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Some Riven balancing ideas

John Berserk·7/16/2015, 2:12:46 PM·3 votes·997 views

When I first started playing League back in late 2012, the first Champion I fell in love with was Riven. She's still one of funnest Champions to play for me, but I haven't actually played her in a very long time due to the stigma that seems to come with it (also thanks to the fact that I've migrated to the bot lane for the most part). Typically peer pressure doesn't get to me, but the people that are so outspoken against Riven's mere existence have succeeded in getting me to not play one of my favorite Champions, even in bot games.

I do acknowledge though that her laning phase can be a bit oppressive at best.

So, as a Riven main of the past, here's a few things I'd like to suggest to make her less of a headache to play against (PLEASE NOTE: I haven't touched Riven in a pretty long time, nor have I payed that much attention to all of the QQ threads about her, so forgive me if some or all of my suggestions miss the mark in what really makes her oppressive):

  • Change her Runic Blade (Passive) so it doesn't just add a percentage of her AD as bonus physical damage to her AA's, but instead make it so it gives her a flat amount of bonus phys. damage (+ some percentage of her AP) on each hit. (I can smell the Trinity Force/Lich Bane builds from here)

  • Change her Ki Burst (W) from a stun to a root that also cancels channels. This would still keep her enemies from leaving should they get too close, but also allow them to at least continue attacking.

  • Change her Valor (E) from scaling off of her AD to a flat amount for every nearby enemy champion + a percentage of HP, AP, literally anything that isn't her AD, so her 1v1's aren't so insane. Nothing wrong with being a good duelist, but rewarding the player with more practical HP by having them build AD on an AA-focused champion who already has 3+ damaging spells that scale OFF THE SAME STAT makes no sense. Too much reward for too little cost.

  • Change her Wind Slash (R2) so it's a little less instant (yes it has a missile speed but it's practically an instant aoe cone execute). Give it a short channel time, plus maybe some kind of visual indicator (maybe the wind starts blowing around Riven as she channels or something...which reminds me she needs particle updates too...and a model update).

  • Clean up her animation cancelling. It can get a little crazy.

So, thoughts? More suggestions on how to fix Riven? And no, "delete her" is not an option. Go whine in one of the other 10+ Anti-Riven threads on the front page.

16 Comments

MadmanWithBox7/16/2015, 2:19:22 PM2 votes

Don't play a squishy against her, and build armor instead of damage.

AyRe CoNteMpT7/16/2015, 2:37:20 PM2 votes

i dont think riven needs much changing. the slower projectile on her ultimate allready did some good against the cheesing potential.

really what i would like most to see is her broken wings to go on cooldown after the LAST cast and not after the FIRST one because right now, she can Q (wait 4) Q (wait 4) Q. this leaves her Q at 5 seconds cooldown and now what happens is this: you get knocked up 1 second, you get stunned 1 second and she can stick to you/absorb your damage for another 1.5 seconds with her shield. lets say in between Q and stun she gives you another 0.5 seconds so you cant finish your auto attack but still wastes your time, now this is a total of 4 seconds and her Q is allready back up and ready for another combo + knockup + ult. this is the true problem. she never really gives you a window of opportunity because her Qs cooldown can be mitigated too much.

i would probably lower her Qs cooldown by 3 seconds (10 at all ranks) but make it only start its cooldown after the last cast, so if she combos you right away or uses it to run away, its still the same / even a bit better, but she cant super-cheese around anymore and its clearer when she is vulnerable and when not.

anything else really is just cry cry because she truly isnt that strongl, some champions outduel and outscale her hard and literally all there is to her is cheesing unaware lemmings.

Posui Gart7/16/2015, 2:16:00 PM1 votes

Make all her animations uncancellable by ANY MEANS. Then buff her Q. Done, balanced

junglerboy167/16/2015, 3:13:31 PM1 votes

I think if they finally removed her animation canceling, she'd be much more manageable. I'm ok with having an AD ratio shield as long as the shield value itself is much lower. 100% bonus AD ratio on a spammable shield for someone who stacks AD is too much, maybe 60% bonus AD could work with a slightly higher base value of 90/130/170/210/250 up from 90/120/150/180/210. This would leave her shield at about 450 shield strength late game (closer to 500 with ult on), where at the same damage values she currently would have 540 shield (630 with ult on). However, if she has a lot less bonus AD (less than 100 bonus AD) this is a buff, so basically it keeps her from falling behind as badly, but also keeps her from getting quite as strong.

Her passive does need to be a smaller ratio and possibly a flat base amount. This would curb her snowballyness a lot, since if she gets behind and can't stack AD, she'd still have at least a little damage from her passive, but also means if she gets ahead, her AD scalings don't send her through the roof in terms of DPS/Burst. I'd suggest a flat 20% AD plus 0/10/20/30/40/50/60. Late game this is a buff to her if she has less than 200 total AD (if she only has Hydra and part of LW+Brutalizer) but a nerf if she has more, which puts a soft cap on how hard she can snowball, while also reducing the chance she gets utterly shut down in lane and forced to rage quit like now (if she has 500 AD, her passive would deal at most 160 damage, as opposed to live dealing max 250 damage). It's a win-win for everyone.

Of course, numbers could and should be tweaked from there (removing animation canceling may hurt her a lot more than we realize) but the general idea of buffing her base values (or adding base values to begin with) and nerfing her ratios is a good thing for everyone, since it helps stabilize Riven's power curve substantially (no more "Riven first blood=lost lane" setups, and no more "You all-ined me and died, so you can't show your face here again" scenarios). It does dumb down her learning curve, but all the high elo Riven mains out there really ought to just suck it up and deal with it (really, they know they're exploiting a broken aspect of the game anyway, rebalancing in the vein shouldn't shock any of them).