Frokat
Since his arrival in Season 4, the falcon-headed emperor has been no stranger to being at the center of attention. Fitting to his royal persona, the times in which he was a viable pick were the times when he was an absolutely dominant force on the midlane. However, the same can be said in reverse: it is also not uncharacteristic for him to be completely forgotten and abandoned by the devs and the community at large. Talk about lore-friendly!
Some still remember his original (or nearly original) dominant kit: a burst mage sporting the highest sustained damage of them all, topped off with incredible range, mobility, and, last but not least, the playmaking potential. The Shurima Shuffle, although requiring the squishy robe-wearer to jump into the middle of his bloodthirsty opposition, nonetheless has been a dream of every Easyhoon and Fenix fan. No wonder: while the play’s failure is sure to get a ruthless storm of “?” pings on your dead body, its success puts every Lee Sin’s “inSec play” to shame with its Area of Effect efficiency.
Seeing the champion’s current state of affairs, it is hard not to get nostalgic about the glorious past. Rated as a Tier 5 midlaner by op.gg’s algorithm, Azir is sitting rather uncomfortably at less than 2% pick rate and 44% win rate across Platinum+ matches in all regions, threatening nobody at a measly 0.2% ban rate.
But, as they say, Shurima was not ruined in a day (well, actually, it was). The reason for the funny bird man’s current poor performance is simple: the Riot’s creation was too much to handle. Even though not overseen by the infamous CertainlyT – who did play a role in Azir’s creation, but only on the sidelines – the champion’s kit, although snappy and satisfying for the player piloting him, was not a pleasant thing to play against for his opponents. Azir’s demise was the Riot’s way of trying to tame the beast – and the only way they could do it was with a death by a thousand cuts.
Shurima’s awakening
Introduced in late Season 4, Azir, the Emperor of the Sands, completely missed the deadline for any of the year’s esports events in a royal fashion. As just so it goes, the League of Legends ranked queue meta and its esports scene always go hand in hand, even at times when it doesn’t make that much sense – and this was one of these times. Since the pros showed little interest in practicing a champion they won’t get to play anyway, Azir’s presence in ranked Qs was surprisingly tame for a new release.
However, that’s not to say that Azir’s initial reception was irrational – a big reason for his 5% pick rate at release was the amount of spaghetti Riot bestowed upon us in a two-for-one deal. Soldiers randomly not moving? Check. Soldiers randomly not dealing damage or dealing decreased damage? Check. Or my personal favorite: “Fixed a bug where dancing would break the soldier’s basic attacks.” from 4.18 patch notes!
Quite a long list.
Speaking of the 4.18 patch: the real OGs remember it as the first iteration of the Shurima Shuffle. Flimsy, inconsistent, hard to pull off, but oh so satisfying when it worked, the play was initially popularized for the common man by the League of Legends influencer Robbert “SivHD” van Eijndhoven as the “Banana Juke.” His naming conventions are truly something else.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate the absolute massive brain Riot developer who looked at Azir’s concept of a long-range, sustained damage artillery mage with a self-peel ultimate and thought: “you know what this champion needs? A gosh darn way to traverse half the map and inSec the entire enemy team at once”. Riot’s motivations were beyond our understanding on the day of the 4.21 patch release, as we read the patch notes in awe:
V4.21 – Shifting Sands
- Shifting Sands will now detect soldiers in the process of being summoned and will instantly dash to them.
- Cast range increased to Global from 1100. You can now dash to any soldier regardless of how far away it is.
Thus, no longer contained to a puny banana, the Shurima Shuffle was officially born. Ignoring a few bugfixes and boring number changes – even though Azir had a lot of these, which absolutely increased his lethality – this would be the version of the emperor to strike fear in the world in Season 5. But they didn’t know it yet…
Easy-who? Easyhoon.
Suspecting some funky shenanigans from the golden-clad hawk, the pros immediately took an interest in the champion. As it always goes, the first series of the season is the time for experimenting and innovation – and where are experiments, there are results – and failures. Fumbling about in LCK Spring – and by the way, I’ll be focusing primarily on the Korean scene here as the title suggests – with a presence of 11 out 128 games and a below 50% win rate, Azir was initially received neither hot nor cold in the Group Stage.
