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Riven and why she is unbalanced.

Dextix LT·8/8/2015, 4:52:56 AM·7 votes·2,039 views

Hello everyone. I know that this might be a mistake, since from what i saw, NA forums do not want to discuss champions and dowvote every argument instead of answering it. While upvoting ad hominem attacks. I would politely ask you to not initiate add hominem attacks and focus on the arguments. If arguments are refuted, then you can refute the refutations. And so on and so on.....

This is how the discussions work. So please stop with "git gud" and other childish attacks.

Here are my arguments. I know that there is a high chance that most of you will just downvote instead of discussing, but a guy can hope...

  1. Rivens kit has incorporated 3 classes in 1 champion, cc and tankyness from tanks, mobility and sustained damage from fighters, and burst damage from assasins. All of these classes have different weaknesses, for example tanks suffer from low burst damage and bad mobility, assasins are squishy and have only burst damage, without any sustained damage. And fighters, well the specialise either to mobile damage dealers or more tanky damage dealers, with respective weaknesses.

Riven has all of those strenghts of 3 classes in her, which directly counter all of their weaknesses. Making riven a well rounded up champ with no clear weaknesses. Look at all other champs in clasees, they have clear weaknesses which can be said. Riven, doesnt. And her scalings plus an execute tool, is just icing on the cake.

I am not saying that these classes area always like that, i generalise them a bit. But all in all, riven has the tools and the strenght of 3 different classes if you look at her and other champions kits.

  1. For the power she has, she is too easy to play. Look at every champ, those who require more skill, have the most power, a good example is yasuo or xerath. Both have high skillcaps, and reap huge rewards. Riven however, without having the required skill, reaps big rewards herself. Oh i know what you are going to say, that she requires skill. Please, get real. No other people than riven mains think that riven is hard to play, she really is not. Her kit makes her safer from ganks than many other champs and allows her lane dominance, and her scalings make sure that even if she does bad, she will still be usefull. She has far too many tools and she can utilize them in various situations safely.

And no, animation canceling is not a hard thing, i do it every fcking game, with every fcking champion. It is not that hard, and it is essential in higher elos.

Also, about her "Skillcap", please look at all those videos where people manage to make incredible "plays" just by fcking around. I saw players dominate with riven while only using the fcking mouse and thats it.

  1. Riven is more or less classified as a fighter, even if her kit consists of 3 other classes. Well lets discuss her shield now. You see, every other fighter, needs to buy defence items, expensive ones. Even master YI, has to buy a randuins to play well and deal most of his damage. Why is that? This is because most fighters have sustained damage, and to deal it they need defences, and since they dont have innate defences of their own, they need to buy items. Riven on the other hand, doesnt. She has both burst and sustained damage, and not only that, her defence ability scales from ad, her favorite stat. Meaning, that she can build full ad, and yet have good defences. She can have over 500 hp shield on 3.8 seconds notice, during 1.5 of which she is shielded. It is a spammable ability. Not only that, but it also gives her a dash to boot.
  1. Unless you are countering her, a riven with equal skill, will beat anyone. Her kit is specifically designed for lane dominance. That would not be so bad, we have darius after all. But even darius has a downside for this dominance. Riven doesnt. When she dominates a lane with her tools she can proceed roaming easier than any other champ (exept for kass and other special cases). And how will she dominate? Well her kit is simple. If enemy champ is melle, she can just cc and outtrade him thanks to her passive, shield, cc and also her damaging dashes. Against ranged skillshot champs, she will just dodge them, and against ranged targetable spells, they are low enough range for rive to attack the caster. Not only that but after lvl 6 she even gets an ability which buffs her even more, and also is an execute.

Now i know what you are going to say. "But garen/darius/volibear/maokai and all other bruisers counter her" Wrong, only darius from that ist counters her, but he counters every melle champ, and sacrifises something for it. I have made calculations on that front and if you want me to show them i certainly can. For example garen, the "great" riven counter fails to outtrade her even with her "shit" early which riven defenders always bring up. The great riven counter is beated by her objectively by counting numbers!

And now before you can state these "counterpoints" let me counter them instantly.

"MUH CC" - Not an argument. Everyone gets fcked by cc. Yes, even tanks. There are only a few exeptions to that rule, but even those have windows of huge vulnerability. Noone can do their job properly when cced.

"NO LCS" - Not an argument. Lcs players play in a completely different league and have different paths and strategies than us. Champions like lee when they were considered weak in the rest of the game were popular in LCS. Why? Because LCS games, at least then were short and lee didnt have any chance to fall off, unlike in the long games in our queqes.

"Not big winrate" - Winrate is not an argument. Winrate is a statistic that is made from over 1000000000 different variables. Even 1 mouse click by 1 player can impact the game with a butterfly effect. It is an innaccurate statistic, and it doesnt show the power of the champion or how good people are with it. Let me remind all of you that LB had a 45% winrate when she was in her broken state. Does that mean she should have received buffs and not nerfs?

**And now for the numbers, this is one of the Riven x Garen match ups. And as you all know garen is listed as one of the best riven counters out there. **

Here, all the calculations, in this scenario its at level 3.

