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?
Apocalypsic6 votesHer 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)
SpírìtsAway1 votesHer 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)
Thanks for the in-depth response. Do you think there is a discernible pattern with how other manaless champions are balanced?
Apocalypsic2 votesThanks for the in-depth response. Do you think there is a discernible pattern with how other manaless champions are balanced?
I can't speak for all champions that are manaless but I really think its determined by power budget and playstyle.
Take zed for instance, energy user. All of his power lies in his rotations, if he screws that up he has to sit and wait for his energy to regen, seeing how he doesn't have a consistent pool of mana to fall back on. Zed's poke is easy to avoid and throwing out a shadow and a shuriken (maybe using your e too) carelessly will leave you wide open for retaliation as you try to regain your resource.
Now imagine say, Ahri or leblanc. If they burn a rotation they usually can very very quickly strike back with another, at least until they run their mana pools dry. Especially since most mages invest heavily into CDR anyways.
SpírìtsAway1 votesI can't speak for all champions that are manaless but I really think its determined by power budget and playstyle.
Take zed for instance, energy user. All of his power lies in his rotations, if he screws that up he has to sit and wait for his energy to regen, seeing how he doesn't have a consistent pool of mana to fall back on. Zed's poke is easy to avoid and throwing out a shadow and a shuriken (maybe using your e too) carelessly will leave you wide open for retaliation as you try to regain your resource.
Now imagine say, Ahri or leblanc. If they burn a rotation they usually can very very quickly strike back with another, at least until they run their mana pools dry. Especially since most mages invest heavily into CDR anyways.
Awesome response. TY again.
Quepha1 votesThanks for the in-depth response. Do you think there is a discernible pattern with how other manaless champions are balanced?
No. Riot avoids a pattern and just balances each champion individually based on the factors they deem most important to that specific champion.
The closest thing to a consistent pattern for mana vs. manaless is that reliable, low-counterplay, ranged harass generally has to be mana-gated to make sure that mana phase remains an actual game for that champion instead of "press this button every time it's up and you win"
TruckFump20162 votesI 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.
SpírìtsAway1 votesI 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.
Let me rephrase my question: how is a manaless champion balanced compared to a non-manaless champion? Or is there no major difference?
67chrome2 votesI 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).
The Whamboozler1 votesWhat 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.
Croanin1 votesWhat 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.
Um no. Zed uses energy, using energy is a huge advantage early game, but honestly mana is better later on when you have items and levels. Eventually you don't worry about running out of mana while energy users always have to worry about being short on energy.
Yasuo is in the Riven camp it's utter bs that those two have the mobility and tools that they have while being gated by nothing but CDs.
Garen is also resourceless but he's straightforward has hell, and his CDs are far longer then Rivens. In fact despite loving Garen I was an advocate for them to not lower the CD on his ult (it had the CD of teamfight ults like Amumu) simply because I felt it was a trade off for having no resource.
The only other champions I can think of right now that don't really have a resource to manage is Katarina and Shyvana. Katarina sucks in lane anyway, and Shyvana like Garen is super straightforward with little to know outplay potential.
I'm sorry but I think it's total BS that Yasuo and Riven can dash around like crazy w/o a resource. Now to be fair Riven wouldn't work with mana or they'd at least have to make her Q cost free.
The Whamboozler1 votesGiven that Zed is built for quick skirmishing, darting in and out with one rotation of his abilities at most, I don't think energy handicaps him at all. In lane it's non-stop poking. His energy is back for each minion wave to splitpush, and in mid-lategame teamfights he's only going to be jumping in for a second or two at most. Oh sure, if he's forced to stay in he's on empty, but not much can force Zed to stay in after he's ult-bombed someone and what CAN is probably going to kill him anyway since he's likely stunned in the middle of the enemy team. Shen and Kennen have pretty meaningful trade-ofs for energy, but Zed really.... doesn't. If he was just based on cooldowns like Garen and Riven I doubt anyone but Faker would notice much.
Besides... "lategame when you don't need to worry about mana you can spam so much faster than zed can!" is... um... who the heck can do that? Ryze maybe? Even if you built full CDR and a ton of mana regen on say... Xerath or Lux or something, there is still a good bit of time that their spells are on cooldown that is on-par with zed's "weak point" where he can't use his abilities. Zed however is AD and his autos hurt like hell during this time. Xerath's... don't. I'm not saying we need to nerf zed or anything, just saying "he uses energy" isn't really one of his downsides. It's a very big PERK for him.
I'm also with you that Riven and Yasuo are kinda bullcrap. At least Riven has the decency to suck all game after she yolos at you at level 2 and dies because she doesn't understand how to trade properly. Yasuo can go 0/5 in lane and still matter because of how fiercely he scales and how absurd is power spike is off of crit items. Riven is kinda feast of famine. Yasuo is feast or wait for a bit and THEN feast.
Croanin1 votesGiven that Zed is built for quick skirmishing, darting in and out with one rotation of his abilities at most, I don't think energy handicaps him at all. In lane it's non-stop poking. His energy is back for each minion wave to splitpush, and in mid-lategame teamfights he's only going to be jumping in for a second or two at most. Oh sure, if he's forced to stay in he's on empty, but not much can force Zed to stay in after he's ult-bombed someone and what CAN is probably going to kill him anyway since he's likely stunned in the middle of the enemy team. Shen and Kennen have pretty meaningful trade-ofs for energy, but Zed really.... doesn't. If he was just based on cooldowns like Garen and Riven I doubt anyone but Faker would notice much.
Besides... "lategame when you don't need to worry about mana you can spam so much faster than zed can!" is... um... who the heck can do that? Ryze maybe? Even if you built full CDR and a ton of mana regen on say... Xerath or Lux or something, there is still a good bit of time that their spells are on cooldown that is on-par with zed's "weak point" where he can't use his abilities. Zed however is AD and his autos hurt like hell during this time. Xerath's... don't. I'm not saying we need to nerf zed or anything, just saying "he uses energy" isn't really one of his downsides. It's a very big PERK for him.
I'm also with you that Riven and Yasuo are kinda bullcrap. At least Riven has the decency to suck all game after she yolos at you at level 2 and dies because she doesn't understand how to trade properly. Yasuo can go 0/5 in lane and still matter because of how fiercely he scales and how absurd is power spike is off of crit items. Riven is kinda feast of famine. Yasuo is feast or wait for a bit and THEN feast.
My point was how energy champions work in general. Zed is actually known to be one of the more champions that can be inhibited by energy. That's why it wasn't rare to see blue buff donated to him in competitive play. Energy is a consistent resource that must be managed, while managing mana becomes easier and easier as the game drags on.
The Whamboozler1 votesI think that's more because most pro teams expect their midlaner to snowball and/or hard carry... especially if it's ZED. So he needed every edge he could get.
In lane vs him as nearly any mage he just tosses Q's at you until you have to B with no risk or worries about running out. Meanwhile if you harass HIM, you go oom pretty fast and he lifesteals back up to full. Weee.
WinBoat1 votesShe has no tradeoff. It's just like Zed, Yasuo and others. They still do good damage and not have to worry about mana.
Critmaster Garen1 votesi 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.