A Know-Nothing Silver's Analysis of a Ranked Game
How to fight riven early - make her use spells to gap-close to you - reducing damage she can deal while maximizing yours via auto+spellcast "animation cancelling".
I delay my entry into top lane to leave the enemy confused as to if I leashed or bot leashed for jungler. My cs'ing in the first 3 waves is way below my average due to heavy focus on trading and figuring out this riven's skill level. Around 3:30, she made a mistake of overstaying with no hp and her spells on cd. If she had shield and stun up, I couldn't safely flash in to kill her without risk of getting killed in reply via tower damage or the enemy jungler depending on the jungler's route. At 4:50, I have blown riven's flash and tp so I can either fast push the wave and hopefully make her miss some cs, or I can slow push to build up a large wave and try to all-in dive her with my ult that will come available soon when I hit 6. 6:19 I dive and get the kill. Whenever you use w, it roots yourself in place for a bit. Recently I saw some videos that taught me how to break that root. Obviously if you have tiamat or ravenous hydra pressing w+ hydra will break the root, but apparently you can w+r on renekton to break the w from rooting you in place - as you can see in my dive of riven. 8:20 - I freeze the wave to deny riven cs and make her overextend to get any xp and cs. Ekko plays really well and sees we can kill her. I would be fine doing this solo, but getting teammates kills and assists never hurts. 9:20ish, riven tp's bot to grab a kill - good by her to get something positive going since she can't farm safely top except under her tower. To protect ezreal from tower dive, I tp bot at 9:30. I engage into a 1v3 because I have 3 backup coming and we will win the fight even if the enemy kills me - I am merely baiting them in. And I come back top to a giant wave which I can freeze if I so choose, or I can push and continue roaming. Riven realizes she cannot overextend, so she correctly farms jungle camps instead. She also shows she knows a few combo's on riven even if she can't always perform them properly - namely the "fast combo" of q+auto animation canceling on riven. 12:20 - I chunk amumu thinking ekko will dive with me - we had a free kill with me tanking the tower, but he wanted to play it safe. Then I basically get stupid with how far ahead I am and die from tanking tower shots. Ekko has no mana, so there is no way to help me. Ezreal sees riven has a large minion wave pushing top and ults to prevent some tower damage by helping clear the wave - a great macro play you wouldn't expect from low silver. I am still the strongest champ in the game at this point, so ekko returns top to get first brick with me. We could push tier 2 tower and risk getting collapsed on, or we can transition our lead to other lanes and snowball towers and objectives. I choose the second option. Seeing veigar is potentially pushing out from his tower and SHOULD be an easy flash stun, kill for me and viktor and ekko. Ekko lags behind and viktor doesn't immediately follow up even though I ping the gank in advance around 15:30. Veigar's stun field, barrier, and flash are all blown or he would have died. Because ekko lagged behind in rotating, amumu and riven catch him out in jungle and he dies before we can help him. Still, we have a 4v4 bot with enemy having used key abilities to pick off ekko. This allows me to rotate bot with vik and set up for a potential 4v2 tower dive with the enemy mid and jungle having to take the long way around or risk getting engaged on 4v2 if they come too close from the flank to help. Sona makes a great escape from veigar and amumu and my team focuses people down better - letting us come out ahead. My team doesn't need me bot to win the rest of the fight and grab dragon, so I tp top to punish riven for staying to grab top outer tower. Riven is right to grab tower rather than be bot for the fight there I think because she is still very behind and xp and gold - so soaking that solo whenever possible is the right call. 17:15 I tp to a minion. I get to correct side of blast plant to stick with riven. I have no flash, so I have to play perfectly or riven can wall-hop and escape from me. She makes a beautiful attempt of this - heading back into my jungle after we use the plant to hop the wall together. If I follow her, she hops the wall and escapes - so I have to wait for my e cd to slice over wall. If she runs towards mid, I probably don't catch her; however, she tried recalling in bush and fails a flash - giving me just enough to kill her. Around 18:30 the enemy red is supposed to be up. As long as I'm not 1v2 or 1v3 I can steal it - amumu shows bot, so I know I am safe to grab it. I then see riven pushing out top again - a potential free kill. She kites back to tower, expertly baiting me in for the second time this game (greed op) while waiting for two of her teammates to come top. I fail to watch the map adequately to spot the gank in time. 1v2 I would win no issue - but the 3v1 with veigar is too much cc and burst. While I blew 3 ults and bought my team time to push other lanes, I should have waited until they were grouped and pressuring a tower mid or bot to press so far up. Around 21:30, I press my w too early, so I back off - baiting riven into going too aggressive away from tower. This let's me dash in and stun. She trades back nicely with the help of tower, but I am too far ahead and have flash back available - something that would have been nice in the last fight. 21:46 I flash in for a stun - she's just used her e and q - making her vulnerable and unable to fight back. I kill her too fast to get the second charge of my e though, so I nearly die to jhin ult and the tower - not what I had planned. Meanwhile, my team is grouped mid - exploiting the 4v3 I am giving them by pulling 2 people top. Jhin should have thrown out his stun to potentially finish me off - I was in range, but I don't think he thought to use it and I escape. 23:00 drag is available soon and can be used to potentially bait a fight. We can't get much mid due to their waveclear and cc, so I roam into jungle to ward up for drag or see if I can sneak behind if they press out from mid tier 2 tower. Instead I find a lonely jhin. With that pick, we can easily pressure mid and bot tier 2 towers. I could tp top to stop riven split-push, but that means no tp for drag. If I recall to run top, we lose pressure and risk them engaging with riven tp behind my team mid. So I give up top tier 2 for damage on mid AND bot tier 2 plus an infernal drag - not the best trade, but not the worst either. 25:11 veigar has to flash or risk being stunned by viktor gravity field and me - which would have been a free kill. We can keep pressuring them bot to grab a tower while ekko pressures mid. They cannot respond with adequate waveclear and damage in both lanes due to the lead we have. Due to losing ezreal bot and the amount of gold we all have to spend, we back off after clearing some enemy jungle camps. We can set up baron pressure and force the enemy to make a bad engage around there. Riven is solo pushing top -- too far this time, and ezreal and sona come top to make the kill happen faster. 27:50ish mid and jungle get a second pick - all-but-guaranteeing a free baron. We grab baron - although I disagree with ekko not helping with it since he is the one with smite to make sure enemy doesn't steal it. I still have tp, so I tell team to push and I will tp mid to help minions tank tower longer. Meanwhile ekko splits top to spread enemy team thin. After securing mid inhib tower, I rotate top to ensure we kill 2 inhib towers - grabbing the inhibs after that is easy enough. 29:50ish, jhin opens up with ult on a half hp viktor. Sure we win even if vik dies, but I move to tank the ult for vik so everyone can be in the family photo after destroying the enemy nexus. Too bad I had to spam my recall animation - it went through and I was in my fountain - guess crocodiles aren't really part of the family anyways though.
