Could Anivia get a little more help?
Summary of topic:
-Speed up auto-attacks. -Make a mana regen mechanic to reduce the burden of her heavy mana costs. -Make Crystallize actually do something when at rank 1.
I would appreciate any support on at least these 3 goals, since I don't see many Anivia players often. She's pretty hard to use due to her in-built and unfixed problems, not because her kit is actually hard to use (especially now that there's a marker telling you when Flash Frost stuns). Anyway, on to the explanations.
I've been testing out some things (minorly), but for the most part been trying to watch more skilled Anivia players to try and get a feel for how she plays. I kept finding problems though.
One thing is a guaranteed problem: her last hitting. It's horrendous, even for an AP caster. It's not really the AD behind it, it's the speed of the projectile. You'll never really know when it will hit the minion, you're just playing a guessing game where you are almost guaranteed to not get as much CS as your opponent during the early game.
I would like the hit confirm boosted to more realistic values, whether it be boosting her ramp-up animation or the actual projectile's speed. Kog'Maw has a similar issue, but he's an AD carry in most cases and thus doesn't have the issue for long.
The other problem is more conceptual...it's her wall. It's great when used correctly. Amazing. Can change entire games. However, most Anivias will not level it up for the sake of inflicting more damage with other abilities. While I enjoy that she has damage potential, her focus should be more on utility, like her Flash Frost and Glacial Storm.
Yes, Glacial Storm and Flash Frost deal a ton of damage when paired with Frostbite. But we already have AP assassins that can do what she does even faster, and with less positioning requirements. Not only that, but it's recommended to completely ignore Anivia's Wall entirely until mid-game! Is that healthy gameplay for a skill to be completely ignorable? I think not.
My proposition here is:
Crystallize now gives a Skarner-esque passive. Chilled is now a status effect where you can see an indicator for someone's stacks of Chilled. Landing Flash Frost applies one or two (based on if you stunned them), and Frostbite will now automatically apply one as well.
At 3 stacks, an enemy will be "Frostbitten" (placeholder) or simply put, stunned for about a second or two. The enemy cannot be stunned again by "Frostbitten" for a few seconds. Until Crystallize is leveled, or if an enemy has been recently stunned, the max number of stacks on any enemy is stuck at 1. Any enemy stunned by "Frostbitten" will increase Anivia's mana regen for a few seconds, based on how many were affected (low mana regen unless smacking champions). It scales with every level of Crystallize.
Early game base damages will have to be reduced like it did for Skarner's (quite a bit since it's a double stun at lv3), but Glacial Storm should be unaffected for the most part. Also, the stun will not deal damage.
Please support giving Anivia help! \o/
. Probably not fine with anyone else though even if the base damage was lowered for both Flash Frost and Frostbite, which would infuriate me to no bounds. I guarantee that Anivia will have mana issues even with this Frostbitten gimmick that reminds me of Catalyst passive except based on Frostbitten proc rather than a level up proc. I'm even willing to bet that Anivia would have mana issues if you make her Frostbite give mana back on minion last hits (like Annie). Even if I do like the latter idea more. Anyway, you want a champion with mana problems to have less base damage and do nothing for the first half of the game where all she does is ramp up mana items like Tear/Chalice + RoA?