Devil's Advocate(defending Riven)
As the boards know I am a Shyvana main. But uhhhh I wanna talk about Riven. Lessgo.
http://www.champion.gg/champion/Riven
To start out she has among the most experienced playerbases in LoL. Few first time Riven players. Meaning the people who do play her know how to. Despite this she has a fairly aberage win rate that bounces around 48-51% through meta changes and buffs/nerfs. Currently just over 49% win rate.
Her win rate per games played is not all that impressive. Especially when compared to some other skill cap and meta-viable champions.
http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/245353#ranked-stats
This is BoxBox. The fairly famous and arguably best Riven in the world. 58% win rate pn his most played and famed champion. And that is considering he is willing to counterpick, meaning he doesn't often face her worst counters. This is also in challenger, where a lot of her hard counters fall off due to being low skill cap bronzelord champions like Garen or just aren't as common like Darius.
http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/38067920
This is Nowww, not well known but he has the most games played as Riven in NA, yet a 52% win rate. He isn't "complete trash" either. He made it to diamond.
http://www.champion.gg/champion/Riven
Look at Riven's matchups again. She wins some hard. Like vs Trundle, Swain and Vlad. Vlad isn't considered good atm. Swain is not extremely meta. Trundle a fair counter. She counters gnar, cool somebody had too.
But look at who counters her, many strong meta picks like Jayce and Kennen. And some champions outright destroy her(even if not meta) like Quinn.
Maybe she just roflstomps bronze because they don't know how to handle her? http://i.imgur.com/R4VyNFE.jpg Oh wait... they also don't know how to play her...
She performs well above diamond so that is nice. But she doesn't even hit the top 10 until master/challenger.
Why exactly are players in Bronze-low Diamond posting complaints every day about how many dashes Riven gets or her being manaless? She is trash in low tiers of play. Evens out by diamond and only becomes a problem in high high tiers.
Now. If suggestions were "Nerf high tier play by nerfing some specific mechanics only they use" I would be somewhat behind them.
But suggestions are actually "Give her mana costs, nerf her Q cooldown, nerf all her dash ranges and nerf her shield scaling!" Which is just gutting.
Or people who think they are reasonable "Nerf her scalings and cooldowns but buff her base damage, HP and HP regen." Yeh so she can become Tanken, since atm she relies on building tons of AD to be useful she cannot efficiently build pure tank, triforce tank or any of the other Skirmisher tank stuff people QQ about. If Riven builds tank she does no damage and her shield is trash, if she builds AD she does damage but is squish with no internal sustain and her only tanking steroid being a skill based 1.5 second active mitigation.
As she is. She is one of their healthier designs. Bad if you are bad at her. Good if you are good with her. Strong if fed. Weak if shut down. Must build damage to do damage.
Her only major balancing issues are A: She is overtuned in high levels and undertuned in low levels. This is however a systemic problem with LoL balancing in general being balanced around trash to master alike making some champs noob friendly but worthless in high tiers and some champs master friendly and trash in noob tiers with some inbetweeners around.
B: She hard counters a couple champions too hard and is hard countered by a couple champions too hard. Some matchups are just rock-paper-scissors for her. This is true for a lot of champions especially fellow carries and hyper carries.
Overall. Riven does shit in low tiers. Average in high tiers. And too good in the highest tiers. So until you reach tiers where it matters. Suggestions like "Lets give her mana Costs, remove AA cancels, remove wall hopping and nerf her shield CD" are counter productive.
In the end people just enjoy some champions. For their fantasy, their moveset, their culture, their design, their lore, their voice acting, their model. Etc. Try to keep this in mind when suggesting that people's champion should just be gutter or removed. We are all here to have fun.
Thank you for reading.
