Counter Guide

How to Beat Anivia

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Anivia is the only champion who makes you win the same fight twice, and the second one starts with her at full health.

She can't move, she can't escape and she's slow to do anything, and she's still among the most miserable champions in the game to be on the wrong side of. None of her tools are about her own safety. They're about where you're allowed to stand, whether you're allowed to leave, and how many times you have to kill her before it counts. Reading that correctly is most of the matchup, and the solo queue tier list shows the company she keeps.

Matchup Snapshot Anivia, the Cryophoenix

Where You Meet Her Mid lane, almost always

Damage Type Magic, and there's a lot of it

Why She Is Frustrating You have to kill her twice

Mobility None at all

Biggest Threat Crystallize [W]

Hardest Counter Ahri

What a Counter Needs

Enough burst to finish the egg
A way to survive being cut off by a wall
Something that answers the opener before it lands

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Anivia on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Anivia

Ahri1,325 games54.3%
Syndra993 games54.1%
Xerath809 games52.4%
Viktor1,461 games51.3%
Katarina782 games51.3%

Picks Anivia Beats

Mel523 games42.3%
Ryze659 games45.1%
Galio469 games45.2%
Vex515 games45.8%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the mid lane against Anivia. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 26,366 Anivia games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Anivia Overview

Strengths: What Makes Her Dangerous

She gets a second life. Rebirth [Passive] turns a successful gank into a wasted one, and the team that walks away from the egg has usually given her the lane back.
She decides where you are allowed to go. Crystallize [W] is an impassable wall placed wherever it's most inconvenient (and it's at its best behind you rather than in front of her).
The combo is enormous. Flash Frost [Q] chills, and Frostbite [E] hits a chilled target for far more, so what looks like two spells is really one very large one.
She never has to stop. Glacial Storm [R] is a field she can hold up indefinitely, so the fight around her is permanently slower than the fight she's having.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

The egg is a real, killable window. She can't act in it and it doesn't last long. Finishing it is the single highest-value thing anybody on your team can do in this matchup, and somehow almost nobody does.
She can't move. No dash, no blink, no escape. Every jungler in the game has a favorable path into her lane and she has no answer to any of them.
Mana runs out fast. Holding the ultimate up is expensive and so is the combo, and a version of her that has been doing both is a version with nothing left.
The first six levels are weak. Her clear is slow and her damage doesn't arrive until the combo does, so the early lane is one she's trying to survive rather than win.
The opener has to land. Without the chill the follow-up hits for a fraction, so a single dodged skillshot turns her burst into poke.

Countering Anivia

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Anivia comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Kill the egg, out loud. Say it in chat if you have to. Walking away from it is how a kill becomes nothing.
Don't path through a place a wall would ruin. Her best use of it is cutting off the retreat you had already decided on, so decide on two.
Dodge the first spell rather than the second. The follow-up is only frightening against a chilled target, and the whole sequence collapses if the opener misses.
Bring a jungler early. She's immobile, she's weak before six, and she can't punish a gank that fails. There's no cheaper pressure available anywhere on the map.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Anivia Matchup

Farm from behind the wave rather than beside it. The opener travels through minions and slows down doing it, and standing where it has to pass through five of them is most of the counterplay.

Treat her ultimate as ground rather than as damage. It's asking you to fight somewhere slower, and stepping out is usually free and almost always right.

When you kill her, check whether you actually did. It sounds obvious, but it's also the single most common way this champion generates value in a game she was losing.

Best Anivia Counters

Refuse the opener, punish the immobility, or make sure the second health bar doesn't matter.

Ahri Dashes Out of the Opener

Everything starts with Flash Frost [Q], a slow ball aimed at where you're standing now. Spirit Rush [R] gives Ahri three dashes inside fifteen seconds (a second apart at the quickest), so the stun lands on an empty patch of lane, and Frostbite [E] only hits hard on a target that got chilled first.

Then Charm [E] does the punishing. Anivia's got no dash to step out of its path, and it's back every 12 seconds.

Syndra Stuns the Storm Off

Glacial Storm [R] switches itself off the moment Anivia is stunned or silenced. Scatter the Weak [E] stuns anyone a Dark Sphere [Q] gets knocked into, and Syndra can set the sphere down before the fight starts, so the storm that was meant to hold the lane doesn't last.

Unleashed Power [R] is point-and-click from 675 units. She can't sidestep it and she can't dash, so it lands every time she's inside that range.

Katarina The Egg Does Not Survive Her

The second health bar only helps if somebody has to stop and spend time on it, and she doesn't. Her damage lands continuously and the egg is gone before the rest of the team has finished walking away.

Her mobility covers the rest of the matchup. Anivia can't land a slow skillshot on a champion who keeps repositioning, and can't leave once that champion has arrived.

Itemizing Against Anivia

All of it is magic damage and the crowd control is what makes it land, so buy for the opener rather than for the field:

Mercury's Treads is the first buy, because the stun and the permanent slow are what keep you standing in the place her damage is being applied to. A Null-Magic Mantle costs very little and it very often decides the lane phase outright (which matters against a champion whose early game you're trying to punish rather than survive). Banshee's Veil is the specific answer later, since her whole sequence depends on one spell landing first and a shield that eats it turns the combo into a wasted cooldown. Kaenic Rookern is the version of that for whoever she keeps choosing to freeze instead, and the magic resistance underneath it does real work against a field she never turns off.