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Anivia in 7.1

RiotNot Surrendering·12/17/2016, 3:40:38 AM·82 votes·95,218 views

Hey all, thought I'd hop in for a chat about where Anivia's ended up after the changes.

Overall, we're pretty happy with where Anivia has landed after the changes in 6.23.

To refresh, we first undertook these changes for several reasons:

Reward vs Counterplay Reward for ER was very high for pretty low counterplay. If we continue to support ER being powerful (where the only meaningful play is to stay out of range), it means we have less power budget to make the rest of her kit cool and powerful.

In the context of the changes, we wanted to play up the combo aspects of Anivia.

  • Wall -> R, then Q the side when they try to get out -> empowered E should feel powerful and worth the mana cost.
  • Putting down a storm on them when they go for a minion -> walling/Q'ing them into it -> empowered E should also feel worth and powerful.
  • Even R -> E should be OK, but you shouldn't expect to outtrade people as well as previously. It's tuned so that unless the opponent is greedy and stands in it for half a second too long, you won't be able to get an empowered E off without using at least one other ability.

Obviously this can cost a lot of mana in lane, but we like that Anivia builds mana and can support these costs. (She also has high base mana and mana regen and can take some points in meditation if you want to go for a lot of trades) As the game goes on, mana costs become less relevant, as your mana costs are a smaller and smaller proportion of your mana pool. If she needed buffs, I would say that we would look to improve the reward she gets for landing her combo, so that she is more incentivised to contest minions with big trades.

I also expect that at higher MMR's, the ability to throw down R and be a "waveclear bot" without getting pressured off the wave becomes harder, so I'm not too worried about her turning into that (it's not a winning playstyle) and I fully believe that an aggressive Anivia's laning is both effective and necessary in a lot of matchups (unless you want to give up a lot of CS). Her trades still hit very hard in laning phase, there's no question about that.

Playing up the Controller/Disruptor By our class definitions, Anivia has the kit pieces to be the quintessential disruptor.

We want disruptors to have good sustained lockdown, sustained damage and good counter engage and pick potential (think Zyra root and ult, Orianna ult, Anivia wall and storm).

With the old storm at 3 seconds to ramp up, it was generally too unreliable to access and the reward was pretty low for how difficult it was to get empowered storm to actually hit people (in most cases).

Wall is one of the most unique and powerful spells in the game and was on an overly restrictive cooldown at 25 seconds (without a cooldown rankup), so reducing this made a lot of sense. The cooldown is also in the range where you can opt to go for two different builds (CDR predominant build with wall at 10-12 seconds CD for lots of walls/stuns or the 0 cdr mana/burst build).

By loading more power into the storm (making empowered storm happen earlier) and wall, we can play up the controller aspects a lot more. This power has to come from somewhere, so we took it from the ER, which as I mentioned earlier had game health problems and was an inhibitor to making the rest of her kit more functional and powerful.

General Performance Our internal metrics have been showing Anivia performing well after aggregating for all regions and for our target audience. Our changes targeted her laning strength being down (she will be more vulnerable in some matchups) and her late game strength being improved.

She now exhibits this behaviour with more of a scaling curve (increases over game time), rather than a snowball curve (spikes very hard early and drops sharply).

Anivia is still a very difficult champion to play (she is in the top 10 for mastery curves) and as such, we still expect her to continue to improve slightly (but not hugely) over time (new builds will emerge and her playstyle has been pretty heavily shaken up). As such, we have decided not to buff her for 7.1 and generally think she's in a pretty good spot (she is in the top 30% for overall winrates and experienced players are finding a lot of success on her.)

However, keep in mind that she is a champion that is mained heavily with a steep mastery curve, so this will skew winrates upwardly (experienced plays are a larger proportion of her total plays [compared to Syndra] and she improves much more by game [compared to Shyvana]). All things considered, I think it would be a mistake to rush into a buff and we would almost certainly regret it later.

Anivia for 7.1

  • We will be adding a "flash forming" effect for both her base and blackfrost storms.
  • Fixing a bug where Empowered Storm usually takes 1.75 seconds to form instead of 1.5 seconds (this is technically a small buff).

So just wanted to give my thoughts on where we're at; always open to having a good discussion.

