Anivia is regarded to be one of the most easily exploited mid laners in the game. Her lack of mobility spells and low movement speed have perpetuated this. However she has actually been seeing some play in the recent weeks. How is it possible for her to survive in a meta that has a heavy focus on getting straight to the back line?

Why can she be useful?

Anivia can control an extremely large amount of space. Her Ultimate, Glacial Storm, can make passing through a choke point inadvisable for an enemy team. As will her ability Flash Frost. Frostbite is her biggest damage source and can easily force any squishy target out of a fight. Crystallize allows her to separate enemy teams or split them apart and create chaos. A good Anivia can dictate the way a fight plays out and create extremely potent traps and picks against the enemy team. The ability to control or even reset a team fight is the reason that Janna and Nami has seen play and this is something that Anivia does extremely well.

She has also seen some boosts in potential due to some recent item changes. The buffs to Athene’s Unholy Grail were an excellent quality of life change for Anivia making her high mana costs much more manageable. If Anivia were to be played, it would not surprise me to see the player build a Rod of Ages first and then get an Athene’s second. This is a build that we have seen Kassadin, who also has heavy mana costs in team fights, have success with due to the large returns of mana on kills and assists.

An Unsurprising First Two Items on Anivia:

We have also seen the return of Ziggs in the past few weeks. His excellent wave clear and synergy with the likes of Sejuani and Nautilus have spurred that. I believe Anivia could come back for similar reasons. Her wave clear is excellent as is her team fighting. But I think she has one thing that Ziggs doesn’t. She allows for the possibility of split push compositions. She can physically prevent an enemy team from getting to a turret and clear waves in just a couple seconds. The opponents would have to intentionally pick an extremely heavy siege or poke composition in order to combat this. A Gragas and Anivia team would be nearly impossible to break if they decided to sit back and wait until the late game.

All of this has been said without mentioning her passive. She has a free Guardian Angel passive making it much harder to dive her safely until the late game rolls around, by which time you probably won’t be able to get close to her. This passive can never be discounted.

Where is she still weak?

She still lacks mobility. This is something that can be punished early on in the game especially with the hard engage and roaming that occurs during that part of the game. The Anivia needs to be pressured, or even killed early. The more she is disrupted in the early game, the longer it takes for her to reach the late game, and the later she becomes effective. Her laning phase, pre-6 in particular, is very weak. She isn’t going to bully anyone out of lane and she can easily be bullied out herself. You can pick to out-scale the Anivia or you can pick to set her behind early. She doesn’t have any matchups that she really wins, the best she can hope for is to go even in lane and hope her lane opponent doesn’t significantly affect the rest of the map early.

Champions who can easily deal with Anivia's siege defense:

She can also be poked out of siege scenarios. Hard engage is something that she can deal with along with the help of her team. But if she eats 2-3 AP Kog’Maw Ultimates or a Nidalee spear or two then she’s gonna be forced back and the turret or objective can be taken. Anivia can clear waves better than anyone but her ability to make an offensive siege can be limited as she no longer has a turret to aid her defense.

How often should we see her?

You won’t see her often. The team has to be built around her and play around her effectively. The team also has to be proficient at playing a split push composition and properly trading objectives. I think we will see her more as the teams who lack the skills to team fight well look for other solutions. I think split pushing could be a solution provided the team brings enough peel, likely needed a Gragas and Janna on top of the Anivia. I don’t think this is going to happen frequently until the tank heavy meta starts to become squishier but given how tanky the meta is I don’t think there’s many other directions the meta could go. Until then, she is going to be a very niche pick who should only be picked late in the draft phase when you know what you are facing.