yasuo uses air to create a wall: proyectiles: nope anivia makes solid ice: proyectiles: whack

*cries in true ice*

Being an anivia main since season 2 with over 5.5 mil mastery and Challenger since season 4. This video overall is pretty well done hitting a lot of the key points I always complain about when trying soloq. The amount of games I win were I actually have an impact is way less these days and the amount of games I lose because enemy mid has priority is super high now. The change you want on R though is the wrong way to go for sure. That would make any melee/tank/bruiser 100% lose to anivia by mid game super unhealthy for the game. Any change I always ask for is just give her some priority/buff in the early game or another passive on her egg when its down. Since her passive is basically a 2nd life her base stats are pretty low in a lot of ways and when the egg is down you have no passive at all for minutes each game something no other champion in the game really has to my knowledge since most champions have some kind of passive on their q / w /e /r or passive. Not only is her mid priority just so horrible but these days her scaling isnt as OP compared to a lot of others anymore. Just overall like your video says Anivia is basically a season 1 champion who does need some changes in her kit to help her but not going overboard. Give CDR / Mana / Tiny passives on her kit for her EARLY (levels 1-9) game thats all she really needs.

BTW, letting Anivia recast her Q in CC would be a much more productive buff than letting her keep her R in CC. Her R being taken down like that is her primary means of counterplay for melee champs, so taking that away has worrying balance problems

Anivia main here (over 500 games into her) the reason I think she's so fun to play is the way her abilities work together compared to other champions. Her Q is a stun and buffs her E AND allows her to keep enemies in her R, her W is a wall which can help hit her Q, trap enemies in her R, or even trap enemies in turret if they try to dive her and survive with her passive while getting the kill. Her R slows and buffs her E. Honestly I feel like she's one of the best designed champions, get pred boots and there's mobility. Get glacial augment and they literally cannot hurt you. Take aracne comet and deal absurd damage. There are so many different options for runes and builds for her that make her the balanced yet fun champion she is. No broken abilities, no 5 hour fucking roots, just pure kit synergy.

So as an anivia main, you more or less hit the nail on the head for most points. Something I, and most people who actually play anivia, would disagree with you on is whether or not her R should remain active through hard CC. The change to make it not be deactivated was actually a relatively recent PBE change (when her Q AP ratio was buffed to 90% from 80%), but it would have led to good anivias being overbearing, and her ban rate skyrocketing for a few patches until she received nerfs. At the moment, she really just lacks good itemization options to be good in solo queue, which is something the item rework seems to be fixing to a certain degree; at present, she's forced into RoA+Seraph's embrace, meaning she can't fight until 19~20 minutes, and can't carry until 3rd item, whether it be a liandry's or a deathcap. Because of this, you need to be significantly better than your opponents in order to reliably win games, both mechanically and macro-wise. The item rework helps with a lot of her issues though, with Luden's becoming phase rush for dodging CC in fights, liandry's to deal with any CC, demonic embrace being a very good 3rd item for tankiness, starting item tear, archangel's actually being a power spike, etc. For more coordinated play, she's in a rather poor spot. She takes a lot of draft resources to make work, and while if she's made to work she's an incredibly powerful carry, it often isn't worth it to build a composition around her unless you know the other team is drafting a composition that doesn't have amazing siege or engage, which anivia can actually stall out against when they're ahead. You're much better served by Oriana or Azir, who can perform roughly comparable roles, while taking less draft resources to make function, and having early lane priority to secure early scuttles. Edit: As for why her winrate and pickrate are both decreasing, it's because she's been in a bad spot since the start of season 8, while other battlemages have risen to prominence and anivia mains have jumped ship, while people who don't actually play anivia are still going to play her and drag down her winrate.

Honestly I can do well on Anivia, but that’s only because she’s so obscure that nobody knows how to play against her

So this did not age well. (Gladly!)

I wonder if riot watched this vid because she's about to be OP/easier to pick up in 10.25

As one of the many Anivia mains I think that you hit the nail right on its head here. Anivia is sadly an “outdated” champion. She doesnt fit that well into modern league anymore and this is something I find really sad because I enjoy playing her. I think that the Buff on her Ultimate would be a bit to high. It would be cool to have something like that, but it would be very overpowered. Anivia needs something which would help her in her early game. The rune pages I designed do help me to deal more damage and stay in lane longer but its still not easy. Hope this helps :)

As someone who loves anivia making her ult not canceled would be terrifying to everyone but assassins as her ult can do up to 500 per second not including item affects. Anivias kit is based around control basically the only traditional control mage in league at the moment. The problem i think is that she does have self peel if she sees opponents coming but even then one misuse of wall and q will lead to your death with all the dashes. She is still one of the best counters to running Champs such as darius garen and nasus. She can also just block entire flanks with r to force head on team fights, but this is a lot of background carry stuff for a midlane mage

Well this Video didn't age well

I haven't seen much people talking about how they remove the vision given from her wall... It was Riot saying they would try to give champs less "visions for no reason", yet touched no one but her. (which is imo completlely unfair, she deserve to have vision, even if just around it, on her W !)

