Riven has been under-performing for the past 3 patches struggling at a 48% winrate

how do i clímb·4/10/2018, 1:56:28 PM·23 votes·7,013 views

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/riven/all

She's the lowest Winrate bruiser right now. She hovered at 52-53% for a good 2 years and is now down to 48% winrate

Riven hasn't really been all that amazing since the introduction of the new runes system, but the last few patches it has become more noticeable. There are high elo Riven players constantly saying she isn't in the best right now & it is obvious to see why. There is no reason to pick her because most of the other champions with similar playstyles are just better than her.

Why is she bad?

  • She doesn't have a keystone rune that is a "stand out" on her. Every single keystone is just mediocre on her
  • Her itemisation is incredibly weak
  • Her Scaling into the mid-late game is bad compared to every other bruiser.

Rune Choices

One of the big problems Riven has is that she doesn't have a defined keystone rune. Every keystone rune kinda just feels mediocre on her, but there is definitely nothing that stands out.

The most notable thing is that she doesn't have a viable rune in the mid-late game. Other bruisers either either use Conqueror/PTA to maintain their power in the mid-late game ( Irelia Jax Renekton Kled ) or they have true damage/arm pen scalings on their abilities ( Fiora Camille Darius Gangplank Yasuo )

Just to take a look at the runes she can use:

  • Electrocute; This rune is terrible in lane vs bruisers since you cannot burst them & mid-late it is extremely bad.
  • Comet/Aery; Mediocre runes in lane but they fall off way to hard in the mid-late game to be viable.
  • Press the Attack; Riven doesn't auto attack enough to proc the rune.
  • Conqueror; The wind up time is too long for Riven to activate & then maintain compared to other bruisers.
  • Aftershock; The cooldown is too long for her to take the rune & resolve tree just feels horrible on her.

Basically, Riven does not have any way of scaling into the mid-late game


Itemisation

Again over time she has been dealt the back hand with constant nerfs to the itemisation she uses. She relies on armor penetration to deal damage, but with all the constant nerfs to lethality & armor pen she no longer has the damage she needs.

  • Ghostblade; is mediocre but only really purchased due to the active movespeed letting her get onto her targets easier.
  • Duskblade/Edge of Night; are garbage items now & she can't use either well.
  • Last Whisper; isn't even worth buying. The arm pen it gives is so little that even vs a full armor tank it makes little difference.
  • Lifesteal items (hydra/bloodthirster); Virtually useless ever since the introduction of bramble vest/thornmail grievous wounds.

Right now she is in a spot where she either builds full lethality, becomes glass cannon & still struggles to 1 shot the carries or she builds like a bruiser to survive a little longer but deals no damage.

Once again you can see the trend, the items she purchases do not give her good scaling into the mid-late game.


Her decline in winrate is most likely being ignored because the majority of players think she is "OP" due to that one Riven that popped off in their games, but seriously she needs some help. Riven is under performing heavily compared to what she was capable of in the past.

48 Comments

Onecimus4/10/2018, 3:14:58 PM17 votes

Maybe I'm missing something, but why should a high skillcap champion like Riven and Yasuo and Ryze have a higher winrate than 48%? That's why all/most of the high skill cap champions have high winrates and are still viable while low skillcap champions can have high winrates and be about average.

Anyone can tell you that a winrate does not tell the whole story.

But maybe I'm missing something.

xelaker4/10/2018, 4:02:27 PM8 votes

[sg-lulu] I'm a little ok with this.

Tegash4/10/2018, 2:27:41 PM6 votes

48% winrate since new runes is not struggling. Especially now that the addition of Conqueror has made it to the game. That would be like saying 52% winrate is busted AF. And yet everybody on Boards complains that Janna, Shaco and Udyr are "weak and in need of buffs" despite having 53%.

Ivern has had a concrete winrate of about 46% since the removal of windspeaker's. Gragas currently has a winrate of 43% (although with the ap scaling damage reduction this might change).

Volibear at his WEAKEST dipped below 30%.

48% is not struggling. I agree that Riven is in a weak spot and the current item setup is unhealthy for her, but please do not overstate the problem.

TyroneWatermelon4/10/2018, 4:02:30 PM5 votes

This is the type of champions imo can stay underperforming forever and i couldn't care any less, along with Yasuo, Zed, Fizz, Vayne, Katarina, Fiora, Kha'zix and Rengar. awfully kills the entire gameplay experience to play against them that much that it will be better to leave them underpowered to prevent all the kids from picking them every game.

