I'm not the best League player nor a particularly good Anivia player too. However I am quite experienced with her and basically this guide is to teach new Anivia players in a few minutes what it took me several games to learn.

I see these more as "reasons to play this champion" vs "downsides to overcome"

Pros
- Amazing scaling
- Amazing teamfighting
- Amazing waveclear
- Great at zoning
- Can set up ganks well

Cons
- The most mana hungry champion in the game
- It is essential that you are able to last hit minions during laning phase
- Low mobility
- Might be hard to play if you have difficulty landing skillshots or do bad walls

- Flash: A must have for obvious reasons

- Teleport: The standard spell for Anivia. Allows you to follow up on laner without taking a risky path through the river/jungle and gives you time to push the wave out from under tower

- Ignite: If you're playing aggressive Electrocute Anivia

The following are only options if you're taking Unsealed Spellbook

- Clarity: If you're out of mana in the early game (kind of a crutch noob trap though in my opinion)

- Smite: If your team is about to take a dragon or Baron

- Cleanse: Vs an enemy mage with cc

- Exhaust: Vs an enemy assassin

- Heal: If you have nothing better to take and a teamfight is likely

- Ghost: If you've already used Heal. Good for positioning during teamfights since lack of mobility if Anivia's primary weakness.

Most of these are no brainers

Rush Items...

- Tear. Unless I'm probably about to die, I never go back unless I have enough gold for this

- Rod of Ages. Gives all around good stats, especially mana and it's good for a scaling champion such as Anivia

- Arcangel's Staff/Seraph's Embrace. Naturally you'll want to complete this next.

- Liandry's Torment. This synergizes with Anivia's kit wonderfully.

If you've ever played a mage or are simply familiar with League, you should know how to build situationally but I included this chapter just in case anyone reading this is not only new to Anivia, but new to the game as well.

- Void Staff. Provides percent Magic Penetration so basically it's good for tanks/bruisers who have Magic Resist

- Zhonya's Hourglass. Comes with an active that helps you survive burst.

- Banshee's Veil. Honestly I never build this unless they have a fed Veigar or something usually Hourglass is just better.

- Morellonomicon. Good against teams with healing champions such as Vladimir, Nasus, Mundo, and Soraka.

- Rabadon's Deathcap. Straight up damage. Good buy if none of the above really apply.

In a normal game I tend to get Rabadon's and Morellonomicon. I tend to find that with decent self-peel and positioning, I don't need Zhonya's and Rabadon's and Morellonomicon are the best for general situations since they provide the most damage and the enemy will almost always at least have an ADC with lifesteal

Q: Super slow AoE skillshot that stuns. Can be instantly recast to be activated. Has quite a good range that people sometimes underestimate.

W: A wall. Early on this is underwhelming as the mana cost is quite high. Mid-late game though this is a very useful zoning tool and at level 2 it can block jungle entrances/exits. You'll develop a knack for using this over time and if you're new, prepare to wall off teammates/enemies and get flamed a bit.

E: Point and click. This is your primary damage ability. It does double damage if you've landed a Q or they're inside a full-sized R. Being able to do a Q+E combo is essential as Anivia.

R: Large AoE slow and damage. If you're new, it might help to give yourself half a second before you place this in a teamfight since often the fight will move away and you'll have to cancel your ultimate and wait 5 seconds for it to come back up again which can be crippling.

So you have three possible options

1) Arcane Comet

This is your standard Anivia rune set. Arcane Comet is useful all game as it's a guaranteed hit when you land a Q in lane and it scales well into the late game as well. You get overall nice options from Sorcery primary/Inspiration secondary.

2) Unsealed Spellbook

If you don't play Anivia, you might not know that this is actually a quite popular rune set. I never took this because I wasn't sure it'd be better than the tried and true Arcane Comet until recently and I can confirm this thing is ****ing great. In a single game I caught Neeko off guard with an Ignite and got a surprise kill early game, secured a dragon with Smite, and stopped Master Yi from killing our entire team with Exhaust. In many of my games while Teleport has come in handy early for saving bot lane or just getting to lane after backing for a Tear/Rod of Ages, it feels like I never use it late because I'm simply where I need to be all the time. With Unsealed Spellbook I can not only provide great utility, but I can also survive my horrendous laning phase with Clarity (only if I really need to since this feels like a crutch noob trap). This keystone truly is for adapting, improvising, and overcoming all situations.

3) Electrocute

I have never run this but it feels wrong to not mention it. Basically Electrocute is good early game if you're playing aggressively as Anivia. This is completely contrary to my PERSONAL playstyle and it doesn't scale as well into late and Domination runes kinda suck but some people do it and it works well for them. You'll notice that for this rune set you take Scorch and Adaptive Force instead of Gathering Storm and scaling CDR; this is because the point of taking these runes is to maximize your early game power. It's recommended that if you're taking Electrocute, you get a Corrupting Potion start instead of the normal D-ring and 2 Potions. If you like playing aggressively in the early game then Electrocute Anivia may be for you.

1) Always auto the minions.

In general you want to save your abilities to poke and proc Manaflow Band and use them only for CSing under tower or securing cannon minions. Constantly auto minions in order to prevent being pushed under tower and opening windows for the enemy to roam; trust me, it is basically impossible to push past the river as Anivia levels 1-5.

2) Get good at last hitting

Anivia's laning phase is honestly quite painful. Your Q and E make for poor waveclear and even post level 6 your R's mana cost prevents you from mindlessly farming with it. Until you get your Rod of Ages, you should only use your Ultimate to waveclear if you are about to be pushed under tower. Honestly even if it feels like you never poke or use abilities to CS, you still end up running out of mana quickly.

3) Learn to ping

This one's for the newer players of course. If you've never pinged your laner missing, now's the time to learn because Anivia is not good at following up on roaming laners since she can be easily caught out.

1) Basic Wall move

If you wall behind an enemy, they will automatically take the shortest path towards where they were moving, which is along the length of the wall. This means you can Q towards the edge of the wall where you know they'll have to go for an easy stun.

2) Inhib Wall move

Late game you'll probably be sieging mid Inhib tower and you'll have a few levels into your W; so at this point it'll be wide enough to cover the distance between mid Inhib tower and the walls of their base. If any of the enemy steps past the imaginary "safe line" between the tower and the walls, you can easily wall them off, then R and Q and E which at this point will one shot any squishy target. Many people just think that they're relatively safe under tower as Anivia doesn't have diving potential and don't expect this.

3) Baron/Dragon Pit Trap

If someone blast cones or flashes into the dragon pit, you can easily wall them off into the back "corner" and stun them to prevent them from stealing (I feel this situation comes up quite common)

4) General zoning

If you're an experienced player this will be quite obvious but my advice to newer players would be to watch out for enemies flanking from the jungle. You can easily block them off with a wall and prevent them from engaging/joining the teamfight, which can really help turn the fight in your favor.

5) Egg TP move

A bit of a classic though I havent' done this in over a year. If your passive is up and you know they blew all their CC already, you can use Teleport which will continue channeling while you're in your egg and basically save yourself that way