Welcome to the guide! My name is StarTundra and this is my first guide so please excuse me if it looks terrible or I've forgotten something. I've been playing Anivia since season 8 and she became my main because Phoenix's are badass. This guide is specifically designed for mid-lane Anivia and I plan on making a guide for support Anivia in the future, so if you're interested in that then idk if there's a follow system on here so bookmark my profile or something. I also plan on making a ****post guide where I put builds like tank Anivia or Jungle. I would also like to make a top lane build but it's not super high on my priority list since it's mainly a niche counterpick for Sion, Illaoi, or other low range lane bullies. Add me on discord if you have questions or suggestions! this includes railing on me for wording things bad
Discord: Godly yet Cold#7381

Please note that this guide is incomplete, However the build options and notes ARE complete and are reliable. I will be filling out the content of the guide before i start adding images and making things pretty, although this is primary because I don't actually know how to make things pretty for the most part ATM.

tl;dr at the bottom
I recommend not skipping this chapter, although you can skip this chapter if you know what Anivia does in terms of abilities, there are some distinctions which will be italicized which will explain how certain abilities work more in-depth than you might otherwise find elsewhere.

Anivia is a textbook definition control mage. She excels at taking control of an area and punishing enemies who enter her control through high CC and Damage. More on this in the next chapter.

Anivia's passive is named Rebirth although it is commonly known as Egg:
Egg causes Anivia to not die when killed, but rather she turns into an egg which Can be damaged. After 8 seconds, Anivia will be reborn with the same health as she was left with when Egg expired. During Egg, Anivia is not known as Anivia, but rather Eggnivia and this can be seen if you ping or type in the chat while in Egg. Eggnivia cannot cast abilities, spells, or use item actives, and her armor and magic resist are reduced while reviving. Egg Has a five minute cooldown after Anivia has been revived
Egg TP: When Anivia reverts into Eggnivia, Teleport is not cancelled and can be used to escape death if the enemy does not have CC to cancel the tp. This is known as Egg TP

Anivia's first ability (Q) is Flash Frost:
Flash frost creates a small, slow moving projectile which travels in a straight line and passes through all enemies it hits, slowing and applying the Chilled effect, which doubles her E: Frostbite's damage. The projectile will detonate in a much larger area around the projectile at the end of its path, stunning and applying the Chilled effect again. The ice shard in the center of the projectile is what slows and deals passthrough damage, so while an enemy might be hit by the stun, they could be too far to the side or away from the center for the slow damage to be dealt twice. You can proc spellshields with this ability by having the shard pass through the enemy before detonating, causing the spellshield to block the slow, but not the stun so long as the spell shield is single use only, such as Sivir's spellshield or item based spellshields.

Anivia's second ability (W) is Crystallize:
Crystallize is a placed ability which causes a wall of ice to form perpendicular to the direction from Anivia which the spell is cast. There is no way to rotate this wall, although it can be visually bugged using flash. The wall increases in length as the ability is levelled. The wall will knock enemies away from it if the ability is cast on top of them, which deals 0 True damage and can be used to proc Electrocute or phase rush, but will not proc spell shields or Arcane Comet and will cause turrets to aggro onto you.

Anivia's third ability (E) is Frostbite:
Frostbite is a point-and-click projectile which send a homing projectile after the target like a Veigar ultimate. This is Anivia's most important source of damage especially after her new rework which moved most of the damage from her ultimate into her Frostbite. Enemies that are Chilled take double damage from Frostbite. Enemies are given the Chilled effect by being hit by either the passthrough or the detonation of Frostbite or by being hit by a fully formed Glaciate. The Chilled effect will remain on an enemy for 1.25 seconds after it is applied

