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A Champion Analysis on "Riven, The Exile" and why she's Well Designed

Jaxelo·5/23/2015, 3:16:18 PM·9 votes·1,167 views

In this thread I will be analyzing Riven, a popular fighter with high damage and scaling while also explaining why she is the benchmark for champion balance due to her innate strengths and weaknesses as a champion and why she is one of the most well designed champions to ever enter the League of Legends Roster.

In the first short part here I will be discussing her base stats and what they mean for Riven. I'll start with the basics, Riven is a melee champion with moderate base stats (HP, armor, MR) for a melee champion while having one of the lowest melee movespeeds for fighters at 340 while most fighter peers are 345-350 meaning she will be heavily reliant on in-built mobility. Rivens HP Regen is amongst the lowest of all champions in the game falling below Rengar who has a heal and barely above Gnar who has Mega-Gnar anyways who conversely has the highest HP/5 while in Mega-Gnar for fighters which means Riven must itemize at some point for sustain otherwise she will be left behind by other fighters. This leaves her attack range which is on the low at at 125 meaning Riven has below average base stats overall for a melee champion, however her kit covers a few of these weakness as I'll explain rounding her out.

In the second part I will be discussing her abilities, what they do, how they can be used, and the choices she makes each time she uses these abilities. Lets start with her passive "Runic Blade", each time Riven uses a basic ability she gains a charge of Runic Blade which enhances her next auto attack(s) to deal bonus physical damage this is a great way to encourage combo styled play with Riven as it gives a way to increase her maximum DPS for experienced Riven players who know how to masterfully use her passive to its full potential, the downside to her passive is it has no actual passive use the entire passive only ever benefits her in combat as such its more of an active passive than a real 'passive' passive, so to speak, so if Riven isn't actively using her passive she essentially has no passive adding depth to her kit that separates good and great Riven players.

Next up I will discuss Rivens Q ability, Broken Wings. Broken Wings is a 3 part ability that consists of 2 regular short ranged dashes dealing a small to moderate amount of AoE damage with the 3rd part doing a small-moderate amount of damage with a small knockback. This ability is Rivens outplay bread and butter as masterful use of this ability makes or breaks Riven. Using this ability offensively increases Rivens damage output tremendously when combined with perfect passive usage however to do this usually requires closing the distance using the very same ability meaning to get full use of Broken Wings you need to outplay your opponents positioning which can be hard as the ability is on a 13 second cooldown which means you cannot use it for this purpose early game before you begin to build CDR as it leaves you vulnerable to ganks so a Riven must make proper choices on when to engage or disengage with this spell.

Her W, Ki Burst. Ki Burst is a short ranged short duration stun with a moderately long cooldown early with a low base damage, this ability is best used to keep an opponent locked within a Broken Wings combo to prevent yourself from being kited. Ki Burst is one of Rivens 2 CC abilities that must be used appropriately depending on situation. This gives Riven versatility of choice in a fight and light utility outside of her damage which is a trademark of the Fighter design. Expert usage of Ki Strike will reward great Riven players with favorable trades 9/10 times as it allows her to easily trade back or disengage a bad fight while her cooldowns are down.

Onto her E, Valor. Valor is another mobility spell of Rivens except instead of offensive oriented like Broken Wings it is an defensive focused mobility spell as it grants Riven a short duration shield with a moderate base value further enhanced by her attack damage. This ability will make or break a Rivens early game due to bad health regen and team fight as it is her only defensive ability against targetted spells (her Q and E mobility can be considered decent defense against skillshot oriented enemies). Her only real defensive ability being tied to her mobility is also an incredible drawback aswell as it forces her to use it to close the gap/escape and not get value from the shield, or to save to shield lowering her overall mobility to use when she actually needs it to absorb an ability giving Riven players a hard choice to make. Another well designed part of her E is the fact it scales on her offensive capability since Rivens entire kit is focused on building a strong plethora of AD only itemization with little to no room for defense items but this allows her to do so with less punishment creating a more well rounded kit.

Rivens R, Blade of the Exile. BotE is a steroid plain and simple, it enhances her AD by 20% and gives her more attack range (200 from 125 fixing her low range issue temporarily) while also giving her access to her real Ultimate Wind Slash. Wind Slash is a large frontal cone AoE that does low damage on base values but greatly amplified the lower an enemies health becomes. This forces Rivens to use her ultimate before an engage to maximum her damage however if she misses her melee oriented skillshotdash damage her ultimate does nearly no damage meaning once her ult is up she has to commit to the fight to get the most out of it. Expert usage of this ability can win great Rivens most duels and even team fights but if misused or misfired it'll have little effect for the Riven. Many people will consider Windslash to be too strong for her to have but I have to point out that ADCs such as Jinx also have AoE executes that scale off missing health damage and are also AoE except hers is GLOBAL instead of 900~ range so before you think its too strong please consider its similar rivals.

Now that I've given the Rundown on all of her abilities I will briefly list her strengths and weaknesses on why Riven is a benchmark for champion design.

