Boards›Gameplay

Riven nerf suggestion to really hit the core of the problem.

SIayton··4 votes·1,100 views

We've seen Riven nerfed time and time again without really affecting what's truly obnoxious about her, and even with the proposed ult changes on PBE, I don't think that's going to make her any less obnoxious. The real problem with her is that her Q is essentially 3 flashes. Even if she's snowballing her lane she's almost impossible to gank because she has 4 dashes in her kit which essentially makes her uncatchable.

I think, instead of hitting her damage, which is kind of her thing, why not hit her mobility? Instead of allowing her to do 3 Q dashes whenever she wants, make it so she has to HIT something with Q to do the next follow up. This adds counterplay to the ability and makes it so she can't use it to escape and gap close as easily. She would have to use her E to get into Q range to ensure that it hits and she wouldn't just be able to QQQ into her lane opponent's face whenever she's dominating her lane. That's honestly the biggest problem with her and what makes her so frustrating to lane against.

With this change, she also wouldn't get such safe trades, because she'd either have to be up close to you already to get the QQQ > W > E away combo for safe trades or she would have to use her E to get in range of her Qs and then she wouldn't have the safe disengage for trades. You could still use minion waves to proc the following Qs but that would force her to naturally push the wave if she's going aggro kind of like how Yasuo has to push the lane if he wants to be mobile, and that would open her up to ganks more.

Just my 2 cents, but I honestly have always felt like this was the real issue with her. Its not that Riven is broken. Her Q combo just makes her incredibly frustrating to play against and doesn't have any counter play other than to be a mile away from her.

24 Comments

67chrome6 votes

The real problem with her is that her Q is essentially 3 flashes.

Ehh I'd go with Riven's problem being much more a perception vs. reality thing.

From playing LoL since Poppy's release: one constant has always been true for Q_Q posts: Nobody likes playing against mobile, kill-based champions. Tryndamere Riven Vayne Akali MasterYi Yasuo Khazix Shaco Fizz Fiora Katarina Leblanc

Objectively LoL isn't about kills, it's about blowing up a Nexus. Kills are simply an optional means to that end. Objectively there are also several situations where defense or range are better assets than mobility. Objectively Riven's performances aren't game-breaking or in an awkward spot compared to everyone else.

It's just: with the K/D/A display and mobility's immediate effects: every time she does something useful it's extremely obvious and clear to everyone, where most optimally-played champions are more subtle/underrepresented in their capacity to make solid plays.

I mean - a support sets up a perfect initiation/counter-initiation that insures there team is going to win a team fight in a 4 vs. aced process but they die in the process? Can't believe we won that with this feeder support.

Riven attacks a half-health squishy under their tower Sona could OHKO with her combo? Riven so broken, Rito plz nerf.

Baseball3b3 votes

Holy shit thank you.

Most clearly written post I've seen on this topic.

SIayton1 votes

I think its moreso their ability to impose their will on others without the assistance of their team. A well played support can be more useful than a fed riven but they're also not as autonomous. I don't think she's OP but in matchups she wins, her lane opponent basically can't play the game, and ganking her is generally out of the question thanks to the mobility.

Also with the champions you listed, I think the majority of them have really good mobility and a low amount of time to react / counterplay if they're ahead. Leblanc is another champion like Riven that I don't think is particularly OP but is just miserable to play against and ungankable, so you're essentially up the creek if you're losing to her. High mobility and high burst generally will always be unfun to play against.

HaIlMonitor3 votes

Remove the knock up from the 3rd q and BAM balanced lol. Seeing as her damage is usually enough that they charge the Q to 3, hit them with the Knockup, stun, ult, dead.

JustMyBassCannon5 votes

{quoted}

Remove the knock up from the 3rd q and BAM balanced lol.

"She has two CCs!" Yes, and they have a combined duration that's still shorter than the average hard CC.

Would someone actually explain this logic, instead of just pretending the sentence speaks for itself?

HaIlMonitor2 votes

Well seeing as she can 100% squishies anyways it seems redundant. To have CC like a tank but Damage like an Assassin.

