Hello and thanks for viewing my Anivia guide! I am Tyler "ecco" Spesick and am the former mid player for the LCS teams "Team MRN" and "Team Velocity eSports."

The guide will help Anivia players of all skill levels improve their play. I will do my best to run over the grand scale of things as well as the smaller things that will give you the tools for your Anivia-play to excel to the next level. Overall Anivia is a very strong champion who scales well as long as she doesn't get behind early. She has very strong laning, utility, and burst. She is also a very high skill-cap champion which is why I enjoy her so much!

(VOD of a stream game of me playing Anivia in solo queue: http://www.twitch.tv/thebts/c/2921902)

Pros

1. Very aggressive sieging.
2. High Burst.
3. Amazing Catch.
4. Excels in kite comps.
5. Defends pushes/towers well.
6. Is one of the strongest teamfighting champions in the game.

Cons

1. Low mobility/low escape.
2. /Very/ blue buff dependent.
3. Flash Frost can be difficult to land in teamfights.
4. Has bad matchups which makes her risky to pick early.
5. Hard to recover from games where you get behind early.

Anivia works best with compositions that focus on kiting/peeling which ultimately is protect the adc comps. These compositions are mostly very teamfight centered which allows Anivia to use her kit to the maximum efficiency. Twitch and Kog'Maw are two ad-carries who work extremely well with Anivia because she can peel for them so well. She makes up for their lack of movement with her high-cc so it tends to turn fights into having almost two supports on your team; except one of your supports does an insane amount of damage. An example composition would be Shen, Jarvan IV, Anivia, Nami and Kog'Maw. A very well-rounded and overall low mobility comp. It is very teamfight/sieging centered comp and this best suits Anivia because once she gets one or two items, she becomes the queen of teamfights because of how well she controls everyone's movement.

Also, as seen in the aforementioned example composition, Anivia also works very well with a split-pusher on her team. She has some of the strongest wave-clear in the game which allows your team to defend 4v5s very well. Also, she sieges extremely well by using her wall to zone people from defending the tower as well as strong catch with Flash Frost.

Ignite and Flash are the summoners that best fit Anivia due to her very high kill potential she has in lane. She has some of the strongest pre-6 laning if you are able to land a couple of Flash Frosts and this set of summoner spells allows her to utilize this strength.


The other set of summoner spells that I use on Anivia is Exhaust and Flash. This is something I rarely, rarely do and when I do it is because the match-up is terrible and I will be using it to help survive. The only match-up I consistently use exhaust is against Fizz because he hard-counters Anivia otherwise. If you are having trouble in other match-ups you can use exhaust to help relieve pressure as well but I rarely use it outside of the Fizz matchup.

9x 9x 9x 3x

...

greater mark of hybrid penetration Greater Seal of Armor Greater Glyph of Magic Resist Greater Quintessence of Ability Power

These are the runes I run on Anivia and are the runes I use the majority of the time on every mid-laner currently. The hybrid-penetration marks are especially strong on Anivia due to her insanely high AA range which allows you to slowly dwindle down your opponent's health bar until you can land that flash frost that will spell their demise. Only 2.3 magic-pen is lost for 8.1 armor pen when comparing hybrid-pen reds to magic-pen reds so overall it is much more efficient.

For yellows and blues there are really no other options. You need the extra resistances to be trading as efficiently as possible.

Quintessences are something that I actually changed earlier this year. I used to only room movement-speed quints on Anivia but I changed it out for flat-AP quints because it makes her laning that much stronger. I make up for this by going for fairly early alacrity enchantment on my boots.

This is the standard page I've been running on almost all of my AP mids right now. Overall it gives you everything you need for the entire game. The 21 points in offense allow you to scale as hard as you can into the late game while the 9 points in offense give you added regeneration for laning as well as reduced cool-down on your summoner spells.

This skill-matchup will give you the strongest laning possible with investing all of your points into your damaging moves as well as giving you a level 2 wall at lvl 10 for extra objective control. It flows very fluidly and I've never used another skill sequence since using this one.

Rebirth (Passive) One of the strongest passives in the game as it forces your opponent to kill you twice. There are only a couple nuances with this passive; one of which is if you have to make the choice whether to pop your passive or your flash, use your flash. The reason why is let's say you and your jungler are skirmishing 2v2 mid against their mid and their jungler. If you compare having double your health-pool to being able to re-position yourself, the vast-majority of the times you are going to want that extra health and survivability. The other thing to keep in mind with Rebirth is if you are going to get your egg-popped in a teamfight, try and do it in a safe place. Whether it is flashing away right before that last ignite ticks to get out of harms way or before Vladimir's Hemoplague pops, then do it. Preserve yourself at all costs.

