Anivia is one of the most underplayed AP carries in solo queue. What I mean by this is Anivia is insanely strong and a very good champion. Her skill set lets her change team fights just as easily as a well placed fiddle ult can. Her wall is the best non ultimate skill in the game. When fighting in jungle you can completely wall off the enemy team and make a 5v5 into a 2v5 or a 1v5. Even without her wall she has amazing burst and because of her low cool downs and her ultimate being a toggle on a 2 second CD she has amazing sustained damage. In this guide I will try to explain Anivia as well as I can. I hope this guide will show you how to play Anivia in high elo and tournaments. This is my first guide on mobafire so any advice/criticism will be gladly accepted on how to better formatting my guides.

I have two different standard rune pages for Anivia. I will show you both and explain both of them to you.

This is just my standard caster page:I use the above page when I am against a lane that I need the early game damage and burst to survive and poke my lane. You can call this a page to help out your early game if you seem to be struggling.

This is my personal bird page. I use this one in most of my games as bird because it makes your late game so much stronger. The main difference with this rune page is I have 0 ap and mana regen in it. Some people ask me what I'm thinking using 0 ap and mana regen on bird. I reply with buy a tear and destroy late game.

I will give you two different item builds for Anivia. One for each of the rune pages I posted above.

When using a page with mana regen and ap I suggest the following build.

Start off boots 3 health pots.
Farm in lane until you have enough for a catalyst. (Should be before level 6 if farming well).
After you have your catalyst you spend the next part of the game farming up to get your RoA.
After RoA you should get sorcerers shoes if you don't have them already.
Now you need to be farming for a deathcap.
Once you have your deathcap you need to look at the enemy team to fill out your next three items.

Enemy team have a lot of MR and not much damage is getting to you? Void staff
Enemy team has a lot of magic damage and is bursting you? Banshees veil
Enemy team has a lot of physical damage and is hurting you? Zhonyas
Those should be your next three items 99% of the time but you just need to figure out which order is best for it depending on the game.

When using my "Bird" Rune page I suggest the following build:

Start off boots 3 health pots
Farm up to your tear of the goddess. Once you have that make sure to cast a few spells in base every time you shop to help charge it.
After your tear of the goddess make sure to farm up your catalyst.
Once you have catalyst spend this portion of the game applying pressure mid and making sure to not miss a single creep with your R and Q. Farm up a RoA during this time.
After your RoA you should be going for deathcap.
After deathcap you should finish your tear into a archangels staff. By now you should have about 400-450 AP and be blue potted for the rest of the game. Now you have your 4 core items and 99% of the time your last two items should be void staff and banshees veil. The reason I say 99% of the time is because if the enemy team has near no magic damage and you're being destroyed by physical damage I'd get zhonyas and void staff instead.

Level 1: Q
Level 2: E
Level 3: E
Level 4: W
Level 5: Q
Level 6: R
Level 7: E
Level 8: Q
Level 9: E
Level 10: W
Level 11: R
Level 12: Q
Level 13: W
Level 14: Q
Level 15: W
Level 16: R
Level 17: Q
Level 18: W

A lot of people ask me "Why don't you max your Q second?" The answer to this is that your wall gains size while leveling it up. As I stated earlier this is one of the strongest skills in the game. Being able to wall off a team to split up their team fight and single out an enemy or two is too strong to pass up. Being able to wall of an entire section of the jungle at lvl 14 is very strong.

I take flash ignite for obvious reasons. Flash is the strongest summoner in the game and should never be passed up. Ignite gives that extra burst and healing reduction which is always good. At level 6 you can one burst someone if you land a Q on them, then add a R under them and throw an E+ignite. This is enough damage to kill most people in mid lane.

Anivia is a champion that is godlike late game and very game changing.

Pros:
Wall; this can change an entire team fight, you can even wall someone off at baron (see picture below) to change the entire game.

CC: Has an AOE stun that has a lot of damage with it, also has an ultimate that slows everyone inside of it while still doing damage

Burst: Her E has a lot of burst damage when used with anyone who is already "frosted" as I like to say.

Sustained damage: If you play anivia right, you can make her "burst damage" become sustained damage as well. Throwing your Q into a group of enemies will stun them all, then put your R underneath them all and wall them off. Throw an E on an enemy, now you need to decide if they are still in your ult leave it on, but as soon as they step out of it you need to turn it off. and by the time you've done all this your Q will be back up. Rinse and repeat

Cons:

Very squishy: Like most mages it is very easy to burst Anivia if you can get some sort of disable on her.

Slow: One of the slowest base move speeds in the game for casters.

Auto attack is bad at last hitting: This is one of the hardest things to learn on Anivia. Getting used to using her auto attack to last hit levels 1-6.

Weak early: If you are bad at landing your Q on enemies, laning 1-6 is going to suck for you. You will get our harassed, out pushed, out everything and will probably end up losing your lane because of it.

One of the great things about Anivias bad laning 1-6 is the fact that once you hit 6 you can 1 burst a whole creep wave and then go farm enemy wraiths, your wraiths, your wolves, and still make it back to lane before the next wave spawns.

Here are some pictures below of how to do this the most efficient way.

Here is how to shove the way fastest. Use your R on all 6 creeps. Then shoot and detonate your Q (for the double damage) on the melee creeps. Once this is done the caster creeps in the back will have died from standing in your ultimate.
This is the best way to farm yours and the enemy teams wraiths. Use a wall behind the 4 wraiths and then put down your R and shoot your Q in there. Killing all the wraiths insanely fast and barely wasting any of your time.

Here are some key wall points near baron and dragon. I could go on forever with wall places but here are some of the best ones. Notice how any enemy caught by my wall will have no escapes.

Anivia is very mana dependent. You should try to get your team to do near to no fighting while you don't have blue. But when you do have blue you can have tons of fun!

How to defend:
If the enemy team is pushing your tower you can put your R down right in front of the tower and leave it there. Not many teams can push when you're instantly clearing their creep waves for free.

How to push:
Instantly clear creep waves with your R and let your AD carry poke on the tower. Most enemy teams will be hanging out a few steps behind the tower. If any of the enemy team's squishies come in range don't be afraid to wall them off and have your team blow them up. But if they are hanging back just trying to stop your push a good thing to do is to wall right behind the tower so they can't commit a fight onto you guys. You can then push the tower as 5 making it a lot harder for the enemy team to engage on you under their tower. I suggest doing this when the tower is very low.

So that is King Rafiki's Anivia guide. I am an avid Anivia player in High elo as well as tournaments. Like I said this was my first guide on Mobafire so it might be a little "unfriendly" on your eyes. I can assure you the content in it is amazing and is worth the read. After reading this I can promise your game-play will improve as Anivia.

Leave questions/comments/feedback below and I'll be sure to respond to them.