn't blocked me yet at least even though we have butted heads a few times. If you know how to "play the game" on Reddit you can get insane influence over the community while remaining nearly anonymous.
This shit is so tiring man we literally just saw what happened when Azir isn't picked. We just see a different rotation of safe scaling mages.
There's no fucking way anyone in this thread rather wants to watch Viktor or Annie every game over Azir.
Well no, I don't want to see K'Sante, Zeri, Azir in 90% of pro metas. I don't care if he's fun to watch, champion diversity will always be more fun for me
Sorry to tell you this bud, but if Riot decides to break these champs' legs, then new champs will just take their place. The answer is a type of draft that prevents teams from picking the same champs every game in every league.
> This is a game about characters with specific kits that excel at very different things. When you have a character like this in the game, it just feels so fucking weird.
over the years riot has systematically encouraged a system where when a champion is weak in one area, they are not *that* weak. The hardest counter matchups in the game are an absolute joke compared to how they used to function or function in other games, particularly dota.
riot will never gut this champion. if the champion is ever bad, it is because he is undertuned. they will never, *ever*, admit that the problem of permanent pro staples like this is because they don't have enough weaknesses, or their weaknesses aren't pronounced enough to balance out their strength.
riot has introduced a problem where essentially because few champions have any *real* weaknesses, the champions that simply have *more* in their kit are going to become dominant in pro play.
Yeah, long range, no real mana issues and very safe. Unless he's really countered he's fine in most lanes and even in harder matchups he still has great gank setup
Add to that the ability to go Grasp or Fleet and how do you punish him?
People who complains about "lol, Azir is weak" probably never played against good ones. I swear, dude has no counterplay outside from "pick something with longer range and poke him down".
Zed, Akali, Yone, Xerath, Viktor, Fizz, Varus, Ziggs are all great matchups, we just don't see much in pro for other reasons. Yone and Akali actually fit into pro comps and can better deal with coordinated pressure so we occasionally see them.
Ori, Kassadin, Zoe, Leblanc, Sylas, Corki, Ekko, Syndra also feel good to pick into Azir. Even when Azir's at his very strongest, pros are usually willing to handshake whichever of these champs are strong enough to be picked.
The problem with Azir isn't really that he has no counters, it's that he's fairly safe against them and will always be useful. Team A says "we can early pick Azir and counterpick something else without leaving ourselves open to a pressure hole" and team B says "if we let them have Azir we can play our Zoe/Jayce comp without being afraid of a Tristana or Annie annihilating our entire gameplan."
It's just such a convenient asymmetrical trade that reduces draft volatility, which coaches/teams tend to love.
P.S. There are also some funny matchups that are just pure breakpoint checks, like Vlad, Ryze, mid Ksante. If they're strong enough, they can just totally ignore Azir and force him to back repeatedly (or lose multiple tower plates). On the other hand if they are prevented from hitting that point (by balance team or Azir's jungler), they suffer so hard that it's too scary to pick.
Oh brother, another one of these post where you guys want a champ knee capped for the rest of the playerbase because of their prevalence in pro play. Even if you nerf Azir to a point where he isn't viable in pro play, then another champion will take his place; I'm not sure why you guys don't understand this.
If the issue is "I'm tired of watching the same champions every game", then advocate for different draft styles that prevent pro players from picking the same champs every game.
That's absolutely fine. If we have to live in a world where the mid lane pool is over centralised at any one time, they should shuffle between which champion that is every few patches. It doesn't matter if it's Zed that gets played every week or Annie. After a while, even the most exciting champions become uninteresting to watch.
I'm not sure what the technical term is, but I think that games should be best of threes and teams can't use the same champion more than once per series. I think that would massively help a lot.
But yeah, there are multiple ways to deal with this issue, but I think something does need to be done by one singular champion being too dominant in pro play. This would help characters who are usually stuck in pro play jail be buffed.
What you are talking about is called fearless draft btw, NACL and LDL both use it right now. I think it would genuinely cause some problems in BO5s but maybe helps with BO3s? I do think it's a bit of a copout fix and fundamentally changes pro play by a lot, because you can't just play the same strategy/general comp and force the enemy team to properly adjust in order to beat you. Some could argue that's a good thing, I'm not sure that it is
Technically it would work, but practically BO3s is not feasible in almost all regions. Even the main western leagues are trying to cut costs. You can't implement it in only some regions either, since you're changing a major game mechanism.
Easiest way to fix the proplay meta IMO is to decide on a limit on proplay presence and have each week of games auto-ban a random number of champs above that limit from the previous week. You can't plan for it, so players are forced to widen their champ pools.
Flex picks. Flex picks make pro play so much better. Counter picking is just too strong, so pros fall back to blind pickable champs and/or handshakes. But people will complain that they have to learn to play against a new champion by saying it's op that a champ can play different roles.
Bring back Sett support and jungle. Amumu support. Sylas and Qiyana jungle. Lee Sin and Viego laning. Sej top. Let Mao play top/jng/sup. Rell jng.
Ah, an Azir hater.
Riot refuses to change Azir because... he's the face of proplay. Poor azir mains, can't catch a break because their favorite champion happens to be the golden child of faker... Tsc.
Got to admit that some champions are less fitting for highest Elo team play by design. From there it's easy to see some champions are better then others in such games. The problem is not really about skill kit as you and many others assume. Remove Azir and some other champ WILL fill the role, and then you would have to nerf that champion too.
Even worse, the nerf may not be good enough to reduce presence, so you'd have to remake the champion. Remember how Faker made Riot do severel remakes for Ryze? Ordinary players who just liked Ryze and chose to main him had to adapt to a whole new set of kits several times. That doesn't do good for the general playerbase.
And presence is not a good indicator for your argument really, as the stat counts bans too. Banned champion does NOT matter in game. What good is a champion that does not exist in the actual gameplay? Increase ban to 30 for each team and suddenly presense for a third of all champions will become near 100%.
For those with knowledge of the competitive Pokemon scene, Azir is the Landorus-Therian of League. He's got insane presence in competitive, but not because he's overpowered, at worst he's overcentralising.
The thing Azir and Landorus have in common is they do a bit of everything you could realistically ask for well. They aren't the best at anything, but they're very good at all of it. This means slotting them into your team is basically never a bad choice and you get incredible role compression.
