In all seriousness, why isn't Riven disabled?

Lord Malpercio·Jan 17, 2017·310 votes·25,038 views

She has a known, extremely game-changing bug that is relatively easy to do, and people are abusing it. It was bad enough when Riot decided to let her keep animation canceling in general when other champions had it removed (IE: Zed), but letting her break CC is just unacceptable.

Edit: Since people are at a bit of a misunderstanding here, Riven is not just causing issues with displacement effects on dashing. This is not a hook/pull/knockback only issue. She is able to remove any and all forms of CC.

Unlike, say , who completes her leap, but cannot take any actions during it, Riven can continue to use basic attacks and abilities in a time frame she would otherwise be unable to make any actions.

Edit 2: Please read Meddler's response, he has given Riot's viewpoint on the matter, and has stated there is a planned fix.

224 Comments

SEKAIJan 17, 2017102 votes

Because apparently when playing Riven, rule/game breaking exploits are suddenly a "trick" or otherwise a display of skill.

To which I say:

What in the actual fuck?!

duckarpJan 17, 201711 votes

Yes, that's sad, but true. Other games try to mitigate the issue and fight against animation cancelling, in LoL we praise exploits.

RalanrJan 17, 20173 votes

It's why Alistar still has his WQ combo.

VerxintJan 17, 201729 votes

Ali's WQ combo is clear and straightforward though. Not only is it much easier to execute and not as particular, but it's obvious to the recipient what just happened.

If you're a new player and you go against a Riven that doesn't use animation cancels, then against a Riven that does, you will get utterly destroyed in the second match and won't have any idea what happened. The second Riven will just seem to dumpster your face compared to the first one.

If you're that same new player and you go against an Alistar that doesn't WQ, then against an Alistar that does WQ, it's really easy to figure out what the second Alistar is doing differently. Furthermore, the moment of "holy shit, he can do that?" is a lot more satisfying than "I just got shit on and have no idea why". Even though the new player is dead in both cases, it's a lot more fun to have some understanding of why you died that time.

GayFluffyUnicornJan 17, 20177 votes

That's one of the reasons i fuckin despise playing against riven. You'll never know: is this a trash riven? can i trade with her? Is he a god and i should stay defensive? You'll always get surprised. When i play against nasus, nauti, yasuo i kinda know what they can do...

AnidanJan 18, 20175 votes

In LoL we praise exploits.

Bullshit. Some people do, because some exploits will add a perceived depth to the game. If you know much about some competitive games, you might know that there's still some debate over whether or not "wavedashing" is considered an exploit in Smash Melee, but regardless of whether it is or is not you still have to learn it. In original DotA there were some quirks from the WC3 code that allowed for allied creep denying that reduced the experience the enemy got from the creep and allowed for stacking neutral camps. Similarly to Smash Melee, these quirks were at first considered exploits, but then people realized how to use those quirks effectively and you were forced to learn them because they were useful.

You think League praises exploits? You guys hate them more than any sort of competitive community I've ever seen. You outright refuse to have to learn them, no matter how beneficial they could be. In any other competitive game, you'd just get strange looks if you weren't taking advantage of everything you could to advance your character's metagame and improve your general gameplay as long as it wasn't an outright busted tool that was immediately considered cheating.

KorZodJan 18, 20177 votes

Every smash character can wavedash, altho some can better than others. If every league champ could break CC on demand and artificially pump their damage through animation cancels, it wouldn't be as big of a deal

TerchioJan 18, 20177 votes

They don't even like Dodge for its RNG. There is no excuse for keeping champion abilities that work in similar fashion to the Konami Code. If it's a legitimate combo, fine. If it's a random string of inputs that spits out a new and unique outcome unlike the 5 abilities you have on your screen, and you're the only champion with that "ability", That should not stay.

And DotA is a bad comparison to make. Sure, code allowed creep denying, but part of the reason LoL exists is because they admitted to themselves that such an ability will hold back an enemy's gameplay in ways difficult to balance, and they held that out of their game. Afterall, AD characters have a general advantage when trying to deny over a support or caster, since a caster can't damage their own creeps with spells, usually. Riot made the right choice in removing that, and even removed random-like effects such as dodge and universal crit chance (for those who remember, every champion used to have inherent crit chance), yet somehow thinks giving Riven a new free Cleanse effect is something worth keeping, with no clarity on the effect whatsoever? No, this isn't the straightforward gameplay Riot has generally been known for. Riot is the company that boasts about their clarity. Yet, for some reason, some of these champions are given unique effects that you not only can't read up on easily for one special champ, but then you need a sandbox to perfect it in the first place, which they still have yet to release. I am glad they did decide to implement it, from the sounds of things, though. Now we'll have to just wait to get that... soon...