Anivia's ultimate and final ability (R) is Glaciate:
Glaciate creates a circular field (an ice storm or blizzard if you will) on the ground which slows and damages every second. The ability has an unlimited duration so long as you can supply the mana for it and will not be disrupted by Zhonya's, although a silence, knock-up, or stun will cancel the storm. The storm will cancel if Anivia moves too far away from the storm, however the casting range is shorter than the leash distance, so it is possible to move up, cast Glaciate, and then back off again. The leash distance is indicated on the ground when Anivia is casting Glaciate.


tl;dr: Flash Frost creates a stunning projectile which can be detonated, Crystallize creates a wall, Frostbite Deals damage, double to enemies who are hit by Flash Frost or Glaciate, and Glaciate creates a large damaging field which slows and drains mana on a low CD

Anivia is a Punisher. I'll say it now and I'll say it a hundred times throughout this guide, because she is amazing at her job as a punisher. This is because of her:

High Damage
High AOE CC
Long range
Low CD Ult
Strong zoning
Counter-engage potential/strong baits

All these things combined allow Anivia to exert extremely high pressure against her foes so long as she is able to position well. However, the cons of Anivia's play-style consist of:

Anivia is Difficult to master, partially due to...
She is very Squishy, one of the lowest base HP pools in the game.
She can be easily beaten if you make mistakes/bad micro
She is highly reliant on positioning, ability aiming included.
Anivia is Mana starved and reliant on her pool, hard to manage resources.

Pros:
High Damage - Anivia has massive burst potential as well as consistent damage due to her empowered E on chilled targets. Many people underestimate the chunk of health a single E can claim. Not to undermine the damage her R can stack on unwary targets, even without E, her R alone is nothing to scoff at, Especially when paired with burn items such as Liandries Torment.

High AOE CC: This is going to be a long one but to sum it up: Anivia's full kit synergizes with itself to provide incredible zoning, and all of her abilities save for her E combos into itself, as well as being incredibly strong standalone spells.
Anivia's Q is a powerful stun, but it is not where the bulk of her crowd control potential lies. Sure, it is a strong zoning tool, but it's easily evaded against a competent enemy in a 1v1. Anivia's true strength lies in her whole kit, and how it synergizes and combos into itself. I'm sure any guide on Anivia out there will display her classic W>R>Q>E combo where the enemy tries to run around the wall and ends up pinned between the wall and the oncoming Q. this is an excellent example, but all too often people tunnel vision on this specific setup for her combo, which is only effective against solo enemies with no mobility that can go through her wall, and most enemies will usually be able to flash away from or into Anivia, which can lead to their loss of flash at best or at worse a burned egg as well as a death. A bit on a tangent there but to return to my main point, Anivia's true strength in CC lies in her whole kit. Her ult can be used as a massive spacer when placed between her and a bruiser, giving her space to retreat, or as a tool for tethering. It could also be placed on top of her enemy and be used as a trap as stated before, just be careful not to get stunned or flashed if the enemy you're fighting is able to punish you. Her wall is able to block off entire paths in the jungle and can catch unsuspecting front lines out if you place it behind them as their carrys are following, allowing your team to focus eliminate them or causing them to burn flash and thus hampering their engage potential. Anivia's wall is also able to disrupt channeled ults from Lucian, Katarina, and so forth if used precisely enough, and can do so more reliably than her Q as her Q is slow-moving and predictable, whereas her W takes all but half a second to hit it's target. If an enemy is fleeing against a wall, Anivia can lock her enemies against the wall or more reliably form a V shape with her wall and the terrain, causing them to backtrack towards your allies or straight up breaking the pathfinding AI if the angle is sheer enough. All of these can be used in lethal conjunction with eachother, and her Q is usually reserved for enemies targeting allies as they're usually paying less attention and are easier to hit or for close enemies/those which move predictable, such as Ekko who dashes straight to their target after a roll, or Zoe who becomes stuck in place and is forced to a specified position after using Portal Jump. Anivia's CC potential is incredible when each of her tools for zoning are used to maximum efficiency.