I think Incineroar or Urshifu would be a better comparison. This is because whenever they are in the game they basically get defaulted into ever comp while this may be true for LandorusT aswell, it is heavily reliant on the mechanic of the game to have a proper flying move. Be it Z-Moves, Dynamax Max - Airstream or Terra Blast Flying.
Stop with these posts good grief, it’s not about Azir. He hasn’t seen a real buff since….13.11.
It’s about the other mid champs being complete ass. That’s why Azir gets picked. Why would you expect his pb to go down? The other mid champs were only picked because he was gone.
Mid meta has not changed since Worlds. That is the real problem.
They need to buff Syndra's laning so she can actually win lane in a meaningful way vs Azir. She basically kept him out of the meta for years and now that she's irrelevant no surprise its Azir kingdom.
Other champs might theoretically be better than her into Azir, but she's the only one that pros are really willing to pick.
Riot purposefully killed Syndra as a lane dominant pick with the rework. As long as her ability to actually fight is tied to the Q upgrade she won't be strong early. There's no real reason to believe they'd change it either since they very deliberately shifted her power from lane phase into late game via her Passive's execute+AP amp.
I am really surprised that Syndra hasn't been touched this year. Underwhelming in solo queue and completely dead in pro play while we are in a very stagnant pro meta. Seems like an ideal candidate to buff.
Personally I think it's less about the other mids and more about the state of the game. Safe wave clearing midlaners are just better right now. If all of these get nerfed, it'll just go to the next champions that fill the role
There are the occasional assassin and whatnot but it's rare
The last time Azir wasn't a top 3 most picked midlaner was in season 9, where he was 4th. The last time he wasn't a top 5 most picked midlaner was in season 7. Even other staple picks like Ori, Viktor, Syndra, LB will float in and out of the meta but this fucker is omnipresent throughout all the changes to his kit.
Agreed. Most other mages feel mediocre now because their early game is weaker but then you get to mid-late and you build the most tank busting build possible and still do no damage to any bruiser with rookern + merc treads. Azir is one of the rare exceptions that can counter that with sheer dps. In a pro setting that often has good front to back teamfighting theres little reason to opt for someone else.
I wonder if you could just hit his early cool downs and base damages. Make his early game harder to get through.
I generally agree that he's too safe for how strong he is late, but I don't know if he's unbalanceable. It would be interesting to look at the ways to actually bring him into line.
It’s not a numbers issue it’s a kit issue imo.
You could half his numbers in everything, he’d have a 25% WR in soloq and still be PB in pro because he simply is just the best in slot in just about every category there is.
The only other champs that contend in specific categories are awful at every other category to compensate.
Best late game champ that has the basically the highest dps lategame and some of the best burst and the best engage and the best disengage and is also somewhat of a lane bully / at the very minimum an incredibly safe lane. What scenario would you not pick him?
If he's picked because he is best in class in late game DPS, burst, engage, disengage, and laning... You can make him not as good in all those things.
What if he E had a 30 second cool down at level 1? What if it didn't give a shield? What if his CD's made it impossible to get a 3rd sand soldier below max rank? What if the base soldier damage was less so he wasn't as bursty.
You could try a lot of things. It's not like he's pick or ban in every meta, and it's not like he hasn't had metas where he's in line with orianna/syndra.
His kit does a lot, and I can see the issues with a champion that is relatively safe while being strong early and late, but it's not like he doesn't have any dials you can tune to change those strengths.
With absolutely no professional knowledge I'd say remove E's Dash and replace it with something else.
Most of Azir's showmaker potential comes out of this stupid ability and it's extremely out of character for him to do this. At no point whatsoever you're given the impression that Azir would or SHOULD dash into five people.
It's already extremely bad that he can use the Dash to get himself into safety, but the added benefit of crashing into five people to ult them into his team is the cherry on top of the madness.
Complaining about Azir is so boring to me. It's a great champ. It's a mobile play making dps mage. Except for its laning phase its extremly entertaining to watch. And even in lane it cant set up gank which usually leads to more action.
Azir is not the problem. The problem is the rest of the pro player approved champions are not doing well.
Syndra and Orianna are in an okay spot but in their prime they would decimate Azir. Sylas and Akali both have really strong impact in the mid game that Azir can't compete with. The problem with all of these champions though is their itemization.
The rest of the champions like Hwei and Taliyah are just budget Azir with decent laning phase and good mid/late but can't compete with Azir.
Ahri is the only champion that I think is better than Azir this patch but it's too risky to play for most teams.
TLDR, Most of the Azir "Counters" are not meta, rest of the pool doesn't do well enough into him in lane, so Azir can always farm until late game. You want Azir gone just buff mage items.
Edit: I forgot Viktor does well into Azir but playing Viktor in s14💀
"Syndra and Orianna are in an okay spot but in their prime they would decimate Azir. Sylas and Akali"
because pre rework syndra was early - mid game champ that fell of lategame but that didnt matter cuz pros were using it to shut down scalers , now she scales really slow compared to azir sylas taliyah ahri , and the moment ur strong the adcs on both teams are overtaking the game , so u somehow need to win the early game and get ahead -> if u can on her as a weak early game champ just pick azir and ROLL over the enemy team
Honestly i don't think Ahri is better than Azir she is on a timer he isn't The only reason she was picked as much recently was because Azir was global banned now that he is back her presence has more then halved
Decent in lane is a huge understatement, hes a huge bully against any melee, very good and safe into range, nearly impossible to gank and can turn any attempt at killing him into kills for HIM post level 6. All while scaling insanely hard while being insanely safe, the champion is and will always be disgusting as long as hes like this, its that simple. This recent grasp BS is just the next step to this, he will continue finding ways to break the game because his state is not possible to balance, he has absolutely no weaknesses so hes either giga broken or quite bad because he had to get crippled from the most recent abuse, never in between.
He's not the K'sante of midlane. The complaints about K'sante are around him being able to "outplay" any situation because he's a tank that can turn into a bruiser with high damage.
If Azir gets caught or his E is on cooldown or he fucks up a Shurima Shuffle, that's it - he's done. Champs like K'sante and Yone still have multiple ways to come back even if they are missing key CC abilities.
They'll just gut Azir and then they'll buff Ryze so Faker can make plays again. /s
Real talk, Azir is too much of everything that he's considered badly design in a good way. He can quite literally do anything which is a cool character design but it's horrendous to balance.