Riot's never been perfect, but allowing Riven's shenanigans has been a particularly glaring low in their game over the years. Every once in a while, we hear about champions getting clarity injected into their kit, for both allies and enemies. For whatever reason, Riven is the grand exception of that. The kicker for me is that they even removed invisible autoattacks within Nidalee's kit to help balance her out. I'm in shock that she made the cut, and Riven's still Riven.

Lord MalpercioJan 17, 201746 votes

{quoted}

Because apparently when playing Riven, rule/game breaking exploits are suddenly a "trick" or otherwise a display of skill.

To which I say:

What in the actual fuck?!

This. I actually used to main Riven back in S2. I quit when Riot started pigeonholing her into an assassin role with the removal of her armor and HP regen and the high AD ratios. Then came all the animation canceling with tiamat, and it became just dumb to play her, because you can only 'master' her through abuse of shitty code.

Pale PirateJan 17, 20175 votes

According to them, her gameplay was inspired by street fighter games, so it was normal that she would have animation cancelling. What I don't get is why she must have that Q+backwards step+autoattack which gets her extra attack speed. Like, what? This is probably a bug and only diamonds+ mains are capable of doing it.

granny stranglerJan 17, 201715 votes

That's an extreme ovestatement. Maybe if you took the time to experience her and see what people go through to master her combos and techniques you would see that a mere silver could do them with enough practicing. The Q animation cancel doesn't give her attackspeed, it's literally the same thing as stutterstepping with a ranged champion, it cancels the end of the AA animation in order to refresh the attack faster.

Velzard of KozJan 17, 201712 votes

She has the weeaboo protection

RiotMeddlerJan 19, 201750 votes

Info dump on this bug:

We've got a fix for it that should be going out in the next patch (7.2), assuming it passes final testing.
That fix address an issue where Riven's E could be used to negate displacement CC and the associated stun (and not just in the intended 'dashes/displacements can override other dashes/displacements' way). Timing was much easier if used in combination with other abilities on her kit (buffering), but could be done with just the E.
We don't have a repro on any other displacement cancelling effects besides that one with the E. It's possible there's something else, none of the bug reports we've got had demonstrated other cases yet however.
Similarly we've seen reports the bug could be used to cancel non displacement CC, but haven't seen a demonstrated case of that occuring to investigate (if you've got a good repro would love to see it).
This bug's been live on Riven for at least a year (probably a lot longer). Given that, difficulty exploiting it reliably in game, lack of increase in average power after the bug began getting discussed, attempts to exploit the bug often leading to Rivens just wasting their abilities mid fight and dashes/displacements in general being able to override existing dashes/displacements we concluded this was not a disable worthy bug.
The recent Teemo disable by contrast was due to a bug where Teemo would phase in and out of invisibility (passive proccing, AS included) while in brush even when in combat. That was a newly introduced bug that happened very consistently, had a noticeable power impact, could be reliably exploited and was very different from other normal behaviors. We made the call to disable Teemo over it as a result.

WeatheredJan 19, 201710 votes

What bothers me is that "the bug's been live on Riven for at least a year" sounds like it's being used as justification. No matter what the champion or amount of time on live, if the bug is that much of a change to gameplay, the champion should be disabled and fixed as soon as the bug is discovered.

Edit: Read the rest of my comments. I'm not deleting this one because of the downvotes, but it indeed was a misread so I just suggest keep reading.

RiotMeddlerJan 19, 201728 votes

Amount of time on live isn't a justification by itself, but it can be a useful piece of info when assessing likely impact of a bug. If a bug's been live for a long time it generally gives us confidence that it's less powerful, or more difficult to exploit. It's harder to assess a newly introduced bug by contrast.

