About the Author: Hello, I'm Gleebglarbu, a high elo player on the NA server and have peaked at rank 4 on the ladder, but am currently around rank 30 in challenger as of updating this (12/10/13). Annie support has become much more acceptable and popular after Tabe played it at worlds but it has always been a strong pick.





Annie is a really strong pick in the current meta and brings a lot to the table. She has an on demand stun that can either be single target or AoE, incredibly high magic damage in the lane phase, and a long range auto attack to harass the enemy out of lane. Her ultimate also can serve many functions from tanking objectives, bursting an enemy, or tanking a tower for your team in a dive.

12/10/13 - Updated to Preseason 4
1/8/14 - Updated Leona Match Up

Pros

1. Wave clear
2. On demand stun
3. Good dragon control with Tibbers
4. 625 range auto attack
5. High damage w/o building damage items

Cons

1. Squishy when Molten Shield is down
2. Has no buffs for her AD carry
3. Has to use mana to charge up stun in lane
4. No sustain

9x 9x 9x 3x

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

9 x Greater mark of hybrid penetration

I prefer these runes over Greater Mark of Magic Penetration on Annie because you can abuse your long range to deal physical damage and the magic penetration is also useful because all of your spells deal magical damage. I wouldn't recommend any other type of mark for Annie, hybrid penetration gives her the best ability to poke in lane while still retaining her massive kill potential.

9 x Greater Seal of Armor

These runes are very effective at mitigating physical damage. They are mandatory as a support because you will be taking physical damage from the enemy AD, the enemy support, and creeps in lane.

9 x Greater Glyph of Ability Power

Ability power is a great stat to get in blues on Annie because her 3 damaging spells all have above a .7 AP ratio. This will give you big kill potential in lane and you don't really need Greater Glyph of Magic Resist because your Molten Shield will give you a free 20 magic resist in fights anyway.



3 x Greater Quintessence of Ability Power

You take these quintessences for the same reason you take Greater Glyph of Ability Power. With this set up you will start with 33 AP at level one and you have an incredibly easy timing getting kills in bottom lane.

Another option for quints is Greater Quintessence of Health if you are afraid you will be blown up through your Molten Shield.

I wouldn't recommend Greater Quintessence of Gold with this set up because it is all about the early aggression and power you bring to bottom lane and sacrificing any of it will just make you weaker.

0/9/21 is the new go to mastery page for ranged supports in season 3. Picking up a bit of durability in the defense tree makes it harder for you to be killed in a single CC bot lane and the utility tree is great for a plethora of reasons. The amount of gold you can generate from it has increased massively from season 3 to 4, Wanderer + Fleet of Foot gives you great roaming and initiation capability in the mid game, and Culinary Master gives you biscuits which are incredibly strong for early game fights because you can pop them all for a quick 80 hp.

Another set you could run on Annie is 9/0/21, getting Sorcery, Double-Edged Sword , Mental Force , and Arcane Mastery with the same utility set up as shown above. This will give you a bit more damage but at the cost of your survivability. Both are viable, so try them out and see which fits your play style better. I prefer the safeness of 0/9/21 personally.

This start is emerging as one of the most common builds for supports in the new season. The Sweeping Lens has a very long cool-down before level 9, but can still be very useful for setting up ganks and forcing the enemy to play scared by denying vision. Ancient Coin is the strongest of the 3 new support starts on almost all champions, especially ranged ones, after the nerf to Relic Shield, except for Annie. Her 625 aa range and great AP ratios make Spellthief's Edge my preferred choice, but both are strong. Getting a ward helps make sure you stay safe in lane and grabbing biscuits will keep your health and mana high.




These are the items you should aim to buy when you first head back to base. Sightstone will give you vision to protect yourself from ganks and the Frostfang will give you increased AP as well as gold flow. Picking up a Vision Ward at this stage of the game is nice as well because they no longer have a duration. You can usually put it down in the small bush in the middle of the river early game and often have it last for 10+ minutes because most players just walk through the river without actually checking that location. Annie has no health sustain so grabbing another biscuit is usually a good idea in case you get into a bad trade or take some poke damage.





Most supports will itemize for talisman of ascension, which you can do on Annie, but I prefer to take advantage of her high base damage and AP ratios to make her a more significant damage threat. Upgrading to Frost Queen's Claim gives you some CDR, more AP, and a great active with a surprisingly long range. The upgraded Sweeping Lens gives you temporary true sight which is great for clearing out wards with Oracle's Elixir being removed. Haunting Guise makes you a bit beefier while also noticeably increasing your damage, and Mikael's Blessing is such a strong item after its reduction in price that I end up building it most games on almost every support.

Situational Items

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This item provides a great magic resist aura and active that can be useful against heavy AoE based AP teams. If the enemy team has multiple sources of magic damage or AoE damage it can be a great pick up for teamfights.

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This item has been reworked for the preseason and now is gold efficient as long as the passives' combined gold values is equal to 16g, which they easily are. Promoting a siege minion puts pressure on that lane and can often force someone on the enemy team to go defend it. The increased minion damage will help you kill towers, push waves, and increase the damage of many allied units in team fights like Elise's spiderlings and Zyra's plants. The effect does not work on Annie's tibbers or Shaco's Jack In The Box. If you get this item , do not get CDR boots as well because you will go way over the cap.

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Annie does great damage for a support and these boots only amplify that. They hurt your ability to initiate and roam, though, so don't get them if you are the only form of initiation for your team or if you plan on roaming a lot. They are a good alternative to Mobility Boots when you mainly want to focus on your damage output.