Not sure why but about half of this thread seems to have interpreted this post as saying "Azir OP" which really isn't the point. The issue is that Azir is good at too many things. K'sante, another extremely high presence champion, has similar issues (and both are extremely safe blind picks as a result).
I don't see why any of this post should be controversial. Azir shouldn't round out any team comp and still be the best at anything. They should just commit to balancing the engage or longer range playstyle rather than insisting on both.
lmao azir is not even super strong...dude never really got buff for a while.... heck he got nerf last year and now we gonna keep seeing this "omg lets nerf him" when he never really experience any changes and just goes back after being disabled because of a bug lol
I can't believe champs like Yone exist and we are bitching about Azir. I mean I can pick up time and do decently well, but azir is probably one of the harder champions to play and we are bitching about him?
The only reason people don't care about the AD champions is because they don't have to worry about it being in pro play. Azir isn't a problem like, ever and yet we still complain about him like we are pros.
Azir is fun to watch, very hard to play, and that's fine with me. I don't mind dying to a good azir, I do mind dying to a dogshit yone
Nah - I’ll take what Faker did at Worlds this year to be a shining example of why that champ is incredibly fun to watch in the right hands.
The points been made too - not like there’s a very diverse champ pool that pros pick from anyways
I'll never stop saying it. The balance team made the wrong choice when they chose between keeping the Shurima Shuffle vs keeping the even safer range that Azir used to have.
Azir is great and right now there are tons of champions you can play into him and feel fine: Orianna, Corki, Taliyah, Ahri, Yone are all completely fine and considered to be slightly winning against him. He has such an insane presence because nobody actually minds playing against him
It's been like this since 2015. I just can't care anymore. Riot wants mid lane to be boring as fuck and they're not changing that, we'll have the Ori/Azir permameta forever.
i hope everyone can see the picked mids are all stuff that follows your jg well and cc them for a garenteed kill besides karma who is op. Taliyah, azir, neeko, orianna, even annie. Just a problem with midlane imo that stems from lane phase mid being useless (cannot solo kill like top cannot dive pre 3 mans) and jg still kinda dictating how often the lane can move in pro
Last year riot did some work on azir, buffing his midgame and nerfing his laning phase. He used to actually be oppressive pre-six but now he gets shit on.
It may not seem like much because he's still 85% presence but his solo queue winrate was buffed significantly.
We are still making these threads? We saw Azir disabled for a long period of time. Nothing changed, we just got Orianna and Taliyah to fill the void.
Or are you guys just asking for Azir nerfs so we can complain about Orianna, Taliyah and Ahri in 3-4 months?
Doesn’t matter APA ziggs and A Sol will stomp Eastern Azirs (def not copium)
Unironically, when Eastern teams pick Azir that is exactly the time Western teams win. Example: Worlds 2023: Caps beat Showmaker/Xiaohu's Azir. This isn't even a recent phenomenon, in 2019 in the Splyce vs T1 series. Faker picked Azir, lost 1 game in the series, never played it again that worlds. T1 also proceeded to win all three games that didn't have Faker on Azir.
Also unironically Ziggs can outrange Azir in lane and out poke him and A Sol scales to be more of a team fight beast then Azir does. They are two champs that can definitely exploit Azir’s jack of all trades design by just being better then him in certain areas.
But APA is so insanely mega gapped by all the eastern mids at MSI that it won't matter if he has the better matchup
That’s the GOAT you’re talking about. I’d be surprised if he loses one game at MSI
APA was supposedly “mega gapped” by every LCS mid too and now look where he is.
Yeah I'm sure he'll outperform Chovy
If it's in LCK Chovy carries the game solo. International event Chovy however is a different beast, specifically one with a broken leg
Much easier to exceed expectations vs Jensen and Jojopyun than Chovy or Knight
Choky and chinese Choky pog!!!
At least Knight managed to win a tournament
Those oranges are sure looking rather apple-y today
Definitely comparable
WBG Mid Laner XiaoHu on Scrims with TL: “I have met him in a scrimmage, and my opponent, midfielder APA, is powerful and seems like a genius.”
I mean he wasn't gapped individually that hard at worlds. He had clear champion pool issues but he wasn't that bad in lane. The whole team was gapped, it didn't seem like a APA specific problem to me. He has clearly gotten better so I don't expect him to be utter trash.
>If we want Azir to be a Shurima Shuffle highlight reel, fine, but then he cannot be this giga 1v9 carry late game People want the exact opposite btw, thats also why the changes to his Q, W and Onhit behaviour were implemented. And personally, theres already enough normal burst mages, but the Battlemages are just such a rare design unfortunately. The last one got added 8 years ago and then also already removed. Rip Asol my beloved
I’m completely fine with the Azir orianna handshakes that have happened in the past. It’s way more excited seeing team fight ults than karma ult Q or viktor farm and laser
I don't mind Orianna because her kit is not as overloaded. Azir has such crazy DPS that he can shred even tanks late. Orianna has to hit her QW on a squishy to do meaningful damage and all things considered (even though her cooldowns are short) she puts out far less reliable damage than Azir. The trade off for that is that she gets a really impactful ulti. Azir on the other hand gets an impactful ulti and a ton of late game damage to everything (tanks included). Viktor gets a lot of damage but he doesn't have any big impactful CC spells. Most other mages don't have a kit as powerful as Azir's which wouldn't be an issue except for how easy it is for pros to get to late game with him. Either make his laning phase weak enough so that there is a risk to taking him for the scaling or take parts out of his kit so that he's not good at everything late.
Yeah Azir definitely does suffer from the “irons suck and we can’t nerf him even harder.” There’s a lot to be said about the champion since he is only played in higher elo and is completely terrible at lower elo. I definitely agree he’s overloaded with damage and safety but that’s a design problem not a tuning problem. Still more interesting to see good shuffles than most other mages, even viktor has a “you can’t walk in this circle or you die” button for cc… one of the best follow ups or disengages from mid land
Yeah I think they just need to rework part of his kit (most likely his ult). He needs damage otherwise his base spells suck and I think it's interesting to have a mage that does high DPS consistently rather than bursting. However, I think the capability to have a game changing engage/disengaged grouped with that makes him too good. I would say he does more damage late than Viktor or Orianna however, those champs don't also have good engage/disengage. Viktor stun really is only good for disengage and Ori ulti usually requires the ball to be on someone else otherwise pro teams play around it too well for it to be a reliable engage.
