Annie is a mage/caster champion with good burst, and decent DPS. As a support, she is an aggressive support who has a strong early game in lane, and eventually transitions into a minor/secondary APC later into the game. She has good engage/disengage/peeling

Annie support has two jobs:
1. Focus high damage enemies with stuns
2. Land AOE stuns
That's about it. As long as you can manage those two, you should be able to help naturally peel for your ADC in the process, as well as disengage for them if need be.

Annie is a dangerous champion, typically used for zoning the enemy laners away, so most players know not to engage onto her to save her the trouble of gap closing. If they do try however, just simply stun the target and let your team mates go to town. Otherwise, you'll be left to do most of the engaging in fights.

Pros:
- High burst & Good DPS (can help secure kills)
- Strong early game
- Strong CC
- Good engage/disengage
- Strong threat = Good zoning when ahead or behind
- Long auto-attack range
- Can tank towers/dragon with Tibbers ultimate

Cons:
- High burst & Good DPS (might steal multiple kills from your team)
- Squishy
- No innate sustain
- No innate gap closer for engage

Quints: GP10 - Nothing better for support.

Marks: Attack Damage
- AP or Magic penetration won't nearly be as useful as you think (since you're support)
- With Annie's auto attack range of 625 and with the idea of Bandit (Pickpocket) & Spellthief's Edge meaning you'll auto attack a lot, it will help you wear them down and poke harder before an all-in fight.

Seals: Armor

Glyphs: Flat Magic Resist - (Normally it's better to take Scaling since you don't have natural scaling MR, but you'll be building some MR items so it's okay to take Flat MR glyphs)

Standard 0/9/21 support masteries for Season 4.

Standard core support items:
- Sightstone
- Trinket (early game: Stealth Ward -> late game: Greater Vision Totem or Oracle's Lens
- Gold income: Spellthief's Edge

-- Spellthief's Edge gives you a stronger early & mid game, giving you early AP and allowing you to get more gold income for mid game items from the "pickpocket" like passive. Upgrading to Frostfangallows the "pickpocket" passive to be applied to your spells too, meaning your W or R can apply it in an AOE allowing for even more gold income. The other alternative is Ancient Coin (old Philo stone), which gives you less gold income, but turns into talisman of Ascension (Shurelya's Reverie) in the end, which strengthens your late game with the ability to engage with the speed boost. Normally you would have to choose wisely/accordingly, but by taking Spellthief's Edge, you can simply accomodate for an engage tool by purchasing Twin Shadows which produces more or less the same effect as Talisman of Ascension. Spellthief's Edge also builds into Frostfang, and then Morellonomicon, giving you AP and CDR, which is a perfect item for Annie to transition from early lane gold income item, to a mid/late game AP item.

Other Situational items are listed, and should be bought according to their needs:
- Mobility Boots: Helps your engage, or good if enemy has strong catching power and wards well
- CDR Boots: More damage in DPS | Sorceror shoes: More damage in burst (good against assassins)
- Rylai's: Utility | Rabadon's: Damage
- Spectral Wraith: not the worst item, but not the best. Good if you're behind, helps you get gold to catch up, some quick AP, CDR, and other stats for a temporary mid game item
- Locket of the Iron Solari: If your jungler doesn't build one because he's a damage/carry jungler
- Void Staff: if they build MR and you want more damage

Some max Q first, some max W.

W is better to max, because you'll have 3 points in it by level 6 when you get your ult. Should a fight break out, and you land your ultimate with a stun, you can follow up with a Rank 3 W that will also hit both targets, amplifying your burst immensely. That alone should be enough reason to max W.

Otherwise, if you max Q, you may have more poke but it weakens your overall burst, so that might not do you any good if the enemy has good sustain to heal it back up like a Sona/Taric/Nami support. You'd rather have more damage for your all-in at Level 6, or any double stun/all-in pre-6.

Obviously, max W first, Q second, E third, and your ultimate whenever you can.

Flash of course.

