Anivia's Visuals, her depiction from lore, and the source of 'impact'
Anivia's a champion that's had nearly the same visuals since release (excluding when new particles had to be made to accommodate new mechanics, and a texture update), and obviously a lot has changed since then. In fact, Anivia's one of the original champions, older than Mordekaiser's pizza feet and Master Yi's sword boots.
When she was first released she was an 'elemental' from another world of pure winter.
Back then they didn't have the technology used in Lissandra's animations, so Anivia simply fell to the ground (and hilariously enough, turned instantly back into bird form and fall back to the ground if dying from egg form) with a yell, and her abilities consisted of a cast animation that was barely noticeable and no other visual indicator.
However, after Freljord's lore was reworked, Anivia's identity lorewise changed completely. She went from having an emphasis on being a creature of coldness and ice from another world, to being a literal embodiment of a geographical area that is covered in snow, being a sort of 'spirit' controlling the weather rather than a simple elemental.
Is Anivia's visuals still up to date with her lore? Should she be disintegrating into smoke or dust as she dies? Or does she simply die like any other bird? Does Anivia's new lore represent a contrast between Lissandra - Lissandra is solid, hard and sharp ice while Anivia is mysterious, ethereal and light snow?
Another thing to note about Anivia, less related to lore but more related to LoL's aesthetics and gameplay design changing over time, is how her abilities are connected to the champion model itself. To be more specific, where the champion's 'impact' lies and how they affect the battlefield around them
There are two extremes to this concept: Orianna + Anivia, and Udyr + Sona.
Udyr and Sona are both champions composed of effects emanating from them, or of effects that require an interaction directly from their champion model. Udyr has to auto attack and all his effects bolster his ability to either absorb damage, or cause damage as long as he positions himself within melee range of an enemy. Sona also relies on autos for her Q but the more important thing to notice is that her effectiveness is decided purely on her position once she gets to a point where she can spam QWEQWEQWEQWEQWEQWE endlessly, she has to position close to allies for buffs while knowing when to position for an ult, and the enemy plays around it by trying to isolate her from her allies, avoiding her auto range during Q or by being ready to juke the moment they get into her ult range.
On the other hand, Orianna is the exact opposite. All her abilities (minus passive) do not emanate from her (even when ulting or using W without Q or E repositioning, it still emanates from her ball from a player learning point of view), and there are only 2 interactions to her champion model, for repositioning her ball and occasional autos, only one of which is required later game. Orianna's positioning and the enemy's positioning instead play around a third element, her ball, rather than each other a lot of the time, to the point that without her passive you might as well be playing as the ball and controlling an Orianna with your Q (skin idea anyone?). To compensate, Orianna 'commands' her ball with VO, her gameplay identity revolves around her ball practically being its own being that makes up half the champion like Lamb and Wolf, and she can use her own movement and ult in point blank range if the ball is not sent out.
Now this is where Anivia comes in. Anivia is like Orianna (and in fact, like most other disruptors) where she creates a zone that people play around. Anivia has Q and E connected to her model (but passive doesn't count as it's usually a matter of collapsing onto the egg or relying on allies entirely to zone) but the fact E has less noticeable visuals (I barely notice it until I see an explosion of particle effects upon hitting a chilled enemy) and Q is a relatively long cooldown ability that encourages you to actively follow its path with your eyes makes them lesser in apparent 'impact' from the champion model.
This leaves Anivia with her R and W, both of which only use a small casting animation to indicate an interaction with the champion model. When Anivia in lore commands and controls storms, the ingame version looks as if her ult only happens to appear nearby out of chance, rather than out of her own volition. I'm not saying there's no way to connect a champion to an effect without a connection through motion or a literal physical connection like a projectile or laser (think back to Orianna using her voice over to command the ball), but colour scheme (blue bird -> blue storm), conceptual theme (ice bird -> snow field) and knowledge (champion with AoE damage tooltip -> AoE damage) aren't enough to create a feeling of impact or power from the champion itself.
For Orianna, her very model shares an aesthetic with the ball, but even then it only works due to the fact there is an extreme emphasis on the ball being nearly a second champion, or the second half of Orianna. Anivia's ult on the other hand, is made of particle effects representing snow while Anivia is a model that represents it in an entirely different way (look at Orianna and her ball, they look similar in design. But when a new player looks at Anivia's model and then look at her ult, they have to process the connection as it's by concept of ice and coldness, not because Anivia's model looks similar to the particle effects). Even Anivia's wall, which has a bright, sparkly and transparent effect on it, doesn't resemble Anivia at all which is a dull blue model. It gets even worse when using skins other than Blackfrost.
The problem is made even worse by the fact Anivia is not a humanoid figure - she's incapable of making human-like arm motions without looking ridiculous in flight (which is why she has to land for her emotes), if Zyra was just a plant, her W and passive would require some serious thinking to distinguish a seed that just happens to appear from passive, and a seed that's deliberately placed by W. She just bypasses this problem by throwing (a human based motion) a seed with W, and passive just trailing from her to the area the seed appears in. Anivia's ult cast animation looks natural for a bird but it doesn't invoke the same assumptions as a human motion directed towards a certain area.
So there are a few ways to approach this problem: Anivia can glow when casting ult, or wind appears to form beneath her wings, her model or wall should be changed to match in aesthetics, or a physical object like a projectile or beam appears from Anivia's model to where the ult or wall will appear.
TLDR; Is Anivia's aesthetics up to date with lore after its change? Does ult seem too separate from Anivia herself? Why is her wall's ice and her model so different in model when it just disconnects the two?