I feel like playing with Anivia is chill No stress you just press buttons and deal broken damage

Speaking as someone who played Anivia since Season 1, I'm impressed, you did your homework on this one, there are a few points I would disagree with you, though. Anivia does have self peel, she has great self peel, in fact. The only problem with her self peel is that she gets denied her self peel if her enemy can reliably stun her (even a ministun will just absolutely destroy her), which is not a difficult thing to do. Also the problem with her self peel is that if she DOES self peel, she loses virtually every bit of damage she has. Other thing is that you claim her to be a "scaling mage" which might be true with some builds, but in the current meta it's much better to just build her for the early game, talking about skipping Tear, going straight for RoA, Sorcs and Oblivion Orb with Electrocute as your keystone. Her early game really isn't anything to scoff at, she has some of the best damage in the game levels 2/3, and level 4 enables her to use wall, which of course is a flash checker. The problem is that in the current meta game, people don't play around mid, mid plays around everyone else, and THAT is something that Anivia is not very good at, because she has such a hard time moving out of lane, and running into her lane opponent and their jungler is a death sentence for her. Other than that, you said at 9:37 that Glacial Storm didn't always use to cancel on cc, which is partially true. How Glacial Storm used to work WAY back was that only stuns (and I believe silences also but I am not sure about that anymore) would cancel Glacial Storm, whereas it would keep going during Fears, Charms, Knockups, Taunts and the likes. I remember it not being mentioned in the patch notes, and it was kind of swept under the rug, I was really upset when they made that change back in that day.

Great video, thanks for uplaoding it. I'm sure there are other Anivia mains that would disagree but I feel like you hit every point very accurately. I started playing about 2 years ago now and Anivia has been my main up until just recently. I still love her as a champion but I find myself not being able to enjoy playing her when I feel like I must outplay every other midlane just to have a shot at going even in lane or just survive them. I'm glad that you brought up the fact that the meta is essentially leaving anivia and her kit behind. I was talking about this in a post on this subreddit a few months ago about possibly adding the grounded effect to her ultimate. After some discussion, I was convinced that it would be too OP but I also did make the point that most other champions have a lot more in there toolbelt than anivia does and that and added effect or two might not be so bad. This feels especially true with the release of Samira. I used to be in the camp of just adjusting Anivia a little to help her keep up but at this point the only thing I see making her relevant again is a rework and at that point I fear that would be at the cost of her identity. Hopefully Riot cares and has better ideas about ways to bring her back from the dead (pun inteded).

I've mained Anivia since season 4 - great work on the video. Like many have already noted, you've clearly done a lot of research before making the video. Other people have already commented on the most frustrating part of playing Anivia - the fact that her build path forces her to play passive until 25 minutes in when you've built archangel's/ROA/Sorc shoes and your ROA has had time to fully stack - once again, the season 11 item rework which removed ROA and made tear a starting item should hypothetically help Anivia become relevant earlier in the game. The second issue is mobility creep - pretty much every champion has a dash nowadays, so the power of Anivia's wall (and the trapping power of her ult to a lesser extent) has been significantly reduced. One of the most frustrating things is to wall off an enemy champion, only for them to dash through, all your teammates to dash through, leaving you stuck behind the wall. You can time the enemy dashes and wait for them to use it before walling, but nevertheless the wall has far less impact on teamfights than it used to, when you were able to split the enemy team in two with a well-placed wall. I think that adding a heavy slow for enemies that dash through Anivia's wall would be a nice change to the ability. Enemies without a blink wouldn't be able to dash through the wall like it was nothing when trying to escape, it would give Anivia a bit more defensive capability against champions with dashes (which still giving those champions a chance to outplay), and Anivia could delay enemy champions with dashes from joining a fight, bringing back her ability to "split up" an enemy team.

You are so right, I been maining anivia since season 1 and shes slowly becoming unplayable, games are too short, you used to be able to force the game to go longer with your wave clear but baron buffs and heralds make it impossible. Honestly i think she needs a rework or at least a revert to the old Anivia who was more of a bust mage, your ultimate didn't deal a huge amount of damage but you could instant proc your e's double damage from it

I think the main reason is because she's a weird champ in terms of gameplay, the wall can be very troll in hands of someone that isn't that experienced with her I got insulted to dead when I was learning to use the wall and it's discouraging

Well now they do xD

>anivia mains all 12 of us

Damn, I just started the game, loved Anivia, and this video was recommended to me, and look, the buffs you said are coming to her :D

Anivia: "I used to be one of the best mid laners" Me: sure grandma let's get you to bed

I literally watched this video the moment PBE Patch notes came and was happy reading the comments that there are anivia mains who feel my struggles as well. But the best part about the new anivia patch this season is the pass through dmg being considered as chilled. Its also worth noting that her cooldown on R is GREATLY decreased late game with the cooldown being lowered to a totsl of 1 Second.