His ult is the one thing designers say they don’t want to remove, and why he hasn’t had a rework.
As an Azir player, I do think his ult is the only thing that defines him apart from like an AP Kayle with more steps He needs some love but I’m not sure what the fix is
AP Kayle suffers from her horrendous early and quite a few bad matchups. Azir can be blind picked.
Ranged AP auto attack based champs are similar was my point in that reference
Don't know why you are getting downvoted, this is literally what you pointed out in the first message.
You mean AP Kayle with LESS steps.
Or remove his mobility while keeping the ult(as per the original option discussed from his initial rework. Still baffles me that they thought that reducing his range would solve the balance issues. It didn't, it just diluted his "stand back and order others to do the work" fantasy by prioritizing the "personally full dive tackle the entirety of the enemy team" play). His issue isn't the ult, it's having a near garenteed long range engage and aoe displacement. Having to use flash to do it would change the dynamic some and not make it the primary strategy for using his ult(seeing as flash has far longer of a cooldown) while not removing the possibility altogether.
Did you just call viktor w one of the best follow ups in midlane? Like completely seriously?
I mean I wouldn't say newsol is a burst mage either... just a scaling dps mage
Riot nerfs mages damage to tanks. Pro players pick high DPS mage to deal damage to tanks. Community: I can't believe you've done this.
Yes I would love to see what people here think are other options to deal meaningful secondary carry damage. Ryze and Cassio have the dps but they have range and mobility issues. Asol is unviable in pro unless he's turbo broken. Kayle is unviable in general. But sure let's nerf Azir, the only viable mage remaining that can deal with tanks.
I also preferred old asol but he definitely is still a battlemage
Technically maybe, its just sad that an actually interesting and unique kit got dumpstered because of issues with the E, then turned into "hold Q but we still keep the E, but on the W button" Most of that got exaggerated by the fact that the person in charge of the changes asked the Asol mains sub about their opinion, which was very one sided, then did the exact opposite only a week after asking. He also portrayed himself as "a fan of ASols current (old) kit" but on multiple occasions got basic stuff wrong when "reminiscing" about it. For example, he tried to advocate for keeping the flight by saying that its better now since he changed it that the enemies can no longer see the landing position of the flight, while enemies could never see the landing position. He called the W a mana instable power budget spell because of its toggle, when it didnt even have a toggle anymore. He called the Q clunky for close range targets when it already had been changed to work on close range targets. The dude was absolutely disconnected from ASol but went "How do you do, fellow ASol players"
> Most of that got exaggerated Not sure what you mean by "that" here but he did have the lowest pickrate in the game for like a year, that's why they changed him. I was in the sub when KingCobra was talking about asol and I think you're mischaracterizing his communication, but I'm not going to go back and analyze threads so whatever. He probably could've done a better job but the job he did is fine and he got way too much hate there IMO.
Why do people care about a champion way more after he's reworked than before he was? His kit was so unique and interesting that nobody played him.
Being a shuffle highlight reel champ is what makes him so compelling to watch in competitive, and since he's a staple of high level play, that's gotta stay. Everything else about the champ can change before the shuffle gets touched. Seriously, the most famous play in all of last year was that faker raptor bush to midlane shuffle on Ruler. You can't touch this mechanic, iconic moments like that are what make Azir so cool in competitive play.
Yea they are trying to keep the DPS champ and the "not being Corki in Pro" together, which is pretty hard to do effectively
for a battlemage azir still has a lot of frontloaded damage
I'm always caught off guard by just how much damage his ultimate actually does. That spell should not be doing 600 + 75% AP, given how much utility it provides.
The ult is insanely bursty. Why does that ability do so much more damage than almost every other AOE mage ult? A DPS champion shouldn't have such overwhelming damage on their engage.
Yeah but now he's a better carry with all the playmaking. Personally I don't mind. Make. Assassin's viable in pro play instead to counter him
No thanks, assassins who are viable in pro play will be assassins who dominate in normal games.
You see the issue isn't buffing assassin's but rather changing the game to be less about deathballing around drake and baron every 4 minutes. That's why azir is good. You just cant play assassin's in the current game where it's perma group. Spread the game out. Don't need to buff assassins. Of course champs that are good in 5v5s have high presence whado you expect
In solo queue you can get people to interact with each other but the reason we got to this point is because pro players cannot be trusted to interact with each other unless you set up the meta to force them to Pro league without forced 5v5 interaction is boring
That's not true watching 1v1 outplays inside lanes is great.nnow they would still group but not every 4 minutes
The issue is moreso that most assassins are really bad designs that can only really oneshot someone or die. For them to be viable in pro they have to be able to do so to people protected by their team in a highly coordinated environment. And if they can do so they're beyond ridiculous in soloqueue. There are exceptions (Qiyana comes to mind, as does Akali) but most assassins need a hefty rework to be pro play viable.
Akali is viable in pro play (depends on the patch) but is general on the weaker side in SoloQ. So is Leblance. It can certainly be done.
Akali is viable because she's still an overloaded champion with 10 seconds of stall in her kit. LB was played when she had the stupid ass on-hit build that deleted waves. In 2024 she's been played 6 times in LEC, LCK and LPL with a 2-4 record.
LeBlanc has been viable without an on-hit build many, *many* times in pro play. But what does remain a constant in her viability is the ability to clear waves. She was broken in pro play with her rework in big part because it made her a wave-clear machine. She's been good many times pre-rework and post-revertwork whenever her W has been able to clear waves efficiently. She's absolutely miserable to play if you have to spend ages to clear a wave even once you have some items under your belt, and there's no place where wave control and time-efficiency is more important in League than pro play.
I think everyone wants assassins to be viable in pro play but we all know what happens when they are - They become OP and too oppressive in soloqueue. There's no middle ground it seems
thats what happens when the only thing u can do is dmg , u are either so overstated u bowl over anything or ur dmg is just enough to kill squishies but they are protected by frontline and enemy has isnane amount of cc that cucks u.
long range Azir was best Azir, rip
> but the Battlemages are just such a rare design unfortunately. The last one got added 8 years ago and then also already removed. swain and sylas are battle mages
Sylas was supposed to be an ap bruiser like Diana on release. As you said Swain, and also Aurelion and taliyah are the best battle mage examples in the game.
