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Annie Gameplay Suggestion - Pyromania

Yamanoki·5/8/2015, 12:20:41 AM·7 votes·1,103 views

Long ago, in a distant patch, TwistedFate Twisted Fate's ability to hold his gold card from Pick a Card (W) was nerfed because it was deemed "too oppressive" as a zoning tool for enemies. Being able to have a nearly constant CC threat at low cost with minimal downtown relative to uptime was deemed too strong, and his ability to hold cards was nerfed to adjust.

I'm an Annie Annie main, and I love her how she is. I'd personally be miffed if this suggestion actually made it into the game, because it IS a nerf to her. However, I believe that, for the health of the game, her passive is extremely similar in nature to TwistedFate 's (W), and I suggest the following change to her passive.

Keep in mind that this suggestion is primarily for game mechanic health; currently,Annie is able to hold her stun indefinitely, allowing her to have a massive and permanent zoning presence in sieges and objective contests, which is even worse than the "oppressive" zoning TwistedFate was capable of, especially considering the potential for Annie to AoE her stun. However, it also makes sense in terms of the name of her ability; a Pyromaniac would not be satisfied with casting 4 spells and then pausing until an opportune time for the final spell. A Pyromaniac KEEPS lighting things on fire!!

Keep in mind that Annie cannot afford to attempt to build stacks with W, as W consumes the stacks regardless of if an enemy is hit.

Now for the actual change suggestion: P - Pyromania: Stacks now decay over time. Annie loses a stack of (possibly all stacks of) Pyromania every 8 (tentative) seconds. Casting a spell resets the timer regardless of whether a stack was added (i.e., Annie can still use E to prolong the duration of her passive).

Note that this change is a lite nerf to Annie. Annie's E cooldown is 10 seconds; with 21%+ cooldown reduction, Annie would still be able to permanently maintain her stacks by spamming E. However, because item 3027 item 3089 item 3157 item 3285 item 3116 item 3020 item 3135 etc. all lack CDR, this necessitates Annie to build either item 3158 with 5% cdr from masteries or item 3060 item 3174 item 3165 , resulting in:

  • Annie's total AP/magic pen from items will necessarily be lower,* This will reduce her (currently) high burst potential, which combined with her innate CC, is a little too strong.
  • Annie would have to spend her E to prolong her passive.* So, she will constantly be losing small increments of mana if she would like to prolong her zoning, which can add up, reducing her oppressive laning phase which, with her Q mana-refund mechanic, is fairly mana-cost-free.
  • Additionally, Annie's E will be on cooldown for much of the time due to using it to prolong the passive* This opens opportunities for counterplay and strategic diversity (wink wink), as her opponents can choose to engage her while it is still up (so that she cannot reuse it for the fight, since it provides deceptive tankiness and damage), or engage her while it is on cooldown and already faded (she will be squishier and easier to burst, but will have it available for the counter-engage if she is not killed).
  • Annie's stacks decay now* This will provide more early-game opportunities for opponents to exploit her stack number, as she will not have the cooldown reduction necessary to permanently have max stacks, nor will she be able to build to max stacks as easily if she is pushed too far up and no longer has enemy targets.

What do you guys think?

6 Comments

Martyrofsand5/8/2015, 1:24:14 AM1 votes

The "constantly up" isn't the biggest issue, as in mid lane she doesn't tend to hold it indefinitely due to farming with her Q. What is the biggest issue is the holding it up and ability to charge it while out of combat, IE support Annie charging it in fountain and then holding it until she is ready to use it. If she actually had to hit targets with her Q/W to charge it or be in combat to get a stack from her E support Annie could die in a fire and Annie could go back to mid lane where she belongs, and right now is perfectly healthy.

Llanite5/8/2015, 2:48:24 AM1 votes

Avocation for buffs in disguise.

Now Annie can occasional Q without losing the stun!

Jungle Lux God5/8/2015, 4:17:10 AM1 votes

I really like the idea because it gives Annie's opponents more ways to play around her crowd control. Annie doesn't really offer the greatest amount of counterplay outside of her short range and fighting her when her stun is down, and this would greatly increase the amount of counterplay she has.

I think that all of Annie's passive stacks should disappear when the timer runs out because I feel like it would more of an unhealthy buff to have her stacks decay one at a time rather than disappear all at once. Theoretically, what Annie could potentially do is consistently keep her stacks at around 2 or 3 stacks to both keep her on-demand stun and still be able to use her abilities. On live, you at least have to burn your stun if you want to use your abilities normally, but in this case you don't even burn you stun.

In addition, with the one stack decrease model, support Annie would also be able to keep her stacks up permanently given she has the mana to use E. If it takes 8 seconds for the passive to fall off, Annie has 16 seconds to use her E to keep her current stacks: 8 at the current level to refresh the duration, and 8 at the previous level to bump it up to the next level (which is the level it is at now). Molten Shield's cooldown is currently 10 seconds, so Annie has a 6 second window to cast E to keep her passive at the current window with no cooldown reduction. If you account for Molten Shield's fairly negligible mana cost, your stun is not going to go away.

By having all of the stacks disappear, Annie will actually be able to provide some downtime for her opponents to take advantage of as far as her stun goes, which is exactly the kind of counterplay that we would be looking for with an Annie change like this.

Teridax685/8/2015, 12:41:57 PM1 votes

I feel Annie 's ability to charge up her stun out of combat and maintain it indefinitely is a major source of her strength, but also the core of what makes her often unhealthy to play against. Her summoner 4 + Tibbers + stun plays are what make her terrifying to face, and difficult to react to if she gets ahead, and I think removing that kind of power would allow her to have much healthier strengths elsewhere. Going back to her Bear Mage fantasy, one way of compensating for this could be to have Tibbers generate Pyromania stacks for each second he spends damaging a champion or, more generally, have her become more powerful in prolonged combat, rather than via immediate burst.