Long Range: Somewhat self explanatory, but I still know a number of things about Anivia's range which you might not realize. The first of which is that Anivia's base AA range is one of the highest in the game, on par with the likes of Ashe and Annie at 600 units. Anivia's only beaten in range by Caitlyn at level 1, and champions whose range increases from abilities or passives such as Tristana or Senna. Another contributor to her range is the fact that her ult not only is a circle and thus extends beyond the cast range, but also after casting, Anivia can back away from the cast position some 200 units before reaching the maximum range of her ult, allowing her to place it in front of a turret to clear the oncoming wave and then retreat far beyond the back of the turret to avoid shots from enemies if they are sieging her lane alone. Her wall range is Anivia's longest range ability, and many underestimate its range.

Low CD Ultimate: Anivia's base ult cooldown is 6s after channelling is stopped, and thanks to her QOL rework, this is decreased to 2s at max rank. This allows Anivia to relocate her ult somewhat frequently early and late her ult cooldown essentially becomes the time it takes for her ult to be fully placed. This is important because her ult is a massive part of her damage and zoning.

Strong Zoning: This one is a highly tied to her low CD ultimate, and High AOE CC. However, in the explanation for high AOE CC I definitely skimmed over her ability to keep enemies away from her or her allies, in favour of fawning over her chase and more specifically how she can easily prevent enemies escape. Anivia is also extremely well versed in preventing enemies from engaging on her using her W and melee enemies will often avoid Anivia at all costs if she just holds onto her Q to save it for if they try to get closer to her. The downside to being able to keep enemies away easily is that if her enemies outrange her she can struggle to apply pressure, as she has no gap-closers if she can't land her abilities.

Counter Engage potential/strong baits: Remember how I mentioned how a classic Anivia combo is to trap the enemy between her wall and her Q while they're escaping? Well something a lot of people miss is that the same logic can be used in reverse, as Anivia is able to wall an enemy attempting to close the gap between them, and then Q them as they come around the wall to the same effect. This also allows her to place her ult closer to herself to force them to back away or on top of the enemy if she has kill priority, making making the combo much more versatile. This same concept can be applied to terrain and enemies who are simply too close to her. Because her Q is so slow, it's difficult to hit targets farther away but up close, the detonation allows her to almost immediately guarantee a stun against her target. Even without using abilities, Anivia can coax a kill out of her opponent if they decide to make a risky play against her while under turret or with a nearby jungler, so long as she has Egg. When playing support Anivia, I often explicitly tell my ADC that I'll be using my Egg to bait the enemy.

Cons:
Anivia is difficult. Against noobs, she is an absolute crusher due to the sheer number of mistakes/baits they'll fall for, but against a competent enemy it is very difficult for her to stand her ground. This is due to all of the following things, and will be summarized at the end of this section as well.
She is very squishy/Low HP: Anivia, even with Egg, remains an incredibly squishy mage. This is somewhat helped by her ability to zone her enemies but the fact remains that if caught off guard, an Anivia is helpless to defend herself without her abilities.
Easily beaten if Anivia makes mistakes: Anivia is able to execute a lot of creative combos to outwit her opponent using ability positioning, however if Anivia misplays, as previously stated she is incredibly squishy, making careless mistakes can easily cost her Egg or her life or both. Anivia has a number of tools to help with this, such as Flash, Zhonyas, or Egg, but overall she remains one of the most defensive oriented champions simply due to the fact that she struggles to recover from such misplays. This is especially important to realize in a meta where mobility is so high even ADC's have an item for it.
Highly reliant on positioning of skills/herself: Anivia is easily caught out by enemies. Facechecking a bush and getting cc'd results in a death for most champions, but this is especially prevalent on Anivia since she is a squishy immobile mage. If Anivia stands on the wrong side of lane and gets jumped on by the jungler, death. If she's caught on her flank after expending all her abilities on an enemy in front of her, Death. This is also a problem as if she places a bad wall and her enemy goes on the wrong side, as they either escape for free or are able to gap close for free. If she places her ult at a bad time and gets CC'd immediately out of it or tosses a Q at an ADC only for them to sidestep it, she loses a major part of her kit over a small mistake which can lead to death. Even if Anivia stays out too long and runs out of mana, which you inevitably will, you become vulnerable and pose little-no threat to a hungry enemy. The big takeaway from this is that Anivia is highly reliant on her ability to use her kit to keep the enemy away or prevent their escape through zoning, and if she positions wrong she can lose the ability to keep her enemy away from her, and she can also lose this by simply misplacing a key part of her combo.
Mana starved: As previously mentioned, if Anivia can't cast abilities, she can't protect herself. This is especially a problem when she runs out of mana, as she will often due to the channeled burn nature of her ultimate as well as the massive chunk of mana her Q costs early.
All of these factors combine into a common theme: Anivia is difficult because Anivia must be careful, which leads to Anivia being a highly defensive pick. Anivia has to be in complete control of her surroundings, and losing control leads to deaths. Anivia is very good at controlling her surroundings, but even the best players make mistakes and mistakes can be very costly if you aren't being careful.