195 Comments

Kemious12/17/2016, 10:44:43 AM34 votes

Even though my words are not gonna change any minds I figure I might as well stat my mind and let what will be, be.

I don't believe that your expecations for Anivia trading in lane is exactly fair. you expect a full spell rotation for her simply to trade. That buy itself is completely and totally unfair. What other mid laner is expected to use all their abilities to trade. You've effectively made it so if anivia wants to deal any type of damage she has to all in. Your suggestion for trades as anivia at level 6 is to unleash everything for approximately 335 mana every time you want to trade for a little over 500 points of damage, This of course while your lane opponent can do approximately half the damage at a third or less of what it cost you all while maintaining their other spells in rotation . This true with every other mid laner other than anivia .

Anivia's combo nature makes her naturally made her less efficient for damage and mana at the cost of her reliability, you took away the reliability but in no shape or form did you up her efficiency in any way. She always has to use 2 spells for 1 person for damage thats not much greater than her opponents spells. I find this especially problematic simply because now her initial damage in teams and any fight to be honest is halved at least for the first couple of seconds, its not back ended its just reduced in half.

Also the intial 75 cost for her ult is no longer inlane especially at the reduced initial damage and range that it currently , if nothing else please set it to the current toggle amount.

No Anivia player begged for this empowered damage from her ult that been forced in our faces, because of how quickly our ult gets shut down by some what compent teams, especially now that its damage is half of what it used to be for the first couple of seconds in a fight and its inability to trigger E double damage for the same period of time. You threw everything about her into what is easily the most easily countered part of her kit. One need not even interupt the ult but merely be able to out of it with in that 2 second period and she;s damn near useless for what appears to be another 5 seconds if your running max cdr.

In addition can we stop pretending that Anivia is this amazing wave clear God that clears super fast. The only thing noticable about her clears, is its fairly safe a neutral or defensive postion. There actual speed of those clears and the mana cost do not make her clears particularly amazing like the glory days of season 2 . Currently many of the other mids can clear just as fast and at a much lower mana burden then anivia.

Anivia W is also situational, you simply can't use it in every fight, its power is extremely subjective depending on where your fighting if you are enaging or being engaged on.

The removal of the Q E Q combo and your unwillingness to bring it back just makes matters worse, Your now forced to use you E on what ever unit gets stunned despite having you Q go through a better choice of target this in both in team fights and wave clearing.

Anivia lack of popularity is probably the only reason theres any success on her. Most are too unsure of her abilities and skills to even know the proper way to deal with her.

LankPants12/17/2016, 3:53:40 AM30 votes

Oddly specific thread but I like it. Any chance we could get similar threads for other champs who have undergone similar changes, an example that comes to my mind would be the Ashe changes a few patches back that really seemed to hurt her but we haven't got any response about.

Anìvìa12/17/2016, 2:47:31 PM16 votes

(part 1)

Hey ho, is that you proxzon? If not than apolgies, but he was the one linking it to the reddit. Well, lets start with the discussion.

"Reward for ER was very high for pretty low counterplay. If we continue to support ER being powerful (where the only meaningful play is to stay out of range), it means we have less power budget to make the rest of her kit cool and powerful."

Indeed, her reward for e r was high compared to what you had to do to get it. ( Basicaly getting in range without getting cced)

But now we are left with a combo that is easily countered ( some champs just need one spell of either cc or dash, and they have 1.3 seconds to use it ) by most champs that is in fact dealing less dmg than bevore ( ult dmg down the first 2.5 seconds and e base dmg down. ) Her e r was basicaly turned from being high dmg and low counterplay, to high counterplay and slightly less dmg.

It is nice of you to say that you want to have that powerbudget for her other spells, but so far her powerwas mostly taken and not put elsewhere. We are left overall weaker with less dmg for harder plays.

I understand why you would do that change if you in fact would have compensated her elsewhere, but the wall and minimal e cdr buff just won't cut it. It is nice for a supporter to have, but anivia is not a supporter.

And now you say that the one Qol Change we could have seen in the near future is not going to be implemented either. You say that you want to buff the rest of her kit for what was taken from her, but it did not happenso far and you also state that you guys/girls are happy with how anivia is right now. I do not see how those statements could get along. Please explain if you are actualy planning to give that powerbudget back to her other spells. I would appreciate it.