A thing that should be used to make her better in a future rework should be the fact that she flies. Maybe a passive effect that make her ignore terrain if she move in a straight line just like aurelion Sol but just under a certain circumstance. I can also see anivia having an aura of cold around her that slows movement and attack speed

I know I'm a bit too late but I still hope this reaches someone Anivia is my favourite champion in the game (together with Camille, they go back and forth) and I've nearly one tricked her for a season or 2 and played her in all the others (since I stated playing in S5) so I feel like I have something to say, expecially now after the item changes and the buffs: Your analisys is very well made and you highlighted my 2 biggest problems with league rn and the reason I haven't played in almost half a year: ever since....season 10 really, lategame is no longer a thing as double herald and plates make stalling basically impossible, ALSO outscaling is no longer a thing since whoever gets the dragon soul is the team that OuTsCaLeS (and DO NOT get me started on elder). Now onto Anivia herself, I feel like most things you said are correct but there are a few inaccuracies from the time this video was made and also I wanted to add a few things regarding the post buff situation. Let's start with her pre buffs identity: Anivia has always been a lategame control mage, focusing primarely on CC and area control/denial Her power spread throughout the game was...weird: in the super earlygame (lvl 2-4/5) the Q-E combo could CHUNK people, the real "problem" (and the balanced part) was the manacost since after like 4/5 Q's you already were basically oom, overall egg made it so you had a pretty safe laning phase to try to farm. In the eariler parts of midgame you'd trade damage for studiness and more safety because of RoA, this may sound like a detriment (because it was) but it allowed you to be the uncontested best champion at "holding off the BS" if your team fell behind as you had the defence (with RoA health and your passive...and maybe even a stopwatch) and the mana (RoA+ tear) you needed to clear waves, stall and punish the opponents overextending until your team would catch up and you could scale through the midgame. Lategame is where Anivia's power would show as by that point you had become a semi tanky (RoA+Seraph's shield+Zonyah/banshee+passive+maybe lyandry's) CC heavy control mage that could make a "nono zone" that the enemy team could NOT touch without losing at least half health thx to your more than respectable burst AND consistent damage. Also by that point you would become basically impossible to assassinate (unless your name was Kassadin) thanks to what I said earlier about "semi tanky". She did struggle a lot because of league of dashes but the one thing she ALWAYS had is decently good safety (wich is the one thing I feel you kind of missed) thnks to the innate tankiness of her build and Q/W/R all having decent to good defensive utility. The fact that R can get canceled by CC is annoying but it's not as big of a problem as you make it out to be, the real issue was the speed of the game. And now for what happend in S11 (oooooh boy): I still stand by my idea that removing RoA is the single biggest mistake they made in the items rework. Anivia got gutted at the start of the season, losing ALL your defensive items AND your main mana sustain item kinda destroyed her and then.....the buffs happened: not much to say here, they turened an actually interesting and quite unique champ into another "burst the hell out of you" mage focused on an earligame bloodbath...Way to go ruining my enjoyment of my favourite champ rito.

Yeah, them removing the ulti cc change was when anivia really fell. It would have helped a lot.

And one thing that me and my friends alway said "this game have to much dash, blink, etc." She used to have her spotlight and I didnt realized. Then Akali rework hit me :/ If Anivia receive her CC anti ult that will be powerful but if her passive open her ult on herself or something that would be nice. Great video and analysis +1 like

As an anivia main, I agree with most things in the video It feels weird watching this as I still play as her in the current days, but I must admit that varying my picks have been relevant to the way I play Even though I used to pick her every game, whenever I see something like Lucian, Katarina, Fizz, Malphite, Yone, which is basically anything that comes dashing towards me, I feel forced to pick something else. My winrate is high with her, but probably just because I'm trying to pick her in situations I can guarantee. Another thing is that she's basically completely nullified in certain games. As much as she has a strong area of effect, if everyone decides to focus her in a team where most people haven't had luck in their lanes, she's pretty much not gonna do anything other than die, twice. nevermind the ult part

As an anivia otp i agree that we have it harder these days.. on the other hand, people usually dont know how to play against anivia since its very rare..so it is equal

I’ve been an anivia main for years. Using zonias when your ult is around you is useful, and they made it so you can use TP as an egg again so you can have an almost guaranteed out if need. U need to build tanks items for her to be useful now. Rylais crystal septer, demonic embrace, and zonias are key to have any long-term effectiveness in team fights

