Oh sweet. The summoner level 1 smurf guy is totally too pro for everyone else. Btw bait, your guide is ok though I personally don't agree with the item build. Also I stand by my belief that a point in molten shield at level 4 is a waste and you really don't need it until later. Some of the tips are really good though and I'm glad you agree with me about mainly using her normal attack for harassing and the spells more sparingly unless you're about to get a kill out of it.

Annie definately is not an easy hero. I can say this because I barely ever see any well-played annies, heck I barely ever see any decent Annies. It's not that I don't ever see anyone play her, it's that when I see them they usually suck. What makes you say she's soo easy compared to all the other heros in LoL?

Pardon me if your other account is level 30 top 20 best annie in the entire universe, but right now you're not only some level 1 smurf but you're also trolling a thread in which another player was just asking for a bit of advice.

if you read my notes, i don't use molten shield for armor/thorn. i use it to charge up stun faster.

I'm not saying you do, but I'd rather have the extra 60 damage on incinerate than a useless spell I can cast once every 30 seconds to get my stun up faster. During the laning phase I'm constantly casting disin for last hits, and ocassionally using incin which will keep my passive cycling. I don't feel you need any molten shield at all until you're well in to the mid-game phase where you have a lot of mana and youre constantly spamming incin/shield to cycle your passive faster. Some people will disagree with me on this as you do, and thats fine but I'd like to present my opinion as well.

I'm going to get my stun up with or without a 30-sec-cooldown useless spell. But if I put a point in molten shield and not incin I'm never going to get that kill on the hero who just barely got away with 40 hp left.

Putting one point into molten shield early is worthwhile because it's much easier to bait your opponents into a stun and still have enough cooldowns to kill them afterward.

Nobody is going to get near an Annie that has a blue swirly around her waist, and nobody knows how many charges an Annie has unless she has the swirly. So if you sit at four charges and then pop molten shield to get your fifth when a target is relatively close to you, then they (usually) won't have time to get away and you'll be able to blow your full load on their face.

I've gotten tons of kills this way because my stun is more or less unpredictable and I don't have to waste a damage cooldown to get it up.

I agree, there is this advantage as well to molten shield but with my style of play I find I'm going to land the stuns one way or another, otherwise the other player is going to forfeit his right to farm. I sometimes manage a similar affect by hitting them with an incinerate they weren't expecting and then stunning them with the forthcoming disintigrate.

I will say though, if your enemy is good and knows how Annie works he is going to be on the lookout for tactics such as the one you've described. I think both builds are valid and there are several factors to consider for each, but in the end it comes down to how you personally play.

There's a tooltip on top of your skills that shows if your stun is ready or not. It says "Energized" when a stun is ready.

If you're having problems with survivability, try going for the AP+HP items like Rods of Ages and Rylai's Scepter. You might wanna try some faster boots too as some mage/casters move really slow.

If you don't like checking your buff for the stun counter, then when you're stun is up, not only do you see a swirl around Annie, but she also makes a giggling sound you can listen for. And I honestly agree with you that it should be present with a number over the buff icon or something. Sure it doesn't take much to hover over it for a moment, but to me this game makes a lot of things easier compared to dota, so why not one more? It would be nice for debuff stacks as well, for poisons or something.

I personally prefer to play as Malonyan does, holding off on the shield all together until mid game. I don't mind blasting and incinerate in someone's face to get that last charge for Annie's stun before throwing a disintegrate.

It is funny to get Rod of Ages, then a Warmog's on Annie. You'll have around 3.5k hp. Fun when an enemy Eve or Shaco pop up and try to kill you. You can take a nap, then blow them away, and you'll still have more than half health left. You can also tank towers with her. I wouldn't suggest it every game, but it is funny from time to time.

But yeah, ignore Molten Shield till everything else is maxxed out.

As for keeping track of your stun, as was already mentioned, it is about as easy as it can get. You can hover of the buff icon, or just wait to see a BIG WHITE SWIRLING MASS covering Annie. Kinda hard to miss, honestly...

For team fights, Annie should NOT be initiating. I've been on teams that insisted I initiate with Tibbers, because Cho'gath would rather run than fight and risk losing his feast stacks, and Scion was too busy jungling to care about anything else. Initiating w/ Tibbers is the biggest waste, and will usually end up with you dead since you won't have any backup. Using a clutch AoE Stun Tibbers IN a team fight can singlehandedly turn the tide to your favor.