Anivia discussion (long)
Anivia is one of the original 40 champions and throughout the years has seem some changes but nothing major. However, in modern league she feels out dated, clunky, slow and unfun to play. I will attempt to explain why that is and suggest some changes. She is the first champion I played back in season 4 as my brother introduced me to the game and as I looked through the champions I saw her and said thats a fucking pokemon I want that. (Keep in mind these are 1v1 scenarios without ganks or any alies)
Base stats: She has the lowest base hp and tied for lowest ms of ANY champion in the game at 480hp and 325. The next lowest would be sona at 482hp and lulu at 325ms. Comparing to other mid laners say diana at 594 345ms and zoe at 560 and 340ms with a move speed buff passive. This may not seem like a big deal but consider this; Even if you come out on top of a trade in lane, you land a combo and now its like ok they have a little 40-60 less health then I do now because of the sheer base stat difference alone including the mana cost of that combo. Riot wants anivia to use her entire kit for a trade. Not an all in, not a 100% balls to the wall fight but simply a trade. For a level 6 trade your looking at about 420-500 mana per trade for a full rotation and the ult is up for about 3-5 seconds. Thats a fuck ton of mana to just trade with someone. Pre level 6 trade looks for about 220 mana with a w, q and e. No other champion besides ryze and maybe cass has to use that much mana to just trade with their lane opponents and keep in mind, this doesnt including mana cost for farming since she has the slowest push pre 6 and cant just spam her only damage proc Q to farm with its level 1, 10 second cd. I would honestly increase her base hp to 540, increase her ms from 325 to 335 and decrease the mana cost for all of her abilities early but keep them the same late game.
Her passive: Plenty of people who dont play anivia would say this passive is op or needs to be removed but they dont take into account its weaknesses. The -40 armor and mr debuff the passive gives you in the early game (it scales to +20 armor and mr late game), and keep in mind that the early game has been the most important time of the meta for the past 3-4 seasons. What this boils down to is that every champion is dealing true damage to you in passive and with the damage creep being out of control combined with the very low 480 base hp, every champions (even some support champions) can either kill you or make you low enough to where you are forced to back in the 6 seconds it takes to revive. This doesnt change late game as you die just as quickly but your team is more likely to defend/distract the enemy. To fix this. I personally would remove the -40 armor mr the passive gives you early on or decrease the passive revive timer from 6 seconds to 5.
Her Q: Her Q is the slowest skill shot in the game at 850 missile speed . Its slower then TF q at 1000 and slower then morgana Q at 1200 speed (which we can all agree are easy to dodge). Granted it does have a good aoe range and can go through minions/terrain but when a skillshot is moving slower then old hell of blades jhin, you know you have a problem here. No one above plat rank in a 1v1 is going to be hit by this laughably slow skill shot at any range besides point blank range, even then its easy to predict and dodge. You dont believe me? Go into practice tool and try it yourself. Hell, try to hit a immobile champion at long rang with this skill shot even with a level 1 wall against someone who knows what their doing and knows how to path. Still not convinced? Well two more scenario i would like to mention. Imagine 1v1 an adc late game, a jinx for example and your both at mid range. You launch a Q but by the time the Q reaches jinx (shes standing still in this scenario which would never happen at high elo) she has now hit you with 4-5 autos and you are now either dead or are one auto away from death depending on build and crit chance. How is that fair? An adc getting 4-5 autos off on you while your waiting for the one skill shot to reach her, its not fair at all. Another 1v1 vs another skillshot mage ahri. Her charm a 1600 move speed reaches and hits you before your Q has gone half the distance and now your dead. Does that seem fair????? Fuck no it doesn't, it feels horrible knowing you lost a 1v1 late game because your main damage proc tool is the slowest thing in this game. To fix this, I would do one of 2 things. Either increase the skillshot speed to match morgana's Q at 1200 or increase the aoe radius. Just remembered Aurelion sol is a champion that exist with his Q that matches aniv Q speed at 850 but unlike aniv q, big space dragon Q increases in size and already starts out fairly big for a skill shot.
Her W: Back in ye old league (season 1-4) This ability was very strong and influential. However, thanks to modern league of dashes, this ability has become a fucking laughing stock. Out of the 140+ champions, roughly 66-68 of them can bypass terrain with little to no consequence. Then Out of the champions that are left, another 25ish champions have movement speed buffs that can be triggered to easily run around the wall when the aforementioned 850 move speed Q cant reach you. Out of those 66 champions ive mentioned, they are all viable and a good 1/3 of them being pick or ban champions making them appear very frequently in games. This basically means that you can not pick anivia into 1/3-1/2 of games without being called out as a troll pick (especially in ranked). To fix this, I would give anivia the ability to take down her wall like j4 can with his ult, and champions that dash through her wall are given a debuff of some kind. Also, remember that her wall has a very ling cd of 17 seconds at all ranks so if an enemy uses their mobility to escape the wall, then its very likely that their mobility spells will be off of cd when her wall is up again. Basically anivia has to wait until enemy champions have used their mobility to make her wall effective and in higher ranks, this doesnt happen to often.