Not aware of the brewing desert storm, the world was utterly captivated by Faker’s Le Blanc performance. However, the pros knew – and for this reason, Azir was a nearly constant pick and ban in the playoffs of LCK Spring, and a 100% pick rate in the finals.
Where there’s one rising star, there are two. As every fighter jet needs a pilot, a champion needs someone to main him, and for Azir, there was no better pilot than SKT T1’s Lee “Easyhoon” Ji-hoon. Formerly a member of the SKT T1 S sister team, Easyhoon found himself in a strange situation following the Season 4 LCK ruleset change that caused the two SKT teams to merge. Uniquely sharing the same role with the established best player in the world, Faker, you’d expect Easyhoon to be overshadowed by his more famous counterpart.
But you’d be very, very wrong. The young control mage prodigy Easyhoon was an incredible addition to his team. As SKT first picked Azir in their second Grand Finals game versus GE Tigers, it marked the beginning of Easyhoon’s legend as the greatest Azir player in the world.
Worthy of a mention, on another side of the globe, another player sought to establish himself as the #1. Kim “Fenix” Jae-hun propelled CLG to the number one spot in the NA LCS with his famous Azir, most known for his massive 1 v 4 turnaround that made an awkwardly lost teamfight into a game-ending lead.
Back to his majesty himself, however. Azir’s performance in LCK Spring Playoffs was no fluke at all – and LCK Summer Groups proved it twice over. Present in 151 games out of 217 as a pick or a ban, Azir was at the absolute top of the ladder. However, it is naive to assume that it was solely due to Azir’s unique RTS-lite gameplay, snappy animations, or inspiring voice lines. The reason is much more pragmatic than that: power.
Harsh, but so relatable if you remember attempting to play anything but a long-range weaveclear on mid during Season 5.
The champion’s initial reception played a cruel joke on the community. Azir’s unorthodox playstyle, surprising item path for a mage midlaner, the number of bugs on release – all these factors contributed to his relatively low popularity and win rate at the beginning. Just for a clearer picture – even at his highest, most overpowered point in S5, the champion never got above 50% win rate in Ranked Queue. Seeing that, Riot kept increasing Azir’s numbers patch after patch, not realizing the glass was already full. All these things combined with Riot’s obsession of making the emperor into the “highlight reel playmaker” type champion combined to form an unholy abomination of absolute oppressiveness.
Azir is incredibly strong throughout the entirety of the game and can carry teamfights with a perfect ultimate. – Bjergsen
That’s not to say that Azir was a free win champion in the pro play. Azir’s star status placed an increased pressure to perform on the player piloting him, however simplifying the midlane pick choice into the binary “Does it counter Azir’s oppressive lane shoving?” and if the answer was “no,” the pick went in the trash.
Still, some credit is due: Riot at least seemed to realize the graveness of their deeds and started trickling down nerfs. The first piece of the puzzle to go was the outrageous E knock-up – it was removed in patch 5.15, just in time for LCK Summer Playoffs. The global E removal followed soon, limiting the champion’s unexpectedly high mobility.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t even remotely enough to even put a dent in this dreadnought. Azir shrugged off the nerf and proceeded to score a 100% participation rate in the form of pick and bans in the LCK Summer Playoffs, destroying those who dared to leave him open with a comfy 75% win rate. Not content with Easyhoon’s status as the #1 Azir, Faker decided to join in the fun and play it himself in the finals with a very predictable result, completely dismantling the very same champion he made history in 2015 with, Le Blanc, played by Nagne.
Continuing their attempts to tame the champion, Riot issued a few nerfs approaching the 2015 Worlds. 5.18 saw Azir receive a significant nerf to base move speed, as well as a decrease to his Q’s initial burst damage. Although the champion kept a dominant showing with a remarkable presence rate of over 50% and 70% WR, he was surprisingly absent in the event’s Grand Finals: no bans and no picks. There is one downside to being at the top: you have everyone ganging up on you and searching for your weaknesses, and both top competitors, SKT T1 and KOO Tigers, realized that.
