As an excellent support and mid laner, Annie is an extremely popular champion that already sees plenty of play in a variety of roles, mostly due to her high utility and strong base scalings. However, did you know it's possible to play her as an AD carry as well?
Introduction
As an excellent support and mid laner, Annie is an extremely popular champion that already sees plenty of play in a variety of roles, mostly due to her high utility and strong base scalings. However, did you know it's possible to play her as an AD carry as well?
Benefits of Annie ADC
1. Range
Did you know Annie has the second longest base range in the game? Other than Caitlyn, Annie has the highest auto-attack range at 625 (unmodified).
Champions like Twitch, Kog'Maw, Jinx, and Tristana have higher range once they get their range boosting skills, but prior to that Annie can absolutely bully popular AD carries such as Graves, Vayne, and Jinx with their pathetic 550 and 525 ranges.
2. Combo Power
With her auto attack, Q, and W all sitting at 625 range, Annie has an amazingly easy time linking all her damage together in sync. This combined with the fact that she can pull off free stuns as an AD carry means that your bot lane will have twice as much CC as almost every other bot lane.
3. Insane Armor & Magic Resist
Annie's Molten Shield, a very underrated skill, gives 10/20/30/40/50 flat armor and magic resist per level up, along with dealing 20/30/40/50/60 damage returned as magic damage.
Comparatively, Taric's armor aura at 12% of his total armor and requires the following amounts to be comparable: 83/167/250/333/417. That's a lot of armor.
By maxing this skill first, she can trade very hard with most enemy ADCs, even in a 1v2 scenario.
4. Strong Base Stats
As a support, Annie's highest win rate build is surprisingly a simple Righteous Glory + Talisman of Ascension, both of which give absolutely no AP. This means that Annie's base damage is extremely powerful already, even without being supplemented by AP items. Might as well build AD instead!
Pitfalls of Annie ADC
Of course, there are also certain reasons why Annie ADC isn't already played, including the following:
- Weak attack speed per level gain;
- Weak attack damage per level gain;
- No spells that scale of AD;
Conclusions
ADC Annie is a strong early to mid-game champion that can cheese kills and snowball very easily against those who are unprepared to fight her. She offers a lot of early game power that is stronger than most AD carries and much more utility than most champions as well.
She can hold her own as an AD carry in lane, but will have more and more trouble as the game progresses.
If you choose to play her, she's best in a kill lane that can take advantage of her strong early to mid game.
Likely placement: Tier 3
You could always just do what I do with Ezreal and wait until super-late game then sell everything for an AP build xD
ReplyDeleteThey are nerfing her range i think. Looks intersting tho.
ReplyDeleteYeah it's going down to 575
ReplyDeleteAhri, Sona and Leblanc seems to me better options.
ReplyDeleteSons doesn't have the range or CC and her spells are mediocre without AP. Power Chord is pretty good tho. I can't see how Ahri could do ADC as her spells will do shit damage and she'll have mana troubles. AD Leblanc is pretty fucking troll, but I think she'd be better in top against a melee champ. 1v1 is kinda more of her thing than 2v2. Although practically any ranged champ can ADC decently if they get an early lead from a good gank and their support is good. Except Azir... AD Azir can't make soldiers near enemies cuz they'll make his autos weaker xD
ReplyDeleteu missed the word "annie" in the conclusion... " ADC _____ is a strong early..."
ReplyDeleteThanks, was late for the dentist :P
ReplyDeleteMake a weird pick for something along the lines of a ap bruiser Rammus top.
ReplyDeleteLove to see it. x)
lol i cant remember the last time i went to 1 XD
ReplyDeletesorry to break it to you but they are nerfing annie's range (info from pbe) to 525 :P.
ReplyDeleteAhri is an okay ADC because of her mobility and base damages (which include true damage). She scales better than Annie does, but doesn't fair as well in-lane overall.
ReplyDeleteSona, I wouldn't consider playing as an ADC.
LeBlanc is a good ADC in that her mobility really lets her keep safe. I mean, AD LeBlanc top was briefly meta in Korea as a result of it.
Annie's E is what really makes her a (slightly) viable ADC, since it really goes a long way in bot-lane skirmishes (especially against weaker laners who rely on autoattacks to do most of their damage, like Kog'Maw, Tristana, etc...). Her base damages are great too.
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Well, Annie can officially join the list of champions that can be played in absolutely any role, alongside Kayle, Twisted Fate, Kennen (not a particularly good jungler, but still playable with a specific runes/masteries setup and a hard leash), Teemo, Nidalee, and LeBlanc.
There're plenty of champions that work in only 4 roles (Quinn, Jarvan IV, Urgot, etc...) but I only really consider the ones I listed above as functional in every role.