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If you're very ahead this can be a good purchase. It gives you a lot of AP which is great for Annie, and the active works well if you need to nuke down a single target. Remember that it amps ALL magic damage to the target, not just yours, so you can use it to buff the damage of other champions like Evelynn, Ahri, etc.

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Good choice for kiting, this also gives you a lot of durability. Tibbers will apply the AoE slow on detonation as well as when he is walking around and burning people and if anybody attacks you with your Molten Shield up they will be slowed as well. Good choice against assassin comps that will try to pick you off, the health makes you surprisingly bulky in addition with the resist steroid from Molten Shield.

Take your ultimate, Summon: Tibbers, at 6, 11, and 16 because the initial damage and strength of Tibbers increases massively with rank.

Maxing Incinerate first in lane will give you the best amount of damage in a 2v2 scenario. The damage per rank on Incinerate goes up by 50 at each level while Disintegrate goes up at 40 by each level. Incinerate has twice the cool down of Disintegrate but you can use it to hit two targets and to clear minion waves which makes it worthwhile to max first.

I max Disintegrate second because Annie can contribute a lot of damage in team fights with just her base values alone. Molten Shield makes you tankier but you are not really a front line champion and I prefer to have the extra damage in team fights.

Molten Shield is maxed last because it doesn't do too much to increase the damage you do compared to Disintegrate, even if the enemy is hitting you. It's a really good resist steroid with even 1 point and the cool down does not change with rank, allowing it to be a one point wonder for stacking up your stun without blowing your mana pool.


For solo queue, Flash and Ignite are always the best summoners to take. Soloqueue is about snowballing the game and getting a lead for your team, this is easiest to do with the added kill pressure from Ignite. In competitive play, Exhaust is a smarter choice vs certain champions such as Kennen and Zed, while Heal is a strong teamfight summoner against a lot of AoE damage such as Karthus and Vladimir. The cons to Exhaust and Heal are that Annie is often not in range to exhaust because she does not get as close to the enemy as champions like Thresh anad Leona, where as Heal, while strong, has an incredibly long cool down and can not be used offensively to secure kills.

Laning as Annie is pretty simple but there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Abuse your auto attack range. Annie has 625 auto attack range, which makes her out range every common support and every common AD in the laning phase except for Caitlyn and Jinx with her Fishbones active. Whenever the other AD goes for a CS you can throw out an auto attack and shave off around 40-50 HP. This is especially useful if the enemy does not have sustain.

2. Hide your stun. When your stun is charged and ready to go, it is telegraphed to the enemies and causes them to play more cautiously. If you sit on 3 stacks of your passive you can simply QW combo an enemy for a stun or shoot a Q at them and the use your E while it is in mid air. This will result in the Q stunning the enemy because your passive will be at 4 stacks by the time it lands.

3. Pay attention to the map. This is not specific to Annie but is important for laning in general. If you haven't seen the jungler in a while you should play cautiously, especially if you are pushed up. Mid lane can often roam down bot as well so make sure to check the mini map and keep tabs on the enemy team.

4. Turn on Molten Shield when you are taking damage. This sounds pretty basic but it is something I see a lot of Annie players forget to do. Your Molten Shield gives 20 MR and Armor at rank 1, making it a very powerful damage mitigation tool that has almost no mana cost.

These will be rated from 1 - 10 with 1 being very easy and 10 being very hard. A difficulty of 5 would mean the match up is even. I won't discuss every match up in this section, though.

4 : Sona can use her sustain capabilities to heal up your auto attack harass but you are able to win early in all fights against her. She is particularly squishy and if you get your Disintegrate and Incinerate on her she should be a pretty easy kill. You both gain massive power spikes with your ultimates so the lane doesn't drastically change when you hit 6. Make sure not to take free poke, if you trade back and forth but never go all in you will run low on health while Sona can just sustain herself and her AD.


4 : Annie is pretty good vs Thresh because she out ranges him and does enough damage to kill or his AD in an all in fight. The most important thing is to make sure you keep control of brushes in this match up. If you get hooked against a bursty AD like Corki you can be blown up before you have time to retaliate and the lane will snowball out of control. Your auto attack harass is your best friend here and you should use it to zone Thresh and push him out of lane.

5 : You barely out range Zyra so she can usually trade an auto attack back at you whenever you go to hit her. Her plants do very high damage and her root makes it hard to get a good ultimate down without blowing flash. She is still very squishy though and is pretty easy to kill. The important things for winning this lane are just dodging her Grasping Roots and not sitting near her plants and eating free damage.

2 : This lane is ridiculously easy for Annie. You out range his auto attacks hard and also out damage him. He is one of the squishiest supports and if you get him to around 60% you can usually solo him if he plays to far up. Just be careful for ganks from the enemy jungler, Flash + Terrify is a deadly combo and if you are caught out numbered you will surely die.

7 : This match up is really hard for Annie. You can zone her hard at level one and abuse your range early, but she can just engage on either you or your AD and blow either up. You don't have adequate peel like a Thresh does to protect your AD so there is little you can do aside from a 2 man stun. I would not advise picking Annie into Leona if at all possible.

Annie is also great vs Janna, Taric, and Soraka, but they all have such weak laning phases that there isn't too much to discuss in terms of match ups. Just auto attack them down because you out range all three, you also win in all in against any of them because you out damage them hard.

I hope you enjoyed my guide for Annie! This is one of my favorite heroes and her kit offers great damage, engage, and lane pressure, allowing you to bully your laner and also dealing tons of damage in mid-game teamfights. Following the advice presented here should make you a much better Annie player and help you to perform well both in and out of lane. If you want to see me play Annie, you can follow my stream at www.twitch.tv/gleebglarb1