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Riven is not overpowered or balanced she is just strong

Reformed Dunni··10 votes·1,360 views

(If you're someone you hates Riven and think she's overpower I'd advise you to keep my points in mind)

Here I'm about to counter most of the arguments stating why Riven is OP

1.Riven is too easy to play for how strong she is Riven is easy to play I'll admit that but just like many other champs it's easy to tell the difference from a good Riven player and a bad one.A bad Riven player spams all of their abilities not using their passive correctly and uses their skills in no particular order.A good Riven handles their abilities better for example, maxing E before Q against heavy poke enemies abusing their passive to its full ability by quickly canceling the autoattack animations and they know burst combo's that cancel ability animations and dish out damage quickly.When Riven gets behind its hard for her to come back unless you try and gank another lane or farm like crazy. Bruisers rape Riven Renekton Irelia Olaf Pantheon Jax Garen Nasus (yes Riven counters Nasus early but after he gets about 200-300 stacks and a frozen heart Riven cant handle him anymore)

2.Riven does so much early game damage Yes she does Riven is a mobile champ thats supposed to punish you when you get too close she is a supreme lane bully just like Darius Renekton Yorick and a few others thats the trade off here is that Riven has no sustain her health regen was nerfed her health regen now is (3.3) when you do damage to Riven it usually sticks and its hard for her to heal its back up thats why its great to play champs with alot of sustain Vladimir Olaf Garen Renekton

3.Riven is ungankable Riven is hard to gank but its not impossible you gank her just like you would any other mobile character, wait for them to use their mobility move(s) Leblanc: Bait out W then gank, Zed: Bait out W then gank, Fizz: Bait out E then gank. You do the same for Riven and if your jungler comes to gank just bait her by trying to farm safely by a distance and she will use her dashes E-Q-Q-Q- and W for her harrass then your jungler ganks and she cant escape her whole kit is on a cooldown and at early levels her cooldowns are high. After Riven gets her cdr items she is incredibly mobile and can chase or run away excessively but Riven gives up being tanky and is most likey building glass cannon point and click cc is effective against bringing her down once Riven gets cc'ed she instantly gets melted due to her lack of defenses and health.

4.Riven's animation canceling is OP and provides no counterplay Yes this is true a good Riven can unload a combo on you and can kill you within less than 3 seconds but this usually happens only when Riven is fed or at full build also these animation cancels are extremely hard to learn can take about a week to learn how to do it and a month is master it and be consistent with the combo and the slightest mistake gone wrong in this combo you can get away or kill Riven if its a teamfight and riven frucks up she is cc'ed and instantly dead leaving your team in a 4v5 just attempting to make the play. here are some animations cancels for Riven that she can perform starting from easy to hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvIJBvNBZkw

5.AD scaling shield is OP Not much I have to say about this her shield just rewards her for building damage which again she trades for tankyness because when she builds glass cannon she dies too easily and since Riven is a fighter her helps her stay in the fight a little longer at about level 18 Riven only has about 2020(varies depending on build) and thats not terrible for a fighter

Riven is very annoying to play against and she is an easy champ to play but she has clear downsides and weaknesses. Riven isn't ovepowered or balanced just strong.

10 Comments

Old Man Teeto2 votes

Riven.

She is given all the tools to win and give the enemy very little room to beat her aside from just raw out muscling her.

Her team fight is mediocre due to melee range threat and primarily glass builds.

However, her 1v1 and even 1 v X is strong if they can't CC and burst her due to her high AoE damage, sustain, and shielding coupled with being able to disengage or dodge abilities should she actually be threatened.

Top that off, she has invisible power for mastery that Riot will not remove for a plethora of reasons.

Riven won't likely see any changes, and continue to be a frequent pick for smurfers or people who rely more on mechanical skill than anything else to climb the ladder.

Reformed Dunni1 votes

{quoted}

Riven.

She is given all the tools to win and give the enemy very little room to beat her aside from just raw out muscling her.

Her team fight is mediocre due to melee range threat and primarily glass builds.

However, her 1v1 and even 1 v X is strong if they can't CC and burst her due to her high AoE damage, sustain, and shielding coupled with being able to disengage or dodge abilities should she actually be threatened.

Top that off, she has invisible power for mastery that Riot will not remove for a plethora of reasons.

Riven won't likely see any changes, and continue to be a frequent pick for smurfers or people who rely more on mechanical skill than anything else to climb the ladder.