As an Anivia main (from the time she was released till the date she got her rework which ruined her completely), I find it fun how the point was not mentioned, where she needed actual skill to use her kit. Since her Q was so damn slow and her E dealt kinda no damage if enemy was not "iced", you had to "lure" enemy into your Qs with your ice wall placing, forcing the pathing of your enemy into your Q. No other champion in the whole game has to do such a thing till present days. You just spam your stuff and you either hit or miss, but you never lure anyone with a skill to another to deal damage. Anivia was not easy to play properly due to this fact, but at least it felt rewarding due of dealing nice damage if you managed to pull off a nice lure. You even were able to make double strikes once you got your ultimate, since back then, your ult iced the enemy instantly, not just after seconds of using it (this growing circle was not a thing). Poor bird got destroyed just because it was picked on pro-play and rito nerfed her to death. As the video mentions, she is not valid in the current meta, too many dashes render huer useless, while her only strength was exactly that, keeping enemies away from herself with wall and glacial storm. No one cares about her abilities anymore, especially since her Glacial storm won't even apply chill anymore in the moment it is summoned, so enemies walking into it can simply dash out of it without getting chilled, meaning, they won't suffer any damage from Anivia when they are hit by her E (her only noobshot skill, while katarina for example, has only noobshots and an ai shot, which is R).

I played a lot of Anivia back in 2010 to roughly 2014 and I do feel like for the most part you are correct. League of legends just has a huge emphasis on mobility where like 80% of the roster has some kind of mobility option making it easier to evade or close the gap to catching her. Also if I'm not mistaken in more recent years Riot did away with a lot of the mana regen items and without the old Chalice of Harmony or Athenes Unholy Grail Anivia is a mana guzzler. The slow moving siege mage may have worked 10 years ago but its time for a refresh!

Yassss my girl. We talked briefly on Reddit awhile back about your tahm kench video and you mentioned this video was coming, so happy to see it. I will say though, her R staying up during CC is something of a controversy in the anivia community. I’m very much of the opinion that it was a WAY busted idea when they put it on PBE, the amount of damage you could potentially do even while you were being CC’ed makes me dizzy to think about. I feel like the big difference between her R and something like cass or or karthus is that anivias R does so much bloody damage just by itself. Sure, karthus has defile and cass has her poison, but those are abilities meant to play around other abilities in their kit: cass poison plays around her twin fangs, karthus plays around his Lay Waste. One could argue that anivia plays around her E, but anivias single DOT ability compared to karthus or cass is a WAY stronger, not to mention can be theoretically only gated by her mana. You could burn an entire team down even while being CC’ed, especially if you build a Liandrys. The best way I can think of the sum it up is that it would further enhance the frustration of playing AGAINST anivia: if played correctly, anivia makes it feel you can’t do almost anything. She’s oppressive, and the idea of “I play perfectly and engage perfectly but I’m still punished for it because her R stays up through my CC” would just make that even worse in my mind. That’s especially when you remember these proposed changes were not that long ago. Like, not even half a year ago if I remember correctly. I’m all for work and love coming to my girl. She’s been my main since my first month in league and I still love her. But I’m hesitant to buff her in such a way where she ends up hated and gutted with nerfs months after.

First of all loved the video always nice to see lesser champs discussed especially when its one that you main. As for the points made with the last season or so there is no doubt that Anivia has not been as strong because games have shifted to being shorter and dragon priority makes early skirmishes more prevalent which is not Anivia's strong point. Gone are the days that you can coast a game no matter how bad till you get 6 items and 100AP from gathering storm and turn the game around solo. But I don't think that the champion is in need of a giant buff as some others have commented being able to ult while egg'd would be very strong unless they massively reduced the damage that her ult can put out which I feel would harm the champ more than help it with the inevitable over nerfs to compensate. Personally I would like to see her vision be given back to her "W", mostly because it is a useful tool for lane phase to check for ganks or small information such as state of enemy raptors - see if crab is still up - without having to risk your neck, it was also useful for chasing people down in the jungle as you can imagine. for a more petty reason Riot stated that they wanted to remove vision on these kinds of abilities and only took it from Anivia and Trundle, Karthus and Yasuo still get vision with their wall and it kind of feels unfair. That's my two cents anyway great video, gonna check out your other No one plays too

Another anivia main here. Really good video, so let me just give my 2 cents here. Yes, most of the issues with Anivia boil down to a slow scaling and slow movements champion in a fast tempo and movility meta. You need at least 20 minute to become online, and by then the game is usually decided already. I think her biggest issue right now is her W, it honestly fells useless against most, if not all, mid lane champions in this meta. I mean, it's an ice wall summoned by a demigod, and a Stabby boi can just jump right over it. Not even pinning them against the wall works anymore, they can just dash/jump out. Giving her more CC in her W like restricting dashes or a slow might be an overkill for her already heavy CC kit, but instead giving her additional movement speed when flying near it, or just a passive in it that gives you additional movement speed per champion level. It still leaves the main issue of items and scaling, but it's a start, at least to let her survive early game, or punish over aggression by the other mid.

omg i was searching neeko vids and found yours but then i was like ?? this voice sounds like the one from the maplestory vids but i dont recognize the channel name (i think you changed it?). glad to see you're making some interesting league content now!