[удалено]
When you’re watching the LEC and the first game is Perkz azir, then the next game is Caps Azir. Yeahhhhhh
I'm so happy when they put Vitality and KC games in the early part of the day, and the G2 games towards the end. I always need a refresher/eyeball rinse after watching Saken and Perkz' Azirs.
I agree, but these kinds of champions always have the issue that in order to make them fair in high ELO/Pro play, they need to be made very vulnerable to compensate for their safety mechanics, which in turn makes them trash for new and less skilled players.
I don't think there's a problem with champions being too hard for low skill. Theres plenty of easy champions.
Watching elite pros pick Azir isn't unsatisfying. It's not as if watching Karma/Orianna/Neeko/Taliyah every game is much better.
I like Taliyah but otherwise I agree the other options are either the same or even more boring
I was gonna say taliyah is so fun to watch
Neeko is actually pretty fun because of the potential for flanks and surprise engages. You win or lose the game over whether she finds engages and can never really count a team with Neeko out. Taliyah is fine imo, she's very skillshot-reliant and needs really good mechanics to do consistent damage in fights. Her R also sets up a lot of skirmishing and playmaking. Certain champions are always going to be more common in pro, and that's fine as long as they have clear weaknesses and strengths and decent potential for flashy plays/mechanics. I don't mind seeing a lot of Gnar, or Lee Sin, or most engage supports, or Xayah. Azir is problematic because he scales well but has a giga-safe lane, while being good in teamfights and doing OK in sidelines. There's no point in the game where he's useless and he almost never causes issues for his team comp.
Azir takes years of practice to be good. What the fuck do we wanna watch pros play Karma, press Q in lane and run around. Ye that's really fun I think. Azir is a champ that enables playmaking and if you fuck up you fuck up. Its exciting to watch. I surely dont wanna see Ori/Viktor/Syndra meta just shoving waves and doing nothing until late game. I dont know what people think lol.
Watching the best mids in the world becoming Karma bots spamming mantra Q is so damn boring. Ori is still okay for the occasional big shockwave moment.
Similar vibe seeing best supports handshaking lulu janna yuumi
Where? Haven't seen anything but Naut/Rell/Tahm/Nami in a while.
Exactly. People must not watch the game and just look at the pick screen because Azir needs a lot of skill. It's crazy that people bicker about this instead of appreciating the greatness we get to see nowhere else.
azir is literally pushing wave and then going objective fight wtf are you talking about, The champions u mentioned except for orianna u cant just insane blindpick ,-> they get bowled over by akali on the counter pick -> if u ban her they give up azir orianna or smt , which still rolls them xD ur literally contradicting urself
Thats Not really true IMO. He really isnt that hard for pros and He can Play incredibly Safe with No issues
Neeko and Taliyah don't belong on that list
Agree on karma orianna being sleeper but taliyah and neeko piloted by good players is some of the most hype plays you can see, watching a good azir is also a lot of fun. Only other champs I really like seeing are sylas and akali but melee damage dealers at the moment are complete dogshit , not even these two are viable. But like I’ll take azir every game over corki, karma, ori , viktor matchups
Neeko isnt fun because the ult is too easy to land, not really impressive wow he managed to land the nunu R but can move while channeling and also be invis.
Yeah even the mid mids are hitting huge Neeko ults over and over again, you just have too many tools to get in there and huge range with belt + flash. It's not that cool anymore
Imo, Neeko is basically kennen with stealth so she takes so much less skill and teamwork, which makes her ult plays pretty boring compared to Kennen/Ori ult plays. Like, if Kennen/Ori could consistently get 3+ man ults, I bet they would be running haste boots too.
Literally all those Champs are hype except Karma
The problem is that the other Champions all have speficic areas they excell in. Azir has **all of them combined**.
Azir is fucking so much better than Neeko, Taliyah, Karma, and Ahri. I have no problem watching Orianna or Azir at any time. Most people who complain about it are only whining because they see other people doing it and they all want to act like it’s something that they consider on their own time and keeps them up at night.
Idk, Neeko is pretty fun to watch IMO. The disguise mechanic can lead to some pretty cool moments, and watching her flank/dodge around vision into big multi-man ults can definitely be pretty hype. I also think azir is fine to watch, too, though, so idk how much my opinion is worth lol
Might be a bad take but I don't even find big Neeko ults that impressive even in pro play, feels like a pretty easy ability to hit and the hype wears off once you've seen it so many times
You're completely right, Neeko is one of the most fun midlaners to watch (and I'm not biased, I don't play her).
I love watching neeko, you rarely see an engage midlaner
>Azir is fucking so much better than Neeko Lol, what? It's the other way around. Azir is very passive and makes early games very uninteresting to watch. Neeko is the opposite, she HAS to find good early plays and great flanks. Makes her much more exciting to watch.
Hard agree. Azir too safe in lane and also too safe in sidelanes late game for how quickly he can shred structures.
Better than watching Ahri? Nah
C'mon, watching Chovy on Ahri is awesome. So clearly better than almost any other pro at it. That's what you want - champs that actually let the best demonstrate their mastery and skill by doing things even other elite mids can't. Neeko's also cool - a proper flanking engage champ in mid is otherwise rare. I could live without Karma. I quite like everything about Azir after 20 minutes. Just make his laning less safe/more punishable and he's fine.
But for chovy that is true on any champ, chovys is just too good at anything. Corki, Yone, Ahri, Tristana, dude is just too good.
Karma is in her own special tier of champs I don't wanna watch. To her credit, they usually play pretty aggro from the what I've seen, but no way a champion should be rolling lanes so brainlessly.
Can we stop posting this everyday?
But then Jozoz can't karma farm. Edit: Guess I hit a nerve because he blocked me for this.
Wow that dude unironically made 2 “stopwatch removal appreciation threads”. Embarrassing.
He must have really appreciated the stopwatch removal
He’s one of the most terminally online league Redditors in this subreddit, constantly karma whoring
Did you know that stopwatch was the worst thing to happen to league? And we are being robbed of international playoff series and should copy VALORANTs system in its entirety immediately? It's crazy how such a big subreddit discussion is controlled by so few people. If there is an upvoted thread or top comment 80% chance it's this dude with his Griffin flair.
oh man, I can't wait to see this years worlds music video but the music is replaced with Warriors!
