The State of Riven: Fast Q and The Bug that became a "Feature"

To preface this post: THIS IS NOT A RIVEN HATE THREAD. The purpose of this post is to discuss whether or not the current in-game aspects of her gameplay align with the goals of what she was designed for, and specifically speculate on whether or not the removal of one particular element will make her easier to balance across skill levels.

The one specific element I would like to discuss is her Fast Q.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this combo, here's a quick video refresher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX7b_TONpEY

Basically, this combo relies on a bug that allows you to cancel the aftercast of Riven's Q animation to start a basic attack faster than usually possible by inputting a movement command while the Q animation is playing and quickly attack-clicking your target afterwards. As can be seen, this creates a huge disparity in how fast Riven's burst comes out. As well as being fairly reliant on ping, it also focuses a lot on perfect rote muscle memory and is something that isn't really featured in any other part of League of Legends.

To be clear, this is not about Riven's ability to animation cancel. Animation cancelling is the ability for her to shorten the animation of some of her abilities or basic attacks by using another ability. This is also not about Riven's ability to cast two abilities simultaneously while her E shield is active. This is simply about your ability to randomly input a movement command during Q to somehow, through spaghetti code, shorten the aftercast of Q to get a basic attack out faster.

Now, let's talk about some pros and cons.

Pros:

1. Allows for skill expression for someone who's completely mastered Riven and her various aspects.
2. Faster attack speed feels smoother?

Cons:

1. Loss of clarity to people who are playing against her. Her opponent has no idea if they're fighting someone who can fast Q or who can't fast Q, and this makes a huge difference in her DPS at all stages of the game.
2. Forces rote mechanical muscle memory that is not a core part of League of Legends.
3. Is actually a bug that Riot has acknowledged.
4. Forces Riot to balance around the existence of Fast Q being possible, which leads to ->
5. Is not intuitive for people who want to pick up Riven, and there is no inherent information in game telling them about this, which leads to them experiencing a weaker riven because they do not know about the experience of Fast Q.

I'm serious. I couldn't think up a ton of Pros for why this should remain in the game. I'd actually really like to hear the perspective of some people who main or one-trick Riven as to why, specifically, the Fast Q is important to her.

Alternatives:

Remember when I said the purpose of this was to see if Riot could get her into a better place balance-wise by removing Fast Q? Yeah.

So it turns out there's a recently released champion that has a passive very similar to Riven's. That's right, mah boi SYLAS, aka Chain Daddy, aka 2Chainz.

"Innate: After casting an ability, Sylas' next basic attack within 4 seconds is modified to whirl his chains around him, dealing 5 − 48 (based on level) (+ 100% AD) (+ 20% AP) Ability power magic damage to the target and nearby enemies."

What this tooltip DOESN'T tell you is that this basic attack comes out much faster and has a higher attack speed than Sylas' base attack speed. I actually commented that he plays a lot like Riven within the first game of playing him. Ironic, given that Aatrox was essentially hailed as Riven 2.0 by the community.

What does this mean for Riven? It means Riot has the technology, right now, to make a compromise.

Proposal: Remove Fast Q. Give Riven's passive, Runic Blade, increased attack speed when using a charge, similar to Sylas' Petricite Burst without the AOE. Balance Riven over the fact that you no longer have to exploit a bug to optimize Riven. (Riot also recently started fixing some other stuff with buggy inputs like Diana's R->Q low-ping combo).

Discussion: If Riot somehow made it so that everyone could essentially execute Fast Q (with Runic Blade) without the rapid click-off-click-on input and balance her around that fact, would Riven Mains riot? Do you actually LIKE the Fast Q in its current form? If so, why specifically do you like the buggy input scheme?