Annie's Counterplay

True. But it also means she can't cast any spells or farm easily.

Fight range with range. Vote Xerath 2016

I do think Annie is a little bit too strong for a few reasons...her passive is too strong, her ultimate can 1 shot people, and on top of that if Tibbers stays out and doesn't die he can tank turret and if Annie is fighting she can zhonya's while Tibbers finishes the job.

However, Annie just like LeBlanc get screwed over by 1 item. Banshe's Veil.

Step 1: Play any of the numerous midlane mages who can both harass and farm from a good range

Step 2: Never get touched by any of Annie's spells.

Seriously. The only people Annie really shuts down mid are highly mobile assassins - most mages outrange her and can simply avoid her combo entirely.

sigh Please don't start complaining about Annie and get her turned into another boring skillshot-poke mage.

Really people, these things have been in the game for years already...

She is not a problem at mid lane. She is fair there. If she has passive up, then you keep out of her range. If she wants to keep it, she will be forced to not use abilities. If she uses it on minions, then you can easily take advantage and harass/poke/all-in her. She is also easily susceptible to ganks. The thing that has the least amount of counterplay is her Flash + Tibbers. This combo can be ruined by good reaction, mercurial, peel, banshee's veil, or spellshields.

Yes, she is strong. Though she is meant to be. She is a burst mage. However, once all of her abilities are used, she switches to a "kite around the battlefield until cooldowns are over" strategy.

The problem mainly lies with the fact that she is a popular support. She is permitted to access her stun at level 1. She has no reason to use it, since she will not be farming minions. Her auto range is very strong at bot lane as well, but that only adds on to her ability to zone and initiate. Then later on in the game, she might be able to solo the enemy ADC, or just an enemy squishy in general. However, this would go for any AP Mid that goes bot. Generally, at bot lane, she is way too controlling with her power and utility.

I am sure that Riot is looking into her, as she has grown popular and powerful, particularly in the support role once again. Before, they nerfed her early game stun time. It is likely they will not do that again, but they have to try to change her so that her support role is weaker but her mid role is about the same, because her mid-lane power is fine. It has to be a very difficult thing to balance, I imagine.

This whole counterplay argument is the epitome of stupid. It's like saying Darius has no counterplay for the same reason.

Honestly, as an Annie main in Mid I saw this coming the second her support hype came around. I don't think she's overpowered, but the fact that Riot has butchered a lot of midlaners in the recent patches is probably making her seem a lot stronger all of a sudden.

You pair that with all of the (if you ask me) stupid buffs, which were buffs even if Riot claimed them to be nerfs, to get her out of bot and back to mid, you face what we have now. Riot need to remove the new thing they did with her Q where half of the cooldown is reduced upon last hitting something, it gives her way too much power in lane with regards to maintaining her stun, and I have no problem admitting that.

You could punish her for using her stun up previously, but now she just Q's up a shit storm and has it back up within seconds, all for no mana, but the mana refund is necessary and hardly the reason she might feel overbearing now.

With all that said though, if you try to deny that Banshee's veil fucks her up you're delusional. A flash dependent champion with mediocre spell range at best, is not going to be able to blow up an ADC if they play properly and have Banshee's. Flash Tibbers has a deceptively long range once you master the boundaries of the Tibbers impact, but her Q and W are middling range wise and if you Banshee's the initial Tibbers burst, and the stun, you as the ADC WILL NOT get hit by the QW follow up. If you do you were too far out of position and the fault is in your court.

Tl;dr: Annie main admits that riot giving her half Q cooldown on kill was absolutely retarded and unnecessary. Everything else is fine. Build Banshee's on your ADC and position appropriately and she's fine. She only looks freelo when you don't account for her flash. It may as well be her fifth baseline skill seeing as it's the only way her kit is enabled against a competent team.

The problem with her is that she can zone you forever because that passive has no cd and if you try to do something, she just flash full combo for something like 1 k base damage plus a stun of 1,5 sec. And you can do nothing. Same problem in tf with her instant aoe stun and great damage. i'm not saying she is unbeatable, but she isn't an healthy champ with her point click stun and massive damage, something like the same problem with the pre-nerf stun of Veigar, an instant aoe stun on a massive burst mage

The longer annie holds her stun, the less time she can use her Q to farm minions.

the only thing that annoys me is how twisted fate got his stun timer nerfed because "he could bully his laners". meanwhile annie? disregard their ults and you will notice the hypocrisy that is riot.

What are you suggesting? Make all her abilities have a delay?

The counter is living through her combo and hoping she is in range for you to fight back

I have no problem with Annie being a strong champion, but her ease of use and access to the power she has is kinda silly. There's no warning her ult is coming so you can't dodge it, she just drops it on your face and stuns your whole team and to zone you she builds five stacks then stands between you and the minions with the threat of dumping her whole point and click kit on you if you try to do something about it.

The 'counter play' is to all in a champion with a defensive steroid, spells with very low cool downs and high base damages when they have less than 3 passive stacks then hope you have enough health to stay in lane to cs while you can.