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Making Annie More Interesting (A Minor Annie Rework)

Namamall·7/13/2015, 9:53:14 PM·16 votes·2,238 views

To begin, I'd like to state that I welcome any and all feedback, and appreciate discussion in the comments. Thank you for your time.

#Summary

This goal of this post is not to demand buffs or nerfs for Annie. Personally I don't think Annie is over/under powered, and the reason I think she deserves some tweaking is because she has a similar problem to old Ryze. She isn't a very interesting champion because her abilities are too simple and mundane.

However, I like Annie's overall identity. The main changes here are that the passive has different effects than just stunning. My proposed set of changes do not drastically change Annie's abilities, and leave them for the most part unchanged.

#Changes

Note that most numbers and ratios are just placeholders or rough ideas.

##P: Pyromania After casting 5 spells, Annie's next basic ability will have an additional effect. Pyromania's bonus effect becomes more powerful with each rank in Summon: Tibbers.

##Q: Disintegrate Deals 80/115/150/185/220 (+80% Ability Power) magic damage. Mana cost and half the cooldown are refunded if Disintegrate kills the target.

Pyromania Bonus: The target of disintegrate is marked for 5 seconds. When Annie basic attacks or casts a spell on the marked target, the mark is consumed and the target burns for 40/60/80/100 (+50% Ability Power) over 2 seconds. If Tibbers basic attacks a burning target, the mark is reapplied for 3 seconds. (There may need to be a cap on the number of times the mark can be reapplied).

##W: Incinerate Casts a cone of fire dealing 70/115/160/205/250 (+85% Ability Power) magic damage to all enemies in the area.

Pyromania Bonus: Stuns all targets hit for 1.25/1.5/1.75/2 seconds.

Additional Notes: Disintegrates hit box should be re coded to match the visuals for the sake of clarity and counterplay.

##E: Molten Shield Shields target allied champion or Tibbers for 70/100/130/160/190 (+30% AP) (+15% of Annie's bonus HP) for 5 seconds. Deals 20/30/40/50/60 (+20% Ability Power) magic damage to enemies who attack the the target while the shield holds.

Pyromania Bonus: The targets gains 50/60/70/80 (+10% AP) move speed while the shield holds. This bonus is doubled when used on Tibbers.

##R: Summon: Tibbers Annie throws Tibbers to a target location. After 0.75 seconds, Tibbers lands in a burst of flame dealing 175/300/425 (+70% Ability Power) magic damage to enemies in the target area and stunning them for 1 second. For the next 45 seconds, Tibbers deals 20/30/40 (+30% Ability Power) magic damage each second to nearby foes and can basic attack them for 80/105/130 magic damage.

Additional Notes: Note that Tibbers does less damage on the initial appearance but more with the AoE, as compared to current Annie. Annie's ultimate should include an animation of Tibbers arcing through the air as it is shown in A Twist of Fate. While Tibbers is out, Annie should no longer be holding a teddy bear in her character model. Tibbers should be able to dance like Azir's sand soldiers.

#Explanation

While Annie's current passive is undoubtedly very powerful, it is a fairly bland and binary ability. For Annie players, it's merely a condition for engaging and doesn't create very meaningful choices. Allowing it to branch away from just being stun allows it to be a much more dynamic and versatile ability. Increasing the stack requirement to 5 was an insurance to make sure expending her passive had meaningful drawbacks if it was not used optimally.

The empowerment of Annie's Q is for a more DPS oriented play style, focusing down a single target by alternating damage between Annie and Tibbers.

Annie's classic lock 'em up and burst 'em down is retained with the stun staying on the Pyromania bonus of her W. The main difference is that the initiating ability is on Incinerate, rather than Annie's ultimate, forcing her to take more risks with the shorter range on the stun, as well as rewarding precision with the conic skill-shot.

The changes to Annie's E are mainly to make support Annie feel more like a support and less like a stun bot, but it also could potentially allow for a very Tibbers focused Annie play style. It also helps to alleviate the problem with current Annie's E. Right now, Molten Shield is at worst kindling for her passive; at best, it's an insipid stat boost.

There isn't really any reason why Annie's ultimate shouldn't be an arcing skillshot. It makes sense logically, gameplay-wise, for clarity, it looks cooler...

Not having a Pyromania bonus on the ultimate avoids locking Annie in a situation where her passive proc is almost always paired with her ult, a situation she is in currently.

######07/15/15 Changed Disintegrate Pyromania bonus due to it being too much like Ryze (thanks to Catastrop). Made Pyromania scale with rank in Summon: Tibbers rather than rank of the ability, and it takes less time for Tibbers to land. Later, gave Tibbers back his stun, removed the slow from the new Pyromania Q, and changed Pyromania stacks to 5 from 7. Huge thanks and kudos to Sightless66 for feedback.

24 Comments

Blue Kaozi7/15/2015, 11:03:31 PM3 votes

Sounds pretty neat to me. I always thought tibbers himself should be the focus of her kit, most of the time youre dead before you have time to register tibbers is even there.

bawlen7/16/2015, 3:35:12 AM2 votes

i like it for the most part

Catastrop7/13/2015, 10:09:18 PM2 votes

I like everything but the Q. It just makes her seem like a more bursty Ryze.

HighKingOfSkyrim7/16/2015, 6:50:13 AM2 votes

dat Speed boost on E :D

With 500 AP i get +260 movementspeed for tibbers :O

Kennen-Speed-Tibbers incoming

Posui Gart7/16/2015, 7:00:16 AM2 votes

So you basically nerfed her passive hard, nerfed her shield(it can now be broken earlier) and nerfed her initiation with ult. And in return we have... some damage on Q, that you have to proc somehow on not-stunned target, better stun on her W and better bear that will hit something only after his arrival(R-W) or when Annie uses improved shield. Well, at least it is still better than "make champ's Q a skillshot"-styled Riot remakes

aquacustom7/18/2015, 6:27:17 AM1 votes

Having been apart of the original discussion in which Namamall and I, as well as a few others, and being a former Annie main I agree with it.

Photos of Ghosts7/16/2015, 11:17:03 AM1 votes

THIS PLEASE Also, instead of the previous permaslow idea, why not adding a first short slow to the empowered Q?

A little Peepo7/16/2015, 4:38:08 AM1 votes

I like the idea but it seems to me you are giving her power she doesn't really need (shield on allies) she also has easier stuns rather than rotating through abilities correctly (W and timbers both stun separately) I do love the passive you had in mind tho! Really cool, not so thrilled about her E though, simply because annie was never designed to be a support and then she would probably get zyra'd :/

Erockandroll7/17/2015, 1:00:03 AM1 votes

.75 seconds to cast her ult? That's about the same length they gave Veigar, and he has problems using his CC. And this is suppose to be her ultimate ability.

Aside from that The only major change is her passive. considering how old she is, I would give her a larger rework that makes her more interesting to play.