@Riot: Can you clarify how you justify Annie having the most powerful AOE magic burst?

darkdill·Mar 7, 2015·3 votes·1,130 views

An Annie with a lot of AP can delete multiple targets at once with her Tibbers/W combo and both of those skills have no travel time. You might say "short range", but that's a bullshit excuse nowadays. Annie can easily overcome that difficulty with Flash or other mobility tricks, or get boosted by an ally with a Talisman of Ascension or Righteous Glory.

Add on that she's a tanky mage thanks to Molten Shield, and there's little wonder why she's presently so high-tier in LCS games. The question I'd like to ask is why her burst and stun power are allowed to be so nasty with so little ability to react to her Flash-initiates.

12 Comments

ZazushaMar 7, 20154 votes

someone has have the highest/best of something.

Wheres the bitching at Xerath's highest skill ranges?

Wheres the bitching at Cait's longest atk range?

Wheres the bitching at Panth/Yi highest base move speed?

darkdillMar 7, 20151 votes

Those have downsides. Xerath is fucked at melee range, Caitlyn doesn't scale into late-game, and Pantheon and Yi blow up easily.

Annie, on the other hand, is both tanky AND blows you up instantly while you're under a 1.75 second AOE stun.

TruthtellerMar 7, 20153 votes

Annie's burst is justified because it's your team's fault for grouping so close together. Xerath, on the other hand, one-shots a squishy halfway across a map.

BluePolarizerMar 7, 20151 votes

pantheon and yi blow up nowhere near as easy as annie because they itemize defense anyways. optimal builds always include randuins, GA and or maw along with their kits inherent survivability. meanwhile Annie has a similarly short range with none of the mobility.

DirewolfiezMar 7, 20154 votes

...because if she burns Flash offensively then she can't use it to escape and can't really initiate as well for 5 minutes unless the other team is dumb and lets her get near them?

Also, her E is the skill that she maxes last and has no reduced CD through point distribution. Really not as strong as you think it is.

darkdillMar 7, 20151 votes

It still makes other mages look bad. And one Flash-ult is all it takes to end a game.

DirewolfiezMar 7, 20153 votes

If you cluster together, yeah. The same can be said for Amumu's ult, except he requires follow-up by his teammates, or J4's ult. The point is, unless you make major positioning mistakes, she's highly reliant on Flash in order to get kills unless she's against low-range assassins, and then you just got counterpicked.

A lot of mages rely on poke to do damage. She's pretty vulnerable to poke. If you poke her down, she's pretty unlikely to go aggressive.

Not trying to say she's not strong, because she is strong, she's strong as fuck, but that's only really because of the mana regen nerfs. Poke mages used to destroy her, but now a lot of the mana-hungry poke mages are either meh or crap. She's similar to Zed in the sense that neither of them really were problems before the mana regen changes (Annie mid anyway, Annie support is a whole different story). She used to be an uncommon pick midlane for a reason.

darkdillMar 7, 20151 votes

Yeah, you summarized it pretty well. My poor Lux can't even try to poke her down because she keeps going OOM, and trying to proc Illumination will just be inviting Annie to kill me.

DirewolfiezMar 7, 20151 votes

I play a lot of Annie, but I used to play a lot of other skillshot mages, like Lux and Brand, so it's pretty easy for me to see why she's so strong right now. No reliance on skillshots, hits like a truck, instant damage on 2/3 of her offensive spells, low to no reliance on mana regen items, usually wrecks assassins...along with Lissandra, she's only strong right now because all the other mages are weak.