Annie is one of the League of Legends champions with the simplest playstyle and is easily one of the best beginner champions in the game. Despite being easy to play, there is always room to improve where players can take the champion’s innate strength to a higher level. Today, we’ll be sharing some of the best Annie tips and tricks that should give players a better idea on how you can play the champion efficiently.
The Best Annie Tips and Tricks
Annie is a very basic champion that can easily be picked up by most beginners and find success fairly quickly. If you’re a player who’s looking for something easy to pick up while being able to make an impact in the game, Annie is one of the picks that’ll definitely give you that easy-going time in the mid lane. She gives you one of the easiest ways to play as a beginner, but there are still some Annie tips and tricks that might prove useful for you.
To learn more about the best Annie tips and tricks, we need to understand how this champion works. Her kit revolves around stacking her abilities and dealing a huge burst of damage to an enemy so that she can immediately take them down or at least put them at an extremely low health percentage. There are many ways to do that and let’s take a look at some of the best advice that we’ve gathered from high ELO players and Annie mains all over the world.
5. Use Disintegrate to Farm
One of the most important Annie tips that you need to learn is learning how to use her Q Ability – Disintegrate – to farm minions. If you’re a beginner, you may not know that Disintegrate refunds 50% of its cooldown and the mana cost whenever you use it to kill a target. This is extremely useful because mages often have a hard time clearing the wave using auto-attacks since they have very low Attack Damage as compared to most champions.
Disintegrate is a very powerful tool to harass the enemy since it’s easy to land, but it’s more efficient if you try to use it to last hit minions to secure an advantage in the laning phase. Being able to clear the wave quickly allows you to push your allied minion wave into the enemy turret faster, forcing the enemy champion to catch the CS before the turrets do and sometimes miss out on a few minion kills in the chaos. While your wave is crashed into the enemy turret, you have the freedom to roam or recall.
4. Spam the Shield To Stack Her Up!
One of the most underrated things that first-time Annie players don’t do is spamming her E ability – Molten Shield – to stack up her passive. As you may know, Annie stacks up her passive whenever she uses her abilities and that includes her Molten Shield. Whenever you walk up to lane, it’s a good idea to spam her E ability until you get 4 stacks of your passive so that when you get back, you’ll be able to use your stacks to stun the enemy champion and hit them with a full combo.
Spamming her shield ability grants her bonus movement speed as well, so it’s good even if you don’t plan to use it to harass the enemy champion. Keep in mind that spamming this ability is only useful if you’re not in the lane because if the enemy notices that your shield is on cooldown from spamming, they’ll have the opportunity to deal free damage on you when the shield expires. Just spam it when preparing for a big engage or while traveling for a long distance.
3. Use Tibbers For a Massive AoE Stun!
One of Annie’s strongest combos is being able to use her ultimate ability to summon Tibbers while having a fully-stacked passive on as many enemies as possible on the opposing team. Take note that Summoning Tibbers counts as an AoE ability that deals a ridiculous amount of damage upon impact, stunning the same number of enemies if the passive is fully stacked as well upon the usage of this ability.
It can be really difficult hitting Annie’s ultimate on multiple targets and it really isn’t always good idea to hold on to it until you find the “perfect moment” which might often be already too late. Instead, assess the teamfight and check if there is any opportunity to use it on as many targets as possible. If not, you need to find the priority targets which are the ADC > Jungler > Assassin/Mage > Fighter/Bruiser > Tank/Support, in that specific order and hit them using your ultimate instead.
2. Don’t Hold Your Stacks Too Long
A common mistake that many beginners make is holding onto their passive stacks for too long. It feels good to be able to land your stun on an enemy champion during the laning phase and be able to hit them with a full combo. However, always remember that your top priority is to farm as many minions as possible quickly and the only way to do that is to use your abilities to thin out the wave and deal the damage on the ones that are near death.
Whenever you get your 4th stack of your passive, attempt to use that on the enemy laner whenever they step forward. If you miss your chance by then, it’s okay to use your ability on the wave. Annie players usually use their Q ability to consume the stack, but don’t be afraid to use your W if they are in melee range because even if you miss, that still means that you’re doing your job of thinning out the wave.
1. Tibbers is a Powerful Ally To Use Properly
The hardest part about playing Annie is using Tibbers properly. Many of our Annie tips include very basic strategies, but mastering the use of Tibbers can take players a really long time to master. Remember that if you use Alt + Right Click, you’ll be able to freely use Tibbers. Using Right Click alone will only control Annie, so you need to use the Alt button to be able to control an ally or pet, which works with other champions with similar abilities as well.
One of the best Annie tips is that your Molten Shield ability also affects Tibbers, giving him both the bonus movement speed and the additional shielding. It’s a good idea to use Tibbers as a distraction by using him to smack high-priority targets to force the enemies to hit him instead of their original targets.