Skip to content

@Riot Don't change Riven

Cinderhulk Riven··18 votes·2,036 views

Riven is one of your most successful and popular designs, who has remained so even when considered unviable. Do not change her.

https://twitter.com/ricklessabandon/status/648750188471816193

Do not let this guy remove depth from her. Do not let the boards colour your views of this champion. Do not change her.

Edit

Now that I have seen the changes, I feel even worse than I did before. Please do not waste effort on changing a champion who is good where she is.

29 Comments

Hayaishi211 votes

Successful design doesn't mean it's healthy. If Riven isn't nerfed because "lel popular" unnerf everyone else.

Cinderhulk Riven6 votes

To be clear, when I say successful, I do mean she is a healthy and well designed champion. Her kit inherently gives outplay potential to even relatively immobile opponents because her Q is both interruptable and locked at a fairly low speed (450 units/s, some champs move faster with moboes for example). Without it she is extremely vulnerable. She is also one of the most interactive laners in League.

In the hands of new and inexperienced players she is fairly weak, but is managable to learn and scales well with experience, she has clear strengths and weaknesses, is easy to counterplay, counter build, exhibits none of Zileas' anti-patterns, but any objective stand point she is a huge success.

Her kit also fits her lore and archetype really well, as an all or nothing soldier who is driven by her convictions. Best of all she's extremely fun. Rickless Abandon needs to not change a champion with a large and dedicated fanbase, there simply is no point to it. If we need a champion like what he would make, then we can have a new champion, Riven is Riven.

Hayaishi24 votes

[{quoted}](name=Cinderhulk Riven,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=j6B4ztvr,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2015-09-30T03:51:07.861+0000)

To be clear, when I say successful, I do mean she is a healthy and well designed champion. Her kit inherently gives outplay potential to even relatively immobile opponents because her Q is both interruptable and locked at a fairly low speed (450 units/s, some champs move faster with moboes for example). Without it she is extremely vulnerable. She is also one of the most interactive laners in League.

In the hands of new and inexperienced players she is fairly weak, but is managable to learn and scales well with experience, she has clear strengths and weaknesses, is easy to counterplay, counter build, exhibits none of Zileas' anti-patterns, but any objective stand point she is a huge success.

Her kit also fits her lore and archetype really well, as an all or nothing soldier who is driven by her convictions. Best of all she's extremely fun. Rickless Abandon needs to not change a champion with a large and dedicated fanbase, there simply is no point to it. If we need a champion like what he would make, then we can have a new champion, Riven is Riven.

How is Riven healthy? Or interactive? being melee doesn't mean you're interactive, her trading pattern is almost the same as Renekton who is by all means one of the most oppressive laners in the entire game, she's also resourceless like him, just because she requires mechanics doesn't mean she shouldn't be nerfed.

The point of the change is balance, her playerbase can whine all they want but balance is first.

Cinderhulk Riven7 votes

She's healthy because she has plenty of counterplay, clear windows of vulnerability, obvious strengths and weaknesses, and has to interact with her laner to be relevant.

If the point is balance they should not touch her at all, she's very well balanced as she is.

Hayaishi23 votes

[{quoted}](name=Cinderhulk Riven,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=j6B4ztvr,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2015-09-30T06:51:01.609+0000)

She's healthy because she has plenty of counterplay, clear windows of vulnerability, obvious strengths and weaknesses, and has to interact with her laner to be relevant.

If the point is balance they should not touch her at all, she's very well balanced as she is.

Yes that is why many people call for her head, because she's balanced. I mean they are all haters who simply don't understand the grace of the best designed champion this game has obviously.

Cinderhulk Riven6 votes

Statistics > a board meme.

Statistics say she's balanced. People complain because they lose to Riven. The boards are not evidence, they have and will always complain about what they lose to.

Karn Bishop2 votes

I'd agree with you if Cooldown reduction was not allowed to affect her E at all, at max cd it has like a 2 second CD for a massive shield which eventually causes you to lose trades due to not being able to touch her health pool.

And lets be honest what riven doesn't run CDR Runes + CDR mastery plus brutalizer for almost 100% off the CD she needs by level 6 or 7?

Cinderhulk Riven1 votes

The shield doesn't last very long nor is it very large at the time when it's being used during trades. If her shield CD didn't scale with CDR she just wouldn't be very good. She already doesn't team fight very well, she'd be completely unable to with that change.

At level 6 or 7 with maxed CDR the CD is still 6 seconds, with 1 second duration, giving 5 seconds of vulnerability between uses unless she's maxing it, and in that case she has invested over 2300 gold into CDR, with only 25 bonus AD, and isn't dealing much damage. Unless you've fed her a kill she should be plenty managable.