Flash Frost Flash Frost is probably the hardest skill-shot in the game to consistently land and to make it even more difficult, there are two parts to it. Being able to know when you can wait that extra split-second longer to pop your Q for the extra damage is a skill that will come with lots of practice. It will help you secure kills you otherwise couldn't have and also add up small advantages in lane with the extra damage. Also, waiting until that last moment to pop your Q for the stun causes the target to be stunned until the latest point in time. Because it is so very, very slow it is extremely difficult to land on an opponent where you don't A) Predict their movement correctly or B) Hit them from the Fog of War. A trick you can use while in-lane if your opponent is being predictable about their last hits is that you can preemptively through your Flash Frost to where they will be and then giggle like a school-girl as you watch half of their health disappear as you combo it with your frostbite and auto-attacks. Remember to use the fog of war created by ledges to your advantage with this spell. It is much more difficult for them to dodge what they can't see and it gives them much less time to react to it if they are very far away. Use the ledges in front of wraith-walls for this if your lane opponent is over-extending.

Crystallize Anivia's signature move that helps allow her to control objectives and team-fights so beautifully. Once it is ranked to level 2, which occurs at level 10, you can wall-off the majority of entrances/exits which is why it is your mid-game goal to have it at that level. When you are using your wall it is to: Limit your opponent's choices - This is when you wall-off a potential exit-route. Such as walling off the ramp leading to purple's blue near dragon pit. You are taking that option away from your opponent. Make their movement patterns predictable - If an opponent is hugging a wall and you place your wall in front of them, their movement will be changed to walk towards the edge of the wall that isn't touching the wall. You can then predict this and use your Flash Frost preemptively to set up for large burst/catch opportunities. Create excessive movement for them - Is either when you your wall offensively to create their departure from a team-fight take longer or used defensively to give your adc more time to kite from the opposing team's front line. Overall, the placement of your wall is very situational and the more practice you have on Anivia and the more comfortable you get on her, the better you will be on judging where to put it given the situation at hand.

Frostbite By far the most straight-forward skill Anivia has and also her most consistent damage. It has 1.0 AP ratio on it when your opponent is affected by Frost which causes it to hit like a truck. A small trick with it that you can keep in mind is that you can use it before casting your ult below the opponent. It has a small travel time which allows you to combo for fluidly. Also, there is travel time on your Flash Frost which creates for a more advanced combo which is using Frostbite while your Q is mid-air and it colliding just barely after Flash Frost does. This is a very advanced combo that takes a lot of practice to do consistently.

Glacial Storm The final piece to Anivia's puzzle that brings her kit altogether. It also has the 20% attack-speed debuff which most people forget exists and is also the strongest part of Anivia's kit imo. You can use this ult to easily clear out oncoming minion wave to defend enemy pushes, to be an easy frost proc for your E, to create mass aoe-damage and slow during a teamfight, as well as reduce their adc's damage. It has many uses as well as well and it also will drain your mana /extremely/ fast so be sure to use it carefully!

Anivia is one of the few champions who uses the old starting items of faerie charm + consumables. It causes her to have a lot of sustain in lane which causes even trades with people who starts dorans to be a winning trade. The large amount of consumables favors high amounts of trading so be very, very aggressive. Because she can be so aggressive so efficiently is a large reason as to why she still uses the faerie charm start as opposed to doran but it's also because having an early ward is almost necessary due to her having the lowest possible movement speed in the game as well as usually being pushed up due to being aggressive.


Once you have reached these items with Anivia you become a team-fighting monster. You deal insane amounts of damage as well as having large health and mana pools which helps greatly in extended fights/sieging. The reason alacrity is acquired so early in my build is because I don't take ms quints and she needs that extra little oomph to make certain aggressive walls. It also helps her overall because she is as slow as a slug and it just overall makes your positioning better. The reason you stack so many "pool" items on Anivia is because she has very high mana-costs so having a large pool causes her to not run oom quickly. She also has very high base damage so she can get away with stalling some of her damage items.


Now that you have all the health and mana in the world on your side you build damage. The order of these depends on your opponent's items. Do they have an Aegis? Do people in their front-line have mr items such as negatron cloak or merc treads? If you are answering yes to these questions you want to get a void staff 3rd item and then follow it up with a deathcap. The reason being is that the penetration gained from void staff will outweigh the extra AP.


