Weird Picks #71: Tank Annie (Mid)

Here's an interesting build I've seen a few times on the rift with surprisingly high effectiveness. This is generally the build taken by players who play for KDA, and try and get the highest possible (which mostly involves not dying). Check out the build below!

Introduction

Here's an interesting build I've seen a few times on the rift with surprisingly high effectiveness. This is generally the build taken by players who play for KDA, and try and get the highest possible (which mostly involves not dying). Check out the build below!

How to Play

Runes: Flat Ability Power Quints, Magic Penetration Reds, Flat Health Yellows, Magic Resist Blues
Masteries: 12-18-0, Thunderlord Masteries
Abilities: Q,W,E then prioritize R > Q > W > E
Summoner Spells: Flash + Ghost
Starting Items: Doran Ring, 2 Potions
Core Items: Deadman's Plate, Mercury's Treads, Abyssal Scepter, Zhonya's Hourglass, Liandry's Torment, Void Staff

Why It Works

Good Synergy With Deadman's Plate

Annie naturally gets the bulk of her CS from her Disintegrate (Q). As a result, she can easily last hit while keeping full stacks of the momentum buff from Deadman's Plate. This allows her to easily engage whenever she pleases.

Excellent Base Damage
The reason Annie works as a support is mostly because her base damage is sufficient to melt squishies without even building any AP items. As a result, her only two real requirements are getting into range and hitting her stuns.

More Engagement Options
As a pure AP mage, Annie's damage is much more powerful, but limited late game to using Flash + Tibbers. By building a few tank items, Annie can take advantage of her powerful cooldowns and Ghost for engage instead in addition to her standard Flash plays.

Potential Pitfalls

More Dependent on Teammates
Although this build can engage at will, Annie may need jungler support to 100 to 0 certain champions, especially if they're building magic resist. Additionally, although she is still capable of soloing targets down, she is less likely to be able to kill 2 or 3 people at once with just Tibbers + Incinerate (W).

Weaker Scaling
This build does not scale as well into late game, and thus runs into issues if you can't finish before marksmen and and AP mages start building Last Whisper/Void Staff. Lifesteal on enemy champions also tends to be a problem if you don't burst them down right away.

"Winning" Build
This build is obviously much more effective if you're already winning before you start build a lot of items, as it's reliant on hard engaging rather than surprise 100 to 0s like classical Annie players like to do.

Conclusions

Tank Annie mid plays similar to support Annie, but with more engagement options and is much more difficult to kill as a result of her item build. This build can net you some very high KDAs, but has difficulty carrying if your team is very far behind in other lanes.

Suggested Rating: Tier 2

What do you think about Tank Annie? Comment below!

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