By the time Riven's sheild CD is low enough to be used more than once during an all in the lane has been decided and trading time is over.

The ability does it's job at all stages of the game. I don't see how that's unhealthy.

Karn Bishop1 votes

On the other hand if you prevented CDR from affecting her E you could keep a strong weakness while allowing her to be buffed at what shes strong at but with a definable weakness of no chain shields.

Weiner the Pooh1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Cinderhulk Riven,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=j6B4ztvr,comment-id=000000000000000000010000,timestamp=2015-09-30T17:24:45.433+0000)

The shield doesn't last very long nor is it very large at the time when it's being used during trades. If her shield CD didn't scale with CDR she just wouldn't be very good. She already doesn't team fight very well, she'd be completely unable to with that change.

At level 6 or 7 with maxed CDR the CD is still 6 seconds, with 1 second duration, giving 5 seconds of vulnerability between uses unless she's maxing it, and in that case she has invested over 2300 gold into CDR, with only 25 bonus AD, and isn't dealing much damage. Unless you've fed her a kill she should be plenty managable.

By the time Riven's sheild CD is low enough to be used more than once during an all in the lane has been decided and trading time is over.

The ability does it's job at all stages of the game. I don't see how that's unhealthy.

riven doesn't team fight well? HAHAHHAHAHAHAHA, everything is aoe.

A Miss Fortune3 votes

I don't think Riven's kit is healthy and I don't think she's a well designed champion. They gave her every single thing besides a heal basically and she has almost no weaknesses as her kit negates them. They made her a squishy melee champion, but she also has a shield that scales off her damage (she can build offensively for a stronger defense), and they also gave her a ranged execute with four low cooldown dashes that have AoE knockup/stun components to them.

Riven needs more weaknesses that aren't so negated by her kit. Letting her get one kill can very easily mean the end of the game and there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

Cinderhulk Riven2 votes

I don't think Riven's kit is healthy and I don't think she's a well designed champion. I disagree. They gave her every single thing besides a heal basically No, no they did not. They gave her a gap closer, a shield, melee range CC, an AA modifier, and an execute. She has no point and clicks, no poke, no safe way to deal damage, no sustain, low base stats, sacrifices some of her damage to use her gap closer, cannot escape once she uses it, and is fairly easy to kite unless she flashes.

and she has almost no weaknesses as her kit negates them.

I'm not sure how, can you give me an example? Her weaknesses seem pretty clear to me. She's melee, squishy, extremely vulnerable during her Q CD, easy to itemize against, has locked MS with her dashes, which are interruptable, can be kited, has no sustain, relies on snowballing to impact the game, and falls off late game/during team fights.

Likewise she has clear strengths, high damage and mobility, very good in skirmishes, strong laning, good roams, etc. This is actually pretty ideal in terms of champion design.

hey made her a squishy melee champion, but she also has a shield that scales off her damage (she can build offensively for a stronger defense), and they also gave her a ranged execute with four low cooldown dashes that have AoE knockup/stun components to them.

Yes, she is a squishy melee champion, and all of those have some way in their kit to keep them alive during fights, otherwise melee champions wouldn't work. Master Yi has untargetability and meditate, Diana has an offensively scaling shield, Shaco has stealth and a clone, Renekton and Nasus have their ults and the ability to build fairly tanky, Irelia has CC reduction, Aatrox/WW/Xin Xhao/Irelia have heal on their autoes, Tryndamere can just straight up not die. Poppy negates the entire idea of a team fight, Fiora can parry almost anything in the game. Etc. Riven's shield is one of the least obnoxious melee defensive steroids in the game, and one of the more fair, on the level of someone like Fiora's; brief mitigation to damage which requires prediction or good timing to get the most of.

Almost every shield in the game scales with offensive stats, so that's normal. Her 4 dashes are more like hops, and together go only a bit further than your standard point and click gap closer, except that she can actually be kited, and if this happens she is in deep trouble, her MS during said dashes is locked at 450 which isn't actually a lot. The stun isn't actually tied to her dashes but yes she has melee ranged stun and knock ups, together they only last about 1.25 seconds if perfectly overlapped, however.

Riven needs more weaknesses that aren't so negated by her kit. Letting her get one kill can very easily mean the end of the game and there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

I disagreee here, as outlined above, and while yes she does snowball well it's pretty easy to stop her and "one kill" is a gross exaggeration. It's pretty simple to switch to a defensive playstyle, build armour, and keep wards down. It's less fun to build that way, but that is how you play from behind against any high damage champion.

