Welcome to Tower Defense (literally)
Hi everyone, this is my first guide so bear with me on the simplicity of it. Basically, when you pick Anivia in Champ Select, you're going to be everyone's wave clear. All you do is defend turrets and kill when you can. Being that kind of champion is what makes Anivia so... underplayed. Because unless you are a Froggen or a High Elo Player that is like a "master" Anivia, it's going to be hard to carry your team, especially if you're the only source of damage because your team feeds or can't win lane early. You'd want to pick Anvia only when you know what the other midlaner is like and to make use of her insanely high burst damage combos and tricks. WARNING: Anivia can not be a solo carry champ to choose if you feel as if your team won't do well. She is way to squishy at times, and doesn't have high enough mobility to keep up with assassins like Ahri, Zed, or even god forbid, a Teemo with DFG.

Pros:
Passive grants another life
You have the ultimate wave clear until you run out of mana
High burst damage
Jungle skirmishes are great
You're a bird

Cons:
Low mobility in beginning
Slow auto attack if you aren't used to it
Your passive doesn't regenerate your mana
Incredibly Squishy
Mana problems if you spam skills a lot

9x Magic Pen for Burst since almost everyone get magic resist glyphs versus Anivia.
9x Standard MR OR 9x Flat AP damage (for more oomph in your combo)
9x Armor runes for early game (cuz creeps OP)
3x AP Quints.

21/0/9 Just try to dodge skill shots with the little bit of extra movement speed til you can outrade your opponent. (which you should be able to if you land the QE or REQ or RQE Combo frequently.)

1. Doran Ring + HP Potions to start. (Standard)
Faerie Charm + HP Potions + Mana Potions. (Sustain in lane for that Tear)

2. You have three choices: Tear of the Goddess, Chalice of Harmony, or Catalyst.

Why Tear? For the stacking of mana (You WILL burn through a lot of mana on Anivia, even with blue buff if you rapid fire off spells to harrass or kill or keep your ultimate up for the slow) (I usually get this VS AD mids because a chalice isn't going to give you much else and you can use the extra mana.)(You dont need to upgrade this to Archangel's Staff yet until you hit around 600 stacks)

Why Chalice? Get it for the MR it offers as well as its passive for regenerating mana. Preferably, I get this against AP Champs.

Why Catalyst? You get it for that Rod Of Ages which is an Anivia's dream (HP AND MANA per level) but takes what feels like "forever" to stack into RoA when you play as her.

Finish your first item, whether it is, RoA or Athene's Unholy Grail.

3. After you've built whatever you've chosen, you should look into more mobility. GET THEM BOOTS!

4. Your 3rd item should be as usual, a Rabadon's (for the extra OOMPH!) or Zhonya's (If for some reason you get stuck against a super high burst champion like Syndra or Zed).

5. 4th Item: 2 choices
1. Go for the Rabadon's or Zhonya's depending on what you chose to build earlier.
2. Go for an early Void Staff to penetrate all that magic resist.

6. 5th Item: Void Staff/Rabadon's/Zhonya's
- Finish up whatever you have left to finish since those 3 items are CRUTIAL to Anivia's Late Game Powers.

7. 6th Item (If you ever get that late and want to sell your boots)
- Liandrys' Torment. Why?
= The burn effect it gives after your magic damage is uesful in finishing off 1hp escapees. Let them feel the burn from your ice. ICYHOT!
= The additional magic pen is useful.
= More HP and more power.

E first if you're just going straight to lane. Use it to CS in beginning if you have problems CSing.

Q first if you're going for a level 1 fight for the AoE Stun.

W is just a wall that you can use, not really useful til later unless you think you can use it to block enemy movements early on and have them fall into your Q -> E Combo.

Skill Level Order: R, E, Q, W

Rebirth (Passive): Give you a second chance at life once you die and then goes on cooldown. It gives you full hp but does NOT replenish your mana. So the amount of mana you died with, is what you start up again with.

FLASH FROST (Q): Anivia's core spell. It provides a slow that travels in a straight line. When the Q detonates it stuns the surrounding champions or minions.

REMEMBER: YOU DONT HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE Q TO TRAVEL THE WHOLE LENGTH OF THE SKILLSHOT BECAUSE YOU CAN CLICK Q AGAIN TO DETONATE THE FIRST Q IN MOTION. A LOT OF TIMES, DETONATING Q BEFORE ITS MAXIMUM RANGE IS GOOD SINCE IT'LL STUN INSTEAD OF SLOW. (e.g. Katarina Shunpo's to you. Just detonate Q right after you shoot it to stun her. No point in waiting else you'll get destroyed.)

-Recently in the 4.18 patch, Riot gave Anivia's Flash Frost a circle around it to help Anivia players see the Flash Frost Stun Radius.

Crystallize (W): Anivia's "escape". The wall of helping or the wall of stupidity. It blocks the pathing routes of all champs and forces them to walk around. The more points you put into it, the longer the width of the wall is, but there is no need for it unless you want to play more a utility role. I find that it's good enough to just have 2 points in W because that'll meet the requirements for walling off jungle routes for skirmishes. It's more like an annoyance and it's what makes her amazing in jungle skirmishes IF PLACED CORRECTLY. Please, when you use this wall, DON'T USE THIS WALL TO TROLL. Many games where someone picks Anivia, the thing that make me want to facepalm myself and will probably tick off your teammates and make them go on tilt is when you DELIBERATELY wall them into the enemy team. Trolls will be trolls, but please at least try to improve on your Anivia play before you start walling people in for no reason because you died so many times because of a gank.

Frostbite (E): Your major source of damage. It doubles the damage inflicted on frozen enemies and all your skills apply the frozen debuff besides crystallize and your auto attacks. Use it to last hit in the early game for gold. This skill also grants you the luxury of going for long range high damage harrass and for the lvl 2 kill you have harrassed the enemy enough.

Glacial Storm (R): It is an AoE spell that deals damage and slows enemies in it over time. Also, it gives you a wider variety of combos with your Frostbite since it also applies the Frozen debuff.

Anivia is a teamfighter. Please don't abuse her by putting her into stick situations like split pushing else you'll just lose an ENORMOUS chunk of magic damage from teamfights. Tell your team to group as 5 to take turrets once you get around 3 items (Rab Cap, RoA/Athenes, Boots). For teamfights lay down your ultimate onto the other team and wall them off from escaping and burst them (unless they flash). AIM FOR THE CARRIES. You'll have so much burst damage in the beginning of a fight that your team will just aim for them too because the carries will be low on hp. DON'T CHASE A PERSON THAT IS LOW ON HP UNLESS YOU KNOW WHERE HIS TEAMMATES ARE since Anivia isn't super mobile. There are plenty of tricks you can do with Anivia but you should youtube it up for more information unless you want me to include them into the guide and post videos about them on here. Just send me a message to help me improve too :)


That's about it for this simple guide. Thanks for reading!