Azir vs Fizz Counter Pick

Playful / Trickster lets Fizz ignore zoning outright: he hops into the air and becomes untargetable, then chooses to slam down for damage or vault further away, dodging Azir’s Conquering Sands and anything else thrown at him mid-animation. That’s most of why Fizz wins this mid-lane pairing, holding Azir to 41.2% across 340 games on patch 16.13.1.

• Urchin Strike dashes Fizz through Azir before soldiers can wall him off, closing the 350-unit range gap (525 versus 175) in one cast.
• Chum the Waters adds a delayed, hard-to-dodge slow-into-burst that punishes Azir for standing still to auto-attack with soldiers.

Both champions actually share mana as a resource and deal mixed damage, so this comes down to timing rather than raw stats. Fizz’s passive, Nimble Fighter, also lets him move through units and shaves a flat amount off incoming damage, blunting Azir’s soldier pokes specifically. At 340 games, that’s a large sample by matchup standards, and the number lines up with what the kits suggest: Azir needs uninterrupted space to function, and Fizz is built to deny exactly that. Azir players generally need to play from further back than usual and treat every soldier reposition as bait.