Moving forward
As we advance into Season 6, Azir makes a mysterious disappearance at the start of LCK Spring. Appearing for a single game that he ultimately lost, Azir was clearly being used as a hidden threat for the enemy team, relegated to special occasions. Special occasions meaning, of course, the Playoffs, where the sand emperor sprung back into life like nothing happened to secure himself a near 100% pick/ban ratio.
Emperor’s divide was too great of a peel tool.
Another notable nerf hit Azir at this time. A removed interaction with the good ol’ Fervor of Battle, as well as a nerf to his Ultimate, Emperor’s Divide, knocked some more dust off the champion. More noticeably, patch 6.11 marked the end of Azir’s ability to obliterate any enemy turret he comes in contact with – wave goodbye to casting W on enemy turrets for quick bursts of damage.
A nailbiter from LCK Summer 2016 series.
Still, Azir kept up his presence in the professional matches. Not as oppressive as he once was with a 50% win rate in LCK Summer, the teams started loosening up to the prospect of leaving him open. Finally, Azir mains could make peace with the community – after all, he’s now a balanced champion, so he gets to play with us, no hard feelings, right?
Well, nope. Unfortunately for Azir trying to play the game, the end of Season 6 saw a rise of another incredible lane bully. As they say, there’s always a bigger fish: sporting a healthy 97% pick and ban ratio at Worlds 2016, as well as 15% pick rate while maintaining 53% win rate in Ranked Queue, Syndra barged into the midlane, crushing hopes and dreams of any Azir player worldwide. Once a mighty hawk, Azir was reduced into a chicken on that day, not even bothering to show up at Worlds. His win rate dropped to 42% in the Ranked SoloQ, respectively.
Seeing this, Riot have thought long and hard about what their next move should be. So long, in fact, that Azir received absolutely zero updates – discounting some funny bug fixes – in the following year. However, the questionnaire sent to Azir mains in 2017 sparked some hope among his followers.
In short, the design flaws committed by Riot in the heat of passion collected over the years like some dirty laundry. Stuck in a limbo between a high-range control mage and gap closer playmaker enjoyer, it was finally time to part ways with one of the two aspects of his kit.
…and the community overwhelmingly chose the playmaking.
Thanks for that one, u/TheSenate6923.
Listening to the community, Riot gave Azir the “rework” that was coming for as long as the champion existed. The new update gave him some additional beefiness and decreased his range all across the board, as well as removing one aspect of his Ultimate’s incredible peel in exchange for finally being able to increase his damage numbers without causing the midlane collapse 2.0. Things started looking brighter for Azirs out there. Instantly spiking up to 15% pick rate and finally overcoming the curse of forever sub 50% win rate, Azir finally made it. To top it off, this rework ushered the hawk’s triumphant return to the pro scene: LCK Spring Groups saw Azir sit at a whopping 87% pick and ban rate, higher than any other midlaner (except for Ryze) by a long shot.
Although, wait. How is it even possible considering how Azir’s early S5 kit was much stronger than his new end of S7 kit, yet it didn’t enjoy these high numbers? Either way, Riot asked themselves the same question, evident by the amount of nerfs the champion collected from S7 to the present day. u/Plague_Knight1 counted that over his lifetime, Azir collected 18 nerfs and just 14 buffs, leaving the old champion behind the new game’s speed. Indeed, ever since the S7’s burst of popularity, Azir’s numbers steadily dwindled, leaving us with a pitiful 44% win rate and 2% pick rate that we have today, with its popularity on the pro scene dipping lower than ever – Azir came back down as quickly as he rose up, not even lasting for 3 months before getting overshadowed by other picks, save for a couple of short periods where the meta was favorable to him.
It seems like even the soft-rework was not enough to make Azir into a healthy champion. Which is a real shame if you ask me – the Sand Emperor’s unique gameplay was a breath of fresh air for as long as it lasted. Understanding how toxic his original game design was, however, leaves us with no option but to simply remember the good old days in quiet pensiveness.
Or maybe until Arcane: Shurima comes out.