Froggen is without doubt the most well known Anivia player in the world right now. From tales of him grinding games early in his adoption of League of Legends on it, to his incredible Season 2 performances with it on CLG.EU Froggen's legendary Anivia has become a fan favorite occurrence. Fans enjoy his Anivia so much that when Froggen was voted into the Paris All Star show matches fans went out of their way to make sure he played an Anivia game. Surprisingly we didn't just get to watch Froggen on his legendary main at Paris, we also witnessed him absolutely crush Bjergsen's Zed and carry Team Ice to victory in the show matches. It's little surprise then that fans exploded in excitement when Froggen locked in Anivia for their match against Roccat this week. The Anivia pick was not just for the fans though, in returning to his favorite cryo-phoenix Froggen had found a massively synergistic pick with the current meta.
Right now much of the LCS champion select revolves around the fact that outside of Lucian, the highly immobile Twitch and Kog'Maw are by far the best ADC picks. This has baited more than one team into running Kog'Maw with little to no peel to rather disastrous effect. Meanwhile in mid many of the meta favored champions don't pair well with Kog'Maw. Lulu, Orianna, and Nidalee are okay pairs with their shields and heals, but picks like Leblanc, Kassadin, Twisted Fate, and Yasuo offer nothing to the protect the Kog'Maw composition usually required to run the champion.
Enter Anivia, in place of the shields or heals Nidalee, Orianna, and Lulu offer to Kog'Maw Anivia instead brings overwhelming zone control and peel. Anivia brings a 400 unit radius slowing AoE from her ultimate, an AoE stun that slows anyone it damages even if the stun misses, and a wall that at max rank extends 800 units across the map. On top of all that team utility Anivia brings to lane strong burst from her Q+E combo, Ziggs level infinite wave clear, and near unparalleled safety from the egg form passive. When paired with Kog'Maw Anivia's kit asks the question "How are you going to get through all this peel and still have something left to catch the ADC?" The simple answer to which is, you're not.
To really hammer home the advantage Anivia brings Alliance held the Anivia pick in both games until late in the champion select. This allowed Alliance to see Shyvana and Evelynn come out from their opponents and ensure that the enemy would have very little hard engage to lock down someone. This magnified Anivia's strengths allowing Froggen to block flanking routes into the team and funnel enemies through his heavy slowing and damaging ultimate. The zone control of Anivia allowed Tabzz on Kog'Maw in game one, and Twitch in game two, to pump out damage with impunity, ensuring Alliance's victory.
By digging into his past Froggen was able to find an incredibly strong pick no one was using and make a 2-0 week look easy. The ability to look outside the popular picks and find something that works so well in new metas is what sets the best players apart, and Froggen has certainly shown he is still a world class mid laner breaking out the Anivia again.
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