There are a number of viable rune choices for Anivia, from almost all the trees however most of them are dwarfed by phase rush or electrocute.

Keystones:

Electrocute.
Electrocute is my primary choice of keystone for Anivia into most matchups, because it enhances trade damage and kill potential/pressure. Electrocute's bonus damage is able to turn a short trade into a lethal one through a single extra auto attack. Anivia's base damage is strong but Electrocute is just that one step that fits so well with her kit, Plus it encourages you to weave in auto attacks during trades, whereas comet does not.

Phase rush
Phase rush is a primarily defensive rune which I usually take into melee gap closers like Talon, Pantheon, or Ekko. The added burst of MS allows Anivia to escape from most trades with them unharmed or with minimal damage taken.

Primary tree runes:
Domination choices

Cheap shot: Cheap shot adds base damage to almost any trade where you land a Q, which is very effective at enhancing your punishing power.
Eyeball collection: This choice is preferential, although I don't recommend zombie ward unless you plan on taking sweeping lens.
Relentless Hunter: This is the optimal rune for Anivia, which may seem confusing but it is extremely useful as Anivia's base movement speed is one of the lowest in the game and without relentless hunter, you're going to struggle to chase down or run away from enemies, although running away is much easier than chasing even without relentless hunter. The primary use of relentless hunter is enabling you to catch up with the enemy which allows you to place your W ahead of them, preventing their escape.

Sorcery choices:
Manaflow band: This is Anivia's best rune from this level, as it provides much needed mana and mana regen.
Transcendence: This rune is pretty useful. can be swapped with celerity if you're running relentless hunter although POM is just too good rn to trade for anything off meta for the most part.
Gathering storm: This rune is very useful for longer games, although at higher ranks where games are shorter or during metas where games are short, it's sometimes better to take scorch for early trade pressure and POM duration.

Secondary tree - Precision:
Presence of Mind: In season 11, the new mana regen after damaging an enemy is extremely useful on Anivia, as even an auto attack can net you 10~ additional mana, and during late game team fights the sudden burst of 1000+ mana can be the difference between winning and losing.
Coup de Grace: Can be swapped with Legend: Tenacity if you feel the need, usually the additional damage is nothing special. just a filler rune for PoM.

see notes for now i don't feel like writing this part yet :P

Anivia is typically known as a heavy scaling late game burst mage. However what some people don't realize is that Anivia is best described as a punisher.