JustMyBassCannon4 votes

There are a lot of champions who have CC and can 100-0 squishies. That's not a valid point as long as almost every single mage and assassin fulfills the same criteria. Riven's one of the few non-mage, non-assassin champions with this capacity, and she doesn't have either the tankiness of a traditional fighter or the burst of a real assassin.

ChargeItDownMid2 votes

[deleted]

JustMyBassCannon1 votes

And instead of one 1-second stun a la Jax, she gets a 0.5 second knockup and a 0.75 second stun. Con, she has to use both abilities for the CC. Pro, it lasts very slightly longer.

Drunk Tsundere2 votes

Here's an idea: Instead of nerfing what is strong about her and removing every reason to pick her, and the reason why she is unique, why not make her weaknesses more pronounced?

I disagree that her mobility is her "real problem". The "real problem" is that her weaknesses (Not being an amazing teamfighter, and relying on snowballing to have an impact late game) are not able to be taken advantage of by low elo players. So we should make those weaknesses more pronounced at low elos specifically, because she is balanced against good players.

HaIlMonitor2 votes

Low elo players dont even play riven correct and she does well. I am sure high elo players hate that lane also just as much. Irelia Carries U is one of the better Irelia players in NA and still has struggles vs Riven at times.

"High elo players can deal with it, it must be balanced." Last I check I think about 80% of the player base is in Bronze to Gold. So it effects almost everyone that plays the game if something is "smashing low elo"

FacerollKatarina1 votes

Yeah at times, doesn't everyone struggle vs champs at times?

HaIlMonitor2 votes

That is what I am saying lol. He makes Riven sound like a pub stomper and she isnt even played as much in NA as she probably is in EU. Just like how Irelia's last nerf was because of Korea not NA players.

FacerollKatarina1 votes

Kinda off topic but irelia's last nerf was a total joke lol

SIayton2 votes

Riven is much harder to deal with in Diamond for me than she was back in Gold and such. She definitely scales with skill, but she also has a derpy play pattern with her all in combo that low elos can make use of. A good riven is REALLY gross though. She also farms better than pretty much every other champion and can lane and do the jungle no problem, so its easy for her to run away with a lead.

Also, her team fight isn't particularly bad. 2 AOE stuns and an AOE execute are threatening regardless of how squishy she is. There are much worse team fighters.

The Yetii Rider1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Support GG,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=AxotdPNM,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-10-24T18:33:50.077+0000)

Here's an idea: Instead of nerfing what is strong about her and removing every reason to pick her, and the reason why she is unique, why not make her weaknesses more pronounced?

I disagree that her mobility is her "real problem". The "real problem" is that her weaknesses (Not being an amazing teamfighter, and relying on snowballing to have an impact late game) are not able to be taken advantage of by low elo players. So we should make those weaknesses more pronounced at low elos specifically, because she is balanced against good players.

And how would you suggest we do that? A base health nerf? A base MS nerf? An increase in her base ability CD? Because making her wait longer for early ults (that's the effect of the current nerf) seems like it will increase her reliance on early snowballing.

Sightless662 votes

That would probably be too large of a nerf. Riven usually ends up needing to use her Q to gapclose into fights, particularly in the teamfighting stage of the game. This would require her to get significantly closer before going in or she wouldn't do any damage. The problem is, she's a pretty squishy melee champion, and making her wait longer to get in gives a much, much larger window to just kill her before she engages. That's a huge power loss, and she wouldn't have great options to deal with it. She'd need a buff.

It also goes against the combo nature of Riven. She's supposed to be able to use her spells in different ways based on the situation. She can use her Q and E for mobility in different ways based on what she needs to do. Add in this change, and it really simplifies her choices. E is gapclosing. Q is damage. That's much less interesting to play with than having options. That kind of cost to how she would feel to play, combined with this probably not leaving her in a balanced state, makes me think that this isn't the best option for touching her. Ideally, we should find a way to change her that puts her in a balanced and less obnoxious state without taking any more fun away from her than it needs to, and I don't think this accomplishes that.

