I always wondered why Riven players were proven to be statistically 40-50% more toxic than others.

JamesTheMage17·Aug 8, 2016·1 votes·796 views

Does anyone know why Riven players are apparentally more toxic? I do not understand this.

13 Comments

The WhamboozlerAug 8, 20164 votes

Riven has a lot of traits that tend to draw in a certain toxic set of players. Think of the mentality of your traditional toxic jerkass. He wants to stomp everyone, BM, be a massive tool all game, assert himself and wave his E-peen around and generally behave like the online version of a stereotypical school bully.

Well, Riven is a very aggressive champion. He likes that. She's often all-in at level 1 or 2, and if she gets lucky and gets a kill, she snowballs REALLY hard, making all further yolo-aggressive plays MUUUUCH more likely to succeed or forcing the enemy to be super passive and accept her dominance of the lane. She's... NOT hard to play. Oh, she's hard to master... but she's a resourceless burst champ with lots of AoE skills, enough mobility and CC to matter and an execute to make certain she gets the kill. You can faceroll Riven and succeed against poor players, after which she begins snowballing hard. Against poor players, Riven can basically be played as a faceroll machine without a single other strat, tactic or bit of skill or variety in her playstyle and she can do well.

Riven is also flashy. Her animations make her faceroll seem harder than it is. There is also the fact that Riven DOES have a high skill requirement to play at the HIGHEST level (AKA: animation canceling is hard) so there is the mistaken belief that she is a high skill champ. She's not. She's a balls EASY champ most of the time and very few of the toxic kids BMing as her and acting like they're all boxbox can actually play her on anywhere NEAR that level. Most of them are playing her in a REALLY simple and mindless way because she allows that to be successful. A lot of toxic players also pick her because they like to anger people and she's widely hated, so it fuels the fires.

She's NOT really OP tho... just designed in a way that enables the sort of braindead aggression that a lot of these players like. If she FAILS on her first few attempts at early faceroll she's gonna be pissed. If she DIES on her first few attempts to fly at you mashing Q and gives YOU a lead... well... Riven kinda needs that snowballing to matter. A riven who's behind and who can't bully the lane and the game is pretty weaksauce and useless. Since most of them only picked her to be huge bullies anyway, a lot of them will ragequit after their first death or three... often deaths that happen within the first few MINUTES of the game. Her players don't want to play a lane where they themselves have to be passive or intelligently play around a stronger opponent while they look for ways to win via strategy or teamwork. Some of them are simply unable to... and they only know how to yolo. Riven has a VERY high ragequit rate if I recall correctly. Last I remember, it was the highest in the game.

So yeah... she kinda draws in toxic, aggressive wannabe bullies with large egos. She's far from the only one. Personally I almost always find Yasuo and Tryndamere players extremely toxic as well... probably for similar-ish reasons. Her playstyle just appeals to the toxic shitters in the game, and the perception that other people have of Riven as being played by toxic jerks steers other, nicer players away from her because they don't want to be seen as a toxic jerk themselves.

KTAS PhirusAug 8, 20161 votes

As a Riven Main, I can tell that she is not really THAT easy, she's not a "braindead" faceroll champ that Qs into the enemy and wins, maybe at bronze you can hope to win without makin the right comboes, Riven has got an indirect buff some patches ago by the lowered price of BC, but she's still out of meta, you have to play her at least decently to win or you'll die, you can't use 3 Qs into Trynda's face, because you know she will crit you and chase you down to hell, so you have to use your brain, you need to know most if not all the wallhops, train in custom if needed as people discovered jumps where pixels of difference change, animation cancelling is hard to get into, burst comboes(all of this and it's still hard to win sometimes). I mean compared to a Maokai that just jumps on you and smashes your head with a punch it's a lot of difference. And the point where you said that if she gets behind she becomes useless, it's not true if you know how to play just a bit, Riven just needs to farm and will be able to win versus most of the champs 1v1 lategame, obviously it depends by the match, but rarely "you are useless". And I'd add that not all Riven players are toxic, not even a good percentage, your argument is solid, but I think that this is rare to happen. I'd say that the most Riven players just play her for her window of improvement, it's satisfying to be able to pull of some comboes and doing perfect animation cancels. I'm far away from being toxic, still a Riven main, because I like her and her playstyle, probably I would not play League of Legends without her sincerely. Have a nice day :)

The LovelessAug 8, 20161 votes

He said Riven isn't hard to play. Never said she was easy. He also said she's not OP.

