Talk:Azir/@comment-6301771-20140827030330/@comment-24967087-20140827052906

I felt he was insanely weak in the laning phase (I'm no expert, but he is extremely difficult to harass with).

I think he is a [ (Mage) / (Hyper Carry) ] hybrid. Very squishy, very low damage (His main source of damage ( W ) is difficult to use because enemies will move outside the soldier's range and you only have the luxury of moving your soldiers once in an engagement ( Q ), which also drains a good percentage of your mana pool.  His last hitting is not very intuitive, but perfectly doable.  Azir's basic attack deals extremely low damage, but is practically instant.  The basic attack of his soldiers on the other hand do decent damage (Comparable to the basic attack damage of a melee champion), but has a slightly longer windup and cannot cast immediately after being cast.

Once you get AP items, your soldiers and spells do decent damage. Once you've invested into a good amount of AP, attack speed allows you to scale much faster (Though I wouldn't recommend getting attack speed early, it is very difficult to immobilize opponents early on (By which I mean stacking multiple Q slows) without draining your mana and therefore very difficult to make use of attack speed.  If he is going to shine, it will definitely be in the very late stage of the game.

His soldiers are very cheap though (40 mana), I was able to regain the cost in 20 seconds without runes or masteries. I definitely reccomend using them to last hit early on (But also get used to using your basic attack, and then learn to last hit with both simultaneously since it is very difficult to position the soldier to be in range of every minion in the enemy wave).

I usually managed to last hit 2 to 3 minions with a singular soldier (He only lasts 9 seconds and his damage and attack speed lvl 1 is not impressive, best wait till a minion is low to guarantee the last hit). My observations so far.