I am an Azir player with over 180K mastery, and I have always believed Azir has potential as a toplaner. When I saw discussion about Azir's PBE changes, where he gets buffed in base damage values, but nerfed in scaling, I noticed that some people were saying "why not play him bruiser, like Swain?" So I decided to make this guide. If the PBE changes go through, I will be playing this in ranked.

You need Lethal tempo and Legend:Alarcity for your lack of attack speed. Feel free to take Presence of Mind over Triumph. For your secondary runes I recommend Celerity and Gathering Storm, to provide movespeed, which is very useful, and infinite scaling due to the fact you will likely need to build some tank stats to go bruiser.

Your core is Rod Of Ages and Liandry's, as they provide tankiness and high AP, and Liandry's passives are optimal for killing the tankier targets up top while still being good against squishies. Your other items are AP items which can help with specific targets or just tank items. I especially like Randuin's because using it with a Revenant combo(Dash in, ult, then turn around) or a normal Shuffle, because it cripples enemies in additionn to your ult's knockback

Just go R>Q>W>E like any other Azir build.

If PBE changes go live, R>W>Q>E

Pros:

Good in lane, can kill most splitpushers
One of the best engages in the game
Actually still deals pretty good damage
Not vulnerable to ganks
Can peel for his team
Most toplane players are caught off guard by him, and often their confusion is easily taken advantage of

Cons:

Still not that tanky
Requires specific items
Damage output not that high compared to glass cannon Azir
Difficult to play

Azir is usually played as a glass cannon hypercarry, and stays behind his team. Bruiser Azir is different, he can be in the frontlines and in the backline.

His splitpushing is pretty good, good waveclear and good dueling mean that not many champions can anwser him in the sidelane 1v1, but Azir isn't a splitpusher, he is a teamfighter, his ult is excellent for engaging and peeling, and his AOE damage make him a major threat, diverting focus from the primary carries or being able to do the damage for incapacitated carries.

Top lane bruiser Azir is a suboptimal pick that does well in most matchups and provides engage, sidewave pressure, and DPS. His ability to win lane against bruisers while also beating them lategame means that he is relevant at all times. His engage and DPS make him a massive teamfight threat. His biggest weakness is that he is not a true tank, or even true bruiser, and is vulnerable to poke and hard engage if he fails to peel it