• A very high ~645 base "range"
• Excellent objective taker and defender
• Able to outtrade nearly any Marksman
• Strong peel against melee
• High zoning power even without Conquering Sands
• Gradual power into hefty late-game spikes

• Low in-lane mana sustain
• Low harass potential in lane
• Weak sustain
• Late-game power spikes gated by high gold costs
• Only escape can be body-blocked
• Tricky to hit high-MS opponents

Azir is normally known for using high burst from their abilities to chunk opponents quickly, playing primarily as an assassin/burst magician in combat.

However, in doing so, a potential avenue of enormous DPS is overlooked: the massive consistent damage that soldiers get out of Nashor's TEETH. Not tooth, TEETH.

By using a damage calculator, it is possible to see that soldiers have uniquely powerful synergy with Nashors.

Through various calculations, it was found that soldiers have a multiplicative relationship between Attack Speed and Ability Power. Every point of AP makes every point of AS more valuable and vice versa, similar to an ADC.

More interestingly, the closer the proportion of AS and AP is, the higher this multiplier.

Yet, there is another multiplier too: as the amount of AS and AP grows, so too does the multiplier.

What does this mean? Even with the wasted CDR, Nashor's is the single most damage efficient item on Azir when stacked.

An end-game Standard Azir build will have soldiers dealing 593 DPS (100 MR) for 16,050 gold.

An end-game Marksman Azir build, that stacks Nash, deals 877 DPS (100 MR) for 16,550 gold.

Stacking Nashors deals a whopping 50% more DPS for only 500 gold more compared to the standard APC build.

And every additional soldier increases this DPS by another 25%.

The problem is tapping into this value; the mid lane has particular restrictions that require a strong laning phase or ample mana + waveclear, neither of which Azir wants to tap into if they want to aim for this godlike damage.

The bot lane provides a safer avenue to ramp up this multiplying power, providing the time needed to gather the components. Additionally, in a standard team composition, the bottom carry is afforded more peel throughout the game which is why they are allowed to itemize for raw damage. This suits perfectly the function of Marksman Azir, who foregoes as much spell damage in exchange for this raw DPS.

it's important to know that nowhere is this guide saying that Marksman Azir is more powerful than APC Azir. The only thing being stated is that potential exists, and that perhaps that potential can be tapped into.

All of these seem pretty self-evident, except for the less obvious Kesytone choice of Deathfire. After running through some scenarios, Deathfire Touch basically outclasses Thunderlords Decree in damage when fighting beyond 4-5 seconds. This is an extremely common situation for MM Azir, especially in teamfights, making Deathfire the preferred mastery of choice.

Recommended

---

• Greater Mark of Attack Speed: Using the excel chart, we find that 1% AS roughly equals 1.5 spell pen. This makes AS marks better for maximizing damage and makes early farming easier.
• Greater Seal of Scaling Health: Standard, for some more powerful ability to trade.
• Greater Glyph of Scaling Ability Power: These are the runes of choice for maximizing damage, which is what a sustained damage champion is most concerned with.
• Greater Quintessence of Spell Vamp: Marksman Azir lacks a strong sustain option for making trades and surviving late-game poke. Spell vamp functions well for providing both, even with the soldier's reduced AOE spell vamp.

Not Recommended:

---

• Greater Mark of Magic Penetration: Using the excel chart, we find that AS marks are more damage efficient than magic pen.
• Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction: Proper play of Marksman Azir won't require a significant amount of CDR to function well. 20% is sufficient, allowing for further power to be put in through magic pen or scaling AP.
• Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed: Marksman Azir lacks any inherent sustain and doesn't get any lifesteal items in the build. Replacing spell vamp with anything would remove the primary safeguard against harass.

---

Shurima's Legacy

• The tower aids Azir in setting up a perimeter to zone enemies into the soldiers

---

Conquering Sands

• On a fairly short cooldown, used primarily for organizing soldiers rather than damage
• A powerful tool for trading in lane, but expensive in mana
• Its damage is not negligible, functioning as a strong execution spell

---

Arise!:

• The keystone of Marksman Azir. Soldiers have the same attack speed as Azir.
• Maxing Arise! first allows for a massive 60% attack speed by level 9
• Useful for farming during the laning phase due to its low mana cost

---

Shifting Sands:

• After using Shifting Sands, cast Conquering Sands while in mid-air. This will pull you much further.
• The shield it provides isn't that great, so try to avoid forcing the sheld except as a last-ditch effort to survive.

---

Emperor's Divide

• Setting up the wall to block a pathway is the simplest way of getting plenty of time to attack with the soldiers
• You will have to be somewhat selfish in using the ult for your own protection, as its your only tool to survive divers and assassins.

