State of a Riven, Tanks and League

As a Riven main that has been playing her for couple of season, i gotta say that she is in pretty bad place right now. It's common missunderstanding that she is broken or op, but those comments are usually by the ones that don't play her and don't know her weaknesses.

Recently she got a pretty hard indirect buff, which was a nerf/change to Black Cleaver. Now, about this change has been said a lot on RivenMains subreddit, but never here. The change was replacing Warhammer with Kindlegem, which replaced some Ad with Hp+Armor Penetration. The change resulted in her dealing much less damage early, leaving her to scale much harder. This wouldn't be a problem if someone as Poppy, Nautilus, Maokai with high base damage aren't playing against her. They just deal unhealthy amount of damage in the game and not many champions can deal with them. On top of their high damage, they are overall pure unkillable tanks with tons of CC. Of course, this isn't 'that big of a deal' to Riven, cause she still can to some point deal with it, but Riot adding Colossus in the game while Tanks were already a big problem and in the meta for a long time, was a terrible idea.

Why? Well someone like Nautilus with high base damage, 3 spells with CC and 1 spell with a shield, mastery that give shield. Not only that Nautilus can interupt any bruisser to deal their damage, but can kill them fairly easily and with those amount of cc, even let them die to cs. So, is there anything worse than playing Riven vs. Nautilus with 3 cc that can interupt her combos that deal damage and even kill her? Yes, there is.

Riven is a type of champion that leaves all her damage in her auto attacks. After every Q, she will get empowered auto attack. So, you are begining to see where i'm going with it. All her damage comes from auto attacks, but how do you play against someone as Nautilus with shield on his W, mastery Colossus, tons of cc + has rushed Ninja Tabi? You can't.

Seems like Ninja Tabis are abused way more than it should, tanks are rushing them cause the damage reduction has been increased to the point you don't need to get a standard item to win a lane, but just boots. Yes, boots can determine your lane. Poppy is not only her hard counter, but just unkillable since she has her shield on passive which is very low, shield from Colossus, her Q deals enormous amount of damage and has 3 CC abilities. Maokai has a shield on his Colossus, has 2 CC (W + Q), his ult reduces the damage done to him and his allies and with Ninja Tabis, is a monster.

Now, to get back to the Riven. Her Black Cleaver is changed in unhealthy way, cause now tanks can abuse it. Gives more hp, more tankyness and less damage. This change just suits everyone but Riven, cause she doesn't have the damage now to be on the same level as high base damage champions who rushed Tabis. Now Riven has to delay her armor penetration to get the previous item that was part of BC, Warhammer to get some damage. Since 12% of damage reduction on Tabis is now a thing, she needs damage ASAP on lane. Of course this doesn't help a lot, since her Armor Penetration has been delayed to be on the similar level with Ninja Tabis by 1100gold, she can't deal with Sunfire. By the time she can get Black Cleaver, she can be abused on lane.

Build paths are always the topic on RivenMains subreddit, but nobody can come up with a decent build. Her scaling has been pushed late game, while tanks got their scaling pushed early. Lethality has been lowered to the point nobody uses them, and the only time Riven could use this build path was against squishes. If you wanted to win against Riven's Lethality back then, you should have played tanky champions. Cause that build was a one shot and too squishy for her with low Armor Penetration. While this isn't working on Riven anymore, it still works on other champions quite well. (Quinn, Pantheon etc. top)

Ahh yes, i don't know if there is anything more annoting than playing vs Pantheon with his passive that gives him shield that can block an auto attack or a turret shot, while having Ninja Tabis on top of it.

Back to the point, it's not that Riven is strong, she is, but not in this state of the game. She is playing against heavy tanks, bruissers etc. and you reduce the damage on her core item, the only item that could help her. It's getting boring seeing this meta for 2 seasons already and i don't know what you did to mess up this badly so you can't reverse it, but enough is enough. In almost every game you see the stats from pro matches, from solo Q matches, and in every game "Tanks dealt the most damage + Tanks have taken the most damage". This is a mind blowing fact that you can be both at the same time. This is not normal. Isn't this alarming to you and not showing you that there is something wrong?

I mean this isn't just about Riven (Yes, mostly it is, but..) it's about Mages, ADCs. Back in the day when i started playing, top were pure tanks which were in the game just to take as much damage as they could, Mid and Adc dealt the most damage etc. Mages can be still in the same damage dealt zone, but ADCs have become so irrelevant with their damage done, that nobody plays an ACTUAL ADC, but rather Ziggs up until recently.

This isn't the same game as i knew and as much as one is trying to adapt, the changes are constant and not small.