A Different Look on Balancing Riven

Wicked Waffle·9/7/2015, 1:46:07 AM·4 votes·405 views

I see a lot of threads discussing how to balance Riven, so I'll add mine to the ever growing list.

Remove Riven's animation cancelling
Scale Riven's Q animation based on her attack speed and ultimate cast time based on her attack speed. This weakens Riven's early game, but allows new Riven players to prosper without doing the weird animation-cancelling technique, which is more of a bug than an actual feature. Simply by building attack speed, you can easily perform the three Qs faster than before.

Disclaimer: I am not a Riven main, nor am I trying to be one

6 Comments

67chrome9/7/2015, 1:54:21 AM3 votes

This weakens Riven's early game, but allows new Riven players to prosper without doing the weird animation-cancelling technique, which is more of a bug than an actual feature. Simply by building attack speed, you can easily perform the three Qs faster than before.

Animation canceling was actually an intended feature Riot specifically added and mentioned in the patch notes.

Also - why should Riven have a weak early game? One thing I really like about her ATM is that, as the lone-wolf top-lane 1v1 duelist class (Fighter), she's actually really solid when you're a lone-wolf/top-lane/trying to 1v1 when everyone's split up and you can 1v1.

It's kind of annoying playing a fighter like Aatrox that's not super great early-game and easily bullied by ranged champions like Ryze or Vlad just because range offers a huge advantage when dealing with tower aggro and minions. Then you build items and become useful in 1v1 situations when everyone wants to team-fight, which really raises questions as to why you'd even bother when someone like Vlad or Ryze can AoE ~50% of an enemy team's collective health with the same items.

I'd much rather see other fighters get put on Riven's level where it's more a strong early and if you do well you can be solid in team-fights, rather than having useless useful qualities due to conflicting with the game's progression.

Irelia Bot9/7/2015, 1:48:27 AM2 votes

I should send this to a friend of mine who has been a Riven main since season 2.

But she would likely either complain about it or ignore it.

But seriously we have Garen, GP, Fiora,Mord, Darius and skarner creating havoc and you are complaining about Riven...

Mr Broken Wings9/7/2015, 2:00:29 AM2 votes

Lets be real here, riven already is in a horrible spot, she doesnt need nerfs that are directed at better and higher elo gameplay. She actually needs buffs there. And the animationcanceling makes riven riven, you dont change that, it makes her unique and there is no real reason to change that. Its like taking away darius ult, nasus q etc.

Deaeras9/7/2015, 1:48:03 AM1 votes

I'd prefer the animation cancelling because it's such a highly skilled mechanic to learn but I'd take away her ult dealing execute damage and dealing full damage to everything it hits and also making her E ratios less or scale off AP and/or max health to promote tankier builds.