The real issues with rivens kit and why it needs to be rework or heavily tweaked.

Hello, this article will be quite long bear with me.

My in game username is Eternal Darkness here is my account link to show im not bad at the game and have some in game knowledge and credibility and not just some rage post. http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=Eternal%20Darkness
http://www.lolskill.net/summoner/NA/Eternal%20Darkness/summary Im a diamond 2 top Rek'Sai main and over the course of my rise from silver 5 at the start of season 4 to d2 now in mid season 5 ive gone vs countless riven players both good and bad to access the issues lying within rivens kit and why it needs to be addressed in order to improve the general balance of the game.

Riven is frankly one of if not the best ad melee champions in league and its amazing how she has yet to be a mainstay pick amongst every division given the tools given to her in her kit so we shall go through them 1 by 1 and address her kit in comparison to champs similar and how theyre gated in ways riven is not. Alright "lets do this" -Jax

Passive: this one is quite alright even with her kit. its basically a combination or blade and spell weaving from the offensive mastery tree put into a passive optimizing a high risk high reward style where the more spells that are thrown out helps optimize her dps and burst potential while giving vulnerability as she lacks the ability to disengage should her opponent turn onto her which allows her to fit her theme of being a high pressure champ and forces smart decision making. Something that her kit otherwise lacks. Overall im satisfied with her passive and it promotes a good theme for her.

Q: Oh jesus do we really need to go into how unfair of an ability this is? This ability could be a entire champions basic ability spell set and would still be one of the most efficient kits in the game. The problem with this ability is how damn overloaded this is. you can get everything with it, damage? check. mobility? check. AOE for teamfighting and waveclearing? check. Those attributes to the ability are fine i mean we have renektons E which is a similar ability. The issue with it is the lack of meaningful play around combating it. After all she is a champ only gated by cooldowns so it should mean that if she misuses the ability you have a window to go in on her with less "charges" of the ability up right? WRONG the fact that it starts cooldown on its first use is a big issue with this ability. "what about renektons E?" renektons e like rivens both have a 4 second duration where you can recast the ability again and failure to do so results in it going on its cooldown from when first used. Given rivens kit however shes a champion thats gets a extra "charge" of the ability and isnt gated on enemy unit collision like renektons is. In doing so counterplay right here is removed, she cant be punished for misusing an ability simply because she has a further 8 second zoning capability with the ability before it goes on cooldown which only gives a 5 second window for you to go in. BUT WAIT, maxing out 40% cdr on her puts this at a 7.8 second cooldown therefore being able to permanently keep this ability up at all times for either zoning purposes or simply by keeping her passive stacked up to 3 charges in case of dueling. That would be fine for late game seeing as it gives her strong late game scaling and options for HERSELF. What exactly does it open for the opponent? having to wait for a riven to not look at the timer to press a q again? Where does that leave room for her opponent to outplay or have any meaningful options to combat her other than being stricly stronger than her in a 1v1 with 0 outplay potential. I could go over her 3rd Q which ill delve into later. but a wall hoping AOE HARD CC with as much utility as a rek sai unburrow is a big NONO RIOT. However with it being VERY VERY STRONG it is one of the few things in rivens kit that has counterplay seeing as it CAN be canceled in both cc and damage. Rek'Sai unburrow for example negates the 3rd q entirely.

W: Least broken ability in her kit but is very underwhelming, press it and BAM aoe damage and stun for .75 seconds. The only thing thats unfair is the ability to animation cancel so well with her abiltiys and her inevitable hydra which riot has stated was not meant to be in her kit but I digress. Counterplay in this ability? None for you having the ability to close all the distance in the world with her mobiltiy ensures you cant avoid it. This ability also raises a question of why she has so much cc in her kit? compared to other early game powerhouses such as Rek'Sai and renekton having only 1 form of cc, the former having a 10-8 second window in which it cant be re used on another champion. And the Latter having it be longer than the other 2 BUT requiring fury and a longer cooldown than the rest of it while only being single target. Perplexing given she has 2 AOE hard cc abilitys with a larger radius than the first example and more targets affected with both considered.

E: This ability is a great ability overall. Having several uses in both escaping and engaging to distance yourself from the opponent or close the gap, while the sheild helps reduce harass when escaping or negating counter attacks when going in for a trade. I wont delve into this ability much but I will refer to this more as I ask questions regarding balance issues with it overall.

R: Next to her passive another healthy aspect to her kit. The ability itself isnt broken nothing of it screams a lack of counterplay except a range increase on her abilitys which will be addressed later. Clearly shown on the animation and her sword color and size, as well as the missile speed reduction allowing mobiltiy to outplay or activate defensive abilitys to reduce or negate the damage with more uptime while remaining capable of hitting especially withits long range and massive cone given to the ability.

Now onto the part of asking questions of her kit and why its unhealthy.

1. Why is riven a champion given all these tools with an offensive nature given to her yet EVERY SINGLE ONE has a level of defensive properties that even some utility spells cant even match?

