Henrik “Froggen” Hansen has resurfaced with a sharp take on the current state of pro League of Legends. Asked by Travis Gafford about pros piloting Anivia in 2026, the former mid laner delivered a flat verdict: “they’re pretty bad.”
The interview happened at Doublelift’s Retirement Home tournament, a nostalgia-packed event pulling old faces back in front of the camera. Gafford was on site running interviews, and the Froggen sit-down quickly became the standout clip.
Coming from anyone else, the comment would be a throwaway line. Coming from Froggen, it lands differently. The Danish mid laner built his entire competitive identity around Anivia during his runs with CLG.EU, Evil Geniuses, Alliance, Elements, Echo Fox, Golden Guardians, and Dignitas. For years, his Anivia was either banned outright or respected as one of the best single-champion performances in the West.
Anivia looks simple on paper. A stun, a wall, a point-and-click nuke, and an ultimate that locks down zones. In practice, she’s one of the hardest mages to squeeze full value out of. Flash Frost is slow and needs prediction. Crystallize can win a fight or grief your own team in a single second. She’s immobile, mana-hungry, and punishing if mispositioned.
Froggen spent years grinding the small stuff. He famously experimented with builds and runes that no one else touched, including Sheen purchases in solo queue to force himself to weave auto attacks between spells. In older seasons, he ran AD runes and Doran’s Blade starts into melee matchups like Kassadin and Fizz, turning Anivia’s awkward early game into a bullying lane.
His signature move was using the wall to herd opponents into the Flash Frost stun, sometimes throwing the Q first and dropping the wall mid-flight to alter enemy pathing. Few players ever read those angles as cleanly.
The bigger point
Froggen’s critique isn’t that modern pros are bad at the game. It’s that today’s professional environment rewards wide champion pools, draft flexibility, and tempo over deep specialization. Anivia rarely sits in the meta long enough for most mids to truly master her, so when she gets dusted off, the picks often look serviceable rather than scary.
Faker has shown flashes of strong Anivia play in recent years, including aggressive passive egg drops and clean ultimate placements. Outside of him, the champion hasn’t had a defining modern specialist.