I would definitely categorize Anivia as a control mage more than a battle mage, but they do share a lot of similar qualities.

Unlike most champs anivia's first backs are only to buy mana which is pretty annoying. Maybe some kind of a movement speed or a dash would make her a lot more slippery and itemization . I mean she is a bird so being a bit faster would make a lot of sense

I might be late for this video's relevancy, but I am an Anivia main who returned to the game after 4-5 years of ranked hiatus in the 2022 season. Anivia is still broken in terms of damage. I can assure you that. The problem is all of these new champions and reworks. As Vars said: every champion has some kind of miblity tool. Making it impossible for battle mages to even contest a teamfight. I was 11/0 Anivia against underfed Irelia. She dumpstered me in the first serious team fight we got. Dashed on 3-4 minions towards me, stunned me and melted me in 1-2 seconds. How is that balanced? I am the one with the advantage, but I am the one paying the price, because my champion doesn't have 30000 dashes, 20 blinks, the ability to jump through walls or to spawn an entire army ( *cough* *cought* the akshan bullshit). Anivia is a "bird" but feels like she is moving with the speed of a building. Give her move speed, give her something to defend herself from all of these dashes and blinks. The funny thing is Riot recently released Vex. A champion designed to counter blinks, dashes and other forms of mobility. But wait a sec. This is Riot. It won't be Riot if they don't shit on themselves quite literally. HER ULTIMATE IS A LONG RANGE DASH !!!! This game is complete joke and there was a reason I quit it 4 years ago. Too much bullshit to handle.

As an Anivia main, I approve of this video, most of what you said is true, tho you can counter most dashes and damage lack in early to just be insanely smart with your plays. She is getting old tho... Best thing they could do for her is make her ult stay out even when in egg as you said and I think her wall should stun enemies dashing through it or prevent dashes all together, so you have to use a blink type ability. The new items kinda compensate for her early now and the mythic item that roots enemies can be life-saving but she is still missing that true terror of just being stranded in a blizzard with no way out. I hope she sees some love soon and ty for your contribution to her! To anyone who reads this; You are amazing and have a great day!

btw storm goes on during stasis shot one e, set a wall, stasis and you get another e, and dodge "mean" cds, storm thicks on , makes hell of dmg

This bird and Voli will be the only reason I actually even conceive the thought of playing League.

The main issue about an Anivia update is that this slow gameplay is rare in League, and if Anivia get a dash or something really different, then all Anivia's mains will stop to play her. Im playing Anivia because I like to cast big spell and I don't like use a lot of dash for example. So why not give her something more valuable as passiv, but I hope Riot will not decide to change radically the gameplay, because Im playing League only to play Anivia. (excuse my poor english ^^)

I miss the times when Glacial Storm was instant.

It would be interesting to revisit this video now that her mini rework has made her relevant.

Right before you said that it would not be broken anymore to have Anivias ult persist through CC I imagined that it rooted in the center so she can lock down better

Anivia main here, I agree if her ultimate didn’t cancel with cc and if her passive rebirth timing was reduced a bit I’d see her probably move back into champion rotation, and she’d be a well formidable opponent

Cries in ROA

add damage to E on activate with slow around it, bonus damage to enemy champions that can dash through/jump over, if die while pass on cd it resets.

Anivia one tricks, scary people.

I always felt like adding some sort of ground effect to her abilities would be good. I mean it would be broken to have her full r ground targets, so maybe on her w? This way champs like kindred cant just skip over your wall in the jg and cut off the rest of your team from chasing. And it feels extra frustrating when you r a target, w behind them, and send a q out, only for them to jump twords you, past your q and most of your r, and start attacking you while your full combo is on cooldown for 5 seconds. At least a ground effect around the w would maybe give you the chance for the q recast to land before they get to try and fight back

I've played a lot of anivia support recently and most of her problems there are non-existent. She deals a lot of damage(for the support) and isn't the main target in teamfights since she's a support and not a midlaner. She has few really difficult matchups tho so its not like she's the best support in the world but i still have a lot of fun on that lane with her. I think before the buffs she might be even better as a support then mid since most of ad's in the game aren't really mobile.

LOL, i love all of the champions you named on minute 3:59 including anivia xD

So Anivia is my main BUT only as support. Her Q can be very helpful its always fun to send her E after that but she ALWAYS needs a mate who does the damage protect her since she is VERY SLOW. But I still love her

This video hurts my cold cold heart.