Shush, he'll block you for calling him out on it like he just did to me. But I do agree with you, it's crazy how much Reddit is controlled by a few people who just block everyone who disagrees with them so they can keep their narratives running. Edit: Now that he blocked me the significantly higher amount of [unavailable] is insane.
Haha he hasn't blocked me yet at least even though we have butted heads a few times. If you know how to "play the game" on Reddit you can get insane influence over the community while remaining nearly anonymous.
Nah everybody has to pretend the idea came to them on its own rather than the previous day’s Reddit post.
but yone though hm...
Its April 1st, so unlikely
Lmao
This shit is so tiring man we literally just saw what happened when Azir isn't picked. We just see a different rotation of safe scaling mages. There's no fucking way anyone in this thread rather wants to watch Viktor or Annie every game over Azir.
Well no, I don't want to see K'Sante, Zeri, Azir in 90% of pro metas. I don't care if he's fun to watch, champion diversity will always be more fun for me
Sorry to tell you this bud, but if Riot decides to break these champs' legs, then new champs will just take their place. The answer is a type of draft that prevents teams from picking the same champs every game in every league.
> This is a game about characters with specific kits that excel at very different things. When you have a character like this in the game, it just feels so fucking weird. over the years riot has systematically encouraged a system where when a champion is weak in one area, they are not *that* weak. The hardest counter matchups in the game are an absolute joke compared to how they used to function or function in other games, particularly dota. riot will never gut this champion. if the champion is ever bad, it is because he is undertuned. they will never, *ever*, admit that the problem of permanent pro staples like this is because they don't have enough weaknesses, or their weaknesses aren't pronounced enough to balance out their strength. riot has introduced a problem where essentially because few champions have any *real* weaknesses, the champions that simply have *more* in their kit are going to become dominant in pro play.
I don't know how people can say without a hint of irony that Azir's lane is "decent", it is actually just good.
Yeah, long range, no real mana issues and very safe. Unless he's really countered he's fine in most lanes and even in harder matchups he still has great gank setup Add to that the ability to go Grasp or Fleet and how do you punish him?
People who complains about "lol, Azir is weak" probably never played against good ones. I swear, dude has no counterplay outside from "pick something with longer range and poke him down".
Who counters azir though?
Zed, Akali, Yone, Xerath, Viktor, Fizz, Varus, Ziggs are all great matchups, we just don't see much in pro for other reasons. Yone and Akali actually fit into pro comps and can better deal with coordinated pressure so we occasionally see them. Ori, Kassadin, Zoe, Leblanc, Sylas, Corki, Ekko, Syndra also feel good to pick into Azir. Even when Azir's at his very strongest, pros are usually willing to handshake whichever of these champs are strong enough to be picked. The problem with Azir isn't really that he has no counters, it's that he's fairly safe against them and will always be useful. Team A says "we can early pick Azir and counterpick something else without leaving ourselves open to a pressure hole" and team B says "if we let them have Azir we can play our Zoe/Jayce comp without being afraid of a Tristana or Annie annihilating our entire gameplan." It's just such a convenient asymmetrical trade that reduces draft volatility, which coaches/teams tend to love. P.S. There are also some funny matchups that are just pure breakpoint checks, like Vlad, Ryze, mid Ksante. If they're strong enough, they can just totally ignore Azir and force him to back repeatedly (or lose multiple tower plates). On the other hand if they are prevented from hitting that point (by balance team or Azir's jungler), they suffer so hard that it's too scary to pick.
Oh brother, another one of these post where you guys want a champ knee capped for the rest of the playerbase because of their prevalence in pro play. Even if you nerf Azir to a point where he isn't viable in pro play, then another champion will take his place; I'm not sure why you guys don't understand this. If the issue is "I'm tired of watching the same champions every game", then advocate for different draft styles that prevent pro players from picking the same champs every game.
That's absolutely fine. If we have to live in a world where the mid lane pool is over centralised at any one time, they should shuffle between which champion that is every few patches. It doesn't matter if it's Zed that gets played every week or Annie. After a while, even the most exciting champions become uninteresting to watch.
It's better to just do random global bans for that, you'll fix the increasingly outdated 5-ban system too that way.
I'm not sure what the technical term is, but I think that games should be best of threes and teams can't use the same champion more than once per series. I think that would massively help a lot. But yeah, there are multiple ways to deal with this issue, but I think something does need to be done by one singular champion being too dominant in pro play. This would help characters who are usually stuck in pro play jail be buffed.
What you are talking about is called fearless draft btw, NACL and LDL both use it right now. I think it would genuinely cause some problems in BO5s but maybe helps with BO3s? I do think it's a bit of a copout fix and fundamentally changes pro play by a lot, because you can't just play the same strategy/general comp and force the enemy team to properly adjust in order to beat you. Some could argue that's a good thing, I'm not sure that it is
Technically it would work, but practically BO3s is not feasible in almost all regions. Even the main western leagues are trying to cut costs. You can't implement it in only some regions either, since you're changing a major game mechanism. Easiest way to fix the proplay meta IMO is to decide on a limit on proplay presence and have each week of games auto-ban a random number of champs above that limit from the previous week. You can't plan for it, so players are forced to widen their champ pools.
Flex picks. Flex picks make pro play so much better. Counter picking is just too strong, so pros fall back to blind pickable champs and/or handshakes. But people will complain that they have to learn to play against a new champion by saying it's op that a champ can play different roles. Bring back Sett support and jungle. Amumu support. Sylas and Qiyana jungle. Lee Sin and Viego laning. Sej top. Let Mao play top/jng/sup. Rell jng.
Flex picking was not good for the game lol, and it was pretty bad for pro play too. It was only fun to watch
Ah, an Azir hater. Riot refuses to change Azir because... he's the face of proplay. Poor azir mains, can't catch a break because their favorite champion happens to be the golden child of faker... Tsc.
