Anivia Needs Help: Why Season 5 Stealth Nerfs Were Bad For Her

The Mimeoplasm·Mar 21, 2015·5 votes·2,744 views

I main Anivia and last season I thought she was in a pretty healthy place. Her early game wasn't the best, she ran out of mana really fast, but there was good ways to get around that and farm to your late game.

The best methods included:

Farming your jungle wraith and wolf camps in between mid lane minion waves to get a bit of extra CS and exp to push you towards your late game
Rushing a basic chalice for the mana regeneration to stay in lane
Getting blue buffs

THE PROBLEM: The problem here is pretty obvious. Chalice of Harmony nerfs to both the gold cost and the way the regeneration works hurt Anivia's starting gambit pretty badly. It wasn't totally backbreaking or anything, but you can really feel the need for mana now with the chalice changes. This is compounded with the duration nerf on blue buff means Anivia is making a lot more trips to the summoner platform to get her mana filled back up. This means less time in lane. This means less farm. We need farm to be relevant as mid game approaches, which means that the next step would be to start double dipping wolves and raptors to make up the lost time and money, but we can't do that because

it costs half of our mana pool to kill a minion wave, and we need to kill those because...
jungle money got nerfed, and even when we have blue buff and have the mana to farm the jungle camps...
the spawn timers got increased which means that they wont be up between every minion wave, instead appearing only every two minion waves.

This means that Anivia now has to take drastic measures to stay in lane to keep her farm up to scale into her strong late game. In season 4 I ran teleport on Anivia frequently because it let me abuse her safe farming tactics and reach 200+ cs by 20 minutes in most games that I got blue buff and double dipped wolves and wraiths. I didn't have to run it, and it let me switch to safer summoner spells like heal or barrier to stop zed and fizz from just killing me.

I now find myself forced to run teleport and use it every time I have the chance to hunt down extra farm this means that I no longer have the safety of barrier or heal when I come up against assassins who straight kill me and poke mages who out range me and keep me off my farm.

I only rarely manage 200 cs by 20 now and usually its because I got a couple good ganks from a jungler and proceeded to run rampant all over the map, stealing everyone else's farm on the way, and by then its hardly relevant that I have that CS because I just killed 10 people and got ridiculous amounts of money anyway.

This come across another problem. Anivia is incredibly fragile. She has one of the slowest base movement speeds in the game, she has one of the lowest base health pools in the game, she has very low armor and magic resist early on, and has no escapes built in to her skills. This means that she is a perfect target for all the extremely popular assassins who can just jump on her and 100-0 her in 2 seconds. She can't even get good value out of Zhonya's hourglass because it cancels her ult when she activates it and her cooldowns are too long for her to burst out of zhonyas like Syndra or Orianna can.

To cut a long story short I think that Anivia's early game has been badly damage by a number of stealth nerfs that were not really targeted to hinder her at all. Anivia's fragile early game has been shattered by a combination of factors that had nothing in particular to do with her, since she hasn't seen any real changes in some time aside from some useful quality of life buffs several patches ago dealing with things like her auto attack projectile speed, clarifying the radius of her stun (which is still a bit unclear, but talking about it here risks derailing my discussion into one about "CLARITY") and having her ultimate deal a tick of damage on being canceled.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: Since most of the problem is centered on the fact that she is a slow and squishy mage with a poor early game and an emphasis on prolonged sieges and wave clear most of my ides target either improving her ability to reach her mid/late game power, or improving the utility of her abilities early on so that she is more relevant early where she has previously been extremely outmatched.

Allow her ultimate to continue through activating Zhonya's Hourglass.
Improve her early mana regeneration or the size of her mana pool.
Improve the damage output of her ultimate to be more punishing to opponents who might choose to walk through it.
Have her ultimate deal bonus damage to minions and monsters, similar to Lucian's ultimate, thus allowing her to spend less mana trying to kill minion waves, dragons, and barons.
Have her ultimate's cooldown begin when she places it, not when she cancels it, allowing her to re-position her ultimate better during fights to increase her damage output and allow her to be more relevant in the early stages of the game.
Increase the movement and/or attack speed slowing associated with her "chilled" debuff to allow her to have more presence early before she manages to complete some items for more damage, such as increasing it to 25/30/35% movespeed slow as she ranks up her ultimate, leaving it at 20% base for the chilled effect on her Flash Frost before level 6.
Increase the duration of the "chilled" debuff so that she can have a larger window to launch her ice lances in and/or allow her Frostbite to increase the duration of the debuff so that she can maintain damage output on a stubborn pursuer (e.g. Irelia, Jax, Blitzcrank)

Anivia has always been a champion that I view as a safety pick. Her power to draw out a game and siege with her ultimate is what defines her. This was balanced out by the fact that she is extremely fragile and requires protection and proper positioning in order to survive and dominate fights. This is why I think that the proper course would be to encourage this sort of behavior in Anivia players by choosing to increase her ultimate's damage against minions and monsters and letting her have Zhonya's without deactivating her ultimate. This would increase her ability to farm in the early game and provide her with some kind of safety against champions like fizz and zed who can dive turrets and delete her before her ultimate can do anything to create any sort of meaningful trade in damage.