DollaMenunaire4/10/2018, 2:29:49 PM4 votes

Good.

Chalseu4/10/2018, 3:57:12 PM4 votes

Ever since patch 5.22 it had been going downhill. Just check the patch notes, worst patch ever.

Riven's itemization is gimicky in my opinion, she isn't a laning phase character anymore. I remember reading somewhere that Riven doesn't hard win any matchup, and I get behind that.

Back in the day (season 5, maybe season 6 ish at the latest) Riven was most often acting as a burst character, with bruiserish aspects as secondary. Essentially a damage focused, bursty melee bruiser. Well, I say bruiser because she built some defense in the items. Nowadays, she is much more of a bruiser that goes for extended fights. And a champion that primarily builds damage, goes for long fights, and doesn't have much defense usually fails. There's a reason Jax isn't build full damage every game, because it just doesn't fit the "extended fight" one

People will say I rant a lot about this, because I have complained about Last Whisper before, but the changes to LW in the marksman update marks a big milestone for a lot of AD characters and casters. I remember LL Stylish mentioning that Zed is only the shadow of himself (no pun intended), in the past he had a lot of possibilities but nowadays it's just the same thing every game. Who builds Last Whisper nowadays ? The only circumstance building it isn't bad is to complete Mortal Reminder. Who builds Ravenous Hydra consistently nowadays apart from niche champions? It used to be way more of a staple.

Before 5.22, old LW and Brutalizer were all the armor pen assassins needed. Those and maybe some armor pen runes allowed them to get all the armor penetration required, and so could itemize with more diverse, non penetration items. Scimitar, BT, Ravenous Hydra, sometimes IE (youmuu's gave crit), Blade or the Ruined King ... You name it. Every AD assassin going the same 3 first items every game nowadays (youmuu's, dusk, cleaver) ... Where is the diversity? Of course there had a price to be paid, if an AD assassin went with armor penetration runes, they essentially gave up a significant amount of laning phase kill pressure ; if they were a jungler (Rengar, Kha ...) they gave up clear speed / healthiness in the clear.

The changes to the armor penetration ecosystem over the years (change of Last Whisper with induced changes to Maw and Youmuu's, then introduction of Duskblade, more changes in the assassin update ...) brought AD casters and assassins in the place they are today. The current state of the game makes it so that, to get a significant amount of armor penetration, you have to commit in 2-3 items a minima, while it is very easy to get some armor to counter it for all kinds of targets: tanks get tank items with lots of armor, carries can get Zhonya's, Tabi, GA. The recent nerf to Tabi did A LOT of good to AD assassins and casters (even though it's not enough), and that's only 10 armor going away. That goes to show how sensitive this group of champions is to their target's armor and their ability to ignore it.

The problem right now is that there are too many items that offer flat armor penetration. That means that if the system is changed so that AD casters/assassins only need 1 or 2 cheap items to have a significantly high amount of penetration, they can always keep on stacking other penetration items and have stupid burst. The game needs a middle ground where assassins get a fairly good amount of penetration quite early on in their item build, but can't stack penetration ever more so that the defensive options they might want open up.

Now is there a solution to this ?

An idea I just had while writing this would be to orient the domination tree (oriented towards helping burst champions) towards adaptive penetration in some way, or rework some rune slots into things that interact with penetration in different ways than sudden impact does. I don't know, Domination first row has only 2 runes so there's a gap to be filled ...

Another idea I had comes back from when Lethality was introduced. Before actually publishing the details of how lethality functions, I made a guess saying that flat armor penetration would be replaced by moderate amount of % total penetration. The problem with flat pen is that it was too feast or famine: either you got penetration before the enemy natural armor scaled enough and so it was super good, or you got it too late because you were behind and it was a bit underwhelming. Having a moderate amount (between 10 and 15%) of total armor penetration on each penetration item would have solved that issue (because by definition it scales with the target's armor) AND would also solve the issue AD Assassins / Casters were going through ever since the changes to LW in marksman update.

Wow that's a lot of text, didn't expect to write that much. Well if you read it all, thanks for your attention :)

Tomosima4/10/2018, 4:13:45 PM4 votes

Please Riven main just stop and show yourself out.