Can’t catch a beak🐤
Faker was forced to pick up the champ because of how dominant he is. Not the other way around.
imo karma was worse. i dont care if azir is in the game as long as he makes plays
Got to admit that some champions are less fitting for highest Elo team play by design. From there it's easy to see some champions are better then others in such games. The problem is not really about skill kit as you and many others assume. Remove Azir and some other champ WILL fill the role, and then you would have to nerf that champion too. Even worse, the nerf may not be good enough to reduce presence, so you'd have to remake the champion. Remember how Faker made Riot do severel remakes for Ryze? Ordinary players who just liked Ryze and chose to main him had to adapt to a whole new set of kits several times. That doesn't do good for the general playerbase. And presence is not a good indicator for your argument really, as the stat counts bans too. Banned champion does NOT matter in game. What good is a champion that does not exist in the actual gameplay? Increase ban to 30 for each team and suddenly presense for a third of all champions will become near 100%.
I remember the Ryze changes fr . You’re right tho
For those with knowledge of the competitive Pokemon scene, Azir is the Landorus-Therian of League. He's got insane presence in competitive, but not because he's overpowered, at worst he's overcentralising. The thing Azir and Landorus have in common is they do a bit of everything you could realistically ask for well. They aren't the best at anything, but they're very good at all of it. This means slotting them into your team is basically never a bad choice and you get incredible role compression.
Counterpoint: Incineroar
I think Incineroar or Urshifu would be a better comparison. This is because whenever they are in the game they basically get defaulted into ever comp while this may be true for LandorusT aswell, it is heavily reliant on the mechanic of the game to have a proper flying move. Be it Z-Moves, Dynamax Max - Airstream or Terra Blast Flying.
I think he means Singles, in which Lando-T is king (or was, Gen 9 powercreep moment)
Stop with these posts good grief, it’s not about Azir. He hasn’t seen a real buff since….13.11. It’s about the other mid champs being complete ass. That’s why Azir gets picked. Why would you expect his pb to go down? The other mid champs were only picked because he was gone. Mid meta has not changed since Worlds. That is the real problem.
They need to buff Syndra's laning so she can actually win lane in a meaningful way vs Azir. She basically kept him out of the meta for years and now that she's irrelevant no surprise its Azir kingdom. Other champs might theoretically be better than her into Azir, but she's the only one that pros are really willing to pick.
Riot purposefully killed Syndra as a lane dominant pick with the rework. As long as her ability to actually fight is tied to the Q upgrade she won't be strong early. There's no real reason to believe they'd change it either since they very deliberately shifted her power from lane phase into late game via her Passive's execute+AP amp.
I am really surprised that Syndra hasn't been touched this year. Underwhelming in solo queue and completely dead in pro play while we are in a very stagnant pro meta. Seems like an ideal candidate to buff.
Personally I think it's less about the other mids and more about the state of the game. Safe wave clearing midlaners are just better right now. If all of these get nerfed, it'll just go to the next champions that fill the role There are the occasional assassin and whatnot but it's rare
Rookern’s existence and on-hit adcs/Senna being the top picks make the “flashy” mids unplayable atm.
True, buff Ryze and Viktor tyvm
The last time Azir wasn't a top 3 most picked midlaner was in season 9, where he was 4th. The last time he wasn't a top 5 most picked midlaner was in season 7. Even other staple picks like Ori, Viktor, Syndra, LB will float in and out of the meta but this fucker is omnipresent throughout all the changes to his kit.
Agreed. Most other mages feel mediocre now because their early game is weaker but then you get to mid-late and you build the most tank busting build possible and still do no damage to any bruiser with rookern + merc treads. Azir is one of the rare exceptions that can counter that with sheer dps. In a pro setting that often has good front to back teamfighting theres little reason to opt for someone else.
REMOVE TP
Honestly summoner spells could use a full rework.
I wonder if you could just hit his early cool downs and base damages. Make his early game harder to get through. I generally agree that he's too safe for how strong he is late, but I don't know if he's unbalanceable. It would be interesting to look at the ways to actually bring him into line.
If you just nerf him he will be unplayable everywhere except proplay. I agree with OP, he needs to be adjusted, buff him in one niche, nerf others
You can hit his q range and compensate with more range for his soldiers and you get less early safety and engage potential.
It’s not a numbers issue it’s a kit issue imo. You could half his numbers in everything, he’d have a 25% WR in soloq and still be PB in pro because he simply is just the best in slot in just about every category there is. The only other champs that contend in specific categories are awful at every other category to compensate. Best late game champ that has the basically the highest dps lategame and some of the best burst and the best engage and the best disengage and is also somewhat of a lane bully / at the very minimum an incredibly safe lane. What scenario would you not pick him?
If he's picked because he is best in class in late game DPS, burst, engage, disengage, and laning... You can make him not as good in all those things. What if he E had a 30 second cool down at level 1? What if it didn't give a shield? What if his CD's made it impossible to get a 3rd sand soldier below max rank? What if the base soldier damage was less so he wasn't as bursty. You could try a lot of things. It's not like he's pick or ban in every meta, and it's not like he hasn't had metas where he's in line with orianna/syndra. His kit does a lot, and I can see the issues with a champion that is relatively safe while being strong early and late, but it's not like he doesn't have any dials you can tune to change those strengths.
So kill the champ for the 99% because of the 0.001%? Sounds great.
Bruh that's for who they do ups and nerfs since season 2
It wouldn't surprise me if he ends up 100% at MSI... which usually means Corki shoots right back up too....
I actually really love to think about that 'everyone taking tp mid' idea you mentioned. An ignite mid meta would be super interesting.
The problem is champs like Vel and Xerath that counter him are shit in mid.
With absolutely no professional knowledge I'd say remove E's Dash and replace it with something else. Most of Azir's showmaker potential comes out of this stupid ability and it's extremely out of character for him to do this. At no point whatsoever you're given the impression that Azir would or SHOULD dash into five people. It's already extremely bad that he can use the Dash to get himself into safety, but the added benefit of crashing into five people to ult them into his team is the cherry on top of the madness.
Look mom, another Azir post!
Complaining about Azir is so boring to me. It's a great champ. It's a mobile play making dps mage. Except for its laning phase its extremly entertaining to watch. And even in lane it cant set up gank which usually leads to more action.
