Just to set things straight, this isn't a QQ thread about Riven or manaless champions. I could care less about who is or isn't OP this month.
I legitimately want to know what a manaless champion, such as Riven, has as a tradeoff for being manaless, compared to mana (or energy/health) based champions that fill the same role, or with a similar purpose.
In other words, if I made Fiora (or whoever else) manaless, what would she lose in exchange?
Her tradeoff is being nerfed into the ground by Riot :^)
All joking aside, she's a heavy heavy AD scaling champion with absolutely horrendous base damages.
Her lack of a resource is so she is purely cool down reliant. Her power budget lies in managing your cool-downs properly and learning how to animation cancel with her (seeing how she is currently balanced around that) . Riven is a champ that requires both game mechanics and game knowledge, how to trade and when to trade, or when not to trade.
If you get behind on Riven you basically can no longer participate in the game, you have nothing to fall back on other than to
1.Farm up until you can actually scale into relevance again 2.Build tanky and become a CC bot for your team
Imagine if Riven DID have mana, they'd have to buff her damages to compensate. As it stands she's in quite a weak state, despite being what most people, who don't understand the champ, view as a button mashing no skill manaless champ. (Not implying that these are YOUR views per say)
I think you are thinking there MUST be some kind of trade off.
There doesn't have to be one.
Riot simply has to believe that Riven is not overpowered.
They could make a no mana champion who starts with 40% CDR.
But if it became too strong, it would get nerfed.
So what is the inherent weakness or some of the weaknesses in Riven that makes her not overpowered?
I don't play Riven enough to know.
I legitimately want to know what a manaless champion, such as Riven, has as a tradeoff for being manaless, compared to mana (or energy/health) based champions that fill the same role, or with a similar purpose.
Auto-attacks are manaless.
Most basic trade-off for manaless champions is having a combo/damage pattern that's very similar to auto-attacking.
Mana is used more as an ammo system for something akin to a rocket-launcher. Tons of power right away, limited ammo so you don't just fire rockets non-stop at everything. Manaless is more akin to a machine gun: still respectable kill potential, not nearly the same level of widespread devistation.
You can often see this in play when looking at a lot of manaless skills. A wide range of AA modifyers are manaless passives across a very large number of champions that actually do have a mana bar. When looking at manaless champions: several also have core abilities that are, for most intents and purposes, fancy auto-attack steroids. Riven's Broken Wings, Garen's Judgement, Rumble's Flame Spitter, Yasou's Steel Tempest, Vladimir's Tides of Blood, etc.
Granted - there are a few exceptions, but that's generally the case. And it's certainly the case with Riven. Riven's auto-attacks actually do more damage per-hit than each hit of Broken Wings for the majority of a game. Riven's HP shield also does peanuts compared to the defensive mechanics available to most light fighters (where you can find 100% dodge chance, invulnerability, untargetability, projectile-blocking shields, stealth, and other means to completely ignore damage rather than mitigate it by a bit).
What is Zed's tradeoff for being manaless? Yasuo's? Garen's? It's hardly EVER a downside for ANYONE. There are really no downsides to being manaless. ESPECIALLY with them nerfing mana regen in the new patch.
She has no tradeoff. It's just like Zed, Yasuo and others. They still do good damage and not have to worry about mana.
i think her w should het turned into a slow, or she should get a new ablity in its place. and then get balanced around that.
the most frustrating part about facing riven is her cc chain. its kinda similar to annies flash + stun + tibbers chain that blows you up without giving you a chance to react or move out of the way.
its not quite as bad, but an animation cancelling riven will either use her mobility or flash to get on top of you and kill you during her stun and knockup without giving you a chance to fight back or escape.
the infamous early all in cheese, where she flashes on top of you n lane and then blows you up.
i thnk riven needs a rework to be made more like fiora or yasuo, where she has restrictions to her mobility built into her kit, and a fight between you and riven is not that she blows you up in a second while youre cced, or shes useless.
she neds a duellist kit, that both sides can play around.
for example yasuo is incredibly mobile. but his mobility is restricted by him having to dash over enemy units, always dashing a fixed distance, and he cant dash over the same target twice within 10 seconds. if you keep all this in mind, you can play around his mobility.
rivens moblity on the other hand is entirely unrestricted. both her e and her q let her dash in any direction at any time.