I know I'm commenting on an old video, but for future videos, could you add markers for each [Problem #]'s? They're often the highlights and it'd be nice to jump to them and back.

Do you think your thoughts still apply to her after her rework?

"well karthus, he doesn't care if he die"

make her ult give her buffs like armour and magic resist, it would be trade between mana and your def stats. or if she is inside her ult she takes 10% less dmg. or to make her better support, anyone inside her ult get resistance to effects over time, like burning

I think keeping her ult up while hard CC'd would busted and would result in damage nerfs shortly after. I main Anivia and think she is pretty balanced. I think a good but small buff idea would be to give her a small amount of movespeed while her ult is active, because as you said, champs are way faster now and almost always have dashes. I disagree that Anivia has no self peel. She has an AOE slow, a stun, egg, and a wall(also a longrange disrupt/knockup). A good anivia can easily kite with this.

Riot considered giving her CC immunity on her ult back at the beginning of the year, but then Froggen said it was OP so they scraped it. A lot of support the idea of making her W either nonpassable or making it provide a slow that can proc double damage off her E.

as a main anivia since 2017 this is so true

I agree with other comments that an unstoppable ult would be the wrong way to go - it would help some aspects, but for opponents without a dash it removes any counterplay they might have had. Ult to slow, q to stun, and empowered e is a massive chunk of damage, and in a teamfight if your allies can lock the other team down in your ult then you will absolutely melt them, and without hard CC cancelling it you can just keep that damage going until you die. The lowered cooldown they introduced in 10.25 was a much better move, now there's opportunity for counterplay, but she's less of a dead fish while it is down. As for your ability to counter engage, I agree that it's a problem, but I think her wall is more useful than you give it credit for. It can hard block some engages like Nunu and Sion, if placed well can interrupt Vi's Q (there's nothing you can do about her ult, but at least that's a much higher cost for her), and there's also the option of letting them use their single gap closer to hit you, dropping a well placed wall right between the two of you, and making eat a whole facefull of ult damage as they walk around with no mobility left off cooldown. Plus there are a whole lot of dashes that can't go through the wall at all.

Pretty much nailed a lot of why she hasn't been played often. When the new store items were put in, she was easily indirectly hard nerfed to the ground. The couple things vital in the build being taken out really did a number on her. She dropped below the 50% win rate down to 48% (World average) on top of a pick rate going down to around 1%. Win rate in the NA servers was at 44%. This was her lowest point at patch 10.23. With current patch, pick rate is up and riot is attempting to get her caught up with the current meta which was overdue by a year or two.

She is so good right now though. I was going to rotate off her before her last nerf because of everything stacking against her but that buff really put her in a good spot. I can actually get early kills with her again sometimes. People actually seem to be picking and banning her every now and again. She has basically been my only mid laner sence i first tried her and now it looks like i can keep picking her in most teams. I just need to figure out what to take into matches she doesn't want to be in. Like when her team has no front line while the enemy is packing assassin etc.

It's actually very nice that you focused on explaining her methodical playstyle, wich is the one thing league does not have anymore, that said, anivia really doesn't belong in modern league. While battlemages are actually turning into AP assassins (been some years actually), anivia can't trully 100%-0% anyone, so you really need this passive punishing playstyle to chisel away into the enemy's health until they make a mistake while low enough. even then you might need to flash and/or ignite since your Q+E don't do much damage earlier. And PRAY that your team doesn't make too many mistakes, since a feed anivia can actually lose to anyone that is levels behind her. If the enemy gets 1 or 2 dragons, a baron or a couple of kills, the entire castle of snowflakes (pun intended) Anivia built just melts in a wrong teamfight or pickoff, and she goes from a carry to a high damage support for the entire game. It's a sad thing.

When Anivia became meta I didn't want to play her lol. But it's really true that all the mobility makes it hard to kite on Anivia. Sylas won't die to your combo, and he will be in range to interrupt your ult, at which point you will die because you used q already unless you do a crazy wall to block his dash towards you. She doesn't exert enough pressure to roam (not enough mana to use r to consistently clear waves early, her squishiness and low range make her vulnerable to poke, and a lot of champions can punish her but she cannot punish them equally), and most midlaners can 1v1 her or she cannot finish them off so she can't win lane. I was playing Anivia in urf against a fed Kaisa, and it required way too much effort to kite her out properly. She was spamming w's which I had to try and dodge while waveclearing and pushing, she could just press e before she got stunned to prevent me from getting my e off, or go around my stun with her e , she could dash over my wall or over my ult if we were fighting. I only managed to shut her down after close shaves with death multiple times by baiting her under tower after stalling the game with my split pushes, sieges and being low health at the mid tower. Basically she got stunned and walled under tower, which is basically a death sentence and her teammates weren't in range to help her, not that they would want to go past my wall and enter my 4 item ult.

