User blog:Willbachbakal/(Champion Rework) Annie, the Dark Child

This is a tentative rework for Annie, the Dark Child. Despite being one of the first champions ever created in League of Legends, Annie's been relatively stable for a very long time, and only started changes relatively recently. The first major batch started during the Preseason 4 support overhaul, which allowed many mages, including Annie herself, to become viable supports. The changes were mostly early game nerfs, compensated for by improved late-game scalings, due to her tremendous burst potential even with little to no AP. Even now, though, Annie has some of the most front-loaded burst in the game, and while that in itself isn't bad, it's not really the best thing to have on Annie for a number of reasons: as a champion with a pretty simplistic kit, Annie doesn't really have that much difficulty in landing her burst, which means there's not that much deep counterplay to her abilities, particularly if you factor in her passive, which gives her hard crowd control which can be landed instantly with her ultimate. Additionally, despite being known above all for her burst, Annie's niche shouldn't be that of a burst mage: not only is a much better fit as League's premium burst mage, Annie herself also has an asset nobody else has, in the form of her controllable bear. Riot recently tried to shift more power onto Tibbers, but in the end she's still a burst mage who makes far too little use of her unique pet in combat, often summoning him just for the initial nuke, which is arguably the least interesting use for her ult.

The overall goal of these changes is to move Annie more towards the fantasy of a bear mage, as Riot intends her to become. She'd still have a lot of potential burst, but it would be a lot more situational, and would require far better Tibbers micromanagement to pull off.

Pets
What do you think of these ideas? Would they work on Annie? Would she be healthier as a result? Is this the kind of fantasy you'd expect of her?