Her E: A while back her E was nerffed from 200 base to 150 base and was easily justified. However, with the damage creep rearing its ugly head, this ability has also become weak with the amount of set up time it needs to work when comparing to other mages who can output more damage with less set up (ahri, syndra, viegar, velkoz to name a few) and assassins like rengar or kha who 100-0 in .5 seconds. I would personally revert the past nerf since I know dam well riot will not nerf any of the flashy lcs champions. Or keep the 150 base but give it triple damage when hit with a Q in a fully formed ult. Another change I had in mind is refunding half the mana if her E kills a unit be it minion, monster or champion. Lots of other mages have mana refund passives. Annie, xerath, vel koz, karthus to name a few so I dont think thats too much of a problem to add.
Her R: For those who dont know, anivia's R did not always have a wind up time to be fully formed. It was given this wind up time due her E+R combo. Anivia's E had a slow travel time which meant that players would use her point and click E then put her ult under her opponents for half a second for that double damage proc making this at the time, one of the highest range damaging and mana cost efficient combos in the game. So her ult was given a 1.5 sec wind up time later changing to 1 second due to a win rate drop. However, again with mobility creep being so relevant, a 1 second wind up time imo is too long for her ult as mobility champions have a generous window to easily escape it. Even immobile champs I find have a very easy time walking out of her ult before its fully formed as the movement speed debuff is only 30% comparing to a level 1 cass W at 40% slow that also grounds. Her ult honestly just feels more like a basic ability at this point thats used more for zoning and locking off choke points rather then using it as an offensive damage tool which is what riots been pushing for, damage this and damage that, give the support items damage ThEy'Ll LoVe It. You would think her wall would be used for locking off choke points but now a days that means your enemy can easily escape you while you cant follow them. Hell I feel more threaten by an attrox W and a Cass W then an anivia R. To fix this I would further decrease the wind up time to .5 seconds this still gives opponents visual and time to escape, give her a move speed buff while inside her ult and increase the slow to 45% base and 60% at fully formed. To go further I would make her ult ground enemy's at fully formed and cut the cooldown if it was canceled by cc like with sion's Q. This doesnt even touch on the mana cost of this ability. Everyone says oh this is such a good wave clear ability (which is true) but they seem to always forget or dont realize that early game clearing one minion wave cost about 250-300 mana with just her ult alone. I would reduce her mana cost on her ult early game but keep it the same late game. Ekko and ahri can clear a wave with just a Q and a few autos. If none of these change suit your fancy, then how about making her ult bigger? If you need a frame of reference, her ult is about the size of oriana's R radius which is an instant cast and gives almost 0 visual reactive warning.
General gameplay (This is without mentioning any of the suggested changes above): Anivia game play in lane is basically farm or trade, you do NOT have enough mana to do both plain and simple especially against high sustain mid laners like akali and vlad. Because of how high your mana cost are (Her q is 80-120 while say diana q is 50 at all ranks and zoe q is 50-70) anivia is forced every game to build mana early with tear and catalyst a 1950 gold investment. Because of this, she loses out of any early game damage that every other mage gets that can go straight for lost chapters and because of the hp base stat difference, she is now on par with hp or still behind with most other mages that didnt have to build hp. So congrats riot, you have made a mage that has to spend 1950 gold to be on par with every other mage in the game thats great game design. Her general game play in lane is that you can NOT go in on any champion as they will either escape your entire kit with one dash or they will cc you canceling your entire kit, your main game plan is to wait until they go in on you then you burst them while they've used everything trying to go in on you. Now I dont know about you but a mage that is designed to trap opponents then burst them down, should not have to be forced to wait until enemies come to them. Lets take ekko for example; this guy will always dash out of your wall and/or ult before you can get any damage off on him, now while you can say that "oh just wait for him to use his mobility", again in high elo, no ekko is dumb enough to do this. By the time aniv spells are off of cd, his will be as well, so now you are stuck in an endless cycle. Now you have no choice but to wait until ekko uses his his spells to go in on you then you can actually hit him but then he'll just ult out because modern champions have so much safety built into their kits that older champions are stuck saying "bruh sound effect 2" all game. This cycle is repeated for most mid lane champions. For the other immobile mages you'll find that anivia loses to a good chunk of immobile and mobility champions because hard cc can also cancel her entire kit but you can argue that this is more of a skill match up however, this does show that even when anvia kit is suppose to shine (against immobile champions) it isnt always the case. Lastly I know people will bring up her win rate of 51% which is a balanced win rate. However, consider her play rate of roughly .6-1.2% (depending o the site you use), this concludes that only her mains play her and even then, they can not win a majority of their matches. Anivia is heavily relient on her team to lock enemies down or to stall out for late where shes as strong as a mid game lee sin. Hell even froggen the best anivia in the world has mentioned more then once that he doesnt like playing her anymore.
In conclusion: Anivia is a champion thats all about taking valuable time and risk to set up for a big pay off. However, that set up is costly and laughably easy to avoid and the pay off is average at best when a ziggs gets a bigger pay off hitting a knock back.