Make it temporary so she can't just spam her flamethrower for a stun that she can hold onto forever. Thoughts?
/edit: Make it so she can't hold onto the stun permantly, she can still cast 3 spells and hold onto the fourth spell, but she can't hold the stun permantly.
ChargeItDownMid4 votes[deleted]
Chaotic Reks2 votesYou are right that there are less counters to mobility creep, but Annie having such high damage along with the infamous Tibbers Stun is just too much. Holding her stun also allows her to CS almost uncontested which is almost 
levels of BS during lane phase.
Orbv1 votesI think Annie's a little worse. She farms safer, Yorick will eventually run out of mana and is melee and can't setup a gank outside of 500 range.
Dedrius1 votesHer "Reliable Instant AOE Stun" (that even sounds OP when you say it) is the problem with her kit. They should increase the range but make it so she throws tibbers like in the cinematic. That way she can engage without flash but the enemy also has the ability to dodge it.
Jungle Lux God3 votesIn my opinion, it's not a matter of if it happens, because Riot will probably realize that this kind of change would definitely give a lot of windows of opportunity to play around Annie instead of hoping she dumps her stun.
The counterplay to Annie's stun should be that you wait until she uses it, but when she doesn't use it and either farms perfectly fine in a solo lane or holds it forever in a duo lane it loses that counterplay. Waiting for the stun to fall off should be an equally useful method of counterplay as Annie using her stun elsewhere.
Narasimha3 votesbut when she doesn't use it and either farms perfectly fine in a solo lane
Just to jump in, if Annie is managing to farm perfectly fine without casting a single ability, then it doesn't matter about the stun, because that is one godly Annie.
Dedrius1 votesIf she can farm with AA's she is godly?
Every Mid laner should know how to farm with AA's on ranged AP mid.
Orbv1 votesShe has one of the slowest attack animations for a mage. Since she has the longest AA range for one as well, it moves even slower. Also...there's a 0.25sec wind-up.
Farming with Annie with just Autos IS a skill. Comparably worse mid attacker:
Less Delay but less range
Narasimha3 votesAnnie's base AD is lower than average, and her AD per level is one of the lowest. Farming with AAs with her isn't exactly easy.
Sightless661 votesThe problem is, while it would give some counterplay to her laning, it kind of screws her over later game. A ton of her later game value is tied up in initiating with that stun, and she's not going to be able to keep it up if she and her team are pushing towers, contesting jungle objectives, roaming, or doing something else that doesn't allow her to easily preserve her stacks. In the later game, her current stun is fine because staying out of her range to avoid her stuns becomes much more accessible than it was during the laning phase.
If this were going to be implemented, it would need to be for laning phase only. It would hurt her too much and break her main gameplay pattern to have this in the later game. I'd say having her passive fall off until she reaches level 11 would be a good solution.
Lugg2 votesI have been saying this for months.
JedenVojak2 votesAnnie pays huge costs for the reliability of her stunning, namely in the form of mana and very limited range. Also, to hold that stun, Annie must refrain from casting any spells to do so, which can be very difficult when she's farming minions, especially against a hard pusher.
Also I think holding up Ryze as the direction to try to "fix" any older character is a poor decision indeed - his rework is a fundamental failure in the design of the champ, i.m.o., and ruined a lot of what made him good.
Singing Lark2 votesA decay means that out of the laning phase, there has a be a way for her to charge up her stun and still let her use her full combo on someone with her stun up. Otherwise, with her current cooldowns, her stun will never be up until after a teamfight ends. Her current W and E cooldowns are way too long for this to be feasible, but if you lower her E cooldown, she can just spam it in the laning phase to get her stun up much more often due to the small amount of mana it costs. And no, scaling cooldown will not work because maxing your useless shield first is pointless and a huge hit to your damage. You definitely don't want to lower her W cooldown since that means AoE fire up in a teamfight much more often.
There have been speculation about making her Q a skillshot as well, which I'm strongly against because it's just so pointless. There's nothing wrong with her Q. Why are you making it harder for her to land it? Yes, it's a point click stun, but it's what follows up that makes her hurt. The projectile speed of her Q is so slow, even if you manage to walk just a little bit away, minions will be in the way which makes it harder for her to get in range for her W. Out of lane she'll be popping Tibbers for the AoE stun most of the time. Not to mention, this'll make her a mana whore outside the laning phase.
Maybe I'm being a little too pro-don't-nerf-annie because of all the "Nerf Annie!" threads, but really, Annie is not the biggest of our problems in terms of champs with counterplay. She's an immobile, close range, squishy, burst mage. Just pick 1 of the 8 million mobile champs out there and Annie's going to have a hard time against you. (Hell, if you really hate Annie so much, pick Brand and just eat her pre-6 and make sure she can't even get RoA until 20 minutes into the game.)
CGJung2 votesNo, because Ryze becomes godlike lategame and Annie needs her passive to be playable, getting her passive away would kill her. There are many champions with aoe stuns (hello sejuani). Annie is not the problem.
Chaotic Reks1 votesso making it so she can't hold onto her stun permantly would kill her?
4nth0l0gy1 votesBig nerf, but it would allow her to gain strengths in other areas. I'm all for it.
General Esdeath 1 votesFor a second I thought you meant the part where you have to cast spells to charge it up.
Owntrolf1 votesDont worry we can make her Q a skillshot to compensate like ryze
Awoof1 votesWhen you say Ryze treatment, I'm imagining Annie stunning with every spell cast during x seconds.
IcyPepper1 votesI wouldn't mind some sort of decay, actually. I neither hate or love Annie (okay, I like the sweetheart skin. Sue me), but I feel like a simple change to her passive wouldn't hurt.
If anything, it would allow a little shift in her power budget. A longer range Q, perhaps?
Nyaboron1 votesIt's hard to farm with annie's aa vs her main tool, Q. If she's holding her stun then back off a bit and let her push. She'll either be gankable, or be forced to dump her stun to quick clear the wave so she doesn't get out of position. Annie's also very susceptible to flanks. If she can't get her stun to be aoe, it's effectively useless.
DropFill1 votesI don't care about her holding her stun forever. I care about a big AoE instant stun--burst ultimate that makes her only useful with flash ( and also annoying as fuck) I would prefer a delayed ultimate with more range instead of a change to her passive.
Mandang01 votesI think it's a good point that Riot should treat stack mechanics the same way. Idk whether that means make everyone Ryze or make everyone Annie, but some consistency would be nice. Hell, maybe just get rid of stack mechanics altogether - does anyone find that gameplay actually interesting?
NorthernDruid1 votesOnly if they make both passives have their stacks decay dynamically (one by one) instead of all at once.
SnugglePuggle941 votesAnnie is not the problem. Taking away her passive will mess her whole play up. She's fine. Stop trying to change her.