The Yetii RiderJan 19, 20174 votes

{quoted}

Amount of time on live isn't a justification by itself, but it can be a useful piece of info when assessing likely impact of a bug. If a bug's been live for a long time it generally gives us confidence that it's less powerful, or more difficult to exploit. It's harder to assess a newly introduced bug by contrast.

Not trying to be rude here, but uh...why are you telling us all this, Meddler? You're using the proverbial 'we' here, which makes it sound like you were a part of the decision making process on whether to disable Teemo/Riven. Is that part of your job on Live Balance? You guys don't have a separate team for this?

RiotMeddlerJan 19, 20174 votes

Fair question, few comments in response:

The Live Gameplay, new Champion and Champion Update teams can all make the call to disable a champion. Live's the most common one to do so, depending on who's investigated the bug and/or most recently worked on the champion in question though specific teams can make a lot of sense. All three of those teams also spend time fixing bugs on champions in general, whether or not they've recently done work on them.
I'll often use 'we' when I'm talking about general Riot decisions because, for most readers, what's relevant is what Riot's decided, not exactly how our internal team structure works. I wasn't personally involved in making this call, though often will be part of the discussion on disables. Certainly agreed with the conclusion in this case.
I'm not on the Live Gameplay team directly myself. I'll split my time roughly equally between the teams that handle Live Gameplay, long term development of systemic changes (jungle, items, masteries etc), new champions and champion updates. I'll also occasionally spend some time working with other parts of the company outside those core game teams on stuff (pick ban changes recently for example).

Irelia BotJan 19, 20171 votes

Some bugs could can unnoticed for years.

Say there was a bug that would only happen if Talon bought Lich bane, Abyssal and Ohmwreaker that if done right allowed talon to one shot turrets through the abyssal MR reduction somehow getting applied 20 times resulting in negative MR on the turret.

The likelihood of someone finding that bug is minimal given the requirements are things that talon almost never would get.

WeatheredJan 19, 20171 votes

Bugs that have odd conditions, yes, they most certainly would be hard to find and can stick around for a while because they simply are hidden. My concern was that it was phrased as if this was a known bug for a while (and this bug specifically isn't all too difficult to replicate if you are talented at Riven) and kind of seemed like a neglect to fix a bug that was so important.

If Meddler's post didn't mean that they had known of the bug for a while and was just giving information that it turns out the bug has been around for a while, then my bad. And if my post came across as ignorant to that if so, then also my bad.

Irelia BotJan 19, 20171 votes

They likely have ways to play on past patches to see when something could first be done to try and trace what caused it.

RiotMeddlerJan 19, 20175 votes

Correct. It's not that we've known about this bug for a year, it's that we were able to go back to a copy of the game a year old on an internal server and verify that it also existed then.

Malicious MetalJan 17, 201738 votes

Mordekaiser Ha... Haha... HUEHUE... HUEHUEHEUEHUEHUEHUEHEUUHHEUHEUHUE

There's no CC to cancel when getting your skull caved in by a Mordekaiser.

SEKAIJan 17, 201722 votes

[{quoted}](name=Malicious Metal,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=LjX1bWNy,comment-id=0005,timestamp=2017-01-17T15:50:39.492+0000)

Ha... Haha... HUEHUE... HUEHUEHEUEHUEHUEHUEHEUUHHEUHEUHUE

There's no CC to cancel when getting your skull caved in by a Mordekaiser.

Assuming you can walk into the range enough to say Hi and manage to maintain the close relationship.

Malicious MetalJan 17, 201720 votes

Riven has to get into range to do her job.

I let THEM get there. Rylais and SrS to keep up.

Riven is BY FAR Morde's easiest matchup-

SEKAIJan 17, 20173 votes

[{quoted}](name=Malicious Metal,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=LjX1bWNy,comment-id=000500000000,timestamp=2017-01-17T15:59:06.334+0000)

Riven has to get into range to do her job.

I let THEM get there. Rylais and SrS to keep up.

Riven is BY FAR Morde's easiest matchup-

Huehuehuehuehuehue.

Inuyasha99999Jan 17, 20173 votes

what is srs?

Malicious MetalJan 17, 201717 votes

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/leagueoflegends/images/8/88/Stormraider's_Surge_mastery_2016.png/revision/latest?cb=20151103094740

DarkSunSovereignJan 17, 20173 votes

That thing that nobody uses.

morris1Jan 17, 20177 votes

Mordekaiser ?