Exhaust is good if you're against a strong hyper carry like Vayne, however, with the amount of damage you deal with your burst, packed on with the stun you'll have, you shouldn't need to use exhaust as your intended target should die relatively quickly. If you can't kill that target within that time and you need to use exhaust to try to kill them, you're probably playing it wrong, doing something wrong, or Annie isn't the support for you.
You can still take exhaust for precautionary measures, but it shouldn't be necessary to secure a kill.

If you're confident in your support abilities, it might be better to take either Ignite for better champion killing, or Barrier.

Cleanse is possible too, if they have strong CC which could burst you down before you get your combo off.

Invades are pretty much free for an Annie Support. Take W at level 1, start charging up your stun, and invade as you please.

Early levels you can just sit in a bush and zone the enemy, and if they don't learn from this, make sure your lane partner is ready to follow up, and apply your stun, and start chunking them down.

Be sure to use your long auto attack range to harass and poke down the enemy while jumping in and out of brush area.

Eventually, the enemy will know not to mess with you unless your stun is down.
A good support Annie player can lure them into a false sense of security by charging 3/4 abilities for your stun, and when you want to apply your stun, you can hit E immediately so that your next ability will apply it, or even use your Q and while your Q is in mid air, hit E so the Q will stun on contact.

Now you've confused the enemy because they don't know when it's safe at all to approach you, or when you're bluffing. And that is left up to you to decide.

Try to use the AOE stun when the support is also a threat (Thresh, Blitz), but if the support is someone like Soraka, feel free to use the single target stun on the enemy ADC.

Try to have your stun up ASAP, and roam around with it ready. You'll never know when you could pick a catch for your team, let alone land a nice double stun in lane for your ADC to follow up.

Upon winning any small fight, feel free to take a tower by summoning Tibbers to tank for a bit, or to take dragon while also using Tibbers to tank damage.

With your build nearing that of an APC, dont' get cocky, but have a little more confident in your ability to duel other champions. Save your stun as well, and try to keep it up because you never know when you might need to engage or disengage from a team hiding in a bush. Forcing Barons, Dragons, and trying to siege more is now a good idea, either allowing you to take objectives, or forcing enemies to fight with your team, thus allowing you to land a nice ult engage onto them, and follow it up with more stuns.

However, try to stick with your ADC most of the late game while you can, or tell them to follow you while you clear wards. You're strong, but not as strong as a real APC, so though you have some burst in your initial catch, you may not be able to actually finish off any enemy target without help from your team, which could mean a wasted stun or ultimate for you.

Remember that you're still a support, not the APC. Your job is more to protect your carries than focus theirs. If you can land a stun or get some damage off onto the enemy carries, good for you, but your main priority is protecting your carries, peeling for them, and stunning anyone who tries to jump onto them and is causing them a nuissance. This means it's better to peel and stun the Vi/Jarvan/Nocturne after they ult onto your ADC, rather than run to their back line and try to stun their ADC. Stun the damage threats jumping onto your ADC and help focus them down with your ADC.

Your stun spell counter goes on even after a spell has been launched.
This means that at 1 charge, you can launch your Q to an enemy (which provides the second charge), and immediately hit W and E while the Q is in mid air, so that you collect 4 charges before the Q hits the enemy, and when it does connect, it results in a stun.

You can coordinate with your ADC to let you last hit a few minions with your Q, to help charge up your stun without wasting your mana.

Using E to charge up your stun through laning phase is the most efficient as it's mana cost remains static at 20 mana.

When using your W to charge up your stun, stand in one bush and fire it into the other bush or into the walls (away from the minions). This way you won't push the wave, nor will you give up your position in the bush by damaging an opponent. However, if you fire it into the other bush and it happens to connect, you WILL be revealed, but that's free damage onto their duo lane without you needing any vision. (Like throwing blind skillshots into bushes for fun)

Annie does a lot of damage, so if you're playing duo with an ADC who hates having his kills stolen, Annie might not be the best champion.

Don't forget, Annie also lacks a form of sustain, meaning sustain lanes can potentially beat you out if they play it correctly and poke you down as they keep themselves sustained up.

Annie fares better than most, but doesn't fare too well when behind, due to her aggressive high damage nature. However on the flip side, she works exceptionally well when you're ahead.

GLHF PLAYING ANNIE :)