Introduction

Tank Annie is built for support. Everyone acknowledges that Casters scale terribly end game when compared to Carries, so why not help them out? Your role as a Tank Annie is to soak up all the damage and provide constant stuns to the enemy team.

Do note however that this build is only as good as your team. So if your Carries are terrible, good luck.

Mastery

The cookie cutter 9/0/21 is generally thought as the best.

I have also run 1/7/22 for Strength of the Spirit in the Defense tree for s pseudo-Regrowth Pendant for early game survivability.

Ultimately it's your choice but the 9% cooldown from 9/0/21 helps with getting your stuns off.

Summoner Spells

I find that people have differing opinions for which spells to use so it is ultimately your choice here too. Your Mastery should reflect what Summoner Spells you choose.

I like to have Flash and Ghost as my spells. Flash in and drop a Tibbers Stun then Ghost out before anyone realized what just happened. Let your team cleanup and come back with another stun bomb.

Runes

CD > Magic Pen > AP

Get 6% CD then fill it up with Magic Pen.

Red: Magic Pen
Yellow: CD
Blue: Magic Pen
Quint: 2 CD that scales with level, 1 Magic Pen.

Yellow Runes do not have any Magic Pen Runes to add so fill it up with CD. Only need 5 then fill the rest with whatever you like. The Yellow Runes and the Quints will achieve you 6%.

Skill Build

1. Incinerate - Common practice to charge up your stun at well before heading out
2. Disintergrate
3. Disintergrate
4. Molten Shield - Switch out a point of Incinerate into Molten for quicker stuns
5. Disintergrate
6. Tibbers

After level 6 your prioities are:

Tibbers > Disintergrate > Incinerate > Molten Shield

Item Build

This build focuses mainly on items that give a mix between HP and a secondary stat.

Sapphire Crystal and 2 HP Potions
Sapphire -> Cataylst
Boots
Boots -> Mercury Threads
Catalyst -> Rod of Ages
[Whenever you can buy Elixer of Brilliance at this point]
Giant's Belt - Do not build this into anything else until you get your first luxury item

I have always started out all my games with this build because it gives early game power then I transition into the Tank role after mid game.

If you do not get Rod of Ages before 20 minutes into the game then you are doing something wrong.

Elixer of Brilliance is a cheap alternative to CD Reduction and gives +60 AP for only 300 gold when you get around to buying it. With this you can easily Incinerate last row creeps and make up for the farming you may have missed out on.

After getting Giant's Belt you should have roughly 2.5k HP. Do not build Giant's Belt into anything yet because you got it solely for the HP Boost. Build it into something after getting one of the luxury items depending on the other team's composition.

Luxury Items

Choose one of these items depending on the other team.

Thornmail: Get this is you spy a Yi or another carry on the other team.

Banshee's Veil: More HP, more MR, and a wonderful passive. Get this if there are too much CC

Force of Nature: HP Regen, MR, and more movement speed.

Chalice of Harmony: If you are running out of MP too quickly, though I suggest Force of Nature over this.

Sunfire Cape: This is just the most slot-efficient item that gives HP and armour. I recommend this the least unless the other team is very physical oriented.

Rylai's Scepter: If you are being stubborn over AP then just stack as many of these as you can. +500 HP and +80 AP for one slot.

The game will usually end after getting one of the above items. If the game continues longer though then be careful of what you pick.

Items to Avoid

Rod of Ages: A second Rod of Ages will take too long to get to its full effect. Take a Rylai's Scepter of a second one.

Any AP Item: Everyone agrees that Annie's AP Ratio sucks. Do not try to focus on more damage because end game your role is to tank damage and stun as often as you can.

Warmogs: It gets too late into the game to get this. Although the HP is nice you need to stack more Armour, MR, and Health as efficiently as possible.

Gameplay

Try to get Solo lane. The quicker you get to level 6 the quicker you can make your presence known throughout the game. Because everyone fears you in mid game they will focus you end game unknowingly to them that you turned into the tank. While they focus you your team cleans up everyone else.

Early Game

Your Spells hurt. Your attack range is long. Play so you make sure the enemy recognizes you as a threat. Use your spells sparingly for harrasment and farm lots of gold with Disintergrate. You do not need to kill the nemy quickly, just keep him harrassed and at mid HP. When you hit level 5 keep your stun for Tibbers. Hopefully you are solo laning so that as soon as you get Tibbers you can Flash in, Use your Tibber's Combo, Ghost to chase them down. They should have died. Take advantage of this to widen the level gap and make sure to keep it that way. Ifthey come near repeat the Tibber's Stun Bomb combo and watch as they are helpless to do anything about it when they try to run away. You can get the Tower down quickly then proceed to mid gmae.

Mid Game

Assuming Early Game went perfectly you should have Rod of Ages and Mercury's Threads. Time should be roughly 18 to 25 minutes. Your level will be higher than everyone else's so use this to your advantage. Since your spells are naturally high damaging you can easily waltz into most 2v1 situations and decimate both of them. Your prescence will be known and they will try to focus you down at end game. Take this time to gank people, farm gold, and help your team down towers. Purchase your Giant's Belt and your Luxury Item of choice and prepare for end game.