Glory ln DeathJan 17, 20172 votes

Well, death is the best CC. So, theoretically, she should be able to CC cancel death, right?

Velzard of KozJan 17, 20177 votes

Karthus was canceling this CC before it was cool And Sion of course :^)

PermabannedGarenJan 17, 20172 votes

[{quoted}](name=Malicious Metal,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=LjX1bWNy,comment-id=0005,timestamp=2017-01-17T15:50:39.492+0000)

Ha... Haha... HUEHUE... HUEHUEHEUEHUEHUEHUEHEUUHHEUHEUHUE

There's no CC to cancel when getting your skull caved in by a Mordekaiser.

But haven't you heard? Mordekaiser's base stats are so shitty and bad that he can't lane against anyone, not even low-sustain melee champions like Riven. =(

TS MediaJan 18, 20175 votes

As a riven main, please stop spouting bullshit.

PermabannedGarenJan 18, 20177 votes

[{quoted}](name=TS Media,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=LjX1bWNy,comment-id=000500020000,timestamp=2017-01-18T00:46:38.634+0000)

As a riven main, please stop spouting bullshit.

As an educated man, please learn to spot sarcasm.

TheOneTrueBrandJan 17, 201728 votes

Its just another example of riot blatantly playing favorites.

"Teemo gets his passive AS .4 seconds sooner than he should in a bush? GAMEBREAKING ISSUE DISABLE TEEMO NOW WTF"

"Hey uhh, guys, Riven can now fully ignore CC. You know, the one thing you need to take her down in a teamfight? Should we disable her and actually try to fix her shit code for once?"

"No Ted, this is just... A totally intended feature for the extremely skilled riven mains to outplay their opponents, yeah, thats it."

DengedenJan 17, 20173 votes

"Teemo's passive, which has no CD, is triggering more quickly than it should. We could fix this."

"Riven's E, which has a CD, cancels CC with exact timing. This isn't the only champion where this happens but people hate Riven. Idk if we can fix this."

Lol, fighters are the worst at teamfighting and you're saying BS like "CC is all you have against her"? You do know that she can't cancel slows, right? Just as an example.

Sozan5Jan 17, 201713 votes

While I don't care that much about Riven in general, I just wanted to butt in for this one:

You do know that she can't cancel slows, right?

She's been doing that since always. Dashes are a natural counter to slows (since they aren't affected) and she got 4. On a rather short cd too.

DengedenJan 17, 20172 votes

Trueee but using her main damage source to cancel slows, in a teamfight/siege scenario no less, seems to make her a bit of a cannon minion.

ShynkleJan 17, 201712 votes

Since when does her E deal damage?

Faceroll TacticsJan 18, 20175 votes

Since when does her e cover the ground needed to get to her target?

If squishies are playing that close to you they deserve to die

BastionKrossJan 17, 201722 votes

I remember back in season 5 or 6, when Sion had a bug with his ult. It went a little something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYDZFIT4NwA

(For those of you who are lazy, you could stutter the Sion ult to make it control much easier) Riot responded with two things:

Disable Sion.
Perma ban players that abused the bug.

For 2, refer to this thread: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/tips-tricks/RE7XxFM8-dont-use-this-sion-ult-mechanic-or-youll-get-banned

From which I quote Riot WookieeCookie directly:

I say this, because there may be points in the future where a bug or unintended interaction is accidentally added to the game which could provide an unfair advantage to players. We do reserve the right to permanently ban any player who exploits this interaction to their advantage. An example of that could be the ZZ'rot's portal bug back in January. Were a player found to be using it to purposely win games, they would be removed. However, a player who accidentally triggered it would be safe.

When can we expect a mass perma banning of Riven mains?

Xela SyabJan 17, 201720 votes

Apparently she can remove disables, riot has no power over her now.

General Esdeath Jan 17, 20177 votes

Riven I am awakened

Riot: She's learning

what you deserveJan 17, 20174 votes

because it's hard to do

Lord MalpercioJan 17, 201744 votes

{quoted}

because it's hard to do

I laughed because cancels are not hard to do.

BIackfoxJan 17, 20176 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lord Malpercio,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=LjX1bWNy,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2017-01-17T13:11:54.234+0000)

I laughed because cancels are not hard to do.

Then do it and climb and abuse it