Edit: There seems to be some confusion in replies. I'm not saying Anivia has a weak late game. What I am targeting with my discussion is how current nerfs to mana regeneration and the jungle has pushed back Anivia's purchases by a good 5 minutes. Her income during the first 20 minutes of the game is MUCH lower now than is was during season 4. The things that I mention as potential solutions are targeted at improving how she plays during the first 20 minutes of the game, or allowing her to function at a higher level during the latter half of the game to make up for how fragile her early game is.

16 Comments

thinking manMar 21, 20153 votes

She doesn't need buffs.

Her zone control and waveclear are already ridiculous.

The MimeoplasmMar 21, 20152 votes

Yes, in the LATE game. When she has a stacked tear or rod and can actually afford to bring some of that power to bear. In the early game she isn't even good cannon fodder because of how incredibly fragile she is and how little damage she can put out without a completely full mana bar.

thinking manMar 21, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Mimeoplasm,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=aK5I043L,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2015-03-21T05:46:10.083+0000)

Yes, in the LATE game. When she has a stacked tear or rod and can actually afford to bring some of that power to bear. In the early game she isn't even good cannon fodder because of how incredibly fragile she is and how little damage she can put out without a completely full mana bar.

Why is it wrong for a champion to have a weak early game?

You also said when she has a stacked tear and a champion shouldn't have a godlike early-game while stacking tear.

The MimeoplasmMar 21, 20151 votes

The problem is that her early game is so important to her relevance in the mid to late game. If she doesn't manage to pick up an early tear and a timely Rod of Ages then as mid game approaches her mana pool is too small to handle a drawn out team fight. With the chalice changes chalice now scales better when a champion has a large mana pool, and performs worse when it is attempting to function as a champion's sole form of mana regeneration. Simply put Chalice isn't enough to keep Anivia in a fight. I find that if I try to build any sort of damage items, such as a Deathcap, over mana related items I still can't kill anyone before I run out of mana because of Anivia's intense mana costs on all her abilities and her relatively low damage output on them. Her Frostbite does deal a fair amount of damage and it's scaling is good, but only when the enemy is chilled. The overall mobility creep of the game has punished Anivia for not being able to move her ultimate quickly enough, and her stun is just really easy to dodge. 8 of the last 10 champions released have some form of movement built into their kit, either as a straight dash like Lucian's Relentless Persuit or Gnar's Hop/Crunch, or more complicated movement effects like Braum's Stand Behind Me, Azir's Shifting Sands or Bard's Magical Journey. Not to mention going back in time a bit further to the bane of her existence: Zed, who's safety, wave clear, pushing power, early game AND late game are all very strong.

In short the problem isn't that building a tear makes her early game weak, that should happen. The problem is that if she doesn't build a tear her early game is STILL weak, AND her late game suffers.

thinking manMar 21, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Mimeoplasm,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=aK5I043L,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2015-03-21T06:04:29.125+0000)

The problem is that her early game is so important to her relevance in the mid to late game. If she doesn't manage to pick up an early tear and a timely Rod of Ages then as mid game approaches her mana pool is too small to handle a drawn out team fight. With the chalice changes chalice now scales better when a champion has a large mana pool, and performs worse when it is attempting to function as a champion's sole form of mana regeneration. Simply put Chalice isn't enough to keep Anivia in a fight. I find that if I try to build any sort of damage items, such as a Deathcap, over mana related items I still can't kill anyone before I run out of mana because of Anivia's intense mana costs on all her abilities and her relatively low damage output on them. Her Frostbite does deal a fair amount of damage and it's scaling is good, but only when the enemy is chilled. The overall mobility creep of the game has punished Anivia for not being able to move her ultimate quickly enough, and her stun is just really easy to dodge. 8 of the last 10 champions released have some form of movement built into their kit, either as a straight dash like Lucian's Relentless Persuit or Gnar's Hop/Crunch, or more complicated movement effects like Braum's Stand Behind Me, Azir's Shifting Sands or Bard's Magical Journey. Not to mention going back in time a bit further to the bane of her existence: Zed, who's safety, wave clear, pushing power, early game AND late game are all very strong.