So when it comes down to your last item you have two choices: Zhonya's Hourglass or Liandry's Torment. Zhonya's gives you more burst and survivability against ad champions while Liandry's gives you a little bit of extra health as well as the tools to help burn down tanks further. If your opposing team has health-stacking champs (such as Singed or Zac) then it might be in your best interest to go Liandry's. It is a judgement call made based on how much health-stacking the enemy's front-line is doing.

The following are match-ups that you should avoid picking Anivia into. Overall she is risky to pick blind but beware of picking Anivia into these champions.

Annie: Very strong burst that can one-shot you easily. Can also trade auto-attacks with you in lane due to her having very long range as do you. Just overall a scary match-up that follows up well with aggressive junglers.

Fizz: Can dodge your E with playful/trickster nullifying your main damage dealer and making it almost impossible to harass him post-5. Has a ton of burst/mobility and is just overall a pain in the *** to deal with.

Gragas: Very heavy burst and displacement that can capitalize on your low movement speed very well.

Kassadin: Has a point and click silence that causes you to be unable to pop your Q. Overall hard to deny him from farming and he will out-scale you into the mid and late game.

LeBlanc: Has a silence so same story with Kassadin but also has very high burst. If you are able to get ahead in this match-up it isn't terrible but it can be a pain to deal with.

...

Anivia's laning is one of the strongest in the game. She has so much harass through her auto-attacks as well as burst potential through her Q + E combos. Your general plan is to be auto-attacking them whenever they can't trade back and to attempt to stun them with your Q when you can predict their movement properly. When they are last-hitting it puts them in a very vulnerable situation that allows you to auto-attack them without worry. If they are being predictable with their movement during last-hitting, use this to your advantage and attempt to stun them with your Q.

The overall idea with Anivia's laning is to be super aggressive so begin at level 1. Be trading constantly as you know you trade more efficiently than them and have more sustain due to your laning emphasized starting items. Constantly auto-attack them and throw out some Qs. Only a few champions can really punish your stun being down early so don't be afraid to toss a couple out and have them miss because when they do connect they will pay dearly. Use the edges of the wall as blind-spots to throw out some sneaky Flash Frosts as well. This trick won't work if you overuse it so just add it in every once in a while. It can be very effective if you trick them into thinking you backed while you are really hiding around the corner waiting to stun them. Usually they will overextend into the wave and waste all of their abilities to push it as fast as possible and set you up for an easy kill.

On how to treat the wave you want to keep it as centralized as possible. Having the lane push away from you without a ward on both sides is very risky as you have very, very low mobility. Having it pushed against you is also bad because her last hitting under tower is not very strong early game.

After you reach your core items your team should be forcing 5v5 teamfights over objectives and towers. She has insanely strong objective control due to her wall sectioning off the exits/options as she pleases as well as aoe cc and strong burst. Once objectives are secured, have your teams get lanes pushing and plant your team down in front of a turret and siege it. Harass with your Q around blind-spots if possible (carrying a pink ward for this situation is a good idea) and use your wall/ult to to zone people away from the turret so your team can damage it. Since Anivia has such high auto-attack range, be sure to be hitting the turret when it is safe to.

...

Your job in fights is to be hitting front-line, kiting and overall peeling for your adc. You deal a ton of damage but have no real way to get to priority targets unless they misposition. By all means, if they do, kill them. KILL THEM. Kill the highest priority target that is within your grasp but overall you are keeping your adc alive. Chain your Flash Frost CC with teammates as well as you can and do your best not to stack your cc on high-health targets. If you are bursting a target then don't worry about this but if a 3000 health Nasus is chasing your adc down and he just got Annie stunned, do your best to have your stun begin right before Annie's ends.

Hold your adc's hand and keep them alive in teamfights. Force objectives and siege turrets. These are your priorities as Anivia and your goals to accomplish with your team.

...

Once you reach 5-6 items you become the ultimate god of teamfights. You thought you were a god mid-game but it is truly achieved now. Insane-burst damage, a wall the size of the Great Wall of China, and a giant swirling circle that melts your opponent's health. Your objectives or goal in teamfights does not change since in late-game compared to the mid-game. You still want to keep your adc alive over almost anything and will be peeling/kiting with the guy holding the gun.

Deny vision with your team and you can sit in bushes with your wall ready to catch the unfortunate person who ventures out too far to gain some of that vision back. Your sieging is stronger then ever but strategies like the one above can be implemented when baiting objectives after taking down an inhib. Anivia is really strong at baiting objectives and fights in the jungle because of her wall so forcing skirmishes and denying vision is very important. Just make sure to use your wall wisely so it helps your team more than hurts them and also remember to hold your Q for the right moment to use it! It doesn't help anyone if it misses so waiting that extra second to use it properly if you need to.