"In the context of the changes, we wanted to play up the combo aspects of Anivia.

  • Wall -> R, then Q the side when they try to get out -> empowered E should feel powerful and worth the mana cost.
  • Putting down a storm on them when they go for a minion -> walling/Q'ing them into it -> empowered E should also feel worth and powerful.
  • Even R -> E should be OK, but you shouldn't expect to outtrade people as well as previously. It's tuned so that unless the opponent is greedy and stands in it for half a second too long, you won't be able to get an empowered E off without using at least one other ability."

I fully support your idea of playing her combo aspect up, as it is what anivia always has been.

But none of those combos are easy to pull off, they are neither reliable, nor are they that rewarding. ( We lost dmg after all on all spells instead of getting it back or raised for such hard tasks.) If we fail one of our abilities, the whole reward is gone. And our mana is still used.

You did manage to play her combo aspect up, but it is not because it is rewarding anivia to do so, but it is the only way she can work at all in case you succeed. Unlike most other mages, she is forced to go all out, while her enemies can trade and holding on to an ability that can save them in case something bad happens.

After all, empowered e does not feel worth and powerful for what we had to do to get it.

"Obviously this can cost a lot of mana in lane, but we like that Anivia builds mana and can support these costs. (She also has high base mana and mana regen and can take some points in meditation if you want to go for a lot of trades) As the game goes on, mana costs become less relevant, as your mana costs are a smaller and smaller proportion of your mana pool. If she needed buffs, I would say that we would look to improve the reward she gets for landing her combo, so that she is more incentivised to contest minions with big trades."

It takes a long time for the manaitems she buys to get effective. While most other mages build ap straight away, she is still trying to get her manadrain under control. This has always been an aspect of her, which is why I played her with clarity until it was removed from the Summoners Rift. Today I do not think it is still necessary to do that, but her manadrain still exceeds that of most other mages, is harder to use effectively and gives less or the same reward.

That you would improve her reward for landing a combo is definetly something I would support. But contesting minions? This is not a PvE game :P Doing big trades sounds more like it.

"I also expect that at higher MMR's, the ability to throw down R and be a "waveclear bot" without getting pressured off the wave becomes harder, so I'm not too worried about her turning into that (it's not a winning playstyle) and I fully believe that an aggressive Anivia's laning is both effective and necessary in a lot of matchups (unless you want to give up a lot of CS). Her trades still hit very hard in laning phase, there's no question about that."

Tbh, she is not going to be the waveclear bot some players try to make us believe. But more often than not, doing that is the best option anivia will have. Sadly, this aspect of her is weak compared to a lot of other champs. One will notice that in case two champs, one anivia and the other one being any other champ, that anivia will not get a lot of that farm herself. WIth the way her ult was changed she is slower in clearing waves. The average adc will clear waves faster than her later into the game.

Why everyone is believeing that she is getting a waveclear bot is, because they think that her trading her opponent wont work now most of the time. This is true for higher elo, and thus you are right. But she won't be able to trade, nor will she be able to waveclear. Getting behind with anivia know is a devastating experience I already had to face a few times against syndra and ahri, and getting ahead is underwhelming and unrewarding, as your enemies still have it quite save against her now, even when she is fed.

"By our class definitions, Anivia has the kit pieces to be the quintessential disruptor.

"We want disruptors to have good sustained lockdown, sustained damage and good counter engage and pick potential (think Zyra root and ult, Orianna ult, Anivia wall and storm)."

"With the old storm at 3 seconds to ramp up, it was generally too unreliable to access and the reward was pretty low for how difficult it was to get empowered storm to actually hit people (in most cases)."

She sure sounds like a disruptor, even though this part:

"Disruptors specialize in locking down opponents or, in some cases, entire battlefields by creating intense zones of threat that only foolish enemies would dare wade through."

Is no longer realy true. I can tell you from experience in my last couble games, that more and more champs start to disrepect anivias ult and zoning, simply walking through it like it never existed. Zyra is doing a better job in this than anivia. Also this sounds a lot more like a Support than a mage. I did not mind back when zyra was also a mid mage, but now she is a support mainly and anivia seems to drift in the same direction, especialy with how that definition is phrased.

