Annie Build Guide by rubiqcube

INTRODUCTION

Do you want to play a champion with so much burst that makes a supernova look like... a little girl? Well, Annie is your gal'.

My love for Annie stems from when I first started playing Leauge. I was playing Ashe and I got 100%HP'd to 0% and I was like: "What the f#$k was that?" and my brother smiled and said: "That's the dark child, my friend."

Since then I have played at least 700 games with Annie including 226 ranked games (season 5 was my first season), despite sitting in Silver III, I have mastered this champion - although I understand that rank is important, and you're probably not going to want to listen to a silver III scrub, well, I refuse to be a one trick pony - depending on my mood I play any champion - which is why I suck.

ANYWAY, here are my stats with Annie, hopefully its enough proof I know how to play this beautiful piece of creation.

PROS AND CONS

Pros

- Insane burst

- Probably the easiest mechanical champion in the game

- OP passive

- Good AA attack range for a mid lane mage

- Instant AOE insta-nuke

- High AP scaling.

- Great roam potential

Cons

- No mobility

- Very bad against a team full of tanks

- Without flash being available she suffers

- Suffers against high range champions

KIT RUNDOWN

Passive - Pyromania

Stun duration - 1.25/1.5./1.75 (Lvl 11, 16)
Every 5th spell cast will stun enemies hit with Annie's spells
Probably one of the best passives in the game, Annie's built in utility makes her great at all stages of the game, even when behind.

Q - Disintegrate

Cooldown - 4 seconds at all levels.
Magic Damage - 80 / 115 / 150 / 185 / 220 + 80% AP scaling.
Range - 625
Passive: If Disintegrate kills the target the cooldown is halved and the mana is refunded.

Annie's Q is a a point and click target spell that does massive damage. Because of of her passive it is easy to stun a target with Disintegrate walk up, use your W Incinerate and get off a few auto-attacks - it's an extremely effective trade, and due to the base damage off the abilities being so high, and the cooldowns being so low, you're rarely going to get out traded. However with this said, don't try and trade with champions like Syndra and Ryze or just any champions that can spam spells, unless you're certain you can dodge their skillsshots.

Cool things about this abiliy:

- Will half the cooldown on champion kills.
- Try walking up to someone with 3 stacks on your passive, Q them them and while the spell is still traveling cast your E to catch the enemy off guard (this won't work if you use E after the spell hits)). The enemy wouldn't have seen it coming because there was no indication by the energized effect underneath Annie... unless they were counting your spells. In case of that - spam "NERRRRRRRRD" in /allchat.
= Makes farming super easy. Due to the mana refund and the cooldown refund, this is the perfect tool for CS'ing. As long as you don't under estimate your damage on the minions you should have able to get all the mana that you spend and more, due to the passive of Doran's Ring.

W - Incinerate

Cooldown - 8 seconds at all levels
Magic Damage - 70 / 115 / 160 / 205 / 250 + 85% AP scaling.
Ramge - 625 (Length) 50 (Width)

Early on Incinerate is very much like Disintegrate damage wise, at level one it actually has a lower base damage but higher scaling by 5%. It is an instant cast cone skillshot, which means it is very hard to mess up. We max this second because in all honestly it is just a worse version of Annie's Q until late game, late game is does more damage but still, you get more DPS from Annie's Q due to being able to use it twice as much. This spell is still very good however - because it gives you the ability to get AEO stuns pre-six, which is a fantastic utility that not many champions have.

Cool things about this ability:

- It can go through Yasuo's Wind Wall
- Does massive AOE damage late game, it's basically your Q but can hit more than one target.[
- Pre-level 6 AEO stun... This is such a crucial thing, because it can win a skirmish, used to catch someone out of position, used to engage team fights - the possibilities are really endless.
- Really good wave clear later on, it works really well with Luden's Echo

E - Molten Shield

Cooldown - 10 seconds at all levels
Magic Damage - 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 + 20% AP scaling
Magic Resist and Armor bonus - 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50

Annie gets a fire shield around her, while it's active Annie gains bonus MR and AR and if a champion attacks her with a basic attack, they take magaic damage. I think that people underestimate how good this spell really is. Other people don't like to get the spell until they're at level 7, which I don't really understand. I don't put more than one point into it until level 14, but I always put one point into it at level 4, because the bonus MR and the AR is always helpful in trades - not to mention the magic damage they take. But because Annie has terrible wave clear early on, if you leave lane and you're playing against a champion with good wave clear, you can stop the wave before it gets to tower, which is a good way to avoid missing farm.

Cool things about this ability:

- This ability counts towards your stacks on Pyromania
- It stacks with Thornmail
- With the Frost Fire Annie skin, it hides the energized animation a little bit.
- If you have Rylai's Crystal Scepter and you get auto-attacked by someone it will proc the slow from scepter, resulting in a 1.5 second slow. (great for kiting)

R - Summoner: Tibbers

Cooldown - 120/100/80 seconds.
Range - 600 (Length) (Width)290 (Aura)200
Initial Magic Damage - 175/300/425 + 85% AP scaling
Magic Damage per second (Tibber's aura, AOE) - 20/30/40 + 20 AP scaling

Annie has insane burst without her ultimate ability - fully built she can almost kill an ADC or an APC with the Disintegrate + Incinerate combo, with her ultimate ability it Garentees it.

