Doing an altered build for Anivia, thoughts welcome
I've been playing Anivia with a different build than is typically recommended. Very little of what I use seems to show up in any guides, though, so either I'm onto something new or (more likely) there are reasons these things don't typically get used. I'll post the build and a brief discussion of why.
Runes: 9X mark of attack damage 9X seal of mana regen 9X glyph of scaling MR 3X Quint Spellvamp
But Proven, where's the damage? Well little jimmy, it's in your bases and your items. You don't have the mana, or CDR, to waveclear with Q. any lane opponent worth his salt will make you lose CS under your tower: AD marks can help a ton with that, and your early autos hurt a good bit more in harassment as well. Mana regen is necessary as well, as only swain and viktor compare for mana costs. Even your strongest lane opponents shouldn't be able to kill you pre-6 with your passive, and that's exactly when scaling MR = normal MR, so scaling is just better. The spellvampis the real difference. with the regen and vamp, I'm looking simply to survive lane phase. I'm rather confident I'll outdamage my opponents later, and until then I just need to outlast them. It seems small, but it's actually quite noticeable when you take some harass, then delete a full minion wave with ult with no response.
Masteries: 14/0/16
The key here is the new meditation. I once, without irony, used ROA, Seraphs, Chalice, and Morellos in one build. a built in chalice passive on top of a huge mana pool is huge. You do lose out on damage, yes, actually quite a good amount. but mana=damage, and your pool lasts longer while you make up the difference. That's then an item that you can convert to a damage item instead since ou no longer need chalice, which pays off more later on.
Summoner Spells: Flash/Teleport
wut? no ignite? Yeah, no ignite. They key here is to make a tempting omelet: low kill pressure mean you aren't driving your lane opponent to roam. If they do, your low move speed will never make following them work in your favor. if they roam anyway, delete the wave and be ready to telegank. This also works quite well for enemy split pushers, as diving Anivia is extremely risky, and sieging her is pointless.
Build, in order: mana crystal tear/catalyst tear/catalyst ROA Sorc shoes w/distortion Liandry's Seraphs 2 situational items (I default to morellos if we need grievous, zhonyas, rabadons, FH, and/or Banshees)
First off, no Drings. why? Mana crystal bulds toward your other items, provides a mana pool for your % regen to work with, and your costs are so oppresively high early on that the Dring regen just won't meaningfully help. since chalice is covered by meditation, a high mana pool provides damage scaling through seraph, regen through masteries, and, well, lots of mana to use. ROA and seraphs are known to synergize. build ROA first, get dem stacks. The distortion is because I use 2 summoner's it affects, and the significantly lowered CD from masteries and shoes means a lot of side wave conrol and flash can save you a lot more often. Liandry's is a huge damage source, and the continuous ulti reapplies it, effectively adding a %HP/sec to an already sizeable AOE that slows the enemy, keeping them inside longer. between this, seraphs, and ROA, it can easily provide you all the damage you really need.
Pros of this specific build: unusual sustain for a mid laner TP can be used to save lanes other anivia lanes would lose with permanent presence counter splitpushes higher flash uptime lower than normal blue buff reliance(you still want it though)
cons of this specific build: much lower early kill pressure slow start and low damage until liandrys CDR comes late if at all: certain teamfight progressions can leave you flapping uselessly threat comes off on inevitability, not snowball, and your teams will likely not respect what you can and can't do at any given time
So then, thanks for reading and please, by all means, leave comments.