We had a instant full size ult for the longest time, but that was deemed unhealthy for the game. If you want to argue about this change buffing her ult, than you would also have to adress her in that aspect, which leaves her still weaker in my eyes.

The part about her 3 second ult ramp up time being unreliable for how difficult it was is btw. how her whole kit and ability inteactions feel for me now. None of it is safe, none of it is easy to use and the reward is underwhelming for the effort in most cases.

"Wall is one of the most unique and powerful spells in the game and was on an overly restrictive cooldown at 25 seconds (without a cooldown rankup), so reducing this made a lot of sense. The cooldown is also in the range where you can opt to go for two different builds (CDR predominant build with wall at 10-12 seconds CD for lots of walls/stuns or the 0 cdr mana/burst build)."

Wall is a spell without any dmg and other effect besides blocking the way. It is not that unique ( Taliyah ult, yarvan ult etc. ) and is outclassed by abilities that block a path for being dangerous by themself if intruded. ( Rumble ult, cassio miasma, veigar stun cage)

Do not get me wrong, it is a good ability, but only in combination with her other spells or a team to make us of it. This is even more true if you play her support, but as mage (disruptor, mind you) she has to work well by herself as well. Pushing her power into her utility alone will leave her weak for what she is supposed to do as well, and that is damage.

"By loading more power into the storm (making empowered storm happen earlier) and wall, we can play up the controller aspects a lot more. This power has to come from somewhere, so we took it from the ER, which as I mentioned earlier had game health problems and was an inhibitor to making the rest of her kit more functional and powerful."

The storm is weaker in dmg. The utility of that spell was buffed but not the damage. We went through the math a couple times and it is weaker until 2.5 seconds, in which it will go even with the complete dmg it has done. Prior to that point, her dmg was nerfed yet again for utility. The only scenario it will be more effective besides time is, when someone is moving in the ult after you placed it 1.5 seconds ago.

It was not more power loaded into her ult, but instead her ult utility got buffed for a decrease in early damage. This change could have also happened without changing the e r. With how the er interaction got changed though, it was necessary to shift power inside the ult, or it would have no longer been viable.

So in my book, no power was shifted from the interaction to the ult. All we got as compensation was the lower cd on w and e, and that is again buffing her utility over her damage.

(Part 2 follows)

Dark Nephthys12/17/2016, 6:09:57 AM13 votes

As an Anivia main since Season 3 I'll put my own thoughts on the changes....

Personally...I liked the changes however I just felt like she really didn't need those changes. I'm tired of people saying that her old E>R combo had no counterplay. Yes if you are talking about counterplay as in "avoidable" then it's true because you couldn't avoid her old E>R combo but you can take advantage after she used it, which no one really did.

During the lane phase which is what most people had a problem with the combo, her E>R combo would do about half of your health..Then after that she has to wait another 7 or so seconds until she can re-use her ultimate which players should of took the advantage of and jumped on her...When her R and E are both on CD, the only thing she has is her easily dodgable Q, her Wall and auto attacks. Considering she just hit you with her E>R combo, she is within like 600-700 range of you which is short enough for most of the mid lane match--ups to follow up and burst her down, because what are you afraid of? Her Auto attacks which has the second worst/slowest animation in the game? Instead of jumping on her when her main skills were on CD, people would get scared and backed off and then complain about the damage.

Speaking of damage, her E wasn't even super OP anyways. Yes it was un-avoidable but you want to know another Un-avoidable high burst basic skill? Viktor's Q. If you count up both proc's of his Q's damage its almost higher than Anivia, while being a standalone skill which doesn't require the use of another skill (like an ultimate..), way less mana, roughly the same range, gives a shield, gives movement speed, about as little counterplay (point-click, then auto attack) and how well it synergies with item 3285 item 3100 both of which aren't that good on Anivia.

Max Anivia E: 300 + 100% AP (600 Range, 90 Mana) Max Viktor Q (Both proc): 240 + 90% AP + 100% AD (8% Max Mana + 15%AP Shield) (600 Range, 65 Mana) A Viktor at level 9 would have base 72 AD so basically it's 312 + 90% AP at that point. So wheres all the hate about that doing to much damage? And both Viktor and Anivia are control mages so it's not like I'm comparing her to an assassin or something...And Viktor doesn't suffer from any of Anivia's weaknesses which is a lot (I'd even say she might have one of the most weaknesses in the game), Viktor's weaknesses are basically like Delay in some of his Abilities and no form of dash and that's basically it.