Tibbers is OP, this coming from a player that absolutely adores this champion. I know it. Unless you have Godlike reflexes it is almost impossible to dodge it, as it is an instacast ability - meaning that as soon as you press R tibbers in summoned - and the other player is dead, unless you have terrible ping.

Because of this ability it gives Annie great potential to engage team fights or catch somebody out. A good Flash + Summon: Tibbers can win or lose a team fight - people say that Annie is an easy champion, as yes I would agree. She is very basic. However your decision making with this ability can distinguish the difference between a good Annie player or a bad one.


Cool things about this ability:

- Cooldown starts as soon as Tibbers is summoned, meaning at max rank if he survives the duration (45 seconds), the cooldown is 35 seconds - theoretically if you have 45% CDR the cooldown would be reduced by 36 seconds, resulting in a constant Tibbers.
- If you have Rylai's Crystal Scepter, people standing in Tibber's aura will be slowed for 1.5 seconds.
- Great for blocking skillshots, shut down that Ezreal. cause it ain't about skill with Annie.
- If you land this on more than one enemy with Pyromania active, it will stun all the targets in the summon radius.
- It has the highest AP scaling in the game with a total of 1050% scaling, assuming the target is in impact-zone and stays in the aura for the 45 second duration.

BUILD PATH

EARLY GAME ITEMS

Morellonomicon

AP: 80
100% Base Mana Regeneration
20$ CDR
Cost: 2400g
Unique Passive: Dealing magic damage to an enemy champion below 40% health inflicts Grievous Wounds icon Grievous Wounds to them for 4 seconds.

The item that is almost impossible to pronounce. This is an overall great, gold efficient item. Building this on Annie is really good if you want to have early damage, cooldown reduction, and a sweet passive for taking down champions with healing. It works really well against champions with healing their kit like Ahri, Vladimir and Tryndamere as it applies grievous wounds when you do magic damage to the target when they're bellow 40% health. I build this item when I am confident that I can win my lane without the defensive stats that other items such as Abyssal Mask can give.

The only downside to this item is that I feel the mana regeneration kinda goes to waste because with Disintegrate, mana isn't hard to come by.

Abyssal Scepter

AP: 70
Magic Resistance: 50
Cost: 2350g
Unique Passive: Reduces magic resistance of nearby units by -20. (700 range)

People say that this is a defensive item, yet I struggle to see it. Let's say you're playing against a LeBlanc who has base MR runes of 42. If you have Abyssal Mask and Sorcerer's Shoes you're going to be almost dealing true damage. An Annie with these two items can kill the enemy ad carry with a full rotation of her spells. It's a really decent item for snowballing, but it kinda falls off late game if their team is full of tanks with a lot MR, as you're going to want the flat 35% penetration from Void Staff rather than the -20 reduction as the flat penetration will apply after the reduction. When you're buying this item think if the game is going to go late, or if it's going to be a quick one.

Rod of Ages

AP: 80
Health: 300
Mana: 400
Cost: 3000
Passive:This item gains 20 health, 40 mana and 4 ability power every minute, up to 10 times.
Unique Passive: Valor's reward: On leveling up, restores 150 health and 200 mana over 8 seconds.

Rod of Ages is a great all around item. It is a very good scaling item as late game it will eventually grow to 500 health and 800 mana, and the cherry on-top being 120 AP which means it is one of only two 120 AP items in the game. It gives you more sustainability in team fights because of the extra added health, mana and Valor's reward, for that reason if you build this item you should go into team fights before you're about to level up to get the extra potion. For the cost of 3000g it is quite expensive for an early game item, it takes a while to get. But you want to get it early as it also takes a while to scale up.

Zhonya's Hourglass

AP: 100
Armour: 45
Cost: 3500
Unique Passive: Put yourself in Stasis for 2.5 seconds, rendering yourself untargetable and invulnerable for the duration, but also unable to move, attack, cast spells, or use items during this time. 90 second cooldown.

I don't like to really build this item first, but sometimes you kinda have to. If you're playing against a Zed or a Yasuo or even maybe Talon it's not a bad item to rush. But it costs 3500g which early game is a lot to come by. Think about it, in the time it takes you to build it you could almost build Abyssal Mask and a Needlessly Large Rod. What I think is a better option is to build Seeker's Armguard and stack the passive as you'll get 35 AP and 45 AR. The only reason to rush the whole item for the active would be if you're going against Zed as it nullifies his ultimate ( Death Mark) which does so much damage, and also Duskblade of Draktharr. [/color]

LOG

V 0.2 - March 6/16
Added - Kit rundown
Added - Match ups
Added - Build path