Along with Damage every aspect in her kit gives some sort of defensive capabilitys with her so lets break it down with each ability shall we?

Passive: Since this is basically a 0 cd weakner sheen it still gives amplified lifesteal when built seeing as thats a important stat on riven to get

Q: 3 dashes accumulating a distance of 780 units with the capability of wall hopping and having a AOE knockup and slight displacement attached to it.

W: Instant AOE stun thats .75 seconds

E: 325 unit dash that generates a shield lasting 1.5 seconds non decaying.

R: Increases her W radius by 10 units and her 3rd Q Konockup/displacement by 50 units while increasing the shield value due to 20% increase of ad.

Are you willing to tell me that thats healthy for a champion to have along with all her damage it necessary to have all these defensive properties in order to survive when behind?

2. Why is it that her kit has all the aspects of a bruiser, is being build as a straight ad & cdr stacking assassin, has had all these issues that have led to repeated nerfs and havent resulted in changes made to her kit to make her more balanced in general?

3. Given all her single target burst why is all her damage post hydra put into a aoe fashion?

4. For how hard her scaling is due to extremely lower cooldowns and great ad ratios on every ability why is she granted very strong early game power through her CC being static durations, manaless and not gated by energy either, and due to lack of items, autos being very strong especially since she can reset them instantly by clicking on the target, clicking on the ground and re-clicking on their target.

5. I know this is asked all the time but needs to be addressed. Why does she have a sheild that scales off ad and further by her ultimate?

And my last question asked before I suggest some changes to give a sense of direction she could be moved into.

6. Why is the only thing thats given counterplay to her is the player itself? Seriously looking at her kit it lacks meaningful counterplay of almost any kind other than her skillshot ult which can be dodged, all her damage otherwise is a instant cast in a AOE around her which is granted to be much easier due to her hyper mobile kit and cc to lock her opponents down in order to keep them inable to escape from her.

Now you might say "just cc her and she can be easily killed". Granted focus firing a squishy champ with hard CCs in order to kill them in fact does work. However lets look at a EXTREME BALANCE ISSUE currently and that champ is none other than ryze. Ryze is a champ that strictly at any point in the game can auto win a trade simply with his passive going off and enough mana to 100-0 you at almost any point in the game with little counterplay, suffering from almost the exact issues that riven has. A lack of ability to outplay the damage. Having a odd amount of defensive capabilitys in order to escape lots of scenarios, in ryze case spell vamp, movement speed, ranged root, a sheild scaling on mana which is a offensive stat used on ryze, and spellvamp from his ult increased by the MR shred on his E. Know whats forced him to be perma banned? The fact that the only surefire way to make him out of the game is by camping him into OBLIVION or stacking enough hard CC so he dies before he gets his damage off so quickly and unfairly you cant react to it.

Trying to find the game and quote is almost impossible in my time but Ryze was picked I believe in the LCS a few weeks ago when he was seen to be super broken with his now gone perma root capabilitys and they said "If the only way to deal with the champ is to hard cc him until he dies, we have a serious issue with their balance" and the same rules apply to riven too.

How to improve riven and give her a sense of direction (in my opinion)

After all the issues ive stated with her kit in my eyes it wouldnt be fair to dump these issues on riot and say "here, fix this crap or QQ more". I like the general concept of riven in fact a balanced state of her in similarity already exists in that of Lucain. A champ that uses spells and mixes autos with them with high mobility and trading to assert dominance over his opponent and has early game power and scaling to make him feel useful at every point in the game. Balanced by his mobility tied into only 1 spell and his 2nd (the W mark) being able to be countered by slows to negate the bonus, attack speed slows since he cant refresh the mark quicker, having his damage abilitys all skillshots with capability to avoid all of them. Has clear vulnerabilitys due to a lack of defensive properties overloaded into offensive ones as well as his defensive ones not being on par of those of tank champions.

I find making her basic abilitys do reduced or taking away damage on say her q entirely, and moving them into her passive which would make her a mobile auto attacking caster that can be countered the way most auto attacking champions come. she would also gated by items in the sense she cant auto attack faster with attack speed. But on the other hand needs cdr in order to keep her sustained damage going, which is where I at least think her kit should be directed into.

Aside from making her autos do more damage and is just a glorified melee lucian. I think a characteristic of udyr as wel where after using an ability it augments her passive into adapting her next insert amount of further autos to have corresponding attributes to her kit.

In doing so it would have to open certain weaknesses in her kit while a ability is down so she is not able to just overpower you or kite around with her remaining abilitys are off cooldown.

Thank you for reading all of this I'm sure it was tiring, But I hope you take what i have to say into consideration. I find Riven is a problem champion and I wanted to break down issues of her kit and how to give a sense of direction in where to go. Thank you for your time again, if any question feel free to either message and ill try to respond or send a Friend Request to my In game username: Eternal Darkness and ill try to respond.