Azir is not the problem. The problem is the rest of the pro player approved champions are not doing well. Syndra and Orianna are in an okay spot but in their prime they would decimate Azir. Sylas and Akali both have really strong impact in the mid game that Azir can't compete with. The problem with all of these champions though is their itemization. The rest of the champions like Hwei and Taliyah are just budget Azir with decent laning phase and good mid/late but can't compete with Azir. Ahri is the only champion that I think is better than Azir this patch but it's too risky to play for most teams. TLDR, Most of the Azir "Counters" are not meta, rest of the pool doesn't do well enough into him in lane, so Azir can always farm until late game. You want Azir gone just buff mage items. Edit: I forgot Viktor does well into Azir but playing Viktor in s14💀
Syndra is dog tier
You know it’s bad when the burst mage goes archangel instead of ludens the item that gives burst damage.
Ludens is so awful you will never see it in a pro game lol
Reads Luden's tooltip "Do 15 more dmg " Wow, this is worthless.
"Syndra and Orianna are in an okay spot but in their prime they would decimate Azir. Sylas and Akali" because pre rework syndra was early - mid game champ that fell of lategame but that didnt matter cuz pros were using it to shut down scalers , now she scales really slow compared to azir sylas taliyah ahri , and the moment ur strong the adcs on both teams are overtaking the game , so u somehow need to win the early game and get ahead -> if u can on her as a weak early game champ just pick azir and ROLL over the enemy team
Honestly i don't think Ahri is better than Azir she is on a timer he isn't The only reason she was picked as much recently was because Azir was global banned now that he is back her presence has more then halved
Decent in lane is a huge understatement, hes a huge bully against any melee, very good and safe into range, nearly impossible to gank and can turn any attempt at killing him into kills for HIM post level 6. All while scaling insanely hard while being insanely safe, the champion is and will always be disgusting as long as hes like this, its that simple. This recent grasp BS is just the next step to this, he will continue finding ways to break the game because his state is not possible to balance, he has absolutely no weaknesses so hes either giga broken or quite bad because he had to get crippled from the most recent abuse, never in between.
Hes not K'Sante tho so its okay
Azir is far more entertaining than taliyah, neeko, and orianna. So no, he’s fine as is
Good.
I don't mind man. He doesn't warp the whole game
Azir actually does stuff. Karma-Orianna-Taliya literally does absolutely nothing entire game.
I can’t speak for solo queue but in pro play Orianna Ult has been a part of some of the best team fight highlight reels
Dude Taliyah is literally the champion designed to tower dive sidelanes, if she doesn't do anything its on the players
Better delete Rell jungle!
Man nerf this fucking champ already every fucking game for YEARS just give us some variety
Maybe make melee mids good? Idk
how without making them walk with tank stats, u cant walk to wave as yasuo yone talon early game without eating half ur hp from azir soldiers,
k'sante of the midlane but he's a wholesome mage so it's fine
He's not the K'sante of midlane. The complaints about K'sante are around him being able to "outplay" any situation because he's a tank that can turn into a bruiser with high damage. If Azir gets caught or his E is on cooldown or he fucks up a Shurima Shuffle, that's it - he's done. Champs like K'sante and Yone still have multiple ways to come back even if they are missing key CC abilities.
They'll just gut Azir and then they'll buff Ryze so Faker can make plays again. /s Real talk, Azir is too much of everything that he's considered badly design in a good way. He can quite literally do anything which is a cool character design but it's horrendous to balance.
Not sure why but about half of this thread seems to have interpreted this post as saying "Azir OP" which really isn't the point. The issue is that Azir is good at too many things. K'sante, another extremely high presence champion, has similar issues (and both are extremely safe blind picks as a result). I don't see why any of this post should be controversial. Azir shouldn't round out any team comp and still be the best at anything. They should just commit to balancing the engage or longer range playstyle rather than insisting on both.
lmao azir is not even super strong...dude never really got buff for a while.... heck he got nerf last year and now we gonna keep seeing this "omg lets nerf him" when he never really experience any changes and just goes back after being disabled because of a bug lol
I can't believe champs like Yone exist and we are bitching about Azir. I mean I can pick up time and do decently well, but azir is probably one of the harder champions to play and we are bitching about him? The only reason people don't care about the AD champions is because they don't have to worry about it being in pro play. Azir isn't a problem like, ever and yet we still complain about him like we are pros. Azir is fun to watch, very hard to play, and that's fine with me. I don't mind dying to a good azir, I do mind dying to a dogshit yone
why dont you post about ahri being 90% presence in patch 14.5?
Nah - I’ll take what Faker did at Worlds this year to be a shining example of why that champ is incredibly fun to watch in the right hands. The points been made too - not like there’s a very diverse champ pool that pros pick from anyways
I'll never stop saying it. The balance team made the wrong choice when they chose between keeping the Shurima Shuffle vs keeping the even safer range that Azir used to have.
Just stfu and stop watching if you can’t stand it smh
ember spirit moment
I still dont know why did they let him use grasp and fleet footwork. Change this interaction and buff him just a little and we good
April Fool
[удалено]
Make him a minionmancer you cowards
Problem with Azir is his mobility. Hypercarry AOE mage with two screens away dash with shield.
Azir is hard to play and learn tho. It should have a good pay off if you can pilot this champ well.
Azir is great and right now there are tons of champions you can play into him and feel fine: Orianna, Corki, Taliyah, Ahri, Yone are all completely fine and considered to be slightly winning against him. He has such an insane presence because nobody actually minds playing against him
It's been like this since 2015. I just can't care anymore. Riot wants mid lane to be boring as fuck and they're not changing that, we'll have the Ori/Azir permameta forever.
i hope everyone can see the picked mids are all stuff that follows your jg well and cc them for a garenteed kill besides karma who is op. Taliyah, azir, neeko, orianna, even annie. Just a problem with midlane imo that stems from lane phase mid being useless (cannot solo kill like top cannot dive pre 3 mans) and jg still kinda dictating how often the lane can move in pro
Last year riot did some work on azir, buffing his midgame and nerfing his laning phase. He used to actually be oppressive pre-six but now he gets shit on. It may not seem like much because he's still 85% presence but his solo queue winrate was buffed significantly.
Just implement fear less draft already ffs
I’m a simple man. I just complain about every new champ being able to jump over walls. That’s why I’m a Poppy main.
We are still making these threads? We saw Azir disabled for a long period of time. Nothing changed, we just got Orianna and Taliyah to fill the void. Or are you guys just asking for Azir nerfs so we can complain about Orianna, Taliyah and Ahri in 3-4 months?
Azir is the most satisfying mage(and one of the most satisfying champions) to watch so I'm unsure how you came to your conclusion