In short the problem isn't that building a tear makes her early game weak, that should happen. The problem is that if she doesn't build a tear her early game is STILL weak, AND her late game suffers.

I'm pretty sure she's mainly for zone control early/mid-game since walking through her ult isn't a really a viable choice.

I'm still not convinced she needs buffs since I'd still feel useless on Kass if I got a late Rod or a late Gauntlet, depending on my build. It's defined by the struggle of getting the late-game, which Anivia still has plenty of.

The MimeoplasmMar 21, 20152 votes

I'm pretty sure she's mainly for zone control early/mid-game since walking through her ult isn't a really a viable choice.

This... I would be here a long time telling you how little anivia ult does in the early game. If you were playing in an ideal game, where none of the enemy team had dashes or other forms of powerful mobility to simply pass through your ultimate in 1 or 2 seconds, and they just walked through your ultimate from one side to the other, you might deal 300 damage to a person playing a champion like Jinx, who won't have any kind of meaningful magic resistance to stop that damage. Maybe. Most of the time they just dash through your ultimate and take their slap on the wrist, and then kill you in 5 hits because you are made of ice and prone to getting smashed.

Edit: Oh yea and keep in mind that Jinx runs faster than you do because Anivia has one of the worst base movespeeds in the game. So she will run you down eventually. Also her rockets outrange your Frostbite cast range at higher ranks.

AbyssphereMar 21, 20151 votes

{quoted}

She doesn't need buffs.

Her zone control and waveclear are already ridiculous.

She had zone control and waveclear before her mana problems were tuned up to 11, too. Was she a problem before the Grail nerf? Because she's objectively worse than she was back then.

Dark NephthysMar 21, 20151 votes

Honestly the weak ultimate early game really doesn't hurt her that much because it's mainly there to slow/zone them and to get your double damage on your E. Anivia has always had a some what weaker early game but her Mid-Late game is honestly imo one of the best for mages.

Also her early game isn't even weak, it's just her pre-6 is extremely annoying to farm with and your trades are reliant on you hitting your Q on them at a close area since your E has such a shorter range from you.

Personally, she doesn't need much or any buffs. The only thing I feel that she really needs would be to not have her ult be stopped by CC, and possibly to be able to destroy her wall (like how Jarvan can). Sure I would love her to get other stuff like reduce her mana cost, or increase the range of her E, or have enemies chilled for longer (So you can make sure you can get in range for her E) but honestly she's fine.

The MimeoplasmMar 21, 20151 votes

I'm mostly looking at how the loss of income affects her transition from her poor early game to her stronger mid game. I'm not looking for buffs to her mid and late game, honestly I think she performs fine... but she needs 4 items before she really starts to do anything in the game, where even Orianna can dramatically impact the game with her first item.

RazorTSMar 21, 20151 votes

what a bulshit post OP, your solutions will break more things that it will fix

The MimeoplasmMar 21, 20152 votes

I didn't say do ALL of them. Of course that would break things.

GLWuffieMar 21, 20151 votes

Everything about Anivia is balanced. As much as she looks like she needs a buff, anything like that could potentially break her, make her a constant ban pick, and ultimately they might overnerf her afterwards.

The ONLY thing that I think that I would change is her passive... her scaling Armor/MR bonus. I would remove it completely. Early levels you LOSE the bonus Armor/MR you have so you're already squishy (for the 1v1s), while late-game/levels you do GAIN some, but by that time there's a lot of Armor and Magic Pen it doesn't even matter (also team fights and such which 2+ whaling on you still makes the bonus null).

But onto why she's balanced otherwise:

Low health = passive, low movement speed = high CC, mana problems = huge burst, slow attack speed = long ranged.

Anivia effectively teaches you mana conservation at it's purest form. Don't focus on waves until level 6+, try not to attack your opponent with your abilities until at least level 4 (3 is acceptable, but extra dmg on that E is needed). Once 6, try to engage with a quick R+E combo instead of Q+E if possible. This will allow you to hit hard, and possibly Q/W afterwards to keep them in your R longer.

All of your "solutions" are just there to make her potentially broken. Anivia just takes patience and practice, and once you got it down you'll have little trouble with most matchups (not all, AD mids are still a pain... and Nidalee).