I think, instead of hitting her damage, which is kind of her thing, why not hit her mobility?

Both are kind of her thing. Damage and mobility define her.

ProfDrDeath2 votes

I really liked the idea that was put on the PBE a while back, in which her passive was limited to a single stack. That would somewhat punish her for using more than one or two moveblocks purely for gapclosing, but keep her sustained combat damage largely intact.

Sightless662 votes

It sounded nice in theory, but because Edge also gave her a damage boost and let her ult do a lot of damage even when it wasn't an execute, it actually ended up making her quite a bit stronger. Good Riven players barely felt the effect because they almost never autoattacked without using an ability first anyway, but they got a large benefit from the actual Edge resource. It's a nice start for an idea, but it did need a lot more work.

ProfDrDeath1 votes

Of course, the Edge resource part needed some work - mainly, a reduction of her base damage values and ratio by around 5-8%, to make up for the up to 10% extra damage.

From the looks of it, the goal of these changes is to shift Riven a bit away from a burst combat pattern, to more of a sustained one.

SIayton1 votes

Yeah its hardly a nerf to good Rivens since most will auto attack cancel after every ability. I like the idea of her being more sustained damage than burst as I think that's just more healthy for the game in general, and notice that they haven't really put any burst champions in the game in a while. Ekko is the closest thing to that in over a year and his play patterns are still more sustained than most of the old bursty assassins.

MisterHealYoGirl1 votes

There are two fundamental responses when a champion becomes overbearing, offering too much reward for too little risk: decrease the reward or increase the risk. Decreasing reward often just ends in bland champions like Taric: because his kit contains essentially no risk, he can't really have much reward, either, or at least not on the same scale as other supports. Examples of nerfs of this type are Veigar's incoming W damage decrease and Gangplank's upcoming base HP nerf.

The other kind of nerf, increasing risk, usually creates a much more healthy champion; still rewarding when played well, but easier to punish and hurt if they make a mistake. An example of this is the delay added to Veigar's Event Horizon awhile ago; the reward (zoning and stun) remains the same, but the risk (them dodging it) grows a lot.

Back to Riven, I think that the main issue that players have with her is that her strength (strong damage and mobility) can be used both offensively and defensively. I think that this is a good example of a risk-increasing nerf, since it maintains the reward of incredible aggressive mobility while increasing the risk of minion damage causing unfavorable trades (esp. for a low-sustain laner like Riven) and reducing her ability to escape from bad situations. Anyway, this is just a long way of saying that this seems like a solid idea, although she'd probably need some sort of compensation buff to make up for the loss of all that out-of-fight mobility.

(Sidenote: You could also keep all 3 Q casts per cooldown, but lower the base ranges a bunch and have the duration of the knockup and the range of the second and third Q scale with how many things you hit with the previous ones. Just an idea.)

ShinTwist1 votes

This would make Riven the worst champion in the game.

Zaghyr1 votes

{quoted}

The real problem with her is that her Q is essentially 3 flashes.

I'm sorry what? I'd love to know where you found that one q sends you the same distance as a flash, and at the same speed. Because if I remember correctly, all 3 of her q's combined is about he same as one flash, if not just a little over. Dude....overexaggerating things will not make your case any better. I stopped reading after this.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by SIayton

As a Diamond, Silver elo is surprisingly hard.
Gameplay1,056 comments
1,283
votes
Can we get health indicators on the minimap?
Gameplay74 comments
161
votes
"The jungle should be a little easier this season, especially for struggling champs before"
Gameplay141 comments
135
votes
#1 rule of Solo Queue
Gameplay99 comments
113
votes
Dear Riot, WE HAVE ENOUGH SAND / SHURIMA SKINS, PLEASE DO SOMETHING ELSE NOW
Concepts & Creations91 comments
113
votes
Aurelion Sol rework feedback for devs since they asked for it on twitter.
Gameplay36 comments
81
votes