Okay, lets do some calculations.

Riven is level 3 with plus 15 ad runes starting with longsword. Riven, hp 685, ad 60, armor 29.(base stats). Riven, hp 685, ad 85, armor 29.(Full stats)

Garen is level 3 with plus 15 armor runes starting with cloth. Garen, hp 758, ad 63 armor 31.5.(base stats). Garen, hp 685, ad 63, armor 63.(Full stats)

(Runes standartised because they can have too many variables)

Riven skill damage. Q - "Broken wings" 10+34*3 = 132 ad damage. W - "Ki burst" 50 + 25 = 75 ad damage. E "Valor" 90 + 25 = 115 hp shield.

In the time of garen doing his q/e combo a riven will easily pull off at least 4 aa. Passive - "Runic blade" 85 + 17 * 4 = 408.

Total = 132 + 75 + 408 = 615 ad damage.

Garen skill damage. Q - "Decisive strike" 30 + 88.2 = 118.2. W - "Courage" Passive already calculated in the full stats and active will be calculated in the defence stats. E - "Judgement" 20 + 44.1 * 3 = 192.3.

Total = 118.2 + 192.3 = 310.5 ad damage.

Riven, defence round. 29 armor = 77,519% incoming damage. Garens damage = 240.7. Rivens shield is unafected by armor so it blocks only 115 damage with no reduction applied.

So basically Riven will receive only about 180 damage to her hp.

Garen defence round. 63 armor = 61,350% incoming damage. Riven damage = 292 , garen can use his W, to further increase his defences by 30% for 2 seconds, so 2 aa from rivenbasically are under effect. so the already reduced by armor damage is firther reduced by the skill. Meaning that 204 * 0.61350 multiplied by 0.7 = 87.6.

Garen will receive about 320 damage to his hp.

Result, Garen, the great riven counter, is unable to outtrade her. And riven deals nearly double the damage of garen.

This is an equal skill situation with garen and riven.

20 Comments

redniwediS8/8/2015, 5:21:52 AM4 votes

Never be afraid to post some constructive opinions on here! People mostly hate on the QQ threads, not the constructive ones.

Lord Dusteon8/8/2015, 5:35:57 AM3 votes

Commenting on the first and last part.

  1. No, she doesn't. Tanks generally have a few main features: great base stats and low scalings, scale best with pure or almost pure defence, and high tanking steroids and CC. If you'll notice Riven has none of that; she has CC, yes, but one is incredibly telegraphed (just watch out for the Noxian swinging her sword wildly two times) and the other is a short ranged melee burst. Both of these CC's are also VERY short duration: ~.5 seconds for Q and .75 seconds for W. And yes, she does have a shield. A shield that scales on her offensive stat (AD: Akin to Diana's AP shield, or Janna's, or Lulu's) but on a champion who cannot afford to build much defence to make that shield mean anything. She might have a shield, but it's short duration and mostly empty health.

So she's not a tank. She is however a very mobile, high damage champion: a more fighter-assassin (or assassin-fighter). She has the high mobility and damage of a assassin, but not the survival tools. She instead has a passive that requires more prolonged engagements (here prolonged meaning fighter length instead of the .25-.5 seconds assassins have) and a shield to defend herself (instead of the assassin style untargetability/blinks everywhere).

Last bit: The entire POINT of the Garen counter is during her Q's you silence her, removing her ability to shield or finish her Q's. You cut out 1-2 Q's if you use it correctly, and your Q will skip her shield entirely (because it's not freaking up yet). Additionally, Garen's E has multiple ticks spread out; her shield will not fully absorb all his damage before its time is up. A correctly timed Q negates 2 of her passive procs and 2 of her Q's, gutting her damage.

snowcrest8/8/2015, 5:00:19 AM2 votes

  1. Riven is not that easy to play if you don't have that awesome mechanics. It's a fact.

  2. How to stop Riven from snowballing in the first place? Beg your jungler to camp the sh*t out of your lane (whether top or mid), make sure she falls waaaay behind and prey that your team ends the game before the 30 minute mark.

3sTbGoP7ES8/8/2015, 5:35:46 AM1 votes

If she is unbalanced and op why don't you climb to challenger with her?

warpenguin5558/8/2015, 5:44:14 AM1 votes

so you animation cancel as lux? lol also git gud

Ace Access 8/8/2015, 3:31:37 PM1 votes

umm out of curiosity why doesn't riot get rid of the animation canceling ?

Shroom Junkie8/9/2015, 12:35:23 PM1 votes

The problem with Riven however, is that if she's shut down, she's shut down for good. There's no coming back. Ever. Heck, if you even just keep her even in lane going 0/0/0 and at an average CS then it doesn't matter, she'll be average to shit.

People don't get that though, they just have to get those kills on Riven because they feel she's OP and they'd be awesome if they took her down. And then they feed. And feed. And now everyone thinks Riven's OP.

And what's this about Riven being tanky? She's not even tanky, she's one of the squishiest 'fighters' in the game. Her shield is BONUS AD scaling. Meaning, by late game, it might scale off of maybe 400-500 damage at best if she's going full damage. Not even close to tank.