  1. Clear design as a combo based all-in champion that lacks influence outside her auto attack range barring her long cooldown Ultimate
  2. Lack of passive sustain giving her windows of vulnerability where she must itemize to cover this forcing her to pool gold somewhere
  3. Hard choices to make with offensive and defensive capabilities being tied to her mobility so she cannot have the best of both worlds
  4. Weak against teamfight oriented team comps giving counterplay room against her glass high damage build style
  5. Extremely High Skillcap for Extremely High Reward since her entire kit revolves around being squishy with high mobility and damage

These 5 facts show some essential things that were considered when designing her champion identity as they show she has both strong points and weak points at all stages of the game making her one of the most well designed champions within League of Legends to date.

That was my Analysis of Riven, if you like what you've read remember to please Comment, Like and Subscribe for more daily threads. If you downvote without posting as to explain why, please refrain from doing that. Thanks.

10 Comments

Raja Chachki5/23/2015, 3:24:11 PM8 votes

Um, I think you were in depth...but Riven is a bad example of what Riot has "done right" in their game. This is due to the fact that ANY snowball champion/feast or famine champion is not fun to play with when behind, and not fun to play against when ahead. Riven has some of the highest scaling in the game, especially on that shield, for the fact that it scales on AD. So while she is mostly a balanced champion, and easy to deal with when you know how, she is usually a nuisance for most players. There are other champions that Riot should strive to follow in their footsteps, because they have lots of counterplay, counterbuilding, and otherwise outplay options.

ScruffyScruffz5/23/2015, 6:12:45 PM5 votes

I agree completely

Blade Queen Liss5/24/2015, 12:21:28 AM3 votes

I like this.

DropFill5/23/2015, 4:02:15 PM1 votes

Sorry, but doesn't matter if she has 340ms when she can pretty much use her dashes nearly all the time. A thing I love about riven is her combo playstyle. I don't like champions such as Irelia who explodes you with little effort by not doing much, while riven has to combo. But riven is a pain in the ass to deal with. Being pushed to her side is dangerous because she has the whole lane to jump on you multiple time and, most of the times, out damage you. She can chunk your health down by doing low portions of her combo without taking damage against some champions. She is also wayyyyy too mobile for someone with two CC, and a AD dash scaling shield.

She is not well designed. A example of well designed champion is probably Anivia. She is , IMO, one of the most well balanced champions of the game kit wise. She is only weak because other champions have features that are way too stupid ( AKA mobility creep )

UberAffe5/23/2015, 5:40:04 PM1 votes

Her abilities as a concept along with her base stats are well designed! However, her cooldown remove most of the downsides of using her wrong.

Because of how the timer works on her q she can use it for small trades during laning phase without worry of being without mobility. It has a 13 second cooldown that starts after the first cast which means if played well there only needs to be 5 seconds of downtime where she doesn't have at least 1 of the dashes.

Her w ranges from 11 seconds to 7 second cd which means that even if she used it just before getting ganked it would likely be up again before the gank finished.

Her e ranges from 10 seconds to 6 seconds cd which like her w allows her to use it to engage and disengage shortly after.

I find this to be the most toxic part about riven. Her abilities are very rewarding when used appropriately and by design they would present a large risk if used wrong, but her cooldowns are short enough that most champions and people can not do anything in the small window that they have.

My suggestions to fix her current "best of both worlds" playstyle:

Q: Broken Wings

Cooldown: 15 seconds (begins after the last use not the first use) If damage was dealt to an enemy by any of the 3 uses the cooldown is reduced to 7 seconds

This promotes the use of the ability offensively and in rapid succession while also decreasing her ability to use it defensively.

W: Ki Burst

Cooldown: 15/14/13/12/11 Dealing damage to an enemy reduces the cd of Ki Burst by 1 second

This again promotes the use of the ability offensively, proper use of her q and passive can reduce the cd by 6 seconds, items like Ravenous Hydra could reduce the cd even faster. But while increasing its offensive use she has to continue being aggressive if she wants multiple uses.

E: Valor

Cooldown: 15/14/13/12/11 Dealing damage to an enemy reduces the cd of Valor by 1 second Only gains a shield when the dash ends within 600 range of an enemy champion

The means that she can reposition within a fight and still benefit from the shield but she no longer has the shield while fleeing from battle and similar to the other abilities, she can use this ability well to run away. I mean come on its called VALOR it shouldn't help much if you use it to run away.

R: Blade of the Exile

Cooldown: 160/120/80 If Wind Slash hits an enemy champion the Cooldown is reduced by 30% Giving 118/84/56 Cooldown on live is 110/80/50

This has practically no effect as long as riven hits someone with her Wind Slash

These changes over all can actually make riven stronger in a fight because her cooldowns can potentially be shorter than they are on live but only if she uses them offensively. These changes also remove a lot of riven's ability to get away from a fight which means the window to punish her for misusing her abilities increases a lot while only slightly increasing her potential reward for using her abilities well.

TL;DR IMO Rivens low cd's were the most toxic part about playing against her, increase those and I don't think she will be as large of a problem.

ScreamPaste5/23/2015, 7:43:25 PM1 votes

She really is one of the best designed champions in the game from any objective standpoint, but if you want to convince the boards of that you'll need a fucking space wizard, sadly.

Upvoting you for your work and depth, and also because I agree with you.