A Miss Fortune1 votes

Riven's primary weaknesses are her squishyness and being a melee champion, and to be fair to Riven, those two combined aren't fun to deal with. It means that she has to always put herself at risk in fights, but that weakness is so negated with her insanely high levels of self peel, mobility, and even a free ranged execute that does a nasty amount of damage. If Riven gets ahead her weaknesses are totally nullified, since she builds a better offense for a better defense. Sure you can argue It's easy to itemize against her since she does all physical damage, but it doesn't matter, her AoE stun and knockup makes her viable throughout the game regardless of how poorly/well she does. On top of that, most carries can't effectively build Riven and she'll easily burst them down, she doesn't even have to be fed to do it with her insane damage output combined with her high mobility and AoE CC all on extremely low cooldowns.

Lord Azır9 votes

Yeah Riven being able to tower dive you at level 3 and just shield all the turret dmg is so healthy for the game. You have to play like a bitch and lose out on a ton of cs if you are even remotely countered by her. People complain about Diana when Riven is just Diana with way more mobility a aoe stun and execute. Like what?

Budupops7 votes

riven is my favorite champion and requires a ton of skill. they better not ruin it due to bronze hominid community ragers

DropFill6 votes

Most popular? yes maybe Most successful? not really. Her kit has so many problems, that she needs some work on it. If she snowballs there is nothing you can do, and is not that hard because she just outdamages you with ult every single time it is up.

IneffableAeon6 votes

sigh

Nerfing Riven's passive into the ground will prevent her from trading in lane and is even more difficult against smart opponents who keep distance between you and walk away.

Quite simply, they'll walk away from your Q's while you gapclose onto them which is easier due to her movespeed nerf a while ago. Now you only get ONE passive stack from your gapclosers since they won't stack, and now you can't win the trade with only 1 (2 with your W) passive-empowered autoattack. This will make it impossible to win trades against opponents who have decent movespeed or who start boots (this is also why I rarely lose against Rivens in lane).

Riven's strong early game is all she has. If she doesn't have the ability to manage stacks to get ahead early, she falls off like crazy unlike every other top laner. Besides the fact that managing Riven's passive stacks is one the most interesting and high skill ceiling parts of Riven's kit... Remember the last time that a early game lane bully's passive was overnerfed? Lucian That worked out well, right? Right? :(

GinoSoldier4 votes

I'd just be happy if they removed her animation cancelling with taunts. It's an unintended mechanic and equates to a 'fourth' spell in a way. Just up her damage slightly and scrap that bug.

Cinderhulk Riven3 votes

To my knowledge doing that provides no real benefit, Keyori is out of his mind, lol. I've tried it, I've seen Box Box do it, it just doesn't actually help. It's just a neat trick that looks cool.

KVbqbFsC8e4 votes

I never actually knew there were so many Riven mains on this board. Stuff like "most successful and popular designs" and "requires a ton of skill" actually getting upvoted. Hilarious.

PiVoRx3 votes

yeah dont change her just remove entirely from lol

Caytheles3 votes

I think this is being done to make sure Rivens are abit closer to an enemy. I believe her Kit is needed in the game ofcourse, however gaining free AD just by gapclosing is abit too much, This would Keep riven from being able to be so far away and just q q Q to an enemy, use three stacks, and get out.

I can see where he is going with his Experiment, Trust me it is by no means a Hard nerf, now you will actually have to manage your abilities to output the most damage when trading.

Cinderhulk Riven3 votes

I can see where he is going with his Experiment, Trust me it is by no means a Hard nerf, now you will actually have to manage your abilities to output the most damage when trading.

You already do have to. Managing her passive and not going over 3 stacks is part of being good at Riven. This change would gut her. Riven's animation cancels would all waste passive stacks, she would be unable to trade in lane, she'd have no damage after using her Q's to get close, she'd have no response after dodging CC, she'd be terrible.

Caytheles2 votes

Then i guess you are actually going to have to Walk close to them for once right? so you can use your Q to full potential, maybe use your Dash as an initiation when you get close. Was talking with my friend about this, (she is also a Riven Main) and instead of complaining we talked over a way to make her Stacks still usable and to ALMOST match the damage that she would be doing now. If you are a true Riven main then work it out, We already did.

P.S dont ask, we dont share our strats.

Mr Broken Wings3 votes

I kinda have to agree here, it would be a shame if they would make her simpler, or even nerf her more. She already isnt good, hitting her even more would be just overkill at this point.

Svddenly3 votes

Not saying I hate Riven, but I think OP has some bias. Having Riven in his/her name.

Ràinbow1 votes

Riot doesn't listen to anybody. They do as they please.

Vincent Lucius1 votes

DrMundo ?

Cinderhulk Riven1 votes

Edge. Really?

More from Gameplay

More by Cinderhulk Riven