Though as I said before, the changes weren't bad and I'm not trying to complain about what happened to Anivia, I'm only saying this to say I really find it annoying to see people pretending that her old R>E combo was so OP and needed to be removed and yet don't take advantage of it when they fight it in lane. I've faced Anivia enough times in lane and I've always won against her, she is rather easy to beat once you know her kit and how to fight her.

As for how I deal with the changes? With the reduced CD on her wall and E I've been running scaling CDR glyphs and getting item 3165 as my 3rd item, after item 3040 item 3027 of course. Thanks for making this thread btw, sorry if this kind of went into a rant but I've seen a lot of threads talking about her and I was basically holding in my thoughts and decided to just put it in here then to talk in countless other threads.

HongChongDong12/17/2016, 4:09:52 AM13 votes

So, big question: Are you actually a Fizz Enthusiast?

Fisherman Fizz12/17/2016, 8:20:24 AM11 votes

I know this is off topic, but you have an awesome name!

Penns12/17/2016, 10:14:34 AM9 votes

Your name tho... What about those Fizz buffs? :D

Unpronoucabl12/18/2016, 9:54:49 AM8 votes

Just one thing:

In the context of the changes, we wanted to play up the combo aspects of Anivia.

  • Wall -> R, then Q the side when they try to get out -> empowered E should feel powerful and worth the mana cost.
  • Putting down a storm on them when they go for a minion -> walling/Q'ing them into it -> empowered E should also feel worth and powerful.

When I play anivia, I don't feel good empowering her E. I feel bad for not empowering it. 99% of the time I use her E, it is empowered. It does not feel like a reward to empower her E, it feels like a requirement. Un-empowering it feels far more like a punishment, than empowering it feels like a bonus.

Kinky Fizz12/17/2016, 12:25:40 PM8 votes

can we have some information about fizz Mr. Fizz Enthusiast?Fizz

ApexInTheCircle12/18/2016, 7:02:35 AM7 votes

I want 3 things out of Anivia.

  1. A marker for when I'm getting too far from my storm and it's going to disappear.
  2. The maximum damage for a fully formed storm shown in the tooltip.
  3. And this may sound super op but I'd like for my storm to not disappear when I go into egg form, I mean if Annie's Tibbers is able to chase my assdown at the speed of sanic when she dies then why not?
Sammystorm12/17/2016, 8:29:48 PM7 votes

As a long time anivia main I still have concerns. Her E is really high risk now. It is still a waste of mana unless you can proc it because it does no damage again unless you proc it. At the same time it is her only form (and best form) of reliable damage. Her q is too slow moving to be reliable and her ult having to ramp for 1.5 seconds in which people can walk out of it on top of her short range for most of her damage. It just makes her seem very unreliable in terms of burst damage which makes lane match ups even harder then they were before.

Are you also ok with changing her play style so dramatically? Are you also ok with her play rate dropping from about 3.75% to about 1.8%? It seems to me that most of the win rate increase she has seen has solely been from the drop of inexperienced players not playing her anymore.

boricCentaur112/17/2016, 11:54:34 PM7 votes

The new Anivia is just not fun

Dracocrash12/17/2016, 10:19:31 AM7 votes

Can we talk about fizz?

Why is his winrate so low? As a fizz player, I don't feel he is "weak".

His rework hit the mark (imo) but whats keeping his WR down?

OlaKeDiseTu12/18/2016, 8:58:11 AM7 votes

I'm really dissappointed with Anivia changes. But the problem is to hear you saying everything is perfect. I hope better changes next patch. Please, make anivia great again.

Mysticman8912/17/2016, 3:42:27 AM6 votes

...I am distracted by you having a season 6 plat badge and a season 6 diamond badge at the same time..

Wyerden12/18/2016, 7:15:30 AM6 votes

I've found it rather upsetting that the Hextech Protobelt-01 is capable of dashing over Anivia's terrain despite the explicit limitation that it can't pass through terrain. I was just wondering if this would be considered a bug, or something that was intended in the first place.