Riven Balancing Discussion
Another one! Yay?
Riven keeps becoming an issue, they nerf her softly, then she kinda falls out of favor.... and then she pops right back into one of the most irritating champions to play against in the game.
In my opinion her issue is that she acts like a pure assassin due to how much damage and mobility she has, but because her E freaking scales with AD and is up so often, she can tank more efficiently than any other assassin... She benefits so heavily from building PURE DAMAGE, like an assassin, but she's safer than an assassin and bulkier.
But... she's a fighter. At least, officially. But she can assassinate as well as or better than all the other assassins in the game. She can get in and out extremely easily. She duels way too well. I know she's listed as both an assassin and a fighter but she seems a little too much like the best of both worlds here. If we look at all of the other dual fighter/assassins in the game... she's just so much more efficient in every way. And no one else has a FREAKING SHIELD THAT SCALES BY BUILDING PURE DAMAGE.
If we look at the other assassin / fighters in the game...
Poppy, Yasuo, Fizz, Fiora, Irelia, Jax, Pantheon, Tryndamere, Xin Zhao, Vi, Lee Sin, Kha'Zix, Nocturne, Zed, Talon, Yi, Rengar, Nidalee (Using someone else's list so correct me if I'm wrong here, might be missing some or outdated?)
We don't get any others with quite the level of mobility that Riven has. And I mean, it's fair to say that that makes Riven RIVEN. But all the same... All of the other fighter/assassins have mostly ONE escape spell. ONE tool to get out or protect themselves. Most of these have to be either used to get in or out, as a conscious decision. With Riven she's safe to initiate and all-in, but her all-in spells also get her out just seconds later. She doesn't have to make any real decisions here. And I'm not really trying to get her mobility nerfed, I'm trying to make her more FOCUSED. Why does she have all this mobility to escape but ALSO the only AD-scaling shield in the game? She can already get out. Why does she need such a huge shield? Often times late game you finally think you can get her or focus her down and she's just running away so fast, with her shield so constantly up AND SO BIG for building PURE DAMAGE. But also you can't run away from her. There's no point. And if you think you barely got away, she has a ranged Garen ult for you. She's just too EFFICIENT in my opinion, especially compared to everyone else in her class.
I think that we should push her more towards the Fighter role and less towards Assassin by maybe making it more efficient to build a tanky item or two. Like most of the fighter/assassins. At least the ones with Fighter being primary. I do see Rivens build tankier sometimes but that's only if they're losing, really. But even losing Rivens don't really need to build tanky because you don't need to since building pure damage really just benefits you more.
You can say Riven isn't seeing pro play for a reason, but that doesn't mean she can't be looked at for CHANGES. Maybe some that will make her more viable for pro play, especially in this tank meta, but make her a little less cheesy to deal with for the casual babies. I'm not sure how to accomplish that exactly, maybe make the shield scale off something tanky so you want to build tankier, or... I'm not sure. Some numbers would need to be moved around of course.
She's still not really even the most broken thing out there, but I think Riot has been having so much trouble balancing her that I thought I'd give my two cents on her.
Also please don't say that her shield is the only AD-scaling shield in the game and that makes her "unique" and it makes her HER because no, she's already unique without it, removing that hardly even changes her gameplay, just makes her need to actually THINK more. And just because she's got the only ad shield doesn't mean it's healthy for the game, don't be greedy... RIVEN PLAYERS.
( really looking for constructive feedback more than anything, help me out here )