---

The goal of the build is more sustained soldier damage and the passive attack speed given by Arise! is insane. Maximizing it first, combined with the items you get by the time, easily allow for over 100% AS by level 9. It's quite potent.

Conquering Sands is maximized next for more powerful executions and faster soldier positioning.

Ramping up to the 850 DPS dream is going to be tricky; how many Nashor's components should be built at any one time? When will Rabadons (or even, if) will it have comparable value? To answer this, we look to damage efficiency, not to be confused with gold efficiency!

Gold efficiency only tells you how much gold an item theoretically costs while ignoring AP scalings, true damage, and damage patterns. This makes it a decent tool, but we can do better.

By using the same calculator for soldier damage from earlier, it is possible to find the total damage for soldiers from any set of items, which is divided from the gold spent. The Gold Spent For Each Point of Damage, also known as Gold/DMG, also known as damage efficiency.

This metric is significantly more useful; Rabadons may give the most raw damage, but it is also an insane amount of gold. What if Sorc Shoes provide half the damage at a third of the cost? Then Sorcs would be the better bang for buck.

Through a construction of the item set through multiple levels, the build order in the following section was constructed, aimed at maximizing the Gold / Dmg at every stage of the game.

Starting Items


Dorans provides just enough mana regeneration for Azir to keep soldiers up in lane, so long as Q isn't being used very often for its harass.

Continue, in Order
> > > > >

As explained in the section directly above, this order offers the greatest damage efficiency of any other possible item set. Even with the wasted CDR from Nashor's, the gold/dmg analysis shows that the multiplying bonuses mentioned in the introduction are simply so strong that it still outweighs it.

Sell Doran's when you need space for any component or item that exceeds 500 gold, or for a quick gold spike for an earlier Rylais or Needlessly Large Rod.

Now your final option.

For raw power, nothing says death like yet another Nashors.

Some defensive options do exist in place instead, however. Deadmans is particularly nice on Azir because soldiers don't proc the active, which means it is effectively 60 permanent movement speed. If looking for a more hybrid area between offense and defense, Banshees is tough to go wrong with.

In the early game, your goals are to

• Farm using soldiers, always having one in pocket
• Counter-harassing with Conquering Sands
• Poke with soldiers you have set across the wave

You have enough mana regen that you can keep up one soldier up indefinitely. Try to avoid summoning the second except in emergencies, since there are diminishing offensive returns on additional soldiers anyway.

Avoid summoning soldiers to farm until you are about to be zoned out. Azir has a very satisfying autoattack even without soldiers and doesn't need to waste mana unnecessarily.

When you are being pushed, summon a soldier in the lane preemptively where you expect the next set of minions to fight each other. This will let you farm for several seconds from significant distance when being pressured hard.

You do not have enough mana regen to harass freely with Conquering Sands. Active harassment should be reserved only for when you know you can secure more than 1 hit on the target.

Try to move toward opposing marksman and hit them with the tip of a summoned soldier to get free harass. Recognize that if you do this, you may be forced to farm with your spare soldiers, so harass wisely.

When the enemy ADC harasses you with an auto, send a Conquering Sands their way to punish them. This will outtrade with all but the strongest early-game ADCs.

As the laning phase ends, you will

• Group with the team to push down towers
• Stay in the backline and let fights occur before moving in
• Avoid falling behind in CS

Despite lacking raw AD, your tower pushing power should not be underestimated. You can take towers fairly rapidly and can pressure enemy towers by constantly hitting them with Arise! whenever the minion wave nears.

Continue using only one soldier at a time unless you can avoid it. However, at this stage of the game, you will be more often bringing out extra soldiers to do your work.

If you cast Conquering Sands every time you see a damage opportunity, you will very quickly run out of mana. Save it for positioning your soldiers into areas where they can do the most DPS instead of relying on its burst. You can also use it as an effective execute during duels.

Your wave clearing power is strong. Set up soldiers in a line against incoming waves to destroy them before they touch your turrets.

You rapidly scale in power and will already have most of your items ready

• Use Emperor's Divide to set up a fortress to autoattack enemies from
• Direct soldiers into areas where your team has laid down heavy CC
• Melt baron and dragon with your powerful sustained damage

An interesting strategy against pushing enemies is to sneak behind them and summon a turret to block off their only escape. This allows your team to get off a strong engage while providing you a defensive perimeter to fight from or forcing enemies into the narrow jungle.

Keep your distance by abusing your enormous "range" as a marksman. Since this will isolate you from the team, you will need to use Emperor's Divide to survive against diving assassins.

Standing inside of the wall given by Emperor's Divide will let you kite most melees for all 8 seconds of the wall's duration. Abuse this power.