Anivia is built to punish mistakes, as such her abilities aren't super effective when used to engage blindly but they can be strung together with great positioning to zone an enemy into their own death. A few examples of why this is true are:

Early game: During the early laning phase,Flash Frost is your main source of engage/punishment, but when used alone the ability is

easy to dodge
doesn't deal a lot of damage
dashes can make the ability even easier to dodge

However, when used to punish the enemy, it becomes much more difficult as they will usually be in the middle of an animation and cannot immediately dodge. Although the issues still remains that there simply isn't a whole lot of damage which comes from just a single Flash Frost, and that someone like Lucian is simply able to dash around the Flash Frost and punish you for wasting the stun.

To solve the first issue of damage, simply add an E AA to your Q. After landing a successful Q, Anivia can use an E and an AA, which will chunk the enemy's health for high damage, as E will deal double damage from the Chilled effect from Q, and the extra AA can proc electrocute if you have it, or can be used defensively to proc phase rush. When using other runes such as Arcane Comet, the AA is unnecessary although it can be used effectively depending on the matchup, it is usually not worth the additional AA damage depending on how quickly the enemy can get within range of you.

The second issue is a bit more problematic for the typical Anivia player, as it is the reason Anivia struggles to engage on many targets, and I refer to it as "Punishing" rather than "Bullying". Any enemies able to simply dash away from or blink through the Q will be problematic when you try to engage. The easiest AGRESSIVE, albeit least reliable solution is a simple bait which relies on Anivia's similar looking animations for her attacks. Typically if you either AA E, or E AA an enemy, they will see the flashy animations and think you are trying to launch an engage, and dodge out of the way, possibly with their dash. If they do happen to use their dash to the side or closer to you, great! simply aim a q at their new location and while they're in the animation of whatever counterattack their trying to land, you can usually stun them and then either back off or AA again depending on the new distance between you and the enemy. Protip: try to land another E after Q, as the chilled effect will usually stay on the enemy long enough for the E to get the double damage effect if you can time your Q right. You can also use your wall, as placing it behind enemies will often make them choose to dash through it, especially if they get walled into a corner, although this makes the enemy back away from you and you'll have to wait until you can safely toss a Q at them in order to trade, and you have the time restraint of their cooldowns.
Note that this requires the enemy to use their mobility, and relies on their mistake for you to effectively punish them

A better solution to the problem with enemies having dashes or blinks, is to simply wait stay out of they're range and wait until they engage on you. This may not work, as the enemy might choose not to engage, especially if you've already killed them a few times when they've tried it before, but countering the enemies engage is Anivia's specialty.

Once the enemy has hit level 6, the game gets much more complicated. Trading post 6 is highly matchup reliant as against someone with a high threat ult such as Orianna, Yone, or even Talon if you haven't finished Zhonya's. Anivia also gets a threat boost, however Anivia's ult will absolutely drain you if you try and use it during short trades. The only solution I've found for the mana issue comes from Blue buff, as even a finished lost chapter doesn't provide enough mana to be sustainable during lane. This isn't to say you can't use your ult, however you can't throw it down every wave either, as I've seen way too many Anivia's make the mistake of doing since her buffs. Once you finish Liandries your ultimate's damage and sustainability for mana will be much better and using them for every trade will be viable, as the damage from the burn will make your enemies die quick enough to prevent you from running through all your mana in one go. Be careful when shoving waves, as combining your Q and R will make you run out of mana even late game after just 4-5 waves. Using solely the R works much better as the mana drain is usually doubled by adding the Q. Tossing an E is usually an effective way to ensure execution of cannon or super minions without completely draining your mana resources.
Anyways, let's get back on topic

Usually, if you're fighting a mage like Zoe and winning lane, you can continue to apply map pressure by zoning them off the wave by posturing farther up in the lane. If you can sustain a freeze then you're golden, but if not no biggie. The biggest thing to ensure if you're winning lane is to stay safe from being ganked by tracking the enemy jungle as well as warding efficiently. Control wards are a must and vision denial although useful is much less important than securing your own vision. Good placements for your wards are dependant on which jungle your facing, as warding against someone like Nunu is much different than warding for a Lee Sin.
I'll add an in-depth chapter for how to ward against various junglers later, but for now see the early warding section for a rough rundown of the basic warding setups.