Thank you for this video. Perhaps your comments on buffing her ult influenced Riot's decision? Id like to think so

I'm a baby anivia main and I'm not sure what could be done to help but the r isnt the way to go. As for enjoyabitlity I find the slow play style relaxing and let's me focus on trying to keep my team safe, playing with my friends I can coordinate with them to secure objectives and picks. The r gives fast clear which let's me leave lane. A lot of the time it's a bit shitty, but damn when you pop off , you pop off! Dragon steals and full team stuns just *chefs kiss* I think a lot of champions do it better but she has the raw guns and pure consistent aoe to make others play by your rules.

Froggen sittin back waiting on the Anivia rework

Is mordekaiser considered a Battlemage/Warlock? Hes melee tho, but gains power on AP

Its because all the recent champions are designed to be incredibly forgiving, yet still extremely strong.

I am a casual player who uses Anivia as a main in most games. You hit the nail on pretty much everything that frustrates its gameplay for me. I stopped playing league of legends since 4 years ago and back then i couldn't get an S rank but i could get like 6-12 kills, a bunch of assists but most importantly a positive kill ratio, at least on most games our team won. Nowadays i got back into playing and im literally targeted... by the jungle pretty much all the time to feed kills, so i can't really push or i'll get surrounded, and i did notice the ultimate no longer being able to help me with such case, i cant even commit well to any push because i gotta get too close to do more damage than they could do to me and my teamates, i'll be dead then or too slow to get back to safety. The reason that i play anivia is because of her slow gameplay with high positional awareness and keeping and eye out for a chance to pounce on the enemy and then back off, slowly harrasing my enemies and if i see a chance finish them off, although they do often escape, but i don't need to play with such quick responses and placing my attacks in the exact spots (basically there's some room for error in timing and placement of abilities). Does anybody want to recommend me any champions that are like that? i like to play league of legends but not so fast paced and more forgiving. Im also playing around with and learning the Rune sets, i'd love to hear what runes would any anivia player recommend for my (not so time perfect, quick reaction) anivia playstyle. Thanks a lot for anybody who took the time to read this, hope it wasnt annoying, it wasnt my intent, and if you comment with suggestions thank you very much ^^.

So I have been a Daimond/Plat anivia main for years, and yeah a lot of what you talk about is true. I tend to play her far more aggressively than most but it continues to be harder to do that since she has gotten squishier and everyone does more damage. Also the change to her r growing in size instead of the applying frost for quick r e combos really should be brought back to increase her dueling potential

So as a anivia main. I'd say that this is right, but also does not cover her mana hungryness. You can build a roa, fully stack serephs, have 5 stacks of pressense of mind. And still only be able to have enough mana to function for maybe 2 teamfights and a short 1v1 without constant p.o.m. procs. And the lack of teamates understanding how to play around her from her lack of play doesn't help. They don't understand why I ult our side of the teamfight to protect them from rogue cc like rakan's w. Or just let me get cc'd by all 5 enemies into oblivian and to see my team walk away from the dps egg™. But on teams that understand her, and those junglers that understand that she is effectively a weak burst mage until 6 and babysit mid to get the scaling on roa started early. Well, she becomes a looming threat that can roam and say no to split pushing. And her lack of movement is so severe that her movement speed with teir two sorc shoes is slower than pantheon's base ms. As well as her having to bring relentless hunter to try to keep up getting back to lane.

Honestly for me its just the W that needs updated. The rest of her kits pretty good. Maybe let it slow like Trundles pillar or count as solid blocking terrain, like an immobile Braum shield

my friend plays anivia and he is so excited for the buffs that are coming up :^)

I actually had some more fun playing her apc in the bot, a support really makes the difference, and you can farm all you want. Also most bot fights are about who kills first and most ppl forget about her passive.

Somewhere between season 4 and 7 AD Anivia was an exploit. Most people expected Anivia to have a low damage output but man when you reached around 300 AD with f ton of attack speed you were literally unstoppable for some reason. But I really miss the tank/mage build on season 2. That was fun.

As a 2.1m mastery point anivia main, I can honestly say that this video explained almost everything. She’s still hella strong and could destroy melee champs (I sometimes play her in toplane and I rarely lose). One huge problem is that if you miss your Stun (Q), you pretty much lose more than half your damage and are most likely dead. Once Katarina dodges your q for example, it’s really hard to reposition. She could single handedly carry an entire team if your team has a frontline. Her kit isn’t appealing for everyone and I think that’s the main reason she isn’t played. I don’t play champions because they are OP but because I enjoy them. Feels like Anivia is one of the champs that are less played overall but have dedicated players maining her at all stages. For examples, every time I match against an Anivia, they always have over 300K mastery points, Never have I ever played against an anivia with less than that.