She is given the tools to win her lane because she is a lane bully, Its not hard to beat her when you time her cooldowns and know what her abilities do to figure out the right time to harrass her

I agree with the second point

Yes Riven has strong dueling power she is best in 1v1's but she cant 1v1 bruiser's such as Irelia due to her low hp 1k-2k

Why remove animation canceling? Its what actually gave Riven a high skill cap and as I've said in my post its takes a while to learn and even when you do learn it its hard to be consistent

Old Man Teeto1 votes

I never suggested removing animation cancelling, just stating that it's too large of a topic to warrant inclusion in that post, sorry if it was confusing.

MTempty2 votes

Nobody can deal with a 200-300 stack Nasus with the respective defensive item build. The fact that only Lane bullies like Renekton and Darius can truly go blow for blow with her is silly. I consider Jax and Irelia to be matchups you can play around for the most part, though i do recognize Jax's ability to wumbo Riven if she dares to eat his counterstrike. I feel her shield is absolute bullshit for its cooldown. Either its duration or its cooldown or its strength... one of them has to give. its obscene what she does in any matchup where she is not against an even bigger lane bully. Shes not impossible to beat, its just a frustrating thing to play against. I attribute that mostly to her shield. Its not ok for her damage to come with Udyr level shields every few seconds.

Reformed Dunni1 votes

Damn downvote already and no explanation

Reformed Dunni1 votes

Thanks for the the upvotes guys I'm bad a writing well typing in this case but I hope i got my point across

1011001110001 votes

I learned how to do animation cancelling on Riven after 3 games by watching a Youtube video. It's not hard to use animation canceling as long as you have a good internet connection.

You don't point out any actual weaknesses in her kit. You just point out that you can try to exploit cooldowns and attempt to counter-pick her. Her kit has both offensive and defensive utility that gives her breathing room against the same counter-picks you pointed out, meaning they only win because Riven will play defensively until she can itemize.

Reformed Dunni1 votes

{quoted}

I learned how to do animation cancelling on Riven after 3 games by watching a Youtube video. It's not hard to use animation canceling as long as you have a good internet connection.

You don't point out any actual weaknesses in her kit. You just point out that you can try to exploit cooldowns and attempt to counter-pick her. Her kit has both offensive and defensive utility that gives her breathing room against the same counter-picks you pointed out, meaning they only win because Riven will play defensively until she can itemize.

You learned to animation cancel but can you do it frequently can you react to almost any situations in a matter of seconds?

Exploiting cooldowns is a weakness and yes you can counter-pick her but what do all those champs I listed all have in common? they all build tanky all you have to do is stack armor against her

1011001110001 votes

It's really not that hard, you just have to not be a complete knee-jerk, which is basically required with any champion. I've learned it well enough to out-duel enemy counter-picks on several occasions, and the ability combinations aren't hard to remember at all. The only thing denying people the ability to use animation canceling is literally bad internet.

"All you have to do is stack armor" is a bit of a moot point when Riven build paths will always have armor penetration, and a ton of it. Bruisers rape Riven because they also have hard CC and stronger gap closers which help them beat trades with her. But that's because that's what Bruisers do. The problem comes early game where Riven players will come out of their Level 2-3 trades blazing with all-ins because bruiser champions early on won't really have any real tankiness and are exceedingly susceptible to Riven's damage output. They're eventually lead to just play passively until they finally have enough armor to "deal" with Riven, which is just ridiculously mundane.

There is also the fact that you would have to consider the rest of Riven's team, at which point the worst case scenarios is that they have two magic damage dealers, and your top lane bruiser spent all of laning stacking armor to deal with Riven, and shows up to teamfights getting slaughtered because now the magic damage is wrecking.

Exploiting cooldowns is a weakness that all champions have, not just Riven. It also doesn't help when all of her pre-6 cooldowns are all actually just 13 seconds and under, and her Q's 13 second cooldown is on first-cast, not last cast. So her cooldowns are all really not that high.

Rebonack1 votes
  1. Make Riven an energy champion
  2. Abilities (including each individual cast of her Q) cost 30 energy, excluding her Ult.
  3. Procing her Innate on a champion restores 20 energy, 10 on minions.
  4. Innate no longer stacks up to three. Use it or lose it.
  5. Buff her base stats/kit numbers as needed since she can't face-roll anymore.

There you go.

Much easier champion to balance around since she now has levers to tweak instead of just kicking her raw stats in the jaw.

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