End Game

This is the bane of all Casters since most of your attacks do not dent most opponents. Well, since you never focused on AP in the first place this should not effect you in any way. By this time you should have roughly 3k HP and enough Armour/MR to back it up. When there is a team fight you can initiate perfectly fine. Pick one of the squishy carries, Flash in, Tibber's Stun Combo. Watch as everyone focuses you for a good 5~10 seconds trying to kill you and have your Carries clean up everyone else.

Here's the beauty of Tank Annie. Assuming Early Game and Mid Game went according to plan, they do not have the luxury to ignore you. If they ignored you, you have the luxury of racking up more stuns to help your Carries finish off the team. If they do not ignore you then your Carries can finish off everyone else while they are focusing you.

Conclusion

Tank Annie can only be as good as your team. You alone will not be a killing machine end game but you will help your Carries finish off the team with your consistant stuns.

If your team cannot take advantage of your stuns than you will not bring any game changing opportunities.

Personally I would go Health per level in Seal and 3x CDR rune in quins to get the 6%.

Also, I tho tank Annie went 9/21/0 ?

Oh and, what's the point of going Tank Annie if you don't get a Frozen Heart? (to be useful for your team)

when you say useful do you mean more stuns?

if it's a matter of cooldown he already dealt with that based on his rune setup and the elixir

and as for the frozen heart, it takes around 1200 more gold to build a frozen heart

(~1600g for the thornmail as compared to the ~2800g for the frozen heart)

i see thornmail as the faster option against carries

and in my opinion thornmail works better with annie's molten shield than frozen heart against carries

activating molten shield against a high dps carry would probably turn out great since the shield returns magic damage per melee attack.. getting a frozen heart would slow down the number of times you could reflect damage and you wouldnt be able to reflect as much damage with frozen heart + shield as compared to thornmail + shield


i haven't been able to try this out in a game but the concept sounds good

feel free to correct any flaws in what i've said though

I wouldn't solo mid if you're doing a tank build (unless you have a jungler + someone who can handle a duo lane). That's a massive waste of such an easy farming lane.

Generally I don't believe Masteries have a HUGE effect over your gameplay. I simply went 9/0/21 for the cooldowns and to help my summoner spells.

Frozen Heart is too expensive to get. It gives you +100 or something armour and not any health.

If you believe that you need Armour against Physical Carries then you should get Thornmail because it provides the same Armour and personally a better passive to shut them down.

Annie's Burst Damage is naturally high. During mid game I have a 3~4 level advantage over everyone else and can easily waltz into a side lane and take on two people with a Tibber's Stun. You WANT them to know you're dangerous so that when end game comes they will try to focus you down after you transferred over to a Tank build.

They know they can't afford to ignore you, but they also can't afford to ignore the Carries.

????

I play annie a good bit if my team has no magic damager or crowd control, and if we have good dps elsewhere I'll build her fairly tankish/cooldown since at that point her main job is stun spam, but this guide confuses me.

Annie without guardian angel?
TANK annie without guardian angel?

W...T...F...

I have not looked at any other Annie guides, so I'm not sure if other builds recommend guardian angle for her, but I'm sure with the game being out this long I'm not the only one who builds it on every Annie.

Seriously, EVERY ANNIE NEEDS GUARDIAN ANGEL. Is this really not known??? I'm gonna have to look at other annie guides now and see if others are ignoring this simple fact.

Quick annie tip: when you are killed with guardian angel, and you are floating there all ghosty for like 4 seconds waiting to pop back up... You still have full control over Tibbers.

People kill me with annie, tibbers munches on the *******s standing around to rape me when I reraise... and I burn the **** out of whatever is left when I get back.

Seriosuly, guardian angel + annie + tibbers = free ace a couple times a game untill they learn to get the hell away from you when you are floating there ghostlike.

It's not carries you should be worrying about with that build, it's the "REALLY EFFING HARD TO KILL" hybrid champs like Udyr, Mundo, Malphite, Fiddlesticks and Blitz who will mess you up.

Tank build or not, all of those champs will chew you up every single time if you're equally skilled; and this '3-4 level advantage' you speak of isn't going to happen out side of extremely low ELO rounds unless the other team has a feeder. Go on and save your stun for tibbers, but you're going to get outfarmed because you can't last hit mobs with disintegrate without wasting the stun. Annie is easily the most predictable character in the game when attempting to gank you, so play it smart (and bring cleanse); and you'll always come out on top.

Banshees is also wonderful for shutting her down.

Nah a good annie goes into a gank with 3 or 4 stacks, and uses her other spells to apply damage/clear banshees before dropping the tibbers stun, then uses her nukes again as soon as they come up and everyone is still reeling from the bearbomb.

Tibbers drops like a rock end game....?

I use him for the massive burst when he is summoned, not for the AI Control.

In the beginning Tibber's damage is frightening but by end game he tickles most champs.

Though the passive is for general usage there's a different point to it with Tank Annie. The passive works on death every 5 minutes. Tank Annie is NOT supposed to die in the first place. Use the money from Guardian Angel to buff up your health and resistances more.

I think you guys missed my point about frozen heart.... The reason it's good is because of the -25% attack speed to nerbies ennemies. It's a huge plus in team fight VS Physical DPS carry.