Some goood shiit riot can try to improve her is 1-. MAKE THE DAM ULT "UNCCeable" 2-. Root enemys in a full grown R 3-. Been able to cast Q in cc. 4-. Make hes W with a Slow area (Like Trundle Ice) and would be nice if some enemy is affected by 2 slows (R and E) chill them as a full grown R, this will just improve his laning fase a lot

I feel like there's a couple things to mention about this. While I agree with some of this, I think it would be important to mention that anivia has one of the longest attack ranges in the game, along with a fairly spamable point and click ability. If played correctly, and in a lot of matchups, she can be quite the bully. Yes, this is harder unless u master her, but still a possibility. I also feel like the assumption that anivia is a late game champ is outdated? I mean yeah, she's still amazing late game, but her midgame is about just as strong. As you mentioned, her AP scalings are very strong. DPS wise she's probably one of the highest DPS mages on 2 items. She's still held back for new players because of the issues mentioned, which means you have to be very conscious of how to play her and what you do when in fights instead of being able to go oonga boonga and if things go wrong possibly dashing away or whatever. But I do feel she's stronger than it came off as here. Good vid tho. Also yes, the r change is... not a good idea lol But recasting q while CC'd would be a very good buff to help with some of her issues.

Anivia is my main, o agree with the video. Personally i would do the followinf buffs 1. make her wall untranspassable for example trindamere could not use his dash. 2 reduce her mana cost for the early levels 3 increase the movement speed by 5. 4 make the wall review bushs(she had that previously but it Was removed).

She's the epitome of an old and outdated champion. Most ancient champions are like Anivia in a sense: they only work in specific conditions and you still have to put in more effort than anyone else. It's an unfortunate side effect of having champions added constantly, the newer ones will always outshine old ones in more situations simply because they were created to fit the meta instead of having to adapt to it.

In the current meta. The only way to play anivia is to outsmart your opponent.

Did you know that like 98% of champs who summons something, J4, Lux, zyra, Jhin. All grand vision on there summoned item? All but Anivia sad Also recast Q (like Zoe) when stunned

I'd call anivia a control mage over a battle mage. She's super safe, can burst people with a q e, can basically confirm a kill/ half hp by walking up, ulting, w'ing them to push them back in, q e. I think she's slept on bc she's slow and not as flashy, but she's one of the best mids in the game rn. The auto damage sucks, auto speed sucks, move speed sucks, but her auto range, double proc on q, consistant burst make her great. Not even gonna mention how she can tp before her egg or w to cancel a leap (like khazix) mid air. ;)

I would like to see Anivia's E changed. It gives her huge single-target burst, but is a very bunary ability. I would change her E to basically be Taliyah traps, which maybe deal extra damage if the enemy is affected by her frost when triggered. It would strengthen her position as a zone control mage, and give her more defensive tools against high-mobility comps. She would do less damage against low mobility champs... but Anivia can already take care of those well with just her QWR so I think it's a fair tradeoff.

Its funny, anivia is a bird yet she lacks movement speed, and once she misses her stun and the enemy dashes through her wall there is no way of getting away and peeling the enemy if you, ur done for What i hate about anivia mostly is her passive, to me its just 5 seconds more to see yourself Die infront of you’re eyes helplessly. I think Anivias wall would be alot better if it acts like Poppies barrier.

Well look at the buffs now!

And now she got overbuffed

As a long time anivia main, I say: Give all enemies standing in her ultimate a grounded-effect. Watch the world burn.

I won’t be here on release of the premiere sadly

Cries as i dodge two stuns with full movement speed rune / asap build yet no movement speed still and dodges then boom boutta triple but last stun cancels burst kms

I mained Anivia for two seasons ending in 2017. I just came back to league, preseason 11, and i find anivia lack luster. After digging into it i found what completely gutted her was the item changes. The removal of Rod of ages and the no shield from archangels staff/embrace kills her. She is a mid range mage but now is too squishy. She used to be able to take a bit of a beating but now is squishy. I hope league adds battle mage items.

I play Anivia, just not frequently during Ranked, but generally in ARAM and SR. Not even sure how I got her as my top 3 champions with the most points.

Anivia is apart of the original 30 champioms since 2009, so it's not uncommon to see decline in their player base. Only a few OG champions are still played a lot today.

As a anivia main I 1000% agree

This is so weird. Anivia is so strong as someone who has been playing her as a mage pick for years. She personally slows down the game to her pace, she can instant Q a diving assassin, and her wall absolutely dictates a fight. Your enemies do not want to waste a flash to dive into a blizzard, but when 2 teammates are singled out they have to do something. While Anivia has some counter picks, so does everyone. It's an annoying farmfest, but she does that incredibly well too (though post 6, her autos are straight up trash and require a lot of practice). Ultimately, I think Anivia is a weird champion that shouldn't still work, but does to great effect for those that take the time to practice and play her like she's meant to be played.