KTAS PhirusAug 8, 20161 votes

"Braindead aggression" seems something without a logic behind, so kind of easy. May be a miss understanding. Also I did say she's not OP, instead out of meta, so maybe a lil weak, just if you are a dedicated main you can reach higher eloes(dedicated mains being people knowing her properly, not saying Faker or Huni are Riven mains at all).

The WhamboozlerAug 10, 20161 votes

Don't mistake my words. What I'm saying is that a Riven who is played in a braindead aggressive fashion by the average player AGAINST the average player (average players being bronze and silver for the most part), can do all right due to how strong her kit is about rewarding said early aggression and how hard she snowballs. It's not that the champ does nothing but faceroll, it's that facerolling with her can work at lower levels of play, and those levels of play are the most common sorts of games.

Playing Riven WELL is hard. She's mechanically difficult and at higher elos is a beast in expert hands and a liability in others, but most games are NOT played by or against experts. For the common pleb, she can function as a faceroller, due to her lack of resources, low cooldowns, mobility, snowballing tendencies and powerful damage at very low level. She can also fail dramatically at it, leading to that high ragequit rate. She's NOT Op at all. She just has a lot of factors making her a champ favored by lousy players who play her in lousy ways because her kit CAN succeed despite this.

venomous frostAug 8, 20163 votes

probably because riven's combo looks really skillful, and it looks like you outplay the opponent, thus giving a sense of being better than the enemy i guess. And when you die you think the enemy just has an easy noob champ.

much like yasuo's E dash through minions looks really fancy and skillfull, while in reality you just spam a button with a cool animation attached to it.

redfeenixAug 8, 20161 votes

Well riven is a noxious soldier. Makes sense all the ragers and toxics play noxious champs, and all the paragons play demacians and Ionians

IceemberAug 8, 20161 votes

Just more an ego thing. Like silvers thinking we are better than bronzies. Riven, Yasuo, Azir, and many ADCs have a higher learning curve to them so they tend to think that because they are more mechanically inclined that they are better.

I'm not saying every single one of them is like this but you'll probably encounter a player of one of these champs to be toxic and that would be the reason why.

DunkinNoobsAug 8, 20161 votes

Probably not quite as true anymore; this was more of a thing back when Riven was way more popular, but now Riven is played mostly by dedicated mains. I just don't see that toxicity nearly as much anymore.

MarshbouyAug 8, 20161 votes

It has to do almost entirely with how the champion needs to snowball to do well enough to win. Feeding 1st blood on riven is a lot worse than feeding 1st blood on nasus, or any other champion tbh.

AstôlfoAug 8, 20161 votes

It's less of Riven players being toxic and more of toxic players picking Riven. She's flashy, low-skillfloor, and quite punishing against people who don't know how to play against her. Hence, self-ego boost. Said players are already toxic and can't handle criticism/not doing well. Thus, the statistics.

AptestAug 8, 20161 votes

yes.

It is because Riven wins early game a lot.

The most tilting thing in the game is an upset. When you win and win and win and then stop winning. and lose.

that makes people mad.

happens a lot to "early game cheese" riven.

ScissorsNstuffAug 10, 20161 votes

in short, toxic players tend to have a particular personality type and said personality type tends to be attracted to champions who's playstyle is highly aggressive and bonus points if it has some manner of penile compensation such as large weapons or a really hard attitude