One of the best things you can do as Anivia is rotate and roam. Relentless hunter and early boots can lead to very good roam timing and your ganking capabilities are very high as your ult, stun, and wall are very powerful tools to catch an unsuspecting enemy out of position, and your egg can protect you from being turned on so long as your allies follow up on the gank. Not that 2v1ing is particularly difficult considering your hard CC and high AOE can usually clean up the enemy so long as you yourself don't get stunned into a bad position.
Roaming bot is usually better than roaming top however both are viable and if dragon is on cooldown I like to roam top to give top prio and look for rift herald.

Pre-Chapter notes: this chapter focuses on warding before you switch to farsight, and as such will only refer to stealth wards and control wards.

There are 4 basic setups for warding that I use. River, deep, wall, and close wards.

The easiest and probably least useful setup I'd use is the "Close" warding setup, where I ward the inner bushes immediately beside the mid lane, which although effective at catching ganks if you're feeling lazy, doesn't actually provide much information to the team. This setup is what i usually use on my smurf where jungle tracking is valueless or when I'm feeling lazy in a norms game.
A quick way to improve your ward setup is to travel slightly further out and switch to the "River" setup. In this method, stealth and control wards are placed interchangeably in the pixel bushes or the bush which is right beside pixel. Stealth wards can also be pushed out a bit farther to the outskirts of the dragon and rift herald pit. This setup gives more vision in the river to show the enemy jungler approaching your lane as well as when they're taking scuttle or a larger objective.
The third and last standard setup is what I call "Deep" as it primarily focuses on deep wards. This setup requires the most attention as you'll need to overextend in order to place wards and if you don't have advantage in lane or lane prio then wandering up into the enemy jungle is very dangerous and your life is not worth the vision. . Your first ward in this setup relies on knowing where the enemy jungler started. Generally I'll place my first ward around 2:30 and if the enemy started blue then I'll put it on the bush next to raptors, and if they started red I'll walk up behind blue buff and toss it over the wall. When going to ward, you should be very wary of the enemies sightlines and if they're trying to follow you. I will usually shove wave and then back off outside their vision to ensure they don't see me walking into the river. Doing so decreases the chance the enemy will collapse on you tremendously and increases the safety of warding. Another way to ensure safety is to make sure you have minions in the lane to watch your enemy laner to watch if they start to collapse on you. If you see them start moving towards the side of river you're on then you should back off immediately, as they probably saw you through a ward and there's a good chance the enemy jungler is also on their way to intercept.

This chapter will define Anivia's role in the mid-game, and various strategies you can use depending on the gamestate. I won't go into detail about what objectives you should be aiming for, as that varies from game to game, but I'll give a couple broad examples about gamestates and generic advice on how you should play to best ensure victory.

Strategy 1. defending turrets AKA turtle strat
Anivia excels at extending games out and creating comeback opportunities for her team, as her zoning and clear allow her to protect an inhib turret from being sieged, while putting little-no pressure on herself. Even against 4-5 enemies at once, she can wall off the ADC from attacking the turret and use her Q to prevent any melee attacks on the turret, all while melting the enemy minions with her ult and cannons with E. The obvious problem with this strategy is that if the enemy team has baron, Anivia cannot clear effectively, and if the enemy tank decides to just tank the turret, there very little in the way of stopping them that Anivia can do once her Q and wall are down, as her ult is busy clearing wave. In case the enemy team runs you down under turret or the enemy has baron and you're unable to keep them off the turret, do not hesitate to retreat. Hesitation leads to death, and in this case death will often lead to losing the game.
The benefit of this strategy is that if you do manage to keep the enemy from taking as many turrets as possible, you could give your team time to catch up. Especially if the enemy has already stopped scaling (Max items and Level 18).

Strategy 2: Teamfight strat