Once you reach about Plat 2 or so...

It is considered normal by Riot, because they've been there for quite a while. They legitimately balance her around it, and have stated as much - her 2 normal damage abilities wouldn't have such lackluster bases if it wasn't for animation cancelling. 270 (more realistically 180) damage + 170 damage (+ their scaling) isn't actually all that impressive. It's the animation cancels that make them feel like they're good damage when they're fairly sub-par, simply because of how fast it happens.

The problem is not necessarily with the animation cancels in themselves, but their complete ease of use. Anyone can pick up Riven and potentially even accidentally animation cancel. What I could see them doing instead is making it more difficult to utilize so that it takes more skill to play Riven at a good level, meaning good Rivens are rewarded while players that only hear of her power through myths and legends will see her as "that one champ that does meh damage." The current problem came in about 5 months ago through a change to overlapping CC effects, even though she's had animation cancelling for longer than that.

She hasn't been balanced around it at all. They didn't acknowledge it as a thing even until recently when they said "Yeah, I guess we'll just keep this a thing". Her nerfs were because she needed them. She was incredibly safe, incredibly oppressive, and incredibly easy to play for just about everyone and anyone could play her stupidly dangerous and get out alive with several kills.

Now it's just people who're "good" with her that can play stupidly dangerous and get out alive with several kills. Removing this stupid mechanic would just mean that the people who are having an easy time would have to actually put some smarts and effort into their play besides, "Yeah, I can outdamage that champ. And that one. And that one. Hell, the only one I can't outdamage is- OH FUCK IT'S RYZE."

lol no, thats not how it works.

If they removed her animation shit, and her winrate, pickrate, banrate, and average ingame statistics don't take a massive dive, she gets nothing.

If they do, she gets slowly buffed over time until she is balanced.

This is called balancing. Very simple.

Actually, animation cancelling is her skillcap. Her skill floor is how easy it is to play her at all, and 90% of people don't exploit A.C. while playing Riven.

They don't deserve that elo because they are just abusing a broken champion that has a lot of potential to win games, nothing else. They aren't doing any effort to deserve that elo. They don't learn other lanes (you don't have to be an expert on every lane, but you must be prepared to play every lane), they don't learn how to communicate with their team or how to teamfight, they don't learn other champions on the situation that Riven is banned, they end up being essentially that; when they play Riven, they play like a Challenger. When they play anything else, they play like a Bronze.

Which means only once ever 6.666 games.

So every game averaging at 30 minutes, you'll only see her one every 3.5 hours you play. If you were to play 24 hours at 30 minutes a game non stop, you'd only see her ~7 times out of 48 games.

That's not a lot in any scenario. You probably throw games at a much higher rate than that.

I've always called it the vayne payne paradox.

{quoted}

It's like Shaco and Vayne, and hell even Fiora.

I think it's called the Shaco Effect?

Aw comon. There's a lot to playing Shaco, it's not like you're just abusing a single gimmick to become a one-trick pony. Besides, jungling already demands a high amount of game knowledge, and Shaco even more so. That would translate well to just about any jungler.

I find it hard to believe that a high ELO Shaco main couldn't just lock in Xin Zhao and still perform at a high ELO level. I've watched a lot of Shaco streams and they don't seem to struggle when he's banned.