League of Legends champion profile: Annie, the Dark Child

Lanes Annie players love

• Yasuo: there is nothing more enjoyable than to see the idiot enemy Yasuo dash through twenty minions aimlessly only for you to hit him with a fully charged stun. Also, his E – Windwall does not block her W – Disintegrate or R – Summon: Tibbers so he cannot negate your all-in at all.
• Twisted Fate: your burst is better than his burst, your stun has better up-time than his (meaning you can hold onto the threat of the stun indefinitely while his Gold Card will eventually expire), and you can stop his roams.
• Diana: another melee assassin, but Diana has it even harder than Yasuo because she lacks his mobility before 6, making it easy for Annie to whittle her down. In addition, Diana needs to go into melee range if she wants to all-in herself, basically inviting you to dump your ult and stun onto her.

Lanes Annie players hate

• Malzahar: if Annie mains were to describe their worst nightmare for a matchup it would be a champion who outranges them, can whittle down their health pool, has some way to avoid their crowd control, and can stop their ult engage dead in its tracks. Malzahar has all of these, with the added bonus of being able to out-shove Annie and roam to side lanes quicker.
• Cassiopeia: I see you’d like to flash + ult me and my team, so why don’t I just put down the “you can never move” carpet and walk away? Oh and as an added bonus, I out-range you in lane and out-scale you late game.
• Syndra: playing Annie against Syndra is just the worst. You will get shoved in lane, if you walk up to last hit you will get hit with a stun and massive damage burst, and at level six she will probably take your whole health bar with one combo.

Tips for playing Annie

• Runes and items that give Annie tools to initiate (Predator for Runes, Hextech Protobelt or Shurelia’s Reverie for items) are great since she has to get kind of close to hit her ultimate.
• You can disguise your engage by sitting on two or three procs of your stun, then using two abilities (W and E would both be quick abilities) then your stun will be up so you can throw out your ult with the stun.
• Your stun applies to the first target hit, meaning if you cast Q – Disintegrate and then W – Incinerate but the Q hits the target first then the Q will apply the stun.

Tips for playing against Annie

• Avoid her engage. That’s it, that’s the biggest thing to know. If she has her ultimate up, stay out of range of the ult. If she has flash and ult up, stay out of range of her flash + ult combo. If she hits you with both and has enough damage you are screwed.
• Banshee’s Veil can be a great item for avoiding the CC that comes from her engage. Zhonya’s or Stopwatch can also be great as long as you time it properly.
• Harass her down in lane. Annie is short-ranged and will need her Q to last hit. If you can whittle her down, she’ll have less opportunity to all-in you at level 6.

Champion Difficulty: 1/10

Annie is recommended as a beginner champion for a reason. Her playstyle is very one-dimensional: she goes in with her stun procced and tries to dump all her damage onto a target.

When her ult is down, Annie has massively fewer options for what she can do in a fight. She’s an incredible team fighter, has easy mechanics to farm in lane, and has very easy spells to land.

Similar to champions

Malzahar, Malphite, Cassiopeia.

Got any tips for players who are looking to learn Annie? Leave them for us in the comments!