Final tips, don't try and rely on blue buff, you can go through whole games without mana regen like chalice (you'll be recalling a lot, but you'll be doing it when something major has happened like a kill or a huge wave clear... which you should actually rush RoA, and therefore get Catalyst to recover mana/hp on level up). If you DO get the buff though, you are the best to utilize it so make sure it goes through no waste. Also if a Fizz (lol Fizz Mid) or Zed or someone tries to tower dive, you should hopefully be able to quick double cast Q to stun them under turret... and while stunned hit with E and turret and they should be hurting... if not dead.

~GL

The MimeoplasmMar 21, 20151 votes

No. My solutions are a list to pick one or two things to give her some kind of better transition from being almost totally useless at the start of the game to her strong late game full dream build situation. She gets punished badly during 1-5 level area, and even until about level 11 she has it rough. Her range is short and she is really easy to bully off farm. It is a large risk, especially against popular assassins like zed and fizz, to go up to ult a full minion wave. If you choose to hang back and just clear the mele minions it is dramatically taxing on her mana pool and hurts her position in lane too much to make it worthwhile. Especially when she needs mana to try and fend off the go deep junglers and assassins that frequent mid lane.

GLWuffieMar 22, 20151 votes

Allow her ultimate to continue through activating Zhonya's Hourglass.

This on is okay I guess, I don't actually rely on Hourglass too much and it's usually when my R is already on cooldown.

Improve her early mana regeneration or the size of her mana pool.

Then she becomes oppressive without blue buff, and just absolutely MEAN with it.

Improve the damage output of her ultimate to be more punishing to opponents who might choose to walk through it.

Seeing how it's instant to start with, combined that with Q/W/E, it'll give it too much (it already does damage, slows movement speed and attack speed)

Have her ultimate deal bonus damage to minions and monsters, similar to Lucian's ultimate, thus allowing her to spend less mana trying to kill minion waves, dragons, and barons.

Her wave clear is already fast enough, we don't need to overdo it.

Have her ultimate's cooldown begin when she places it, not when she cancels it, allowing her to re-position her ultimate better during fights to increase her damage output and allow her to be more relevant in the early stages of the game.

It's one of the shortest cooldowns in the game, having it like your idea would make it so that Anivia and insta-replace it whenever she wants after a few seconds.

Increase the movement and/or attack speed slowing associated with her "chilled" debuff to allow her to have more presence early before she manages to complete some items for more damage, such as increasing it to 25/30/35% movespeed slow as she ranks up her ultimate, leaving it at 20% base for the chilled effect on her Flash Frost before level 6.

All of her abilities (aside from E) have major CC already to completely hinder your opponent, although this one isn't really a bad idea, I personally think she's fine with her current CC and debuffs.

Increase the duration of the "chilled" debuff so that she can have a larger window to launch her ice lances in and/or allow her Frostbite to increase the duration of the debuff so that she can maintain damage output on a stubborn pursuer (e.g. Irelia, Jax, Blitzcrank)

The debuff is pretty long for how it's applied, giving you at least an extra second or so after it's applied to cast E.

At lot of these are just conveniences to make her easier to play. Once you got her down, you can see that most of this stuff is not needed. It'd make her a little less intimidating to play as, but that's also the beauty of playing her.

Also mad respect from others for playing a champion who has all of these hardships :P

~GL

The MimeoplasmMar 22, 20151 votes

Honestly the real problem with Anivia is that she needs such a huge mana pool to fight, which means that she needs to start up the game grabbing a tear and building into a rod. If that gets delayed by a strong jungler ganking or anything you can find yourself sitting around with a tear and a rod at 20 minutes and you are absolutely useless. Anivia doesn't really do any damage with her ultimate at the early stages of the game, and its only particularly effective to kill minions. When you have to spend your entire mana pool killing minions, it doesn't leave any wiggle room to fight enemy champions who don't have any mana problems at all. Ahri can play the whole game just fine with only a Morellonomicon to give her some mana regen. Anivia is so incredibly fragile at the start of the game that most mid laners only need to hit her with 1 or 2 spells and shes going down. She just needs something to help with her early game since the nerfs to blue buff and the jungle took away a lot of her safe options, forcing her to play a lot more dangerously. Anivia can't play dangerously early; she has no power until about level 11 at least.

The MimeoplasmMar 25, 20151 votes

In the wake of patch 5.6 I felt I needed to note something. Riot stated that they know mana regeneration is weaker now than it was. Pulling from the Ziggs buff notes I quote

Thanks to the season's changes making mana regeneration weaker...

So Riot knows that mana regeneration is not what it was. So if they are buffing Ziggs based on mana regeneration issues, why can't they give Anivia, one of the most mana intensive champions in the game, a bit of attention with her mana problems?