Can we talk about adding a bit more counterplay to Annie?

Naomi CoffeeGoat·Aug 9, 2015·8 votes·878 views

I'm kind of sick of not being able to do anything against her because of how much power and how little clarity she has. The whole guessing when she has her stun up is not cutting it. The white lines are not good enough when she can hold her stun at 3 stacks before throwing up her shield and tibber stunning the team. My idea would be to give her a ryze treatment and have some indicators for however many stacks she has or at least like someone suggested make Annie throw out Tibbers like Teemo does with his shrooms currently. I'm just a bit sick of being bursted down instantly as a squishy champ knowing I can't fight back if she catches up to me.

6 Comments

Rico NastyAug 9, 20154 votes

My proposed changes for Annie:

Make her W more clear. The shape is really confusing even for Annie players .. it looks like a cone, but then you actually cast it and it's this weird square thing that has a much longer range? Either change the shape of it or make it more clear, because it's confusing and frustrating for both Annie players and enemies.
That goddamn passive has little to no counterplay. Yes, you can keep track of when it's up, but that's pretty much all. And the stun is far too long, yes I get that she's a utility mage and support, but no champion should have that long of a stun at rank 1. It's crazy. And the fact that it's even triggered by her E, that's always seemed a bit bullshit to me..
I've heard this going around a lot and i'm going to re-state it.. she should throw out Tibbers instead of just surprise spawning him. Plus, can we remove the AoE damage? What's the point of that? I get that she's supposed to have burst, but the AoE damage is needless with Annie's raw power level.

Overall I just feel like she's an unhealthy champion. Like, she may or may not be OP, but her play pattern is obviously lacking meaningful counterplay.

ElkingtonAug 9, 20152 votes

Yeah, Annie's kit doesn't have too much counterplay right now. She gets pretty beefy as well for how much damage she does, and is deceptively tanky with that shield of hers. For most champions, your best option is just to not engage.

I have a rough time taking her whole combo mid-late game as Trundle, so I can imagine how hard the rest of the cast has it against her.

She can delete ADCs, go toe-to-toe with bruisers and tanks, and can destroy assassins if they can't burst her down in one rotation. This would be okay if she was weak early game, but currently Annie doesn't really have any part of the game where she's particularly weak. She's decent early and just gets better later.

LordGeovanniAug 10, 20152 votes

if you tired of being bursted down as a squishy then build some defense the problem is tanks get bursted too because defense items are so shitty

ArcyvilkAug 9, 20151 votes

Imo her passive should be completely reworked. Yes, she can't have it up all the time if she wants to farm/poke, but it creates a danger zone around her of roughly 600 units, further widened by Flash range (that is up every 3.5 min with Summoner's Insight and Distortion). It's not a healthy scenario, especially since her entire kit is build solely around things that got removed from other champion's kits because they were toxic. Veigar's Flash+E combo too obnoxious? Ryze's point and click Q too hard to play against? Viktor's silence on instant ground-targeted ult has no counterplay? Well if you miss all those you still can play Annie!

Till she gets changed, take my piece of advice: cleanse really works wonders against her, if you are able to predict her flash stun combo (because of her low range, she usually is pretty predictable unless she goes Sweeper and camps in unwarded brushes). Picking very long range mage is usually effective as well.

DecaedeusAug 9, 20151 votes

I personally think that as long as Annie has instant cast times on W/R, she will be unhealthy in her design not only as a solo-queue mage but as an LCS support. I suggest that, instead of "throwing" Tibbers as much of the community suggests, we give it a slight delay on spawn, similar to Zyra's Q or Xerath's W. On her W, we give it a slight cast time (maybe 0.5 seconds). Her flash-W/R combo will still catch people by surprise and isn't dodgeable, but you can counter it with your own flash or other assorted mobility/CC spell before you get oneshot. I'm totally fine with compensatory buffs (600 auto range pls or maybe some base MS or a stronger shield) to compensate, as long as she has healthy kit design that allows teams as a whole to react to her initiation.

Malix FarwinAug 10, 20151 votes

Literally build 1 mr piece and you just killed her ability to do that to you. Continue to build your normal build path and well... you deserve to be bursted down.