Anivia has struggled in the mid lane over the last few League of Legends seasons. However, Riot are adamant on giving her the Viktor treatment, and bringing her back into the forefront with some much needed buffs on League patch 10.25.
Anivia used to be one of the Queens of League’s mid lane. Back in Season 2 and 3, she used to decimate the meta. Veterans of the game will forever remember Henrik ‘Froggen’ Hansen dominating on the iconic pick.
However, she’s aged rather poorly. New mid laners have come out that do Anivia’s job better. She has struggled to find an identity — too weak to be a mid laner, and her kit isn’t optimized for support.
She currently has one of the worst win rates in mid lane at 47.59% according to stats site op.gg, and that’s tanked by over 3% since the Season 11 item rework.
Riot are looking at reversing this, and perhaps putting Anivia into the strongest spot she’s been in years in League patch 10.25. Lead gameplay designer Mark Yetter revealed Riot are working on making Anivia more reliable and flexible in the mid lane.
“[The] main focus is to make Anivia feel better to play in modern League without much change to her core identity or skill-tests. This is meant to be a large buff, because Anivia was hit by a large systemic nerf in 10.23,” developer Azubuike ‘AzuBK’ Ndefo-Dahl said on Reddit.
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No stone is being left unturned. Riot are tuning Anivia’s Q to have less damage, but more utility, and feel better to use with a faster missile speed and lower mana cost. Her Crystallize wall will be bigger at early ranks, but the trade-off is a longer cooldown.
The biggest buff is coming to her E, however. The mana cost is being dropped to 40 flat from its 50 to 90 ramping cost, and the damage is also going up. It’ll make it a much more potent tool to follow up a good stun or ultimate with.
With Anivia needing adjustments for 10.25, @RiotAzuBK wanted to expand the scope a bit and do a QoL pass on her
Goals:-Unbind her from Tear so it's an option not mandatory-Improve reliability and flexibility of Q and R
Tuning may still change, this should be on PBE next week pic.twitter.com/VHJr6a7Yk4
— Mark Yetter (@MarkYetter) November 21, 2020
Finally, Anivia’s ultimate will have a shorter cooldown between activation. It’ll do less damage, but now it’ll be a lot easier to reposition mid-fight when needed.
These changes will be going live on the PBE after League patch 10.24 goes live on November 25. That update will be looking to tune a heap of items from the Season 11 rework, as well as overpowered champions like Samira, as we move closer to 2021.
