Sivir's boomerangs really hurt with high AD, I think she'd do better by stacking Bloodthirsters than going Warmog/Atma.
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League of Legends General Discussion Thread
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Thanks for writing an informative guide Sulla. I play on the EU server and I have yet to see anyone play Annie. Not once. 0 times. I tried playing her myself, but she seems to have some severe weaknesses both early and late game (which you also mention in your guide), and I was wondering how you deal with them.
The first, and in my opinion most crippling, flaw of Annie is her weakness to harass in the early game. Also, her own harass is relatively weak and limited due to her short range. If you end up laning against a champion with good early harass (Teemo, MF, Malph, Garen, Kennen, Gragas etc), they will in my experience be able to whittle your health down and, unless you fall back to your tower, kill you. If you do fall back you will get less gold, while they can farm well. My second problem with Annie is her somewhat limited use late game. Yes, once combat has ensued your stunning tibbers is great and can decide fights. But very often there is moving back and forth where champions like Galio, Ashe, MF, Morgana etc try to poke team, and everyone is looking to initiate combat in a favorable location. With Annie I feel very much like a one-trick-pony. I stay safely behind my tougher teammates and wait for a good opportunity. With other spellcasters like Veigar, Karthas, Morgana and even Ryze I feel like I can do more than just hit with that one stun. These two points make Annie one of my least favourable champions to play. I was wondering if your experience is different, or perhaps you have found ways to deal with them? Tredje Wrote:The first, and in my opinion most crippling, flaw of Annie is her weakness to harass in the early game. Also, her own harass is relatively weak and limited due to her short range. Short Range ?  Check this range list: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=...utput=html It's from july, but it shows that Annie has the best auto-attacking range in the game. If you are getting harassed 1vs1 it's most likely your lack of experience with Annie, not the character design. Quote:My second problem with Annie is her somewhat limited use late game. Yes, once combat has ensued your stunning tibbers is great and can decide fights. But very often there is moving back and forth where champions like Galio, Ashe, MF, Morgana etc try to poke team, and everyone is looking to initiate combat in a favorable location. With Annie I feel very much like a one-trick-pony. I stay safely behind my tougher teammates and wait for a good opportunity. With other spellcasters like Veigar, Karthas, Morgana and even Ryze I feel like I can do more than just hit with that one stun. All the champions you first listed usually serve different roles than Annie. Your aoe stun can decide teamfights and it is your job to have it ready at the right moment. Galio for example, usually fills a tanking role. If you like that better fine, but it makes not much sense to compare him to Annie just because he can be closer to the enemy team and do a little harassing before the actual fight. As for the other spellcasters Ryze and Veigar, I believe (besides Morgana who is usually more support oriented, but I am no Morgana player, so somebody else would have to elaborate) Annie is considered the best hands down. If you want to see Annie in action, Roku has posted a vid (I believe it's solo queue) yesterday: http://www.own3d.tv/Rokudan#/watch/43429
Annie will fare poorly against champions explicitly designed to counter spellcasters, but of course that's true for any pure AP character build. Obviously Annie will lose in a solo lane against Malphite - you simply need to avoid that matchup. Some of those other champs you listed are very easy to counter, however. Teemo can't hit you without you hitting him back; I've never had any problems laning against a Teemo. Dealing with champs like Miss Fortune, Gragas, or Kennen involves knowing how to dodge their harassment. You can avoid all of their harassment (Double Shot, Barrell Toss, shurikens) through some good positioning and mousework. The champs that really wreck Annie are melee champs who can close distance quickly, like Akali and Xin Zhao (and of course Kassadin, the anti-caster caster). But all of the other mages will have problems with those champs as well.
