Why don't I see Anivia supports?
Anivia is normally played in the mid lane as a strong zoning and waveclear mage. However, I never see her played support, which I find her to be pretty fantastic at.
Her wall is an extremely powerful ability that has a bigger impact than most ults when used correctly. Unfortunately, when she is played in the mid lane, it's never a good idea to max it first and as a result it has a fairly minor impact in lane. However, if you take her support, you don't need to worry about damage and can afford to max it first. The wall is even stronger in a duo lane, and synergizes with many ADCs. A wall can be placed behind the enemy, allowing a champion such as Vayne to stun enemies against the wall, or Graves to instantly detonate his Q
There are countless other uses for the wall. For example, you can wall off three fourths of the lane, and Jinx can cover the remaining fourth with flame chompers. If someone gets a hold of your carry, such as Udyr, you can place a wall directly inbetween the enemy and your carry to split them apart and get them off. The wall can also be used to interrupt channeled abilities such as Katarina or Malzahar's ultimate.
The list goes on-and-on, but arguably the most valuable use for it when playing support Anivia is to wall off the enemy carry from their support. Placing a wall inbetween the support and the enemy carry forces the carry to walk all the way around the wall to escape while simultaneously invalidating heavy CC melee supports such as Blitzcrank, Leona, or Alistar. This can also be used the same exact way, except defensively. For example, if an enemy Leona catches hold of your carry, you can place a wall between Leona and the enemy carry to prevent the enemy carry from following up. This is an extremely potent ability when combined with Anivia's AOE stun and AOE movement and attack speed slow, further limiting the already limited options opponents have when walled off by Anivia.
Her high base damage on her Q lets her do moderate damage in early trades while maxing her wall first. At rank one it does 120 magic damage, which is well above average. It also functions as a slow to anything it passes through, and an AOE stun when it detonates. It also procs spellthiefs twice which is pretty awesome.
Anivia's ultimate ability is a toggleable AOE movement and attack speed slow that does significant amounts of damage over time. It has an extremely low cooldown for an ultimate ability, letting it be used like a normal ability. While great in the middle lane, it is extremely useful in the bottom lane as the attack speed slow hurts ADCs heavily and the AOE is used to its full potential since bottom lane is a duo lane. This ability pretty much means you automatically win every trade post-6.
She also has a pretty big range on her auto attacks, letting her safely poke at most enemy ADCs without any retaliation. The only bad part about her kit is that her E is fairly useless. Other than that she seems to be a pretty amazing support all around. So why is Anivia support virtually unheard of?