FrostQueensPlane4/10/2018, 2:38:45 PM4 votes

Stop

Ahristocats4/10/2018, 2:59:58 PM4 votes

conqueror is shit and failed to fixe the toplane

4 sec delay is a terrible joke

Sir Fabi Of The4/10/2018, 3:01:35 PM4 votes

It should be added/noted that the gutting of early CDR has made her early incredible weak on top. Riven used to start off with a bare minimum of 10% cdr, sometimes even 20% (Runes+Masteries) which would quickly be stacked by a brutalizer(RIP) or early game warhammer that builds into GB (Which was a viable item back then) or Black cleaver (Which was changed to an awful build path)

Little Padawan4/10/2018, 9:12:09 PM3 votes

[{quoted}](name=how do i clímb,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=gcGgpLfo,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-04-10T13:56:28.339+0000)

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/riven/all

She's the lowest Winrate bruiser right now. She hovered at 52-53% for a good 2 years and is now down to 48% winrate

So I opened your link. Swapped Global for Diamond+. Winrate went from 48 to 50. Then I swapped from all regions to only NA, and she's sitting on 52% there with a decent play rate %.

High skill cap that's all, she's still a strong champion.

Apocalypsic4/10/2018, 4:08:52 PM3 votes

After 1.6 million mastery on Riven over several years albiet playing mostly in norms I can say confidently I'm moving to Irelia. Riven is an absolute chore to carry with now and I feel even after her nerfs that Irelia is so much more flexible and satisfying to play and carry with.

Sasogwa4/10/2018, 1:59:41 PM2 votes

Which source do you have? I see around 49% winrate accross elos in Korea

Step Sis Lux4/10/2018, 2:01:32 PM2 votes

44% where? any ss? cuz i see 49

Serevas4/10/2018, 2:13:43 PM2 votes

You know I may be way off base because I haven't played Riven in quite some time, but I was under the impression that effective Rivens weave auto attacks in between their abilities through animation cancelling. Hence why she has an up to 50% bonus AD scaling on auto attacks after using abilities through her passive. If that is the case still, then I fail see why PTA is not a viable option for her. It's only 3 autos on the same target.

Additionally I see Viper, who is considered to be one of, if not the best Riven in North America taking Conqueror into most lane matchups.

Ignika D4/10/2018, 3:02:39 PM2 votes

well top lane cant be only bad things

not seeing some champs viable makes us happy [slayer-jinx-wink]

Jack Garrus4/10/2018, 3:11:05 PM2 votes

I don't call it 'low winrate', I simply call it 'karma'

All in or virgin4/10/2018, 4:54:15 PM2 votes

Maybe its also worth mentioning that through the dropping playrate mostly dedicated rivenmains play her and thus the winrate was rising again from 44% to 48%. Its still a joke that even experienced rivenmains dont manage to get a winrate better than 50%.

Shadow Hazard4/10/2018, 5:26:12 PM1 votes

Why wasn't black cleaver mentioned with items?

Radiant Wukong4/10/2018, 5:50:58 PM1 votes

Electrocute/Predator Riven with item 3147 item 3142 item 3074 item 3812 item 3117 item 3814 to absolutely destroys enemy backlines.

Ultîma4/10/2018, 4:47:23 PM1 votes

Sorry to play devil's advocate here OP, but Riven has one of the steepest learning curves in the game on par with Ryze and Azir, which means her winrate will always be sub-50% if she's ever in a balanced spot. Some Challenger players are still notorious Riven 1-tricks who absolutely destroy any matchup they're in due to how they've mastered her mechanics, combos and animation cancels. Moreover, Riven still has a pretty respectable pick rate hovering around 4% with player mastery bringing up her winrate to about 54% after only 50 games. If Riven was brought up to a point where she had a winrate above 50% overall she would be disgustingly broken in high elo.

Thylas4/13/2018, 3:01:41 AM1 votes

Totally Agree with you, thanks for the thread. @Riot please do something. The Meta as Riven OTP is actually depressing... I mean, almost every Champ outdamages,outtanks,outsustains,outscales a Riven. You have to play perfect to be equal with other meta champs (camille,jax,trynd,sion,maokai,irelia,kled, singed) , and with perfect i mean master/challenger level.. summoner 3