Annie is superior in teamfights compared to Veigar, Karthus, and Ryze. Veigar has a stun (although a much more difficult one to land), but his damage is pretty much entirely concentrated against one target. That's great for assassinating an individual on the other team, not so great for a larger teamfight. Karthus does lots of area-of-effect damage, but he has to put himself in enormous danger to do so, and he has no stunning ability. Ryze just fires off all his spells in one burst, and is extremely weak in any kind of teamfight. Annie's area of effect stun is simply better than anything that these other champs offer, and it's very possible to cycle through Annie's spells to get off a second stun about 8-10 seconds after the first one. The one spellcaster superior to Annie is Anivia, who also can apply an area-of-effect slow, along with a stun and very heavy burst damage. (I'm not comparing here to champs which aren't spellcasters; Morgana is AP Support, for example, and Ashe/Miss Fortune clearly serve different roles in the team.) Obviously a lot of this is personal preference, and if you don't like playing Annie, then don't play her. My understanding of the European server is that the metagame there is much more based around pushing lanes rather than teamfights, and that's not something that Annie excels at doing, so if all the games are full of Malphite/Gragas/TF pushing contests, you may be better off taking someone else.
Actually, sometimes Veigar might be more useful then Annie, especially if there's an annoying brat on the other team who you want to take out. Dark Matter does great damage if it hits (lol), but he's great for the area-of-effect stun, and for assassinating that person quick (Example: Farmed Tristina).
Thanks for the quick replies guys. I didn't intend to start a general discussion on Annie, I was just curious to hear from someone who has obviously played her a lot more than me. I watched the Rokudan match and thought that he executed the (flash)->stun->Q->W (as Sulla pointed out in his guide) quite well. Ashe at one time lost 3/4 of her health. That being said the quality of the game itself was rather poor, with lots of major mistakes. It is hard to gain insight from such a game. I would for instance have liked to see the Parthenon player really push Annie, to the point where she would have risked missing out on exp. That has been my experience against aggressive melee champs.
Great guide, Sullla!
I'm still quite the LoL noob (lvl 20), but it seems to me that there are a few situation where Mejai's is a strong buy. I think of Mejai's as converting some of Annie's very strong midgame to her slightly weaker late game. She sacrifices a little power by delaying Zhonya's or whatever but can end up much stronger by the end. It's definitely a gamble, but one worth considering in these cases: 1. You're dominating but your teammates are feeding. You are almost certain to lose. One gamble to avoid losing is to turn yourself into the carry. Get RoA then Mejai's and then try to roam/gank like mad. Sure, you're probably still going to lose, but if you get fed, maybe not. For example, if you're losing badly to a fed Twitch who is free farming, turtling isn't going to cut it. You have to take some large risks. (Of course, this is a terrible strategy when your teammates are feeding, but you are on equal or lesser footing with your opponents - it's too hard to get stacks.) 2. Team comp strongly favors your team in the early game but strongly favors the opposing team in the late game. Unless you totally shut down your opponents, they can turtle and get farmed and crush you. Buying a Mejai's can turn that early game into a stronger late game and even the fight. 3. There are lots of early teamfights and you're good at escaping them. You can easily rack up kills and assists on a Mejai's. This rarely happens, but is worth watching out for. Works great on Janna, who can escape easily from almost everything.
Snowball items are only good on characters with great escability. Annie is not such a character.
Or if you are playing against players much weaker than you, so you can easily feed. "There is no wealth like knowledge. No poverty like ignorance." uberfish Wrote:Sivir's boomerangs really hurt with high AD, I think she'd do better by stacking Bloodthirsters than going Warmog/Atma.She'd do more damage sure, but the entire point of the warmog's route is to give up some of that damage while gaining a few thousand health. Two warmogs and and an atma's is quite a bit of AD too. I can't attest to its efficacy in high-level games, and I imagine it can be countered fairly easy, but it can be fun in solo queue. Also I've been having great luck with Shen using Speaker's guide as a baseline, though I need more practice, particularly with recognizing good ult timings. What do you think about getting a Heart of Gold early, at least if you plan to build Randuin's? Like getting level 1 or 2 boots and a HoG on your first back. |
